by Ann Lawrence
He caught her scent before he felt her touch on his back. “I came for you.”
With a shrug, he threw her off. “I saw you.” The words burned in his throat as the flames burned the wood.
“Saw me? Where?”
But he could see from her expression she knew of what he spoke. He arched a brow. “Where? You tell me.”
“Below. In the hall.” She bit her lip. Color flooded her face.
“Aye, in the hall, but not for long. William much enjoys a few moments in the storage rooms below—the third chamber along; you are not the first—”
“Stop!” she cried. “He took me only as far as the shadows. He—”
“He had not the courtesy to seek privacy for your tryst?” Gilles felt the acid rise in his throat with every word.
“Tryst! William is a loathsome, vile—”
Gilles snatched a pillow from his chair and threw it against the wall. “I do not believe you! You went below stairs with him.”
Emma’s heart began to pound, sweat gilded her brow. “Only to try to reason with him. He is constantly about, brushing up against me, touching me, making base suggestions.” Her chest tightened as she realized he did not believe her. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, believe me.”
The cold, hard tone of his voice reminded her more of a lord commanding his men. “Few women object to William’s touches.”
“Well I do!” she retorted, but he continued as if she’d not spoken.
“You will put him from your mind. I will not have him in your thoughts or dreams.”
“I do not dream of him! You are wrong!”
“He can do nothing for you, nothing for Angelique.”
Suddenly, her whole body ached. His face was a study in fury, his words cold and heartless.
He loomed over her. “I am your protector—not he. Whatever vows you said to him mean nothing if he never acknowledges you, and acknowledge you he never will. His every moment is spent assessing dowries, tallying the benefits of one daughter over another as a bride. Your name is not among them! Only a total fool would believe such a ruse.”
“Only a fool?” Emma could barely raise her voice above a whisper. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Aye. Foolish as are most women. You lie to yourself to justify what you do.”
A shiver of ice spangled down Emma’s spine. “A liar as well?” The chamber was frigid despite the roaring fire. She spun away from him.
“Stay where you are!” Gilles stepped between her and the door.
She froze in place.
He punctuated each angry word with a sharp slash of his hand. “You are alone on God’s earth save for Angelique. You are my chattel as is the lowest swineherd. You’ll obey me, yield to me.” He came so close she saw the flames of the hearth flicker in his ebony eyes. “You will never touch him again.”
“Nay, I did not touch him.” She tried to thrust past him.
He shackled her upper arms with his hands. “You are mine!”
Her heart screamed at his harshness.
“Understand me,” he demanded, “understand that you are never to touch him again. Wipe him from your thoughts. Eradicate him from your dreams. Do you understand?”
Slowly she nodded. Her eyes smarted with a torrent of unshed tears. She pulled from his grip and sank into his chair. Gilles leaned over her, his white-knuckled hands on the arms. His intimidation oppressed her and destroyed any hope that she could reason with him.
“There will be no more hiding that you sleep here. He would not dare trespass on what is acknowledged by all to be mine! You have nowhere to go and no one to protect you—save me. You may deny it if you wish, but you are mine. You will stop pretending you do not lie in my bed! Everyone will know. You will do as I wish, when I wish, before whomever I wish. If I demand you sit at my side at the table, you will do it! Truly, if I ask you to attend me naked on your knees, son or no son to see you, you will do it.
“You gave him up when you sought my protection and now you will give him up in your heart and mind as well.” To punctuate his words, he prodded her chest then her forehead with his index finger. “You are my woman, my leman.”
Leman. The word was said aloud. Simply another name for whore.
A fool, a liar, and a leman.
Despair ran through her, chilling the warmth of her love. She could not contain the small moan that issued from her lips.
For a moment the look on his face hovered somewhere between pity and regret, then in the next instant, it disappeared, replaced by the mask of the man who spoke of kings. She realized she was with the warrior who could cut a man’s life off with a single stroke of his sword. Lost was the man who gentled and caressed her, held Angelique on his knee, told the child stories, fed her sweets.
Her moan became a hiccuping. No other sounds came from her throat. She held them in, though they burned her chest and throat.
“No more silence! No more stifling moans so others will not know that you are in passion’s thrall. I want them to know what we do. I want no doubts; I want William to know what a chance he takes trespassing on what is mine.”
She sat in silence, withheld the torrent of words she wanted to scream at him—for the words would end anything between them forever.
Her silence enraged him further. He whirled away from her. He ripped the covers from the bed. He stripped it bare, dragging the mattress from the ropes and heaving the lot to the rush-strewn floor. He swept his arm across the table, smashing goblets and plate to the floor. As the last plate clattered to a stop, Angelique’s wails filled the air.
He spun toward the sound. The babe’s cry drew his rampage to a halt. For a brief moment a look streaked across his face—shame, despair…regret? He stormed out, leaving Emma silent and humiliated, Angelique clutched to her breast.
When Angelique had quieted, and Emma could breathe calmly, she searched his coffers for her sturdiest shoes and her blue mantle, and donned them hurriedly. Then she wrapped Angelique in several warm blankets and cautiously opened Gilles’ door. At the bottom of the stairs a sentry blocked her way and said that at Lord Gilles’ orders she was not permitted below. Meals would be sent to her. Emma backed from the contempt in the man’s voice and the sneer on his face, and hurried up the winding stair to the highest chamber. A sentry stood there, too, and blocked her entrance to Lady Margaret’s former bedchamber.
Footsteps dragging, she returned to Gilles’ chamber. She looked about her and decided to leave the devastation as it was.
“Lemans earn their way on their backs, not on their knees scrubbing wooden floors,” she said to Angelique. Dragging a mound of furs and linens to the hearth, she made a pallet for herself and the child. She remained wrapped in her mantle as she lay down by Angelique with her back to the room.
Sleep eluded her. Every word whirled and spun through her mind. Fool hurt far more than any other name Gilles had called her. She’d called herself a fool enough times to know the truth.
The keep fell silent, the rustlings of night creatures the only sound to be heard.
How she wished she’d been able to explain how William delighted in pestering her, even as he wanted nothing truly to do with her or Angelique. Why had she not ignored William tonight of all nights?
It did not matter. In truth, a noble, a great lord, had no need to tolerate the misbehavior of his leman—he had merely to cast the old out and take on a new one.
At last she wept.
* * * * *
Gilles rode across the drawbridge and far from Hawkwatch. He skirted the pine forest and drove the horse to a hard gallop along the ancient paths through the marshes, his way lighted only by the moon. Ahead lay Hawkwatch Bay in an eerie shimmer of white.
Eventually, the horse labored, foam flying from his flanks. Gilles reined him in and slid from the saddle. He stood on the sand and faced the mouth of the bay where it gave onto the great North Sea. Across the curved bay, at low tide, lay the short way to Lincolnshire if a man
dared cross the treacherous sands. Treacherous like a woman’s heart, sure to suck you in and drown you.
A bank of clouds covered the moon. Black night blended with the black water, one inseparable from the other. Waves foamed white, surging out of the darkness, then retreating. Sand beneath his feet shifted precariously, recalling to him the dangers of the change of tide, the number of people who had perished in this morass of shifting sand over the years.
Salt spray bathed his face; the rush of water soothed the fever of his mind. He led the horse to firmer ground and confronted his shame.
How would he ever face her? What man of honor would so treat the woman he loved?
He did not want to feel this painful, wrenching guilt. To cleanse himself of guilt he had only to remember Emma’s deep flush when he’d mentioned William.
Her words at the judging when first he’d met her came back to him. She’d given herself for love. She loved William. She merely serviced Gilles as any other leman might. He should not feel guilty for ordering about a leman.
To admit that what he’d done was unjustified would be to admit the depths of his fears and envies. By the time the horse was rested, Gilles had convinced himself that Emma only stayed with him for the warmth of his hearth.
* * * * *
Dawn painted the stone walls of the bedchamber rose pink. Emma watched two maids giggle as they put the chamber to rights. Beatrice, who worked at their side, shot Emma sympathetic looks which Emma ignored. They whispered about her, stole glances at her, until Gilles entered. They finished with alacrity under his ill-concealed impatience. When they were gone, he ordered her to a seat by the fire.
“You will not sleep on the floor.”
“I’ll not sleep with you,” she returned.
They stared at each other. How could he undo what he’d wrought in but a few maddened moments?
“You will not sleep on the floor,” he repeated.
“I beg leave of you to allow me to return to a pallet in with the spinners then, my lord.”
“And when I require your ‘services’?” he asked acidly, pain flaring in his chest at the aloofness of her words, the formality of her address.
“You need only command, my lord. Just as you would should you have need of your swineherd.” She met his gaze head-on. There was little point in hanging her head, but she felt a deep flush of shame spread across her cheeks.
“As you wish,” he replied, noting her high color and wishing he could reach across the distance between them and beg her forgiveness. But to do so would make him appear weak.
Emma rose with great dignity and scooped up Angelique. The child began to cry and stretched out her arms to Gilles. Emma whirled away, ignoring her daughter’s entreaties, and left him. Angelique. He had lost her, too.
* * * * *
May touched Emma’s shoulder. “Have you need of me tonight?”
Emma shook her head. “I have no more need of your help, May. Go. Join the other women.” Emma did not hear any of Sarah’s words, nor May’s either. The two women exchanged knowing looks as Emma curled about Angelique and turned her back to the other spinners sleeping amid the looms that were scattered like small trees about the long, warm room.
“Leave her,” Sarah whispered as May made to go to them. Sarah’s solicitous care only honed the knife edge of Emma’s pain. She knew quite well how the castle tittered over the devastation Gilles had wreaked in his chamber.
Emma did not sleep. She stroked her hand over Angelique’s curls. She was out of tears. They no longer dampened the wool of her pallet. She listened to the snoring of one spinner and shifted impatiently on the scratchy wool bedding. How soon one grew used to the luxury of privilege—or the illusion of it. At least the scents here of wool and work were familiar and comforting, and those of honest living.
She knew in her heart what ailed Gilles. Everywhere she turned, William would be. He stood too close and whispered what he would have her do to him when Gilles grew bored and withdrew his protection. Surely it had been only a matter of time before Gilles imagined there was something between them.
How could she make Gilles see it was not so? What if he sent for her? She knew she would go. She could not bear to think that he did not want her. She was his—but she was afraid.
She meant no more to him than any other of his servants.
Nay, that was not true. Her heart told her it was not true. No man ever looked at a woman with so much concern or ardor. She must believe it, else she was what he’d called her and nothing more.
Was keeping her vows to William a fruitless attempt to spare her child bastardy? Or did she secretly know a lord would never pledge himself to a lowly weaver, and so weaved a tapestry of reasons she was not free, could not have him even if he so desired it?
His passions were as easily aroused to anger as they were to lust. The passion of his anger frightened her. What if he struck her? If he did, he might kill her with one well-placed blow. His strength was huge. He had lost control of himself, and how she’d savored his loss of control when he’d made love to her. Why had she not seen that his incredible passion could also spawn incredible jealousy?
Emma wavered between anger with Gilles and utter shame. She deserved his treatment for yielding up again that which should have accompanied sacred vows.
Angelique stirred and shifted in her arms. Angelique. What if the child provoked his anger? Her body tense, every muscle tight, Emma spent the night awake, uncalled.
* * * * *
During the day Emma kept to her weaving, Angelique close at her side. She ate little, as her stomach churned with anxiety.
“What ails the two of you?” Sarah asked as Emma threaded the heedles of the loom.
Emma could not look her friend in the eye. “Leave it be. It is of no consequence.”
“Humpf. Lord Gilles storms about the keep, berates all from lowest villein to my beloved Roland, and you say leave it be. How may I help?” The words were kindly spoken and brought tears to Emma’s eyes.
“There is naught to be done.” Emma bent and continued to thread the yarn that would form the warp of the fabric she would weave. Her hands were clumsy at the task, for her eyes were suddenly blurred with tears.
“You and Lord Gilles have fallen out.” Sarah was relentless.
“Lord Gilles despises me.” Emma broke down. She fell back to the low stool behind her and pressed her head to her knees. “Nay,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Nay, despise is not strong enough. I had convinced myself I went to Lord Gilles to spare Angelique the hard life. In truth, I went to him for the basest of reasons. He has forced me to see myself for what I am—”
“Oh, child.” Sarah gathered Emma to her ample bosom and patted Emma’s back.
Emma raised her head. “I am no better than the women who sell themselves at the village alehouse. I barter myself for Angelique’s food and warmth—and to gratify my own desires.”
“I do not think Lord Gilles feels that is so. I think his rage bespeaks his love for you.”
“Love!” Emma shot to her feet. “He has never said the word! He speaks only of desire. He has mistaken what is between William Belfour and me, and it has made him blind. I thought he esteemed me enough to trust me, but I erred. He holds me in contempt.”
“William Belfour? I wondered when his attentions would draw the master’s eye.”
“Aye. I could kill William for taking what was sweet and wonderful and making it naught but filth and sin.”
“Hush,” Sarah shushed Emma, for her voice had risen and drawn the attention of the other weavers.
“Hush! Aye! Let us hide my sins. ‘Tis my own fault.” She fell to her knees by her friend. “Oh, Sarah, Lord Gilles will take another to his bed and I…I will die from the pain of it.”
“It might be better if you stayed out of Lord Gilles’ sight for a while. Mayhap with distance Lord Gilles will see that you are everything to him. My Roland believes him completely besotted with you…and the l
ittle one. Is William her father?” Sarah dared to put the question no one else had asked.
“Aye.” Emma nodded. “I was so lonely. I convinced myself that I loved him, when I only saw his face and form—”
“And believed his honeyed words!” Sarah interrupted.
“Aye, I believed his honeyed words. He denied me, denied Angelique. I counted myself one hundred times blessed that he did when I met Gilles. Oh, Sarah, Lord Gilles, he is…the air I breathe, the food my body needs, the very soul of me.” Emma could not continue, she could no longer weep either. Emma could not tell Sarah that trust was gone—gone in one brutal instant.
* * * * *
Gilles allowed five days to pass before he gave in to a need he refused to name. He had neither looked for Emma in the hall, nor acknowledged her presence in chapel. The immense pride that had fueled his anger now kept him equally incapable of reconciliation or apology.
But standing on the wall-walk at night, when the stars blazed in the inky sky, in the place she’d first come to him, he felt the ache of her loss. Finally, he told himself ‘twas just lust that made him feel so wretched—and lust was easily gratified.
He took the tower stairs two at a time and wove his way through the hall to find a willing wench. He watched Mark Trevalin wrap an arm about a serving woman—one of William’s cast-offs—and lead her from the hall. Were they all—himself included—doomed to sup at a table only if William had finished first?
William sat by the hearth with two men-at-arms, tossing dice. Three women, Angelique’s nurse among them, leaned over the men’s shoulders making suggestions, cheering William’s luck.
Angelique’s nurse looked up, saw Gilles, and offered him an invitation, squaring her shoulders and at the same time thrusting her breasts forward. He had hardly noticed the woman beyond her solicitous care of the child. That she thought little of trespassing on Emma’s territory annoyed him. Then he cursed his own folly. A serving woman’s loyalty lay with the lord, not his leman.
