The Knight's Bride

by Stone, Lyn

  Well, she would deal with it if he turned his meanness toward her. She would find a way. If she had outwitted Lord Hume, king of backhanded blows and master of intimidation, she could certainly handle one ignorant—not illiterate she knew now, but ignorant—highlandman.

  Alan waited until all were abed to approach the solar. He had delayed this as long as possible. Honor had not appeared in the hall for supper. Nor had she eaten a bite of the food Nan had taken her. Only then had he truly begun to worry.

  Obviously she felt more trammeled over the morning’s events than he had thought. Did she fear for her father’s life? Or was she in there planning how to celebrate his death?

  Alan found he knew little of the woman’s mind when he had thought he knew it as well as his own. A female was a riddle no man should attempt to answer.

  She lay abed, covered to the ears, her hair coiled over the pillow like a length of twisted satin. The uneven rise and fall of the coverlet told him she did not sleep. “Honor, are ye well, hinny?”

  “Non,” she answered, and followed with a spate of French too rapid for him to comprehend. Her voice sounded raspy as though she were ill. Or freshly emptied of tears. Poor mite.

  He did not ask her to repeat what she had said since it did not sound like a question. He quickly undressed and slid into bed beside her. Encircling her with one arm, he pulled her back against him and breathed in her glorious scent. She held herself rigid and her body trembled when he slid one hand across her middle.

  “Go to sleep, sweeting,” he said. “I’m too weary myself for loving tonight.”

  Another unintelligible, almost angry, expostulation, preceded a loud sigh. Then she shoved his hand away, turned on her stomach, still facing away from him and lay quiet.

  Pity he couldn’t have Father Dennis standing near to interpret and prompt answers as he had on the battlements this mom. Poor Honor, so overset she could not think but in her mother tongue. Well, he should simply let her rest tonight and not trouble her more.

  “Bonne nuit,” he murmured, thinking to soothe her with one of the few French phrases he did know. He ignored her exasperated groan, attributing it to her continued desire for solitude. Sleeping on the floor yet again did not appeal to him, however, so he simply closed his eyes, wriggled out a comfortable spot, and fell asleep.

  As he woke, dawn offered a weak glow through the oilskinned windows and revealed Honor’s absence. Alan rose without hurry and donned a fresh sark and his breacan. He spent an inordinate amount of time working his leathern boots to soften the stiffness caused by yesterday’s mist. He pulled on thick woolen knee hosen, the slightly damp boots, and drew the laces round his calves.

  All that time—and he spent more than twice his usual in dressing—he wondered how Honor fared this morning. Had a good night’s rest restored her sweetness? Or had her mood grown darker, even more troubled? What must he do to ease her mind if that was so?

  Full of questions for which there were no ready answers, Alan entered the hall to break his fast.

  Honor sat at table conversing with Father Dennis. He took his seat, noting he received not so much as a nod of greeting from her. Unwilling to force the issue in company or to interrupt the two, he downed a full cup of ale and wolfed a portion of bread and cheese.

  When he had finished and still had no attention, he turned to her as he rose from his chair. He made her a perfunctory bow and spoke as formally as he knew how. “I bid you good mom, then, and take my leave.”

  She shot him a look, narrow-eyed and rather frosty. He got his nod, but no more than that.

  Alan motioned for the priest to follow him. He would get to the bottom of this. As soon as they reached the steps leading down to the bailey, he stopped and turned laying a hand on Father Dennis’s arm. “What’s amiss with my lady?”

  The priest’s eyebrows flew up with an expression of innocence. “Lady Honor? Why naught that I know, sir. She seemed fine just now. A trifle excitable I admit. Chattered more than her usual, now that I think on it.”

  “About what?” Alan asked anxiously.

  “Rebuilding and the like. She is worried about the villagers and the coming winter. Right that she should, she is their lady.”

  “Aye,” Alan agreed, “but more than that’s awry. She acts as though she’s angry.”

  “And are you not?” Father Dennis asked reasonably. “Our people face a harsh time if we cannot replace the stores they lost and put a roof over every head before the weather turns.”

  Alan nodded and sighed, glancing out toward the hills. He clapped the good father on the back and went to gather the men. No point wasting the day wondering over a woman’s megrims when he had work to do. Likely the priest was right anyway. What lady would not be vexed in such circumstance?

  The next day and the next brought no change in Honor’s attitude. Alan retired both nights to a silent chamber. Every time he touched Honor, she would shift away and utter a curt spate of French.

  When he awoke to an empty bed and joined the company in the hall, Honor immediately took herself away from the table, ostensibly to see to the babe or speak with the kitchen staff. Never once did she meet his questioning gaze or answer in aught other than her mother tongue.

  He knew he should leave her be. Approaching a woman in such a mood boded ill for any man with good sense. But damn the mood, he was her husband. The aftermath of such happenings as Byelough suffered should draw a man and wife together, not drive them apart. Alan needed her and he suspected she needed his comfort as well.

  She was so unlike herself. This night, he promised himself, he would get to the root of this coil of theirs, set her to rights and get his sweet and gentle Honor back.

  Honor heard his heavy-soled boots outside the solar and quickly arranged herself so as to feign sleep. How much longer she could maintain this fiction, she did not know. Thus far, he had shown more patience than she expected. Would he simply go on humoring her as though she were some touchless puzzle? He had remained silent, still pretending not to understand her, giving her no answer at all to her reproaches about his hoaxing. He did not intend to explain it, she decided. He must think men were above all the rules of fair behavior.

  Did he not yet realize she punished him for his misdeeds? She wanted him to know it, by heaven. She wanted him to suffer with the loss of her affection, not act as if it meant nothing.

  She had almost rather be beaten than ignored. Almost. Her loud and frustrated sigh gave her away.

  “You do not sleep,” he accused. “Why do you pretend?”

  “I do not wish to speak with you,” she replied in French.

  “Well, at last, something I ken! But ye will speak, by God, and in Scot or English, an ye please!” he declared. “Enough’s enough!”

  “Oh no, not near enough!” she said, abandoning the French and scrambling to her knees on the bed to face him. She wanted absolute understanding between them now, despite whatever results she might encounter.

  He wanted reasons? She would give him reasons. “You are a lying, despicable. lout, Strode! Coming here with a deathbed wish of Tavish’s!” She twisted her lips in a snarl. “A foul trick is what it was! You wrote it yourself. Tricked me into marriage and gained to yourself all I had worked for!”

  He looked stunned. “Ye’ve lost yer reason,” he whispered, shaking his head with the shock of it. “What ha’ done this to ye, hinny?”

  “Ah, lapse into your brogue, will you! Be what you are, you stupid savage! Bloody murderer! You killed Tavish, didn’t you? Killed him to get what was his!”

  She sucked in a terrified breath when he approached the bed, grabbed her arm and shook her. He would beat her! How rash to provoke him so. What was she thinking? She knew in her soul he had not killed Tavish. Tricked him and stolen from him, surely, but never murdered the man. Why in God’s name had she said such a foolish thing?

  His voice came low and grating. “If I thought ye truly believed all o’ that, wife, I would as soon leave this plac
e tonight, take what I came with, ride out and ne’er look back.” He stared straight into her eyes, unblinking. “Aye, I would.”

  “Go, then,” she mumbled, afraid to raise her voice when his huge fingers clutched her arm fit to break it.

  “Nay, I cannot. Bruce wishes me to hold this place even if you do not. What devil’s got into you, Honor, that you should accuse me so? I did not kill your husband. He was a friend in my youth and I loved him well. As a knight and a man, I admired him above most.”

  “You wanted what was his!” she dared in a small voice.

  “Aye, Tav was blessed and I admit to envy. But I never thought to have it until he forced it on me.” His hold lessened. He turned his head aside and blew out a long breath. “’Twas Tavish played the trick, not I.”

  “Liar!” Honor said, fuming, no longer caring if she roused his fury. Let him do his worst, she thought recklessly. “You forged that letter as surely as I altered my marriage documents! Don’t you dare deny it, Alan, don’t you dare!”

  He looked at her as though she had grown horns. “’Tis true ye did that, then? Changed the words?”

  “Aye, but for the good of all I did so,” she admitted hotly. “But you...you did it for theft, plain and simple. Greed and lust for what Tavish owned and you did not!”

  “You loved him that much,” he stated.

  “I feared my father that much!” she shouted. “Tavish meant protection! Escape! I feared for my life and ran as fast as I might to the only man who had ever given me a moment’s worth of kindness!”

  “Ye never loved Tav?” Alan asked. He held himself very still as he spoke, his hand hovering near her arm. “Never?”

  Honor drew back against the headboard, looking everywhere but into the accusing green eyes above her. “I...cared very much.”

  “But ye never loved him?”

  “He fathered my child! Treated me with concern! I cared for him!”

  He grabbed both her arms then and gave her a firm shake. “Answer me, God witnessing, Honor. Did ye ever truly love him?”

  She dropped her chin to her chest, overwhelmed by grief and guilt. “No,” she admitted in a broken whisper. “I wanted to, and I would have...given time, I would.”

  Alan released her with a shove, turned on his heel and left the solar without another word. Honor curled herself into the pillows, dragged up the covers and wept.

  How had all this gotten so out of hand? He was the villain here and making her out to be worse than he. She buried her face, scrubbing it into the linen. But she was a villain, as surely as Alan of Strode. All this ire of hers, ’twas only a means of distributing the guilt so that she did not bear so much of it. Shame coursed through her, an ugly river in her veins that washed waves of pain through her heart.

  She could never forgive herself. But she would not forgive Alan, either. Hateful knave. At least she had not preached truth and honesty at all and sundry while making such a mockery of it. At least, she was no hypocrite. Alan the True, indeed!

  In his grief, Alan sought solitude. Since there was none of that to be had within the crowded walls of Byelough, he saddled his horse, ordered the guard to open the gate and rode out.

  The crisp night air heightened his senses, bombarding him with the scent of damp heather and the lonely silence of the sleeping hills.

  The bitter taste of disappointment lay thick on his tongue. He could not reconcile the deceitful, caustic woman in the solar with the sweet and perfect lady he had wed. How could he have misjudged her so drastically? She had sorely wounded his pride and broken his heart in one conversation.

  All this time, he had imagined her purity of heart, her rare ability to love unreservedly. What was even worse, Tavish had imagined it as well. The poor man had died thinking himself a cherished husband. Alan almost envied him that. At the moment, he wished he had not uncovered the blackness in her soul, that he had died defending her before the truth came out.

  With a harshness he seldom employed, Alan kicked his horse into a ground-eating run and raced across the valley. Through the narrow pass they thundered and into the next open vale toward the burn and Tavish’s resting place. Lathered and blowing, the mount obediently slowed to a walk between the rushing waters and the grave. Alan kicked out of his stirrups, swung his right leg over and slid to the ground.

  Angrily, he scooped up a fist-size rock and plunked it on the growing pile of stones and muttered a perfunctory prayer as was custom.

  That done, he paced back and forth before the cairn. “Lucky devil, ye are,” he muttered. “I want ye t’ know that!” Alan kicked at a loose rock, sending it onto the pile placed there by others who had happened by or come there for the purpose. “There’s another for ye! That’s for her! She’d not ha’ prayed with it, neither.”

  Anger increased with every step. “Ye thought she loved ye, wanted ye, missed ye, aye? Welladay, there’s a woman for ye, Tavish. Fractious, conniving, meddlesome creatures. Best do wi‘out ’em.” He added with a toss of his head, “For some things anyway. But if a mon’s lookin’ fer heart’s ease, he’d best find th’ plant o’ that name. And chew on a mess of it till he drops doon dead!” Alan shot a quick glance of apology at the grave. “Nothin’ personal in that. ’Twas just a thought.”

  Alan alternately stomped around the cairn and by the burn and stopped to heave stones into the water just to throw something. Suddenly, all energy left him and he sank down onto the bank. “Ah, Tav. I curried such hopes, y’ know? I curried such great hopes.”

  He rose then, tossed a last rock into the tumbling waters and turned toward his horse. His ire and disappointment had not diminished in the least, but now smoldered in his breast, likely to break out into a raging conflagration.

  Best that woman not give it cause with that tongue of hers, he thought darkly. Best she not, or he’d show her the rough side of his own. Deceiving Tav. Making sweet with himself. Mayhaps her father had no choice but to thrash her to try to cure her dishonesty.

  Then Alan cringed inwardly at the very thought of it. In his mind’s eye, he pictured Hume with a stick and wee Honor cowering with a wall at her back, her soft gray eyes wide with fear. “Nay, then. Not a beating,” he muttered. “Never that.”

  But he’d not forgive her. Not for the lie she had lived with Tavish, and not for her grand pretense at caring for himself, Alan decided firmly. And there she was accusing him of untruths. She had only pretended to believe him when he first came here. Now she named him a grasping liar. The worst of insults.

  The woman mocked the honor she’d been named for, and that was not a thing he would excuse under any circumstance.

  His heart lay heavy with its load of anger and despair as he rode slowly back to Byelough. He envisioned the future stretched out before him, long years filled with the bitterness of doubt and suspicion.

  When he passed the old dame’s cottage where he had helped to birth wee Kit, daughter of his heart, Alan sighed. Here lay another concern. He could not permit Honor to taint the bairn. She might teach Kit to lie, if not apurpose, then by example. But how could he take a babe from its mother, especially this child whom Honor held so dear?

  At least this quandary need not be solved today. But why not tell Honor of his thoughts on the matter? Aye, there would be a punishment to fit the misdeed. Let her stew in the juices of consequence for her wicked foolery.

  “No!” Honor screamed, covering her face with trembling hands. “Oh, no, please, Alan. Please, I beg you do not!” She sank to the floor before him, weeping.

  “You shall have her until she needs you no more,” he assured her through gritted teeth. “I only hope Kit will not draw character along with the milk. Count yourself privileged I do not put her to another’s breast anon. Fortunately, you will bear no more children, leastwise not by me.”

  “Beast!” she cried, beating the floor with her fists until he thought she must break some bones. But he held himself erect, staring down at her with all the disdain he could muster, willing back a
sudden wave of sympathy. “You are a beast!” she repeated in a tear-filled whimper, “and I hate you!”

  “Aye,” he admitted. “‘Tis truth you spit now, wife. How does that taste in your mouth, eh? Strange and foreign, I’d wager. Best grow accustomed to it, for if I catch you in another falsehood, however small, you may rest assured there will be no friendly ears around you to hear another. Not your daughter’s, not your maids’, no one.”

  He left her huddled in the midst of the solar, the violent shakes of her sobbing tearing at his sanity. God help him, he must not relent in this. ’Twas his only recourse to make her understand the wrongness of what she had done. Her only hope of redeeming herself by holding to truth hereafter. Tears blurred his vision as he firmly quelled a wish to go back and offer comfort. He must not.

  Honor roused herself after a while and rose on leaden limbs. She washed her face, straightened her gown, and repinned her braids. With head held high, she slowly walked into the hall and across to the fire hole where Nan sat rocking Christiana to and fro. “Give her to me,” she said softly.

  “She sleeps, my lady. ’Tis not yet time for her to feed,” Nan replied with a smile.

  Honor reached down and took her child from the maid without another word. Then she strolled about aimlessly for a few moments before making a roundabout path to the kitchen stairs.

  The guard, David, sat on a three-legged stool between the storeroom where her father was imprisoned and the other which housed the entrance to the bolt-hole. A quick glance around revealed no one else save the spit boy idly turning a joint of meat over the fire.

  “David,” she said, “would you go and show that lad the proper manner of that? He’s like to char our supper if he continues to lag.”

  The guard nodded and grinned as he rose to do her bidding. Honor quickly slipped through the door when he wasn’t looking and laid the sleeping babe on a sack of grain. She pulled another bag away from the opening to the escape tunnel, and then retrieved Christiana.