by Tamara Leigh
She coughed into the kerchief. How her throat ached, first from affecting a man’s voice, now from malady. But surely it did not compare to what Rowan suffered in that filthy, dank cell.
Annyn turned again to Lady Isobel. “I am beset with fatigue. If ’twould not offend you, I would seek my rest.”
Concern flitted across the woman’s face, and she looked to Squire Warren. “See Lady Annyn to Wulfrith’s chamber. It shall be hers for the duration of her stay.”
The protest that rose to Annyn’s lips died with the realization it was not the solar of which the woman spoke, but the chamber in which Annyn had bathed.
Once Annyn was clear of the hall, she breathed out relief. However, at the landing she fell beneath Squire Samuel’s regard where he stood outside the solar.
The young man’s becoming face was made unbecoming by the scorn that bent his mouth and made slits of his eyes. “My lady,” he mocked as she drew even.
Annyn halted and let the spark in her light a fire. “I am a lady,” she said with her chin high. “A lady that you, with all your training to become the consummate warrior, were too blind to see. A lady that you allowed to steal past you and compromise your lord’s safety.”
His brow grooved so deeply it nearly made him appear elderly.
“Good eve, Squire Samuel.” Annyn stepped past. “Sleep light.” She met Squire Warren’s livid gaze where he stood a stride ahead. Though her words had not been directed at him, it had fallen as heavily. She did not care. A man might be dying and all the discomfort these two suffered was pricked pride.
As Squire Samuel sputtered at her back, she strode past Wulfrith’s first squire.
“Were you the least bit pretty,” Samuel’s convulsing tongue finally formed words, “you could not have done what you did.
He struck harder than he could know, nearly taking her breath for all these years of knowing she could never measure against her mother’s comeliness. Now, finally, someone had spoken it—worse, for the young man was not even comparing her against her mother’s profound beauty. Not even pretty...
Annyn’s spirit awakened and found good in it. At the door to her chamber, she turned and smiled. “I shall take that as a compliment, Squire Samuel, for if that is all that held this lady from being revealed, it recommends that I, a mere woman, am equal to men as they would not have me believe. Thank you.”
Mouths slackening, the young men stared.
Annyn shouldered into the chamber that wafted blessed heat, closed the door, and crossed to the small table beside the bed. She lifted the hand mirror that lay alongside the basin.
The face reflected back at her was one she had always known, though these past years she was less inclined to look upon it—oval, set with dark eyebrows above pale blue eyes that were a bit too large, a small nose flecked with freckles, and an unremarkable mouth.
Pretty, Lady Isobel had said, but she had only been kind.
Annyn spread her lips. Her teeth were her best feature, white and evenly set. The only real difference to be found since last she had looked upon her reflection was the bruise on her cheek. The swan that Uncle Artur had years ago assured her she would become had yet to materialize, meaning it would not.
As she set the mirror back, a tickle rose in her throat. She coughed, wiped her nose, and eyed the bed. She would rest, and in the morn perhaps she would think more clearly on Rowan.
When she curled beneath the coverlet, the cough turned more insistent and summoned an ache between her eyes. Burying herself deeper beneath the covers, she groaned. Such misery!
“What is this?” Garr frowned at the folded garment tossed into his lap.
As eventide deepened, Isobel perched on the mattress edge. “Do you not recognize the tunic over which your mother toiled though she detests needlework?”
What was she plotting? He lifted the garment and saw it was the one he had given to Annyn. “I know it. Why do you bring it to me?”
“Look to the hem.”
He did. It was torn, and he was momentarily swept with fury at the possibility one of his men had assaulted Annyn. But Abel would not have allowed it.
“What would you have me see, Mother?”
“From that tunic was taken the cloth that bound your shoulder. Lady Annyn herself tore it to stanch your bleeding.”
Annyn who had run with Rowan after the man had put an arrow through him. Garr dropped the garment. “Why do you champion her?”
“When I sought her out in the tower, ’twas with an angry heart, but something...” She shook her head. “She is not as expected.”
“Just as she is not Jame Braose.” He made no attempt to lighten his loathing. “The woman is a deceiver. She will say and most certainly do whatever best serves her.”
Isobel leaned near. “She knows you did not murder her brother, though she has but the evidence of her heart to tell her.”
“Heart!”
Isobel laid a hand over his. “You have been too long without prayer. I bid you, go to it and find comfort. Anger will be torn from your eyes that you may see more clearly.”
He pulled away from her, and when he spoke, his voice was chill. “Does a bed not await you, Mother?”
Disappointment thinning her mouth, she stood. “Do not let all I taught you ere you were stolen from me be for naught, Garr. Now more than ever you need—”
“I know what I need!” He flexed his stiff fingers. “A sword to hand and an arm to swing swift and sure.”
“But going before it must be forgiveness.”
He thrust off the pillows. “You dare speak to me of forgiveness when for how many years did you war with my father? Still you wear black when he is dead and buried and can no more be eaten by your longing for another man.”
Her eyes dulled as if whatever nibble of light was in her had gone out.
“God’s patience,” he growled and dropped back onto the pillows. He was once more the young boy whose father had tested his anger and corrected it time and again. He had hurt his mother, and it was wrong, whether by Drogo’s law or God’s.
“You are right,” Isobel said softly. “Thus, who better to advise you to forgive than one who did not and now lives in deepest regret?”
Garr frowned.
She nodded. “Though the day I wed Drogo I vowed to wear black until death parted us, only when he was gone did I realize the wrong I had done him. For that, my son—not revenge—I continue to wear black to remind me of my unpardonable error.”
It was the most she had ever spoken of her relationship with his father. Though Garr knew it was not for a Wulfrith to care about such things, he hungered to understand what had happened between the two who had conceived him in bitterness.
A knock sounded, causing his mother to startle. “The physician.” She hurried to the door as though she fled the devil himself.
Garr ground his teeth. His injury had waited this long for the man to return from attending an ill villager earlier in the day. It could wait longer. “Mother!”
She pulled the door open and swept past Squire Samuel and the physician.
Tempted as Garr was to vault after her, he knew one could not make a woman talk unless she wished to. And even if one could, it would be wrong to press Isobel further. The little she said had cost her much. If more were to be told, it would have to save for the day of her choosing.
“Your color is better,” the physician said as he approached the bed. “How does your shoulder fare?”
“It does not pain me.”
The man set his bag on the bed. “Let us see if the stitches hold.”
Throughout the examination and redressing of the wound, Garr experienced a restlessness so great he was beseeched a dozen times to be still. A quarter hour later, the physician pronounced that the injury was healing well and withdrew.
Garr looked to the torches and followed their convulsing light that reached to the torn tunic. Was it true Annyn no longer believed him capable of murder? It was as she had alluded whe
n she came to the solar, but perhaps she had said it only to soften him toward Rowan. But if it was true, what then?
He groaned. Mother was right. He was in need of prayer to battle the terrible emotions that threatened to drag him farther and farther from God. He thrust the coverlet back and dropped his feet to the rushes. Though he felt a lightening of the head when he stood, it passed, and he retrieved his robe.
“My lord!” Squire Samuel exclaimed when Garr pulled open the door. “What do you require?”
“Naught.” Garr stepped past him. As the chapel was on the floor above, he started for the stairs, but he had not taken two strides when the sound of coughing reached him. He looked around. Only then did he notice Squire Warren outside the chamber that was Garr’s when he came to Stern.
His mother had put her in his chamber? In the order of things, especially as Annyn was hardly an esteemed guest, it was where Isobel ought to bed for the night.
Garr strode back and halted before Warren who stood with a stiff back and erect chin.
Before Garr could speak, the coughing came again, so raw it struck him with unease. “How long has she been thus?”
The young man shifted his weight. “She was quiet for a time, my lord, but has begun again.”
The tower had done it to her. When she had been brought to the solar this morning, he had seen she was ailing, but it had not seemed as serious as the cough now indicated. “The physician has seen her?”
“I think not, my lord, certainly not since she was given into my charge.”
Garr glared at the young man. There was still much to be taught him before he earned his spurs. He motioned Squire Warren aside and opened the door.
The brazier was well laid, for it still warmed the chamber, its glow lighting the bed and the lump that was its occupant.
The cough came again, sounding ten-fold worse now that the door was no longer a barrier. Of such things men and women died.
“Send for the physician, Squire Warren.” Garr stepped inside and closed the door. As he tread the rushes, the cough subsided. Not until Garr drew alongside the bed did he realize that Annyn was entirely beneath the covers, not a glimpse of dark hair to be seen.
“Annyn?” He strained to catch the rise and fall of her breath, but either there was not enough light to show it, or...
He snatched the covers back and bared the woman who curled in on herself on the same mattress that, in the past, had taken his weight. The thin chemise that damply conformed to her body revealed slim legs, smooth thighs, rounded hips.
Denying the desire that rose in him, Garr bent near, but no nearer did he get.
Annyn coughed so hard she shook, then threw out a hand as if seeking the coverlet.
Lest she open her eyes and construe his presence as concern for her well-being—or an attempt to ravish her—Garr stopped himself from turning the covers over her. Not only was it exceedingly warm in the chamber, but she could retrieve them herself. No sooner did he step back than her lids lifted.
With a cry, she flew up like birds scattered from a thicket, grabbed the coverlet, and dragged it against her chest. “What do you here?” she demanded in a graveled voice.
Garr did not need the light of torches to know her fear. He saw it by the brazier’s glow that lit her wide-eyed countenance—felt it in the space that throbbed between them.
She thought he had come to take revenge in her bed. Though he knew he should not fault her, especially considering his reaction to the sight of her, it rankled that she would think it. Never had he taken a woman by force.
Shoulder aching, he crossed his arms over his chest and supported the injured one with a hand beneath. “I am not here for what you believe.” And yet still he stirred. Could she not also cover her legs? Not only were her delicately arched feet visible, but her stretch of calves...
She clutched the coverlet up to her chin and tucked her legs beneath so the only bare flesh remaining was of her arms—arms that could draw a man in and hold him tight.
“For what did you come?”
Aye, for what? Not concern. Certainly not that.
She coughed, the terrible sound breaking from deep inside her chest. Bending forward, short dark hair falling over her face, she struggled to clear the sickness from her lungs.
When her heaving subsided, Garr was so tense from forcing himself to remain still he felt as if cast of iron.
Annyn tossed her head back and, eyes teared from the strain of coughing, waited for his answer.
“I came for all the noise you make,” he said. “’Tis enough to awaken the dead.”
Indignation flashed across her face, but as brief as lightning in the sky, it cleared. “Though you ought to hate me, I do not think you do, Wulfrith.”
His ire flared. “You err in trying to know me.” He strode across the chamber and slammed the door behind him.
Annyn sighed. Deny it though he did, she felt sure that concern had brought him to her chamber—and desire had held him to it, though, according to Sir Samuel, she was not even pretty. So what was there to tempt Wulfrith? And what had he seen when she lay uncovered?
She pushed a foot out from beneath the coverlet, a calf, a lower thigh. It was a nice enough leg, well-turned, smooth, and proportioned to the rest of her. But as for the rest of her...
She lowered the coverlet and eyed her small chest. Though it was certainly not a boy’s, neither was it anything near the bosom her mother had not passed on to her.
Annyn blew out a breath that ended on a cough, fell back, and stared at the ceiling. Concern Wulfrith felt for her, but his desire was surely of a man too long without a woman. And it made her ache.
A knock sounded.
She whipped the covers back over her and lifted her head as a tall, slim man entered.
“My lady, I am physician to the Wulfriths.”
Annyn nearly smiled. The man who claimed she could not know him had sent her a healer.
Garr straightened from the wall outside Annyn’s chamber and met the man’s tired gaze. “Speak.”
The physician scowled. “The first I shall speak is that you ought to be abed, my lord.”
In prayer was where he ought to be, but from here he would go there. “The Lady Annyn?” He was in no mood to sweeten his demand, especially after his encounter with the woman who claimed to know him.
The physician repositioned his leather bag beneath an arm. “’Tis good you brought her from the tower. Had she remained, she would have...” He shrugged. “’Twould not have boded well.”
To Garr’s right, Squire Warren shifted. In the quarter hour since the physician had entered Annyn’s chamber, he and Squire Samuel had been fed additional lessons that had made their cheeks flush out to their ears.
“The chill has gone to her chest,” the physician continued, “but it ought to resolve provided she rests and takes the medicinals I gave her. Of course, ’twould speed her healing if I bled her—”
“You shall not.” Healers and their leeches! One of the few things Garr remembered of the past four days was when he had awakened to find worms sucking at his flesh. He had raged until they were removed. Despite the certainty of so many, he did not believe there was benefit to leeching, especially when one had lost as much blood as he had done.
The man inclined his head. “As you wish, my lord. Is there anything else you require?”
“Nay. Good eve.”
The physician started to step around him, but paused. “The lady asked that I attend her man who is yet in the tower.”
Far too loudly, Garr said, “Should I further require your services, Physician, I shall tell you.”
“Aye, my lord.”
As his tread receded, Garr silently berated himself for what he must do. But first, prayer.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wulfrith left her no choice. As for Squire Warren—or was it Samuel who had the guard this morning?—Annyn’s regrets were deepest for him. If she succeeded, he would bear Wulfrith’s wrath. But bet
ter that than a man die.
Three nights past, when the physician left her and she had heard Wulfrith’s voice in the corridor—further evidence he was not cold to her—she had been hopeful only to have hope dashed. Though it had been a strain to hear much of the conversation, Wulfrith’s refusal to send the physician to Rowan came clear through the door, his anger clear through her heart. Rather than yield to tears, she had made Rowan a promise. And this promise she would keep. Now that an opportunity presented itself and she was fairly recovered, it was time.
She looked to the table on which sat the second of two vials the physician had given her—a sleeping elixir. She glanced at where Josse lay with the coverlet drawn up to her ears. Three days it had taken to gain the young woman’s trust, three days of imploring her to accept a goblet of tainted honey milk.
Hating that she’d had to deceive her, Annyn turned. The first vial, concealed beneath the bodice of the garment that Annyn had borrowed from the maid, was a medicinal given to clear her throat and lungs. In anticipation of this day, she had taken only half doses, certain Rowan would need it more than she, praying it was not too late.
She smoothed the brown bliaut to her hips. Fortunately, Josse was nearly as tall as she. Unfortunately, the young woman was gifted with exceptional breasts that required the stuff of hose to make the bodice fit. The irony made Annyn smile bitterly, for once again she took another’s identity.
She adjusted the simple circlet on the head veil one last time, swept up the tray of viands that Josse had delivered a half hour earlier, and crossed to the door.
As Squire Warren turned to her, she swept around and closed the door. Head lowered, she hurried past the young man and Squire Samuel where he stood outside the solar, praying neither would ask anything of her, praying she would not tip the tray’s contents, telling herself she only imagined the bore of their eyes.
Robert Beaumont had turned, just as Garr had known he would. As formal acknowledgment of Henry’s right to the throne, the earl had placed more than thirty fortified castles at the Duke’s disposal. It did not bode well for Stephen.
