“You never told me.” There was a note of challenge in the baron’s voice. “Not once in all these weeks have you indicated that you were acquainted with my son.”
Alexandra half-hoped to see Lacklin discomfited, but if he was, he didn’t reveal it. “I once knew a young man named Roger, but I had long forgotten his family name, if indeed I ever knew it. Certainly I never dreamed he was your son.”
“I wasn’t proclaiming my identity in those days,” Roger said dryly. “I was trying to pass as a common seaman.”
“And failing,” Lacklin said with a slight smile. He pulled a stool around and sat down with them, saying, “I fear I’ve come in at a bad moment.”
“Not at all.” Once again, Roger seemed at ease. “I’m being pressed for tales of my adventures.” He glanced over at Alan, who’d been plaguing Roger for stories all evening long. “Alan in particular seems to believe that I’ve done nothing for ten years but engage in a series of hair-raising escapades and bloody battles. I hope you haven’t been emulating me, brother, by rushing about challenging the neighbors to cross swords with you.”
“Not me; I’d never challenge anyone.” Alan shrugged his shoulders, which were rounded from the way he constantly hunched over his books. “I’m hopeless with a blade. The master-at-arms has given up on me, hasn’t he, Alix?”
“Perhaps you ought to ask Francis to give you some lessons,” Roger suggested.
“You mean he’s a swordsman as well as a sailor?”
Lacklin shot Roger an irritated glance before answering, “I once had a modest skill with the blade.”
“Modest?” Roger laughed shortly. “He’s one of the finest swordsmen I’ve ever seen.”
Alexandra felt a kind of triumph: her suspicions were confirmed: Francis Lacklin was not what he appeared to be. “What a waste. It seems that Alan and I could have been studying swordplay with a master instead of listening to interminable lectures about spiritual grace.”
Frowning faintly, Lacklin rose. “If you will pardon me, it’s time for the evening devotions. Would anyone care to join me upstairs in the winter parlor?”
The baron at once offered his arm to his wife. Roger poured himself another cup of wine. “Not I. Alix?” She shook her head. “Alan?”
Alan followed his brother’s example and helped himself to more wine. “No. As I keep telling everyone, I’m not interested in the heretical teachings.”
“Good night then, my lady, Father,” said Roger as they turned to go with Lacklin. “If you feel at all like reminiscing afterward, Francis, I’ll be here for a time.”
While Francis Lacklin shepherded his small flock up the winding staircase that led to the floor above, Alexandra saw Roger smile enigmatically into his wine.
Chapter 3
The fire had burned down to ash, and the great hall at Whitcombe was growing chilly. The smells from supper lingered, mixing pleasantly with the smoke from the wood chips and the fresh scent of summer rushes on the floor. All was quiet. It was well after nightfall and most members of the household were abed.
Roger got up and threw another log on the fire. It flared up, illuminating his face. Alexandra noticed the dark circles under his eyes, faint smudges as if someone had lightly pressed a thumb there. She didn’t think those shadows been there earlier.
“So we three reprobates will go merrily to hell together,” he said, sitting down again and pulling his stool closer to his brother. “Are you staying the night, Alix?”
When she nodded, he asked, “Do you sleep here often?”
The question sounded casual, but Alexandra hesitated before answering. She sensed he meant something by it, although she wasn’t sure what.
“She has a bedchamber here,” Alan said.
“Moved in already, my dear?”
“I’ve always had a place to sleep here.” The way he was looking at her was making her uneasy. His mood had changed again from amiable to something slightly less attractive.
“Have some wine,” he said, pouring it.
“Aren’t you drunk? You’ve been consuming that wine for hours.”
“Very likely. You disapprove?”
“That depends on how garrulous it makes you. I’d love to hear more about your acquaintance with Francis Lacklin.”
“So would I,” said Alan. “You really served together at sea? Somehow I can’t imagine him on a ship.”
“He was an officer on the ship I ran away to all those years ago.”
“Were you friends?” Alexandra persisted.
Roger shrugged. “You could say so. I was the most junior seaman aboard—a child of what, fourteen, fifteen? The reality of life at sea was different from my expectations. Francis was the only person on board who didn’t find it amusing to take the fine young lordling below-decks and beat him black and blue. He was kind to me when I desperately needed kindness.”
“He probably wanted to convert you. Heavens, imagine being trapped on a ship with him; there would be no place to go to escape. Did he convert you?”
A muscle had tightened in Roger’s jaw, and his eyes looked at her as if he weren’t really seeing her. “You’ll remember that I entered a monastery shortly thereafter.”
“So you did,” she agreed, feeling foolish.
Alan started to ask something else, but Roger interrupted him, saying, “No, my friends, I’ve talked more than enough for one day.” He turned to Alan. “You’re what—seventeen? Why are you still living at Whitcombe? Why haven’t you joined some wealthy lord’s household or taken a post at court?”
“I wanted to, but Father doesn’t approve of the court of Queen Mary. Even before he became a dissenter, he didn’t trust the papists.”
“So what? If I sent Father to the devil at fourteen, you could have done the same by now yourself.”
But Alan shook his head. “I’m not like you. I wish I were.” When Roger did not reply, Alan doggedly went on, “You’ve done so many things, been so many places. Your life is filled with adventure—”
“You’ve been reading too many romantic tales,” Roger said. Which was unfair of him, Alexandra thought, considering that his own life had been as exciting as any romantic tale. She was about to say so when Alan came out with the question that she, with all her outspokenness, hadn’t dared to ask:
“Do you still hate our father?”
There was a pause while Roger sipped his wine. “No,” he said. He spoke in short, clipped syllables as he went on, “It was years ago, that unpleasantness. Another lifetime. Why? Do you?”
He’s lying, Alexandra sensed. But a moment later she checked herself, thinking: How do I know what he really feels?
“No,” said Alan. Then, as Roger stared at him, he qualified, “Well, perhaps I do, some of the time.”
“How unfilial.”
This time Alexandra could have sworn Roger spoke ironically, particularly since he saw her watching him and raised his eyebrows.
“He treats me like a child.”
There was a faint whining undertone to Alan’s voice that Roger responded to immediately: “Maybe you act like one. Have you ever thought of that?” He looked to Alexandra for confirmation. “Does he act like a child?”
If he did, she wasn’t going to betray it. She and Alan were unfailingly loyal to one another. But as she denied the charge, she had a flash of memory: Alan screaming with fright because Roger had locked him in the haunted tower. Sickly and delicate as a lad, Alan had been coddled by his mother—overmuch, perhaps. He had grown up timid, and even at seventeen he hadn’t succeeded in suppressing his fears. To Alan, the world was still a dangerous place.
Roger, on the other hand, had been too full of natural vitality to have much sympathy for his fearful younger brother. He used to tease Alan. Not with any real malice, but persistently. Unlike Alexandra, Alan had allowed himself to be browbeaten. She too had been locked in the haunted tower, but instead of bawling, she had climbed out on a ledge and in through an unlocked chamber to make her escape.
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Alexandra watched unhappily as Roger filled his cup once more. “You must be exhausted from your journey.” She nodded to Alan. “Perhaps we ought to retire.”
But Alan must have been feeling the effects of the wine, too, for he ignored the hint. “What do you think I should do with my life? I have no great talents or accomplishments, except translating from the Greek and composing poetry.”
Roger considered him through half-shut eyes. “Poetry, there’s a useful skill. You used to play the lute superbly, do you still? How fortunate. The ladies will adore you. Take up the art of seduction. That ought to improve your opinion of yourself.”
“I don’t think I’d be very good at seducing anybody.”
“What an appalling lack of confidence. It’s the perfect occupation for a younger son. Beautiful noblemen never starve.”
Alan looked embarrassed. Roger glanced from one to the other and added, “Or marry this lovely lady now that she’s free. She’s wealthy enough to keep you, and she’s capable of managing Westmor Abbey alone while you loaf about translating Homer.”
Alan’s face turned crimson. “How can I? You’re the heir. It’s you she’s supposed to marry.”
The silence this comment generated was as thick as a fortress wall. Alexandra felt her own color rise, burning her neck and cheeks. She swallowed a gulp of wine and forced a laugh.
“By heaven! Will the Trevors never run out of brothers? I don’t wish to marry any of you, thank you very much.”
“You have to,” Alan insisted. “You signed a contract to wed the heir of Whitcombe.”
She tried not to panic. Roger was staring at her in a manner that could only be described as malevolent. “That contract was nullified by Will’s death.”
“Why? There’s still an heir.”
“I agreed to marry Will Trevor, not anybody else. Don’t be a goose, Alan.”
“You’ve always loved Roger much better than Will. You’ll be delighted to marry him.”
Alexandra was thoroughly humiliated. Roger’s continued silence did not help. “I love you all, as brothers. I think you’ve had too much wine, both of you.”
Roger shifted in his seat, and they both looked at him. His face was impassive, but when he spoke, his voice was cold. “Go to bed, Alan. I wish to speak with Alexandra alone.”
Alan rose. “I didn’t mean to cause difficulties,” he said, shuffling his weight from one leg to the other. When no one responded, he added, “But Father has talked of it, Alix, you know he has.”
“Good night, Alan.” The boy seemed to wilt under his older brother’s stare.
“Good night,” he said and fled.
Through her embarrassment, she was thinking: I won’t let him do that to me. I won’t be reduced to jelly by a look and a harsh word. “You needn’t worry. He was talking nonsense.”
“Was he?” There was no more than four or five feet between their stools, and as he spoke, he stretched out one of his long, lean legs until he could touch the hem of her kirtle with his boot. Somewhere during the course of the evening he had removed his doublet and opened the neck laces of his white lawn shirt. She could see a hint of the supple muscles of his chest. He looked relaxed, and yet threatening, lazing there in his short breeches and hose, his eyes hooded, his well-shaped fingers curled around his wine cup. “Here we are, alone together in the dark, sweetling. What do they all expect? You even have a bed here. How convenient. Am I to regard you hereafter as my property?”
“You’re angry.” She clenched her fingers in her lap, trying to ignore the strange tightening in her stomach that his words engendered. There was a riot of warm sparkles inside her, the significance of which she dared not contemplate. “So am I. Alan had no call to say those things.”
“I’m glad he did. I must be slow-witted, since it hadn’t occurred to me until now that I might inherit anything else from Will besides the claim to the barony.”
“It occurred to me,” she admitted. “But you might have been dead for all we knew to the contrary. Or already married.”
“Instead here I am, alive and unwed and full of exotic tales of the lush and sensual East. Look at me, Alexandra.”
Reluctantly she raised her eyes to his. He was using her full name. When they’d been young, he had only called her Alexandra when he was angry with her.
“For years you’ve expected to wed the next Baron of Whitcombe. I suppose it’s natural for you to assume that I will carry through with the terms of Will’s contract. And Alan’s right, isn’t he? You always did love me better than Will.”
“Yes, I loved you better than Will, but that was a long time ago.” She sent him a smile to soften her words as she added, “If you imagine I’ve been pining for you these last ten years, you must have an excessively high opinion of your attractions.”
She held his gaze, and this time it was he who looked away. But she had recognized something in him which she had never seen before: a kind of pained resignation, as if he had realized that he must tread carefully, be courteous, but keep his distance, taking care not to injure an old friend who had grown old enough to make unwelcome demands on him. He sighed faintly, dragging a hand through his thick dark hair. Something about the gesture called up her earlier impression of the world-weariness from which he seemed to be suffering. What was wrong with him? Had he undergone some heartsickness, some tragedy? An unhappy love affair, perhaps?
“Roger, good heavens, I was a child when last we saw each other. You were so much older, and yet you actually played with me. Naturally I adored you. You were a hero to me.”
“I’m no fit suitor for you,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. There was an odd, almost haunted look in his eyes. “Believe it. I’m no hero now. The things that happen to young women who get entangled with me are…” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “…highly unpleasant.”
This made her curious, yet only half her attention was on his words. She was surreptitiously looking at his body. There was no doubt about it: he was as comely a man as she had ever seen. With his dark, lively eyes, and his tough, yet graceful build, he was much more magnetic than either of his brothers. There was something about the sheer physicality of him, the way he moved and carried himself, even the way he breathed, that called out to her and drew her.
Averting her gaze to stare into the low-burning fire, Alexandra examined her heart. Despite her denials, she suspected that it would be easy to fall in love with him. It was not just his looks, but his entire manner: he was mysterious and exciting, even dangerous. She was already feeling his pull deep in the most secret places of her body. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to slide her palms over his skin and feel his fingers stroking her in return.
She could imagine herself longing for their fathers to arrange a marriage between them, and awaiting its formalization in a breathless haze of anticipation. And yet, because she possessed little in the way of feminine vanity, she could also imagine a lack of enthusiasm on Roger’s part; an understandable desire, considering his history, for a woman more courtly and sophisticated than herself.
No, she told herself firmly. The vague thoughts on the matter that had been running through her head all day would have to be dismissed forever. A union between her and Roger was impossible. She must accept it. Moreover, she must make sure he did not suspect that the idea held any appeal for her. Rather than worry about hurting the feelings of some silly country maiden, he would withdraw his friendship. She certainly didn’t want that.
“I really wouldn’t fret. I assure you, my father has no interest in such a match. He’s given up whatever designs he may have had on the barony of Whitcombe. And as for me,”—she gave him her most earnest smile—“I never had any.”
“So you’ve discussed the matter with Sir Charles?”
“When Father was here for Will’s burial, the subject of my marriage came up,” she admitted. “I’ faith, he seemed adamantly opposed to you. He said you had an unsavory reputation and that you were uns
uitable for me.”
Roger grimaced. “Very sensible.”
“So, as soon as my father secures a position for me, I’m to go to court and look for a husband there. I suspect he intends to dangle me before every titled nobleman between the ages of seventeen and seventy.”
“You father knows a great many people. No doubt he’ll arrange a splendid match for you.”
“No doubt,” she said glumly.
His dark eyes searched her expression. “You don’t wish to marry?”
“I don’t wish to be bartered in exchange for riches or property, no. Nor do I care to have my lifelong bedmate forced upon me by my father.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What a radical view. Your father is likely to be a much better judge of husbands than you.”
“Would you allow your father to choose a wife for you? You’re up in arms at the very idea.”
“I’ve had more experience in these matters.”
“You mean because you’ve had all sorts of mistresses while I’m still a maiden? I’m not convinced it makes a jot of difference. Some people are good judges of character, whatever their experience.”
“Meaning you, I take it?”
“Yes, I believe so,” she said, stating her main source of pride.
“And what does your excellent judgment tell you about my character?”
Alexandra pulled a wry face. “Now you’re mocking me. I suppose I deserve it. I don’t know, Roger. You’re a mystery. I can’t see very far into your dark and twisted soul.”
She spoke lightly, and she expected him to stop looking so serious, but instead his frown deepened. “I would advise you not to try, either.” He emptied his cup and poured more. “You’ll only get hurt if you do, so kindly concentrate on someone—anyone—else.”
“Now you’re making it challenging.”
He did not find this remark amusing. “I am in deadly earnest. You’re an unusual young woman, and I’m fond of you, but I live in a world that is different from your own, and I do not welcome intruders.”
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