"Not I." Her voice was weary. "I saw how my father treated you." Tears leaked from below the cloth. "It was cruel, and you were so beautiful and so young, and he should have been kinder."
Stung, Lyssa only blotted Isobel's forehead. "But Stephen is young and handsome, and besotted. He will treat you as a queen."
Isobel flung herself suddenly into Lyssa's arms. "Oh, do not make me wed him, I beg you!"
"Shhh," Lyssa whispered gently, smoothing Isobel's hair. "Can you not tell me why it grieves you so, my sweet? Can you not let me help you in some way?"
Isobel only sobbed the harder, her fingers digging painfully into Lyssa's back.
"What drove you to so desperate an act last even, Isobel? Do you love the lord?"
Isobel lifted her head, hiccuping in her long distress. She could not speak, and only shook her head.
"Then what, sweet? Tell me."
"I… want to… marry for… love," she stammered out. "As my mother and father did."
Lyssa had heard the tale, more oft than she wished. Lord Philip, on an errand from the king, had spied a squire's daughter and asked for her hand. It had been a foolish decision in many ways, for the girl brought no dowry to speak of, and Lord Philip had only small holdings of his own. Still, 'twas the stuff of ballads, and well did Lyssa know the girlish longing to find it for herself.
"Listen to me. Isobel, very closely."
Wiping ineffectually at her face, Isobel nodded.
"My lands and my weaving are my only holdings, and I should be loathe to lose Woodell to my angry king."
"But… the king is your… cousin." Isobel breathed deeply. "And all know he is uncommonly fond of you."
"Aye. That he is, and that I used to secure you a husband who would not disgust you."
"Ah, nay, Lyssa—"
She held up a hand. "This one thing will I do for you, Isobel: I will ask Stephen to hold off on this betrothal till his business carries him back again. Give him a fortnight to make his suit, and I will find a way to release you if you cannot love the lord."
Isobel stared hard at her. "Why… would you be kind… to me?"
"I do not wish you to suffer, Isobel, and will give you time to work your way to this match." She narrowed her eyes. "But be warned, child, I'll not do it a second time. Are you truly willing to risk what old gouty lord the king will find for you next? Or will you take this young knight, who burns to lay his fortunes at your feet?"
Isobel lowered her eyes, rebellion on the full red mouth. "I do not wish to be given to any man," she said in a low, fierce voice, the hiccuping gone in her passion.
"Nor do any of us, Isobel, but with noble privilege comes noble duty, and this you will not escape."
Isobel lowered her head, and took in a breath. "I will marry Stephen," she said at last. "At least he is beautiful."
It was too quickly won, this victory, and Lyssa narrowed her eyes. "No more tricks, Isobel."
The girl looked out the window, her expression one of such resignation and sorrow that Lyssa felt it as a bolt through her heart. "Nay, no tricks. I am too weary."
"Ah, child, 'twill not be so terrible. You will learn to love him."
"Will I?" Isobel asked.
And Lyssa could not answer. Instead, she picked up a boar's bristle brush and began to comb Isobel's hair. "Come, we must make you ready."
* * *
Isobel's strange acquiescence lasted through the preparations, and through the betrothal, which was sealed by the village priest, before the witness of the entire village and all of Stephen's men. Lyssa saw Tall Mary, her red hair swept into a knot at her nape, standing in the back of the church; Alice, looking demure in a clean white linen wimple, standing nearby, Lord Thomas in the scarlet tunic she'd sent to him; Robert, glowering, stood near the front.
Within the confines of the church, Thomas looked like an angry stallion, hair black and gleaming, blue eyes fierce in the smoky gloom of the church. Not once did he look toward Lyssa.
It was a subdued ceremony, and when the pair was promised, Stephen prepared to ride away almost immediately. Lyssa insisted that a betrothal dinner would ordinarily have been given and pressed he and his men to dine with them. Hurried meat pies had been baked from the leftovers of the feast, and served up with cherry cider, and offerings of tender young carrots and baby onions, stewed in meat juices.
Through all, Isobel kept her head down, her hair covered with a simple veil fastened with a jeweled fillet, neither laughing nor weeping nor storming. By meal's end, Lyssa wondered with alarm if Isobel had fallen ill, and thought of the mice that had been so much a trial since their return. Once the castle had boasted a fine lot of mousers, big burly cats with too many toes and big heads, but they'd suffered worst of all from the pestilence, and only a handful were left. Shuddering inwardly, Lyssa thought of the plague-dead rats that had foreshadowed their fall to it, and she made a mental note to ask her steward to send someone to town, even to London if need be, for kittens. Surely their numbers had been replenished by now in the cities.
As Stephen and his men began to make restless movements, Isobel suddenly stood, holding her maser aloft. "I would like to speak before you depart," she said in a clear, ringing voice. The veil fell away from her face, showing the bruises and the slight puffiness of her long weeping.
A hush fell over all, above salt and below, and Lyssa found herself holding her breath, afraid that this might be Isobel's moment of revenge.
"'Tis about last night," she said, and focused on Thomas, who sat stonily across from Lyssa. "I have been a foolish girl, Lord Thomas, and I do beseech thee to grant me forgiveness for my actions." To the others she said, "He acted with nothing but gallantry toward me, and I repaid him by acting a spoiled child."
Lyssa glanced toward Stephen, whose face showed a ruddy blush of humiliation at this confession. Isobel, ever the consummate actress, noticed, and with a grand gesture, she knelt prettily at his feet, bowing her head in submission. "I ask thy forgiveness, too, my lord, for my foolish, headstrong ways, and I vow I will ever submit to thy wishes as long as I live."
Stephen struggled with a dignified expression, but it was plain to all that this gave him no small measure of joy. He touched her head. "I grant your wish," he said simply, then as if to spare himself some gaffe, he rose to gather his men.
Isobel, quiet and modest as a novitiate, stepped back. Lyssa watched her carefully, disturbed at the change. It seemed too quick, too complete, to be a genuine transformation. She glanced toward Thomas.
And found him staring at her, his eyes boiling with some dark and best unnamed emotion. His jaw tightened as he sent a flickering glance toward Isobel, then back to Lyssa.
He, too, was skeptical.
But suddenly, Lyssa was too weary to think anymore of any of it. As soon as she was decently able, she escaped to the privacy of her solar, escaping Isobel, Alice, and Mary, but most of all, Dark Thomas, whose brooding gave new meaning to the name the peasants had given him.
Dark Thomas. Dark with fierce pride and brooding wounds. Dark of hair and warm of skin, and suddenly a dark stranger she knew not at all.
Chapter 11
Lyssa sat in the calm of her solar, blessedly alone after the tumult of the long day. It was near evening before she'd been able to escape, and now the deep gold of late-day sun gilded the world beyond the embrasures, a somehow easing sight. Within the curved walls of the high tower, all was silent, and Lyssa sat for a long time doing nothing but gazing out to that calm landscape. It seemed the day had been filled with one blaze of trouble after another, and the strain of it made her neck feel stiff.
Taking up a spindle and a lapful of carded wool, she began mindlessly to spin, expertly forming yarn of a tight, even tension, a thread that would be suitable for winter tunics and warm stockings. The steady swing of the spindle and the simple, repetitive movement of her fingers gave her respite, and for the first time in what felt like days, her thoughts were her own.
During the long exile from Wood
ell, she had dreamed of sitting in this very place, surrounded by her looms and threads, the textures and colors and smells of wool and linen and silk. The vision had sustained her as her men died from the stinking plague one by one, Lyssa standing by helpless to ease their agony. And when she, too, had fallen to the pestilence, her fevered dreams had all centered here, in this solar where she had been so happy. All through the dark, long exile, she'd comforted herself with the certainty that if she could only return to Woodell, all would be well.
But it had not been so. From the first moment of her return, when Thomas had been standing at the well, there had been one revelation after another. Storm had followed storm—Tall Mary's anger and rejection, the problem over the guards, the worry over Robert, and now this coil over Isobel.
Back and forth the spindle swung, gently swaying with the movement of her fingers. Round and round the wool spun between her fingers, thin and strong.
Lyssa frowned, deep in thought. In truth, nothing was as unsettling as Thomas himself. It was he who had disturbed her peace. She thought of him standing so rigidly in the yard this morn, fists knotted, and that strange, hard pride on his brow.
She thought of his great black head bent over her fingers as he thanked her, and thought of him coming to her on the castle wall the first night of her return, and how his voice had rumbled down her spine.
And with an unwelcome rush of her blood, she thought of the breathlessness in their kissing last night, thought of her wanton abandon—rubbing against him like a cat!—and the feel of him against her.
Her fingers stumbled and a thick lump of wool slipped by. Lyssa dropped the mass into her lap with a sigh to gaze out the windows once more. She looked to the far distant horizon to the north, from whence he'd come. From some poor holding so hard on the Scottish border that his voice was blurred with the sound of that rebellious land.
None lived at Roxburgh, he'd told her. All had been killed by the plague.
Restlessly, she plucked at the wool, twining it about her fingers. How had Alice saved the villagers at Woodell, but failed to save those of her own village? Lyssa remembered asking how she'd protected the Woodell peasants. Alice had said the villagers were well cared for, and she'd only given them a tonic to keep them well.
Thomas did not seem the sort to ill-treat his folk. Why had Alice been unable to save them, as she'd saved the village here? Was the north so much harsher, or was there some lie here?
A pair of starlings dove through the gilded scene, their wings a dark and graceful counterpoint to the golds and greens behind them. Lyssa watched their flight idly.
When she was in the company of Lord Thomas, she could never keep a head clear enough to think about anything except the giddy pleasure of being near him, as if he cast some glamour.
Strange, considering she had never felt moved by another man in all her life. What made him so different?
A sudden chill went through her. What if Alice was not only skilled in the arts of healing, but in the darker arts, as well, those arts of glamour and love spells and curses? What if Alice—
Lyssa heard her thoughts, and laughed aloud. Foolishness. Alice was no witch. Lyssa only sought an excuse to explain her overwhelming desire for the knight. With a rueful grin, she picked up her spinning again. It would be pleasant to blame magic for it, but in truth, she had simply been smitten for the first time in her life.
And yet, there was some warning low in her belly. Some part of her noticed things that were not what they seemed. Just as her instincts told her Alice was no witch, they also insisted there was something not quite right about the strangers from the north.
She pursed her lips, thinking. Alice was simple enough; though uncommonly handsome, she was no more or less than the village healer she proclaimed herself to be. Her herbs and potions were renowned only because she was as skilled in her arts as Lyssa was with her loom. Though Lyssa suspected Alice practiced the old religion, even that was no uncommon thing. Here at Woodell, there oft burned fires on full moons that were best ignored.
But Thomas. Thomas.
He was not so simple to pin down, and she tried to decide just what was not quite right about him. 'Twas more than his speech. More than one single thing. As Tall Mary had said, he was not a knight like others they had known, not at all. Everything he did, and the ways he did them, were his alone.
There was no crime in that. Lyssa had oft been named eccentric for her own habits. Perhaps that was all that nagged at her—he was a law unto himself, seemingly unbound by law or lord.
But at the feast last night, Lyssa vowed it seemed he stayed close to the shadows. As if he feared recognition? Could he be a bandit or an outlaw, come to Woodell to hide?
A small voice in her heart cried out at the thought. What if she discovered he truly was a bandit? Would she banish him, or hang him, or simply keep her eyes averted when he indulged his thievery?
Frightening that she could even consider such a thing.
With a sigh, she vowed to observe him more closely. Again she smiled ruefully, for she watched him more close than she ought as it was; 'twas near impossible to think on anything else when Thomas was about. His very presence intoxicated her; even now 'twas far too easy to imagine simply inviting him to her bed tonight, where at last she might learn the secrets of bedsport that he'd no doubt mastered, and would be happy enough to share.
But she feared that, too. The turmoil in the past days had shown her that passion was no simple thing for a woman. It wounded women more than it healed. Men seemed not as deeply moved, or perchance 'twas only that they were easily distracted by another, more willing subject. Men did not pine.
Men did not sigh. Men strode and took and captured.
Some men. She thought of Stephen, and his expression when he gazed on Isobel. But then, Isobel was a female cut of the same cloth as Thomas. Alluringly beautiful, eyes and lips and hands and chest and thighs all aligned to make a body think of hot pursuits.
She thought suddenly of a naked Thomas, his back gilded with firelight. That long, sculpted, lean back that she had touched last night.
She had never tried to imagine a man nude before, but she could not seem to stop thinking of what Thomas might look like below his clothes. Thomas, so big and male, with his tawny skin and his hair falling—
With a small, dismayed cry, she closed her eyes as if to blot away the vision.
As if her longing had conjured him, the low rich voice of that very man broke her solitude. "Did you prick yourself, my lady?"
Lyssa, startled, choked back a snort of laughter. "Nay, sir," she said, and then could think of no reason to account for her pained cry. She scowled as he ducked under the arched doorway, a brace of flickering tallows in his hand. He yet wore the red velvet tunic she had known would suit him, with a belt nipping in at his narrow waist. The texture of the velvet, clinging to his wide shoulders and broad chest, made her ache to rub both fabric and flesh with the flat of her hand.
Quickly she recovered herself. "I did not expect company here tonight."
"Aye, you fled us." He put the candles on a table and only then did Lyssa realize how smoky gray the air had grown, the land beyond her unshuttered windows faded to colorless shadows. "But I wished to speak in private with ye, and knew not how else to do so."
He stood, hands clasped behind his back, and Lyssa made an impatient sound. "I vow, sir, you stand on much formality. Please sit as you speak, for looking up so far gives me a pain in my neck."
Humor glinted in his eyes, eyes that seemed too dark for mere blue now, but shone almost black. His mouth quirked at the corners. "Do I disturb you, my lady?"
The words hinted his understanding of her attraction to him, and she answered rather more vehemently than she intended. "Nay," she said, "but I am weary tonight. Will not your concern wait till the morrow?" Busily, she picked up the wool and began to spin. "I am loathe to think on any new trouble."
"'Tis no trouble." He settled nearby her on the bench, in the p
lace where Tall Mary had so often sat. But as ever, he seemed to take up thrice the area as any other person, his thighs big and hard as the ceiling beams, the curve of his arms straining the fabric of the tunic, his shoulders wide as the river. His black hair fell in glossy locks down his back, all the darker against the red. Only the long, raw cut below his eye marred the perfection of him.
He made her feel breathless, and she spun more busily, caring not if the thread was spun smooth or rough. He watched her. "So this is how you find your peace?" he asked. "Spinning wool, like some busy spider?"
"Aye," she said, and smiled in spite of herself. "It has ever been so. I remember my mother putting the spindle in my hand the first time, when I was four, and it pleased me so much I came with her every day after that. My sister had shown no love for it, so my mother was glad enough to have me."
"Your sister? Where does she dwell?"
Lyssa sobered. "With the queen."
His gaze sharpened, but he said nothing. Gesturing toward the frame in the center of the room, he said, "This, too, is yours?"
"Aye. You may look at it, if you wish. 'Tis a hunt scene. Perchance you will have some advice for me."
Thomas lifted the brace of candles to examine her work, and Lyssa saw the greens and blues shimmer against the light, making the forest seem alive and moving. Sparks of red shot from the forest floor and darker rusts from the coats of the dogs, and even bits of thread of silver and gold illuminated harnesses and swords and the sleeves of the men. A burly huntsman lead the group, powerful and alert, the dogs looking to him for direction.
"This is all your work?" he asked.
"Every stitch."
He lifted his head. "'Tis as if you stole a moment of time, and captured it here."
A glow lit in her heart, and she swallowed her prideful smile. "Thank you, sir."
He gestured toward the forward section. "Methinks the huntsman the finest of the men," he said with a glint in his eye. "Did you have a handsome man in that position when you were a child?"
Lyssa grinned. "We did. He saved me sweets in his pockets, too. His name was John and I thought him the finest man in all the land."
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