Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01]

by Falcons Fire

  For a moment they stared at each other in the dim room. The hesitance in her eyes surprised him; she had always seemed so sure of herself. Whatever the reason for her coming to him like this, she clearly found it difficult. Her smooth face, drained of color, looked eerily like the whalebone chess piece carved in her image. In the little sculpture, however, her hair was bound beneath a nunlike headdress. The Martine who stood before him wore hers loose, falling halfway to the floor in unkempt flaxen tendrils. She was beautiful, achingly beautiful. How could he ever have thought her plain?

  Finally she spoke. “I had decided you weren’t here.”

  “I was sleeping.”

  She frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to—”

  “No, no, that’s all right.” Her mantle was soaked through; taking a step toward her, he reached for the gold brooch to unfasten it. She stiffened, and he drew back. “I just—I only meant—your mantle is wet, and I thought—” He stammered like some weak-minded boy. What must she think of him?

  “Oh. Of course.” She tried to undo the brooch herself, but her hands, heavily wound in strips of bleached linen, were unequal to the task.

  “Allow me,” he said, and with chivalrous reserve, waited for her nod before unpinning the mantle and hanging it on a hook. She had replaced her ruined betrothal costume with loose, dark garments.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her glance at his bare torso and then look away, two bright spots of pink staining her pale cheeks. Thorne smiled inwardly. He had grown quite fond of her blushes, the only hint he ever had of her true feelings. Nevertheless, he took a shirt off its hook and pulled it over his head, then lit two candles.

  She shivered. He motioned for her to sit in his large chair, then poured a stiff brandy and offered it to her. Holding the cup gingerly with both bandaged hands, she took a sip.

  “I can fetch some coals for the brazier,” he offered.

  She shook her head. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll be fine.”

  Indicating her hands with a nod of his head, he said, “Do they hurt much?”

  “A bit.”

  “Then you must finish that brandy quickly. ‘Twill dull the pain.”

  She looked into the cup as if weighing a decision, then tilted it to her lips and swallowed its contents quickly. He took it from her and reached for the jug again.

  “Nay,” she said. “I’ll fall asleep if I have more.”

  He conjured up an image of her asleep in bed, then remembered what Ailith had said about her sleeping in the nude, and cleared his throat. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he asked, “How was Ailith when you left her?”

  Martine allowed herself a tired smile. “Still asleep in her mother’s arms.”

  Thorne nodded slowly. “She’d be dead now if it weren’t for you, my lady. I’ve rarely seen such courage as you displayed today. She means a great deal to me. I wanted to tell you... I wanted to thank you.”

  She nodded, meeting his eye. “I want to say something. I know what you think of me. I know you think I’m... spoiled and... and willful and—”

  “Nay, my lady.”

  “Please don’t deny it. It’s what everyone thinks, and I know you’re no different.” She looked into her lap, where her white-sheathed hands rested atop the dark wool of her tunic. “Perhaps I am that way. I know that some things are hard for me, hard to say. Especially to...” She glanced uncomfortably at Thorne, then looked back at her hands.

  Especially to me? wondered Thorne. Especially to men? But she never completed the thought.

  Martine shook her head somberly. “I haven’t been fair to you. In truth, I... I didn’t like you or trust you. But now... now I feel differently. I hope very much that you can forgive my past rudeness and that we can be friends.”

  Thorne took a deep breath to ensure that his voice would be steady. “I’d like that very much.”

  She met his eyes and held them, her expression grave. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He thought sadly that perhaps she would prepare to leave now, but she didn’t. For a moment it seemed she might speak, but then she paused, biting her lip. He reflected on her hesitation, wondering what else she wanted to tell him, and why it should be difficult for her.

  She struck him as the kind of person who said what she thought. If anything, she could be too outspoken at times, lacking in the diplomacy one expected from a wellborn lady. Some men might object to that—Bernard, certainly, and perhaps Edmond as well. But Thorne had little use for the smooth ways of wellborn ladies, and he found her frankness appealing.

  After a period of silence, he said, “Where did you learn to swim?”

  Staring at one of the candles, her voice distant, she said, “I grew up near a small lake.”

  “Near your father’s castle? Or perhaps you meant near the convent.”

  She tensed, and Thorne instantly regretted the question. He had only meant to relax her with pleasant conversation, but she didn’t know that. To her, it must have sounded as if he were still intent on interrogating her, unearthing her secrets.

  “Neither,” she answered.

  He rose. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  “Nay.” He closed the distance between them in one long stride and knelt at her feet. Covering her hands with both of his, he implored her with his eyes to look at him. She did. “There’s nothing you need to tell me. You owe me nothing. I really didn’t mean to—”

  “I owe you nothing?” She shook her head, her brows drawn together. “You saved my life.”

  He lifted one hand to her hair, brushing it away from her face and tucking it behind her ears. It felt cool and smooth and heavy. “You have a right to choose what you reveal to others,” he said quietly, stroking her cheek. “I never should have tried to pry information out of you. And it’s quite true that you owe me nothing. What happened at the river has nothing to do with... with what you want to tell me.”

  She looked away from him. “You don’t know what I want to tell you.”

  Taking her by the chin, he turned her to face him. Softly he said, “You are not Lord Jourdain’s legitimate child.” The tension in her hands, and her indrawn breath, provided his confirmation.

  “You knew?”

  He rubbed his thumbs gently over the thick padding of linen strips that crisscrossed neatly over her hands. “Not for sure. But it did seem the most likely possibility. Is that what you wanted to tell me? Is that why you came here?”

  She nodded. “That, and to thank you. I felt that you deserved to know. It was wrong to keep it from you, especially after what you did for me. If this were found out after the marriage, it would serve you badly, and that would ill repay you for having saved my life.”

  Mention of her upcoming marriage made Thorne acutely conscious of her indiscretion in coming here, and his equal indiscretion in sitting at her feet with his hands enclosing hers. Nevertheless, he made no move to release them. He couldn’t let her go; he needed to touch her. And he told himself that she needed the comfort.

  Earlier, at the river, as Thorne had been wrapping Ailith in his mantle and preparing to carry her back to the keep, Martine began to shiver most alarmingly. The magnitude of what she had been through, and the toll it had taken on her, suddenly became clear to him. It seemed that her facade of remote self-confidence might be thinner than he had imagined.

  He’d seen her look toward Rainulf, but although her brother asked after her most solicitously, he’d been too preoccupied with Geneva to offer any real comfort to his sister. Thorne’s instinct had been to rush to her and take her in his arms, to soothe her trembling with his warmth and strength—but it was an instinct he couldn’t possibly have acted on. Even had he not had Ailith to take care of, such an embrace, however well intentioned, would have been scandalous.

  Not half so scandalous, however, as this revelation of her illegitimacy, should it become public. Tha
t she had been willing to confide in him touched him deeply. “Does Rainulf know you’re telling me all this?” he asked.

  She nodded. “He never wanted to keep the truth a secret from you—although it never seemed to bother him to keep it from everyone else.”

  “How was that possible?”

  “‘Twas easy while I was at the convent. Few people knew I existed. Then, when I joined him in Paris last summer, he introduced me as his half sister and left it at that.”

  “And they all assumed you were the child of your father’s second marriage.”

  She nodded. “Just as Lady Estrude did. But that would have been impossible. Jourdain’s widow—his second wife, the lady Blanche—is but one and twenty years of age.”

  “Three years older than you.” Thorne shook his head and smiled ruefully, ashamed at having assumed so much and investigated so little, especially considering the importance of this marriage and his part in arranging it. “That would be a clever trick.”

  She looked down, her expression pained. “Rainulf is afraid you’ll feel deceived. He’s afraid you’ll hate him.”

  He closed both hands over hers and squeezed gently. “I can’t imagine his ever doing anything bad enough to make me hate him. And I don’t feel deceived, not really. Misled, perhaps, but only because of his love for you. He’s incapable of true deception.”

  She looked at him with wonder, her eyes brilliant in the candlelight. “You’re quite as forgiving as he is!”

  “Is that so surprising?”

  “Everything about you is surprising,” she answered quickly. Then, as if she had said too much, she looked down, and that hot, telling blush came again to her cheeks. Her troubled gaze rested on his hands covering hers. Reluctantly he withdrew them, reaching for the brandy jug to defuse the awkwardness of the moment.

  “Another cup? I won’t let you fall asleep.” She nodded and he poured one for each of them. “Your mother, then, was...” He had hoped Martine would complete the thought and elaborate to whatever degree she found acceptable. Instead, she inspected the dancing flame of the candle thoughtfully and at length. Very well. Although consumed with curiosity, he would not press her. He swallowed his brandy in one gulp, and Martine promptly did the same, then offered her cup for a refill. He obliged her, and she gripped the full cup with both hands and stared into it.

  “My mother...” she began.

  “You needn’t—”

  “My mother was Jourdain’s mistress.” This, of course, hardly shocked him, given her illegitimacy, but to speak of it appeared to distress her greatly. It suddenly dawned on Thorne that this might be the first time she had said those words, had ever admitted out loud that her mother had not been a baroness, but the mistress of a baron. Realizing this made him appreciate how hard this admission was for her, and why she had felt the need to steel herself with strong drink in order to say the words.

  “Her name was Adela,” she said. “Her father was a Paris wine merchant. He sold her to Jourdain for a handful of silver when she was very young.” She swallowed some brandy. “I know that now. I know everything, the whole horrible... everything.” She drained her cup. “I look back on my childhood—the first ten years, anyway—and wonder how I could have been so naive, so—” she lifted her cup to her mouth, found it empty, and lowered it, “happy. I was happy. Life was so simple... until I discovered the truth...”

  * * *

  In the summer of Martine’s tenth year, she began to notice the same name cropping up repeatedly in her mother’s prayers.

  “Mama,” the child finally asked, “who’s Odelina?”

  Adela knelt at their wooden chest, lighting the six rows of foul-smelling tallow candles that she had arranged on top of it. She looked up, and in her high, girlish voice, said, “Odelina is a lady who’s been very ill for a very long time.”

  Even at five and twenty years, Adela still looked very much the child, with her slender arms, small breasts, and enormous eyes. Martine, although just as fair in coloring, had her sire’s height and presence, and seemed older than her years.

  “So you’re praying that she’ll get better?”

  Grimly Adela shook her head. “I’m praying that she’ll die.”

  Martine gasped. “Die! Why? Because she’s in pain and you want to end her suffering?”

  “Nay,” Adela replied, returning to her candles. “I care naught for her suffering.”

  And then she said something that changed everything. She said, “I want her to die so I can marry her husband. The lady Odelina is your papa’s wife.”

  Martine gaped at her mother. “But you’re Papa’s wife! Aren’t you?”

  Adela looked at Martine with disbelief in her eyes. “If I were his wife, would we be living here? Barons don’t keep their wives in little clay huts in the middle of the woods. They keep them in their castles. Didn’t you know that?”

  Martine merely shook her head, dumbstruck. To Martine, her father was a glorious, golden-haired giant in furs and silks who came galloping through the woods on a white stallion when she least expected him.

  She would shriek with delight as he dismounted and lifted her into the air, whirling her around and around before squeezing her in his massive arms and pressing a little trinket into her hands. For Jourdain of Rouen never arrived without gifts of some sort for his daughter and her young mother. Silken ribbons, tiny gold rings, vials of aromatic oils, polished steel looking glasses with ivory frames, silver combs, beaded slippers... Their dark little wattle-and-daub cottage seemed to fill up with these dainty treasures as the years passed.

  Martine adored him, heart and soul. He brought laughter and excitement into their dreary lives. He was magnificent. He was her papa.

  What a change came over Mama when Papa came to visit! Her eyes lit up as she flew around the little cottage attending to his needs—hanging up his mantle, unlacing his boots, fetching him ale and bread and meat.

  Once he was rested and his belly filled, there would be other needs of his to attend to, and Martine would be sent outside to forage in the woods or swim in the lake, or, if it was raining, upstairs to the little loft where she slept at night. From below, she would hear the crackle of straw in Adela’s mattress, and other sounds—his groans, her breathless cries—sounds that frightened and confused her.

  “No, no, Martine, your papa would never hurt me,” Mama always assured her after he left. “He fills me. He makes me whole. Without him I’m an empty shell.”

  Martine watched her mother light the last candle, listened to her incomprehensible murmurs. Every time she heard the name Odelina, she cringed inside. “It’s wrong, Mama! It’s wrong to wish for someone’s death. It’s almost like murder. God will punish you!”

  Her mother rose to her feet, her blue eyes wide, their pupils tiny black pinpoints. “I’ll gladly risk the flames of hell if only my prayers are answered.” With a quivering arm she swept the candles onto the earthen floor, where they sputtered and died. “I would spend eternity writhing in agony in exchange for just one day as the rightful wife of my lord Jourdain!”

  Martine ran from the cottage and swam in the lake until the sky grew black and the water cold.

  It was shortly thereafter that Adela ordered the material for her wedding gown, yards of luxurious shot silk the crisp green of apples in late summer, before they ripen. It took her many days to sew the voluminous tunic with its long, flowing sleeves, weeks to complete the embroidery and beading. Martine had never seen a gown like it; it was dazzling, extraordinary.

  The morning she finished it, one of Jourdain’s men arrived with a load of firewood. The lady Odelina, he said, had ascended to heaven that very morning, God rest her weary soul.

  “He arrived just as I was sewing on the last bead,” Adela told her daughter as rode away. “‘Tis a good omen. A lucky sign for the marriage, don’t you think?” Soon, she said, her lord Jourdain would come riding out of the woods and carry them back to his castle. Martine bathed and dressed and brushed her
hair, dizzy with anticipation.

  But that day passed, and the next, and yet more, and he didn’t come. His servants no longer arrived at their door with deliveries of foodstuffs, firewood, cloth, and other household necessities. Weeks went by. Martine felt lost and confused. She adored her papa. It perplexed her that they hadn’t come for them, or at least sent the provisions they’d always depended on.

  Autumn came, and it was a wet, chilly autumn that year. They used up the wood and ran out of food. Martine collected roots and berries in the woods, but Adela spent all her waking hours in fevered, tearful prayer. The child knew without being told that she and her mother would not survive the winter.

  One afternoon Adela came back from a trip to the village, sat at the window, and stared wordlessly into the woods.

  “Talk to me,” Martine begged. “What happened? Is it about Papa? Did someone tell you something? Is he sick? Is he—is he dead? Please talk to me!”

  She still sat there when the child went up to her loft that night. But when Martine came down in the morning, her mother was gone. Her clothes still hung on their hooks, all except the new green tunic.

  Martine looked everywhere for her. She even went to the village all by herself and asked if anyone had seen her since the day before, but no one had. While walking back, she passed the lake, and that’s when she saw, floating on its breeze-rippled surface, the apple-green silk of her mother’s wedding gown.

  Why had Mama thrown it into the lake? It would be ruined, and it was so beautiful, and had taken so long to make. She waded into the water and tried to pull it out, but she’d been weakened by hunger, and it seemed to be caught on something. At the sound of whistling, she looked up. A farmer, a man known to her, led his ox along the path at the edge of the woods.

  “Can you help me?” she called. “Mama’s wedding gown is in the lake!”

  “Her wedding gown?” he said. “Who’s she going to marry, then?”

  “My father. Baron Jourdain of Rouen.”

  The farmer laughed incredulously. “Child, His Lordship remarried last week. Her name is Blanche. Thirteen years old.” He shrugged. “Some men like them young.”