by Kris Kennedy
“Thank you,” she breathed and began towards the stables.
Alex knew.
She hurried to the stables, passing Griffyn’s squire Edmund along the way. At his heels tagged Renny, Griffyn’s ancient hound.
“My lady!” shouted Edmund.
Her heart slammed against her chest as the boy hurried over.
“I saw in your cellars”—Edmund said, and Gwyn almost fainted—“the dulcimer you used to keep. Would it be possible for me to learn, do you think?”
Her hand fluttered over her chest, her face hot. “Why, yes, Edmund,” she agreed shakily, trying to focus on the mundane matter. She had entirely forgotten the instrument, else she’d have sold it already. “I-I am certain we could find someone to teach you. My scribe used to play, just a bit, but he might still know a few lines to teach you.”
Edmund’s face lit up. “Thank you, my lady!”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, and bent to pat Renny on the head before going on for the stables.
The dog growled.
Gwyn ripped her hand back. She looked at Edmund, who appeared as shocked as she. She turned to the hound again and another low-pitched snarl rumbled out of his whitened muzzle.
“Why, my lady,” Edmund exclaimed, tugging on the dog’s collar. “I do not know what’s into him! He was at your heels only yester—I mean the day before.” He looked at her in swift concern. “How is your headache, my lady? I should have asked from the first.”
“It’s fine,” she said slowly, looking warily at Renny as Edmund tugged the dog away. “’Tis fine now,” she finished for no one, and headed shakily across the bailey to unsaddle Wind.
She hadn’t made it forty paces before a Sauvage knight approached her.
“My lady Guinevere?”
Saints above, was every soul in the castle intent on her? She turned with a stiff smile.
“My lord is looking for you.”
Dread curled up her spine. Good God, he was back already? “I will just cool down my horse,” she said weakly, trying not to sound desperate. “Where is Lord Griffyn?”
“He’s in the hall now, my lady, but said he’d see you in his chambers.”
His chambers.
She took quite a bit longer than was necessary to walk Wind, rub his sweaty fur with straw to encourage circulation and massage the weary muscles, fill his water bucket, and thump the saddle over a horizontal post hammered into the wall, for cleaning later. For how long had be been back? What of Jerv? Had Griffyn come upon him, been told she was inside resting, then found the room empty? How in God’s name would Jerv explain that? How would she?
The chilling notion made her wipe her hands on her skirts and march up the stairs to the keep. No Jerv. She passed the great hall, where tables were being laid for the meal. No Jerv. She passed a narrow window set in a recessed landing on the stairwell and peered out; no Jerv swinging from a post anywhere. That was a good sign.
Squaring her shoulders, she pushed open the door to the lord’s chamber.
Griffyn was sitting on the bench, rummaging through a sack. He looked around at the sound of the door opening. A lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. “Guinevere! I’ve been looking for you. Where were you?”
“Riding,” she said in a weak voice, about to fall into a dead faint. “My lord, truth, I am surprised to see you back so soon.”
“As were the men. But I rode them hard.” He ran his eyes over her body. “I wanted to get home.”
Gwyn sat down on the mattress. She wasn’t to be thrown in the cellars? Cursed? Beheaded? Did he even know?
“First, this,” he said, and, reaching into his pocket, pulled out the ring of keys to the castle. Even from beneath his tunic, his rock-hard body radiated masculinity, but it was that damaging, sweet smile that made her heart start fluttering. He handed the household keys to her. “You’ll want these. I should have returned them sooner.”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief second, nodding her thanks.
“Come, now.” He touched the tips of her fingers, helping her rise. “See what I’ve got.” Excitement tinged his words as he rummaged around in a sack beside him. “See what I’ve got for you.”
He pulled out one of her mother’s small, chestnut-red harps, the one she’d sold to buy wheat. The other, black-dark, sat, tipped on its side, half hidden amid the linen folds.
Fierce, the memories pressed in close.
“These were your mother’s?” she heard him asking dimly, as if from a distance.
She ran her hand across the smooth, carved wood. “They were.”
“Good.”
She brushed her fingers over the strings. Familiar, melodic whispers filled the room. She did it again, her eyes swimming.
“Good?” he said again, tentatively.
Her breath shot out in a weak, watery laugh. “More than good,” and the tears spilled over.
“Bien.” He ran the back of his fingers down her wet cheeks. “I know you miss her.”
“Every day.” Her voice caught. She smiled and touched the polished, red wood. “This will help.”
Their eyes were inches apart, she standing, he sitting. He cupped the sides of her head and, pulling her down, kissed one cheek, then the other. Then he smiled, that lopsided, ferociously sensual grin, and she began heating up again. All he had to do was look at her and she was ready for him.
“Griffyn,” she protested as he straightened, shaking her head but smiling nonetheless. “You should tell me about your trip—”
“I should lay you out on the bed.”
She laughed. “Griffyn.”
“Gwyn.”
“Truly—”
He grabbed her hand. “Truly. I don’t want to wait. My trip went fine. I—” His words stumbled for a moment. “I got your mother’s harps, and am home again, hungry for you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “’Twas news of my mother’s harps that sent you running to Ipsile? Nothing else?” she teased, but he stiffened. His fingers squeezed uncomfortably around hers.
“What do you mean?”
Her smile faltered. “I meant nothing, Griffyn. I was in jest.”
His hand relaxed. “I am sorry. I am tired, ’tis hot, and ’twas a long ride. But this is a truth: I thought of barely nothing but you.”
She laughed. “That suits well enough.”
Reaching behind her, he tugged at the yellow laces that held her shorter, outer tunic. With each gentle tug, the material tightened around her breasts. The tunic slipped to the ground. He pushed aside the collar of the undertunic and pressed his lips to her bare shoulder.
“And you, Raven?” he murmured. “Did you think of me?”
“Every moment,” she said in a voice barely whispered.
And just as he’d promised, he laid her out on the bed and took her to orgasm with such swift, stunning confidence she almost died from the pleasure.
And the pain. What had started as fierce loyalty to her king was turning into pure desperation. Griffyn must not be hurt by this. Yet she was depending on a most foul saviour in that regard, in Marcus fitzMiles.
Marcus sat whittling wood on a low bench in his herb garden. The mint was coming up fine, but the onions looked like vermin had got them. So be it. The cycle of life.
He shaved off another thin slice of wood. What Gwyn had given him was far too good to pass up. Far too juicy to do as she’d asked. Ride into the Nest, then out again, with only one ailing, dethroned prince to show for it? What then? Was he to prop Eustace on a saddle and shove him out before Henri fitzEmpress’s armies? While Griffyn Sauvage got to nuzzle his Guinevere?
Gwynnie was fine and funny and sharp, but none too bright about these kinds of things.
And for all that Griffyn Sauvage was her betrothed, whom had she come to in her hour of need? Him. Marcus. A hot wash of pride filled his chest. She’d run from him a year ago, now she’d ridden straight to his keep, head bent, begging for help.
Of course, he’d have give
n succor if her head had been staked on a pike or screaming in his face. There was nothing he could refuse Guinevere. ’Twas her own fault she didn’t know it. She never asked for anything.
She could have told him to support Stephen or Henri or Nur al-Din, the Muslim leader who was about to crush the Crusaders in Outremer. He would have done anything. Politics did not matter. Guinevere mattered. Her fierce fortitude, her lush body, her sharp, sharp mind. Marcus knew a jewel when he saw one, and every one he’d ever wanted lay within the Nest.
Sauvage would come out of the Nest, though. Marcus would ensure it. He would lure him out, close enough to parley, then give his ultimatum, without even the pretense of submission. Because he would never submit. Not to a Sauvage. He would submit to Lucifer before Griffyn Sauvage.
And if Gwyn thought Marcus had the Hallows chest, so much the better. The confusion would prove very useful in about two weeks.
The chest must have been tied to Sauvage’s horse, which was rescued, Marcus later learned, by two of Sauvage’s retinue. One of them was a Watcher, Alexander. Best to stay away from them; they had a habit of killing people who interfered with the Heirs. Had Marcus’s father not been acquainted with that fact? Damned Scots.
Marcus’s fingers twitched and a large chunk of wood fell to the ground. The small wooden figurine horse was now missing a leg. Marcus kicked it away.
But the chest had apparently not been recovered. It must be still sitting in the mud somewhere near where they’d apprehended Sauvage. Marcus would have to send a few discreet men to those woods, to kick aside every fern and find the thing.
And from there, his men could continue on to Henri fitzEmpress’s camp, with some very interesting news.
At present, Marcus had only one of the puzzle keys. But by craft or cunning or cold hard steel, he intended to confiscate every single thing that mattered to the Heir.
He felt for the chilled weight of the steel key. It hung from his neck on a craftily-wrought steel strand he’d ordered and had de Louth secure for him on a recent trip to the city of Ipsile-upon-Tyne.
The key was just the beginning.
He whittled off another sliver of wood, then cursed as he sliced a gash through his thumb. Cupping his wrist, he held his hand out between his knees and let the blood drip onto the dirt, a bright red pool between the yellow leaves from the oak tree.
A time for everything and everything in its time. He straightened and dragged his knife along the wood figurine again. It sliced effortlessly. The time had come for Endshire to rise, and Sauvage to fall very, very far.
Griffyn met Alex in the hall the next morning. Griffyn was whistling. Alex looked over, eyebrows raised.
“Pagan? Are you well?”
Griffyn smiled and kept walking.
“You’re whistling,” Alex pointed out.
Griffyn looked over. “I am glad to be home, and to have her to wife is not so bad.”
That was an understatement, thought Alexander as they strode towards the stables to meet a saddlemaker who was here to show off his wares. Alex glanced up at the keep windows and saw a flash of black move past one of them. It was strange, really. Griffyn had been looking for Lady Guinevere for an hour before she showed up yester eve, sweaty and out of breath, yet no one announced she’d ridden through the gates and returned.
The stables were cool after the afternoon sun, and the men spent an hour admiring the leatherwork of the exquisitely stitched saddles. When they made to leave, Alex glanced in at Gwyn’s horse.
He was a fiery chestnut, with withers that grazed the underside of Alexander’s nostrils and hooves large enough to crush a small child. For all that, though, he seemed good-natured, snuffing politely when presented a hand and nickering before they left. In truth, this was a Windstalker who couldn’t be missed, really.
But a’missing he had been when Alex looked in an hour before Griffyn had arrived home yesterday. And missing, too, the night before, when Alex poked his nose into the stables on a whim, on a somewhat aimless search for anything amiss.
And the horse had not been there.
Chapter Twenty
Kneeling in the kitchen gardens, helping prepare the soils for winter, Gwyn tried to forget the mess she was now entangled in. There was nothing to be done about it. All she could do was wait. And hope.
The thought was almost laughable. Hope what? Hope that King Stephen would be conquered, or that Griffyn’s lord would be crushed? Either way spelt ruin for someone she loved.
Truth be told, there was no guarantee Eustace would even live. He just might die.
Gwyn jerked her head up at the treacherous thought. Or rather, treacherous emotion. The thought was but a reality. The way relief swept through her was the villainy.
Her blood pounded as she stared at the clear blue sky. Wispy white sweeps of cloud dimmed the blinding blue brightness of the autumn sky. Cold dirt clumped under her fingernails. The inside of her nostrils burned hot and freezing cold with each breath.
She couldn’t turn dirt another moment. She was too restless. She needed to walk the walls.
She scrambled to her feet, tugged on her skirts, and started for the battlements. She was moving at a rapid clip, head down, when she slammed into something hard.
“Uugghh!” exclaimed a voice. Alex staggered back a few steps, gripping his stomach and grimacing.
“Sir Alex,” she gasped, and hurried forward. “Are you all right?”
He backed up a few more steps, holding out his hand, warding her off. “Fine, my lady.”
She drew back and straightened her skirts, swirling them about her ankles. “What a nice evening.” She said the polite nothing with her eyes averted. She did not want to see Alex, not with her suspicions about his suspicions floating through her mind.
“’Tis,” he replied tonelessly.
“Yes, ’tis.” She bent her head and started forward again.
“Been on any rides lately?”
She turned around slowly. “No.”
“Ah. I just wondered if your horse had come up lame.”
“No,” she said more slowly than she had turned. “Why?”
Alex shrugged. “No, I didn’t think so. I saw him gone from the stables, that is all.”
Faint dread spread in a cold flood through her stomach. “I like to ride, sir. Has my lord some problem with that?”
He shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. “Nay.”
“Then I cannot see where it should concern you.” She lifted her head in an icy pose and started walking away.
“If you hurt him, you will be sorry, Guinevere.”
She stopped but did not turn. He didn’t say anything more, and she started walking again, fighting not to clutch her chest, to hide her hammering heart.
“I have heard riding clears the head,” he said to her back. “Especially when it aches.”
It took all her reserves not to pick up her skirts and run.
Griffyn set his men loose on the Nest and its environs like worker bees of restoration and repair. A few began preparatory work on the crumbling stone of the castle’s defensive walls, but most were sent to the fields.
October was for ploughing, the last of the year. Fighting men tended to fight, unless otherwise occupied. Practice with lance, falchion, and sword was a frequent device Griffyn used to stave off boredom and keep their fighting skills honed to a razor’s edge, but ploughing was even better. It was more demanding, and more importantly, it was a joint effort. A common purpose tended to blur the divisions that led to bloodshed. His men were going to live here. They were going to build families together. Best to start now.
As he was trying to do.
He was aware of Gwyn wherever she went, in the kitchen gardens with Cook, talking with Raashid and William of the Five Strands—she’d insisted he stay on—about marling the fields of a distant manor, greeting a messenger or, most often, walking and talking with one of the multitude of women who inhabited the Nest.
Where did they
all come from? he wondered as he helped haul stone on the walls the next afternoon.
“A bevy of breasts and giggles,” Fulk gruffed when Griffyn brought it up. But Griffyn had seen him stop sweat-inducing labour to help one of those bright lights traverse a set of stairs, so he was not a reliable gruff.
Then again, it did appear Gwyn had adopted every orphaned or dispossessed waif from the River Clyde to the Ouse. They were everywhere, their bright gowns and winsome smiles making his men drop hammers and scatter handfuls of nails. And always, there was Guinevere, her voice carrying over the bailey, indistinct in words but bright in tone, her red or yellow or emerald green skirts floating over the cobbles as she hurried here and there.
He threw another wet shovelful of mortar onto a stone, aggravated with himself. Everything he’d been fighting for his whole life was here in front of him. But instead of reveling in it, he spent hours each day searching through dark, cobwebbed rooms.
He’d explored every chamber in the castle, from kitchen to chicken roost, upturned every chest, unlocked every box, examined every parchment of de l’Ami’s. Nowhere was there a hint of anything more holy than tithes to monasteries and mission houses. Nothing whatsoever about safeguarding treasures coming out of the dark ages of Christendom.
It was as if every hint of it had been swept away by time. Or Ionnes de l’Ami, who’d wanted the Hallows above all things.
And now, Griffyn was starting to want them too.
He paused in his shoveling and wiped the back of his arm across his sweaty forehead, listening to the sounds of his men working. He stared over the battlement wall at the green expanse of the Nest’s fertile fields and hills. No. He might be home again, but a life’s mission realised was not enough anymore.
Not since he’d heard the dying words of Ionnes de l’Ami. Not since he’d been given a key that might unlock a treasure.
