He shoved into the storage room and grabbed the first sword he spied. It was a heavy, bastard sword, meant to be wielded with both hands. Before the door to the shed had time to even close behind him, he stormed back out into the yard.
The tilting dummy had no chance. He charged it, envisioning Edgar de Valcourt, only twenty years younger than he now was. Chopping, hacking, swinging with every bit of the rage that was in him, Axton made swift work of his mute enemy.
If anyone witnessed his display of deadly skill and murderous temper, they did it from afar. No one came near the tilting yard. The entire bailey seemed too vacant and too empty for a summer afternoon; the alewife, the armorer, and the beekeeper should all be out of doors with their work.
Did no one in this damnable place have any sense of duty or responsibility? Axton raged. Must he force every one of them to know their place and do the work assigned to them?
With one final, mighty swing, he severed the dummy from the frame it hung upon. It landed with a dull thump and a cloud of dust. Axton stared at the slaughtered remains of the tilting dummy. His arms trembled from their exertion, his chest heaved as he gasped for breath. But he felt no real satisfaction.
Beatrix should not have interfered.
Then he shook his head. No. Even he must admit that she could not have stood aside and watched as her husband destroyed her father. But she should not have gone off with that ruined old man and left him alone in the bailey. She was his wife now. Her loyalty must be to him.
He shoved the bastard sword into the dummy, as he might into a downed enemy, then left the weapon standing upright in the inert sack of fustian and wheat chaff. She had much to answer to, he decided as his narrowed gaze scanned the deserted yard. If she would protect her father and show him the attention she should turn on her husband, then she had much to learn about being wife to Axton de la Manse.
It was Peter who found her, and Peter who told her what she already knew.
“Go to him and undo his anger before it erupts and burns us all.”
Linnea glanced at her father, but he did not seem to hear. He sat now on a crude bench, not praying, not doing anything. She sighed and without reply to Peter moved toward the door. She was so weary, so tired of all this tumult and tension, this hatred and lying.
But it was her lie that was the greatest, and it was the truth she hid which would cause the greatest tumult of all.
“Where is he?”
“In the tilting yard.” Peter held the door open, then fell into step beside her. Linnea felt everyone’s eyes following her. The feeling that everyone’s future depended on her settled like a gruesome burden upon her shoulders. And yet, what choice had she but to take up that burden, to carry it until … until she could lay it down.
She didn’t want to think about that.
She looked sidelong at Peter. “Is he taking out his anger on one of his hapless men?”
The boy grimaced. “No one would dare cross swords with Axton when his temper flares this high.”
Linnea shivered to think how furious he must be. Yet she could not escape the irony of the situation. “The most powerful of his men fear to approach him and so you send for me?”
They went down the steps that led to the bailey. “He will not hurt you.”
Linnea thought that was true. She hoped it was true. But when she saw the deserted yard, she was not so sure. Not a soul was visible in the bailey. The laundry kettles stood abandoned; the steam that rose from them was the only indication that someone had been there not so very long before. No one rummaged in the kitchen garden, though a small handcart stood within the gate, half-filled with weeds. Only one hound—an old one—lay in a patch of sun. He thumped his tail three times when they passed him. Otherwise, nothing moved.
Axton was not moving either. He stood over a sack, from which protruded a long sword. Linnea hesitated and glanced at Peter. But he only shrugged and stepped back, letting her proceed alone.
Then Axton looked up and spied her. His gaze narrowed as his anger found a new focus in her, but in that moment everything Linnea had worried about seemed to fade into the background. What she saw in him went deeper than the anger wrapped so tautly around him. He mourned his father and brothers. The rage and frustration that he wanted to take out on her father had been thwarted, however, and he’d been left with no one to punish but the blameless sack lying inert at his feet. He would take that frustration out on her, of course. But then, she’d willingly become her family’s sacrificial lamb, hadn’t she? Why fear playing that same role for his family?
Besides, he was hurting. Deep down in his soul, where he didn’t want anyone to see, he was still hurting.
She walked right up to him until only the fallen dummy separated them. The fallen dummy and the forbidding sword.
“Would you walk with me?” she began, saying the first words that popped into her head.
“Walk?” His face was dark with barely suppressed emotion. Mutilating the poor tilting dummy had clearly afforded him no great comfort.
“Well …” Linnea hesitated. “If you would prefer other … another sort of … activity …” She trailed off, knowing her face had heated with color. But she did not look away from his intense stare.
To her surprise, her offer seemed somehow to confuse him. His gaze shifted briefly to his brother who stood across the yard still, then came back to her. “Does my dear brother throw you at me that I will vent my rage on you and spare him and the rest of my men? Do you come to me, wife, with the offer of your body at his behest? To sacrifice yourself to me—”
“I would have come to you of my own choice anyway, without his prodding. I did but wish to see my father settled—”
It was the wrong thing to say, and she broke off when she saw him stiffen. But the subject of her father would not go away, and so she decided to confront it head-on. She always fared better when she confronted Axton head-on. She lifted her skirts and stepped over the dummy and past the sword, so that she and Axton were but inches apart.
“Walk with me, Axton. Outside the walls of this place that brings you such pain. We will talk of my father and his sins against you, and see if we can find some way to a peacefulness between us.”
She reached up one hand and rested it against his chest, imploring him with her eyes to do this with her. In that moment she was not thinking of her family or of any plots to recover Maidenstone Castle for the de Valcourts. She was not thinking that he believed she was Beatrix, or that they had no real future as man and wife. Her mind was filled only with the wish to see him let go of the past that caused him so much sorrow. She wanted to see him smile at her, and perhaps even to laugh.
“Come walk with me,” she repeated, not flinching from the terrible intensity of his eyes.
Without warning he caught both of her arms in his hands, as if he meant to haul her up against him, to initiate the explosive passion that existed between them, here and now. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to do that or not. But he only stared at her with eyes darkened by too many emotions to name.
He was a man of war. Everything about him bespoke it, most especially now. He was damp with his maddened exercise with his sword. He trembled with lingering need to see his enemy’s blood spill into the dirt and gravel beneath his feet. But he did not see her as his enemy. Not anymore. She felt that about him most clearly.
She leaned into him and rested her cheek against his chest. “Walk with me, Axton. ’Twould do us both a world of good.”
Lady Mildred had wept as she watched her oldest son hack so violently at the tilting dummy. She knew what he felt, for she felt it too.
Edgar de Valcourt had no right to be here. He never had. A part of her had wanted to see Axton slay him. She would have happily watched the man’s head be severed from his shoulders and tumble down the steps, leaving a trail of blood as it went.
But de Valcourt’s daughter had protected him from Axton. Though Lady Mildred knew the girl had done the right thing—the
only thing she could have done—she resented it. Now, though, the girl was standing before Axton, speaking quietly to him did seemwhile the sword swayed slightly between them.
Lady Mildred leaned nearer the open window, not wishing to be seen, but unable to turn away either. The couple in the tilting yard had no eyes for her, however, nor for any of the myriad other eyes that surely watched in secret.
Then the girl stepped closer to him, and Axton grasped her arms.
Tears blurred Lady Mildred’s vision once more and a sadness unlike any previous one seemed to press in on her, making it almost impossible to breathe. He was going off with her. Her son, who’d sworn to avenge the deaths of his father and two older brothers, had turned away from his sword and moved now with his wife toward the gate that opened to the moat and the village beyond.
She turned her back to the view as a sob rose then broke free. She leaned against the well of her third floor solar and wept the most painful tears of her long and painful life. Coming back to Maidenstone was supposed to have been her triumph. A bittersweet triumph, perhaps, but ultimately satisfying as her enemies were dispossessed of all they’d stolen from her.
But instead they’d stolen from her anew, something even more precious. Something she’d not realized could ever be taken from her. They’d taken Axton’s heart. She could see that as clearly as ever she’d seen anything before.
She sagged against the solid wall and wept the hard, hot tears she’d not thought she could still possess. They’d taken Axton too, on top of William, Ives, and her beloved Allan.
She didn’t think she could survive this new loss. She didn’t think she wanted to.
Chapter 15
They walked in silence. Yet once they crossed the narrow bridge, the dusty thud of their feet led them to a world filled with sound. It was as if they’d departed the mythical castle of the sleeping princess, a tale Norma had often related to Beatrix and Linnea. Though the castle was oppressed by a terrible curse, the countryside outside its walls brimmed still with life. Bright, noisy, wonderful life.
Linnea was acutely aware of Axton’s presence beside her. They did not touch, but only walked side by side, not speaking, not looking at one another. But there was a communication between them. She knew that without a doubt.
She followed the flight of a pair of goosanders as they dipped and swayed, darted and dove. An otter plunged off a rock and into the water as they passed. A golden oriole cried down in agitation at their invasion of its domain, while a startled duck and her string of downy young scurried from a stand of blue flag, parting the irises and their stately spears, and leaving a trail of Vs as they swam.
Linnea had forgotten how beautiful the month of April could be. The past several days had been dark and grim, in spirit at least. More like January than April. But spring was nigh, she was a married woman, and her husband did walk at her side.
“I am glad to be away from there,” she began, as they turned off the rutted road and onto a narrow path that led toward St. Catherine’s Beck. “Perhaps I will pick flowers for the table. Or for your mother’s chamber. Would she accept them from me?” she added in an uncertain voice.
She thought he did not mean to answer, for he was silent so long. Then he sighed and she heard in that release of his breath, a release also of some portion of his rage.
“She will accept them. You will not find in my mother the outward opposition that your grandmother did show. She will not send you killing looks nor curse you when your back is but half the way turned.”
“But in the privacy of her room, will she shred the flowers I send to her?”
He finally looked at her. “Perhaps. Does it matter so much to you?”
Linnea looked away. “’Tis not my wish to inflict further pain on her. Yet I fear that by my very presence I do that. She would have you wed to any other woman but myself.”
He made a sound, as if he intended to speak but then thought better of it. Linnea stopped in the shade of a towering sycamore tree that marked the narrow strip of forest lining the riverbank. “You also would rather be wed to any other woman.”
He faced her and their eyes met and held. “I did not wish to marry you any more than you wished to marry me. But now that it is done, I am not sorry for my lot.”
“But because I am a de Valcourt, you can never be content.” Linnea knew she spoke the truth, but it brought her a pain she could hardly bear.
“You view it that way, but I would rather say that I am not sorry to have you to wife in spite of your name.”
A small enough thing it was, but Linnea was comforted by his words.
“But what of you?” he continued. “How much pain does it bring you to be wed to me, the man who has struck down your brother and reduced your father to the crumpled old man he has become?”
When she would have looked away, he caught her chin and tilted her face up so that she must meet his gaze. “I was … reluctant,” she answered him honestly. “But … you have proven to be not so terrible a husband as I did fear.”
That drew the faintest hint of a smile from him. A slight easing of the lines in his brow; a subtle curve of one side of his mouth. “’Twould have been easier to have met in a neutral court,” he admitted. His hand cupped her cheek, a warm, callused caress, and Linnea’s heart rate increased.
This was what she’d wanted, to divert him from his rage, to lull him into a more peaceful state. Yet now, in this dappled place where birds trilled, insects went busily about their routine, and the wind blew the heady scents of verdant life all around them, she found herself unable to let go of the castle and everything it symbolized.
“You asked me once about the suitors that did call at the castle. What of the maidens you did court? Was there not one you did think to make your wife?” She did not want to hear his answer, so she could not fathom why she had asked the question. But she stood there waiting for it just the same.
“I have been too engrossed in avenging the wrongs done to my family to have entertained the subject of a wife. My mother has had better success planning Peter’s marriage than my own.”
Linnea felt her relief in every portion of her being. There had been no particular woman in his life. Yet her foolish relief was just as swiftly undone by an intruding reality. “But you know everything about what happens between a man and—” She broke off when she realized she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. Though she prayed he did not understand what she’d started to say, it was clear he did.
A rueful grin curved his lips up farther. “A man need not entertain thoughts of marriage to become skilled in … certain activities.”
Though it was an idiotic reaction, Linnea was nonetheless crushed. “You have done … done that with other women. Many other women,” she forced herself to add.
His grin faded. “It counts for nothing. Much as a knight’s exercise counts for nothing if he does not acquit himself well on the battlefield.”
Linnea did not like that argument, though she could not quite verbalize why. He had practiced with other women so that he could perform well for his wife? “Such practice is forbidden to women,” she muttered.
“There is no need for the woman to be well practiced in the bedroom so long as her groom is.” He caught one of her hands and brought it up to his lips. He kissed each knuckle slowly, all the while holding her gaze captive in his. “We did very well together. Indeed, my knowledge and your innocence together did seem to ignite the very air around us.”
Linnea gulped hard. She felt as if the air around them now had begun to burn.
“’Tis foolish to dwell on the past,” he continued. “Only you have I wed. Only you have I gifted with a chain of gold and rubies.” His free hand moved to her waist, then slid lower, to where his wedding gift rested warm and telling against her bare flesh. “I have no regrets, Beatrix. Do you?”
Beatrix. Linnea stiffened at his use of her sister’s name. For a very few minutes she’d allowed herself to forget.
Then his
expression altered and she knew he’d felt her reaction. His hands fell away from her and he took a step back from her.
“A foolish question, it would appear. I forget that your brother yet suffers from the blow I struck him, and that your family is torn apart because I am returned to Maidenstone.”
Linnea could not manage a reply. Why must she be Beatrix? Why? All he spoke was true—Maynard lay near death and her family was torn apart even more so than he suspected. Still, that did not lay so heavily upon her as did the ugly reality of the deception she did play. She stared up at him, wanting more than anything to tell him the truth.
“Axton, I … I must confess to you—”
“No. Do not speak of your family to me. ’Tis not a matter we are ready to make peace over. It will take more time than we yet have had.” He raked both his hands through his hair and let his gaze roam the edge of the wooded riverbank. “But that day will come, I hope. For now, pick you the flowers you seek. Let us wander awhile and not think on those matters that await us in the castle.”
His eyes met hers once more and for once she saw him as a man only, not as a warrior or the lord of the castle. Not as a vengeful son or a harsh conqueror.
If he was willing to abandon those roles for a little while, then perhaps she could put aside Beatrix—not entirely as she’d very nearly done, but in her mind, at least. To confess the complete truth to him would destroy any hope for peace between them, even this temporary peace. Although she knew she did but postpone the inevitable, there was something in her that longed to meet him shed of the difficult truth. She wanted to pretend, if only for a very few hours, that theirs could be a good and joyful union.
The Maiden Bride Page 21
