The Unveiling (Age of Faith)

by Tamara Leigh

  The horror in Lavonne’s eyes turned to rage. “Unhand the termagant!” From the color that rose on his face and the spasming of his right eye, he did not demand the Bretanne woman’s release that he might offer her his protection. “Unhand her I say!”

  Garr twisted her tunic in his fist, bringing her so near he could feel her breath on his jaw. “She is my prisoner.”

  “Nay, she is my...” Lavonne drew a rattled breath. “...betrothed.”

  The grudging pronouncement stunned Garr, as it also seemed to stun the woman who gasped and breathed, “Nay.”

  “This termagant,” Garr bit, “the same who tried to murder me, is to be your wife?”

  Lavonne raised his seething gaze. “By order of Duke Henry. But do not think I knew what she intended, for until this hour she was unknown to me. Nine days past she and her man, Rowan, fled Castle Lillia. None knew she was destined for Wulfen, and certainly none knew she had donned men’s clothes to pretend herself a man.”

  Though Garr was unconvinced Lavonne was blameless, for the moment he was done with him. He looked to Everard, Abel, and Sir Merrick, and momentarily wondered at the unease wreathing the latter’s face. Did his breath trouble him again?

  “Clear the hall!” Garr shouted. He would have none lend an ear to his dealings with the Bretanne woman. He dragged her toward the dais.

  “Lord Wulfrith,” Lavonne called, “I demand—”

  “Remove the baron!” Garr shouted over his shoulder.

  Despite Lavonne’s protests, his voice quickly faded from the hall.

  Garr pulled the woman around the high table, thrust the curtain aside, and propelled her ahead of him into the solar. If not for the table she stumbled against, she might have lost her footing. He almost wished she had. Such anger he felt to once more know betrayal at the hands of a Bretanne!

  Annyn returned the stare of the man whose death she had denied herself. Now it was surely she who would die, for regardless that Henry had promised her to the detestable Lavonne, Wulfrith would not deny himself.

  Though fear made her long to clutch her tunic closed, she found strength in knowing her destiny. Laying her hands flat on the table behind, she raised her chin.

  Still holding the misericorde that had waited four years to bleed him, Wulfrith strode toward her.

  Annyn steeled herself for his assault.

  He halted before her. Eyes so cold it was as if an icy wind swept the solar, he slid the misericorde beneath his belt. “You have made a fool of me, Annyn Bretanne.”

  Though she longed to sidestep and put the room between them, she stretched her chin higher. “I would think you pleased that I did not make a corpse of you.”

  A muscle in his jaw leapt, but the anger that had pulsed from him in the hall had diminished as if he were gaining control of it. “Were you a man, you would kill me, hmm?” he repeated the threat she had made upon seeing Jonas laid out at Lillia.

  She squeezed the table edge. “It is what I said. It is what I meant.” But what I could not do. Did he know? As no sooner had she forsaken her vow to Rowan than Wulfrith had seized her, she could not be certain. “My brother’s death was no mishap as you told—as you lied. He was murdered.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Did you truly believe the rope burns around his neck would go undiscovered?”

  Wulfrith’s jaw strained, his only reaction to learning she knew the truth.

  “Honorable death!” Were she a man, she would spit.

  “I kill when ’tis necessary to defend home, land, and my people,” Wulfrith growled, “but I am no murderer. No innocents fall to my sword.”

  “Do they not? You were ready to hang, draw, and quarter Lavonne!”

  He smiled grimly. “Was I?”

  Had his threat to the baron been only that—meant to reveal the one whom Wulfrith believed Lavonne had enlisted?

  “In one thing you are right,” Wulfrith conceded. “Your brother’s death was not honorable. Forsooth, ’twas most dishonorable.”

  The admission, could it be called that, took Annyn’s breath. She waited for more, but he strode to the cool brazier.

  “How dishonorable?”

  He looked around. “Where is Jame Braose?”

  Then he would not tell her of Jonas’s death. Very well. Murder was murder regardless how it was done. Still, to know...

  “Did you and your man Rowan, whom I presume is the one who calls himself Sir Killary, murder him?”

  “Murder!” Annyn pushed off the table. “I am no mur—” She lowered her gaze. From what had passed this night, he would believe her capable of murder. He need never know of her failing.

  She met his gaze. “Jame Braose is at Castle Lillia where he was brought after Duke Henry captured him and his escort. I took his name and place. That is all.”

  Wulfrith traversed the solar and once more placed himself over her. “Nay, Annyn Bretanne, that is not all.”

  Though he seemed to have gained control of his emotions, still there was anger in him, anger for her daring to enter a place forbidden to women, for disguising herself as a man, for the dagger that had sought his blood, for the fool she had made of him. Would her death satisfy?

  “Is my fate to be the same as my brother’s? Will you hang me?”

  She heard his teeth snap and would have looked away if not that her fate could be no worse than that which she had already accepted. However, she was unprepared when his large hands settled around her neck, causing a small cry to burst from her.

  With his thumbs, he pressed her chin higher. “Though ’twould be within my rights to put you to the noose and none would call it murder, there are better means of punishment.”

  Why could she not breathe when his hands were not so tight as to prevent it? Though she swallowed, still she could not open her throat.

  “’Twas Rowan in the wood, was it not?” he asked.

  Sliced by fear for the man who had stood by her when there was no other, she lowered her gaze so Wulfrith would not see her weakness. Glimpsing his chest revealed between the edges of his robe, she looked lower and lit upon the misericorde. It was within reach.

  “You wish to try again?” Wulfrith challenged. “To fail again?”

  She hated him for knowing the course of her thoughts.

  “Aye,” he said, “it was Rowan in the wood, though what I do not understand is why you did not turn the arrow on me.”

  Finally, breath stuttered through her. Defiance all that held her head above fear, she said, “I should have.”

  Slowly—purposefully—he drew his thumbs downward, but did not stop at the base of her throat. Hands splaying her collarbone, he continued to the upper edge of her bindings and hooked his thumbs beneath.

  Would he tear them from her? Make her suffer greater humiliation than when he had revealed her in the hall? Ravish her? This last jolted, for she could not believe it was something he would do.

  Poltroon! shrilled the darkness within. If he could murder, he could violate. Still, she remembered the chapel and the man on his knees praying for England. Could that man murder? Ravish?

  The uncertainty, the warring between past and present, and her body’s response to his touch, made her long to scream.

  “I shall find this Rowan,” Wulfrith broke through her turmoil.

  So few words for so great a threat! For her, Rowan had sacrificed his allegiance to Henry. And now, perhaps, his life. She would rather die ten times than have him suffer for her ills.

  “He has done naught. Though I convinced him to assume the person of Sir Killary, still I would have come had he not agreed. He did it to protect me.”

  “Protect you?” Wulfrith dropped his hands from her. He turned, put a stride between them, and came back around. “Where is he now that you are in need of protection—dire need of protection?” He pointed to the outside wall of the solar. “He cowers in yon wood waiting for you to murder a man he also wishes dead.”

  He did not know that. Did he?

  “I am right
, hmm?”

  Annyn took an entreating step forward. “Pray, do not—”

  “You are lovers?”

  She drew a sharp breath. Truly Wulfrith must think her base to believe such when he, her enemy, had been more intimate with her than any. Of course he could not know his was the first man’s body she had seen unclothed. “Rowan should not be made to answer for what I did. Pray—”

  “Pray! Aye, that you should do. And do not stop ’til you’ve no more breath.”

  Then there was nothing she could say or do. Her revenge was now his and he would not turn from it.

  Annyn stiffened her spine and crossed her arms over her chest. “I have naught else to say to you.”

  “That is good, but there is one thing more I need to know.” He came to her again. “Raise your arms.”

  “For what?”

  He stepped nearer and slid his hands beneath her arms and down her sides.

  Annyn strained away, but he gripped her sides.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Have you more weapons?”

  “Only my teeth.”

  His lips thinned, but rather than speak the words surely on his tongue, he continued his search. Less gentle, though still impersonal, his hands at her waist caused the fine hairs along her limbs to stand erect. And when he ventured up again, one hand curving around to her back, the other passing over her belly, she tried again to evade him.

  He placed a hand against her lower ribs and sought her gaze.

  “I have no more weapons,” she said through clenched teeth.

  His hard eyes did not believe her. “If you wish me to spare you further humiliation, you will remain still.” He dropped to his haunches, turned a hand around each ankle, and slid upward.

  Trying to put her mind anywhere but here, Annyn looked to the ceiling.

  He felt her calves, her knees, her thighs. She trembled. He swept her hips, brushed the hose tucked in her braies. She shuddered.

  “Hose?” he rumbled.

  “Aye.” She steeled herself for further degradation, but he straightened and swung away.

  “We leave within the hour.”

  She felt as if dashed with chill water. “Leave?”

  He halted before the curtains. “I will not have Wulfen further befouled by a woman.”

  As if women were all the ill of the world when they were the life and breath of it as her mother had told. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Away.” He swept the curtain aside. “All of Wulfen is known to me, Annyn Bretanne,” he warned, then strode from the solar.

  Leaning back against the table, she dropped her chin to her chest. She had failed, and now punishment would be hers. Unless...

  Though there was no escaping Wulfen, once they left she might find an opportunity. But if she escaped Wulfrith, where would she go?

  She shook her head. Later she would worry on it. If later came.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Now that Annyn Bretanne was unveiled, her deception revealed, where would he take her? Garr halted in the center of the hall. More, once he delivered her, what was to be done with this woman who had tried to murder him?

  Hands remembering the feel of her, her trembling when he had searched her, he was disturbed as he did not wish to be.

  He turned his hands into fists, but it provided no ease, and the anger he had pushed down found a foothold and climbed back up. This time, however, it was more anger for himself than Annyn Bretanne. During the past sennight, she had shown herself—in the unreadable eyes of a woman, her unease at viewing his man’s body, that she had slept fully clothed, the instances of a pitched voice he had told himself was between a boy’s and a man’s, and a grace unknown to young men. But perhaps the greatest evidence was when she had dropped to the horse and not been pained.

  Remembering the hose in her braies, Garr growled. Though there were times he felt unworthy of lording Wulfrith lands, there had been none as great as this—unless one included Jonas Bretanne’s betrayal and subsequent death shortly after Drogo ceded the barony to Garr.

  Garr returned to memories of that morning at Lincoln when he had looked upon the young man’s lifeless form swinging from a tree. He had cut Jonas down and, that afternoon, following a bloody contest between Stephen’s men and Henry’s, had begun the journey to Castle Lillia.

  What he had not expected was to be met by a girl who looked more a boy and who blamed him for her brother’s death as if she saw through his lie. What he had hoped was that Jonas, in his finest tunic and hose, the ceremonial misericorde of Wulfen girded—the same dagger awarded to Garr the day of his knighting—would be set in the ground without any discovering the rope burns around his neck.

  To spare the girl and her uncle shame, he had lied. A good reason, he had believed, but the marks of hanging had been revealed and, thus, his lie. He should not be surprised that the discovery added to Annyn Bretanne’s belief he was responsible for her brother’s death. What he had never expected was for her to make good her vow that were she a man she would kill him.

  Grudgingly, he acknowledged what anger had previously held from him: were Annyn Bretanne a man, her attempt at revenge would be warranted—though not in God’s eyes—by the unveiling of his lie. Truly, her only trespass was in taking another’s name and disguising herself as a man to enter Wulfen.

  “By faith!” Garr touched the scores on his cheek left by the young Annyn Bretanne. They were so faint he could not feel them, but they were there. He pushed a hand back through his hair. What was he to do with her?

  “Brother?” Abel peered around one of the great doors that granted passage to the inner bailey and smiled apologetically. “’Tis a chill night and there are yet two hours of sleep to be had ere rising.”

  This the reason Garr had left Annyn Bretanne to herself—to return those of Wulfen to their beds. He beckoned for the men to enter.

  Lavonne was among the first to clamber through the doorway. The night air striping his cheeks pink, he surged toward Garr. “I demand to speak with her!”

  Her, not my betrothed, not Lady Annyn. “For what?”

  “Henry gave her to me. ’Tis my right.”

  Garr made him wait while he silently ticked through the preparations to be made before departing Wulfen. Finally, he said, “Your rights ended when she raised a dagger to me. But if ten minutes will suffice, I shall grant it.”

  “Ten minutes!” Lavonne’s nostrils flared, mouth twisted, and color went from pink to crimson.

  Though the man before Garr was one only glimpsed during his years of training at Wulfen, he had always existed. If not that Garr’s father had put loyalty before sense, the same as he had done with King Stephen, Lavonne would not have been allowed to complete his training here. But Drogo had insisted, placing the Wulfriths’ one hundred year ties with the Lavonnes above Wulfen’s reputation for turning out honorable men.

  Loyalty! Garr silently scoffed at his father’s failing. Admirable, but only where due. He ground his teeth and silently begrudged that Drogo was not alone in that failing. He himself struggled with it as if it had been passed through the blood from father to son. England was in dire need of a worthy king, and neither Stephen, nor his son, was or could be that.

  In that moment, Garr accepted the answer to prayers he had long prayed. Though it wrenched his gut, it was time for him to join Henry.

  He focused on the man sent by the one who would be king. “Ten minutes or naught.”

  Lavonne drew a harsh breath. “Very well.”

  As he strode toward the dais, Everard stepped alongside Garr.

  “It seems you have won your wager with Abel,” Garr said.

  Though Everard had to be pleased, there was no gloating on his face. “You are taking her from here?”

  “Within the hour. I shall leave Wulfen in your care.”

  His brother inclined his head. “I will not disappoint.”

  “This I know.” Garr looked around the hall, caught Abel’s
gaze, and motioned him forward. “I regret you shall not gain the two hours of sleep you desire. You will accompany me from Wulfen.”

  “I knew ’twould be me.” Abel sighed. “And our destination?”

  Garr looked again to Lavonne as the man tossed the curtain aside and entered the solar. “We go to Stern.”

  “Stern?” both brothers exclaimed.

  To that place where Garr had been birthed and been but a visitor since leaving it as a young child. He did not wish Annyn Bretanne among his mother and sisters, but there was no other place—at least, until he determined her fate.

  He breathed deep. “Aye. Stern.”

  It was Wulfrith she expected, not the man who strode toward her with the unsure step of one still suffering the effects of too much drink.

  Annyn rose from the chair she had lowered into moments past, and with one hand gathered her parted tunic together. “Lord Lavonne.”

  He halted within an arm’s reach, stared a chill wind through her, and swept the back of a ringed hand across her cheek.

  With a muffled cry, Annyn dropped into the chair.

  He slammed his hands to the arm rests and thrust his face so near hers she knew not only his deepest pore, but the depths of his sour belly. “I, Baron Lavonne, betrothed to a woman who runs from me, then disguises herself as a man?”

  Denying herself the comfort of pressing a hand to her throbbing cheek, Annyn held his gaze. Naught to fear. He can do no worse than Wulfrith.

  “Do you know how they laugh at me?”

  She narrowed her lids. “The same as Lord Wulfrith, I presume.”

  He caught a fistful of her hair and forced her deeper into the chair. “Witch!”

  Though tears burned her eyes, she held his gaze.

  Abruptly, he released her and turned away. “Why?”

  She knew what he wished to know, but though inclined to deny him, she decided it could do no harm. If nothing else, he might reveal something that would allow her to see Jonas’s death more clearly, especially considering his drunken state. She gathered her tunic closed. “Retribution for my brother’s murder.”