“Aye, he can barely walk.”
“Why do you suppose he came here?”
Luke kept his gaze fixed on the little chunk of wood, which he sculpted with great precision. “I should think he made that fairly obvious.”
Alex looked at him.
“He came here because of you. He heard you’d be here, and he wanted to see you.”
In his mind’s eye, Alex conjured up images—some dreamlike, some nightmarish—of that fateful summer in Périgeaux. “Why?” he asked with a vague sense of dread.
Luke rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over his handiwork, then raised his eyes to his brother. “That might be worth finding out.”
Chapter 3
Alex couldn’t shake his sense of disquiet as he climbed the narrow, winding stairwell within the ducal castle’s north tower. He fisted his hand to rap on the oaken door at the top of the stairs, but muffled voices from within made him hesitate. Drawing on his uncanny hearing—as keen as any wolf’s, and a valuable asset in the field—he concentrated on making out the words.
“Eat some of this—please.” A woman’s voice: Nicolette.
“I don’t want it! My stomach’s in a twist. I told you that.”
“Just a little, Milo. You haven’t eaten in—”
“Because I haven’t wanted to. Damn you, you meddlesome bitch, get that away from me.”
Alex turned and had descended halfway back down the spiraling stone passage when a rattling crash—as of something hurled against the door—made him spin around. He paused only briefly before sprinting back up the stairs.
When he was within sight of the topmost door, it opened. He heard the whisper of silk as Lady Nicolette backed out of the chamber. “You’ll have to clean it up yourself this time, Milo,” she said, her voice quiet but strained.
“Send up a maidservant to clean it,” came Milo’s gravelly voice from within. “And tell her to bring some wine.”
She shut the door and turned to lean back against it, eyes closed, her chest rising and falling slowly as she took several deep breaths. The warm torchlight burnished her face, igniting it with a golden luster. Alex frowned when he saw the brown spatters that marred the otherwise pristine white silk of her tunic.
Her eyes opened, and then grew wide. “Alex,” she breathed.
“Hello, Nicki,” he said quietly, his heart racing in his chest.
They regarded each other in charged silence. Presently Alex said, with a glance at the door, “Is this a bad time? I can come back later.” He kept his voice low, lest Milo hear.
She didn’t seem to hear him, absorbed as she was in studying his face. Her gaze lit on his jaw, his chin, his nose, and finally his forehead. The scars were so old and well-healed as to be nearly invisible in the light of day, but in this torchlight, he knew, they would stand out in sharp relief.
He stood rooted to the spot as Nicki descended the stairs. Being fairly tall for a woman, when she paused on the step above his, they were nearly eye to eye. She stood close enough for him to inhale her spellbinding scent—roses mingled with a faint spiciness and the lure of warm skin—so astonishingly familiar to him after all these years.
Her gaze riveted on his forehead, she brushed her fingertips over the most visible of his scars. He stiffened, and she quickly withdrew her hand.
After another moment of silence, she said softly, “Is the life of a soldier all you’d thought it would be?”
He took a deep breath. “‘Tis everything to me. ‘Tis what I live for.”
“But do you like it?”
“Do you like being married to Milo?”
She nodded slightly, as if conceding a point, but said, “‘Tisn’t as bad as it may appear. He’s never struck me, and I know he never would.” With a glance at the door she added, in answer to his initial question, “This is no worse a time than any other. You can go in. He’s been looking forward to your visit.”
She swept down the stairwell in a fragrant rustle of silk, her shoulder grazing his as she passed.
Alex climbed once more to the doorway and paused, feeling the cool, airy touch of her fingertips on the snakelike little scar. Is the life of a soldier all you’d thought it would be? Could she really think these scars had been earned in battle? Didn’t she know? Perhaps she was toying with him.
Alex knocked, and the door swung open. “Cousin!” Milo, supporting himself with his cane, embraced him and waved him into the room—not the “dismal cell” he’d made it out to be, but a pleasantly cozy little chamber, with a sizable window. A far cry from the straw pallet Alex, as a single man, had to make do with in the great hall, and nothing to complain about. The bed curtains were tied back; a lady’s night shift of white silk lay neatly folded on a red brocade pillow. The sight only served to further unsettle Alex.
Turning deliberately from the bed, he saw, strewn over the rushes near the door, a wooden tray, a white-bread trencher, and some slices of meat. A brown liquid—the meat’s sauce, he supposed—was sprayed across the door and wall.
Noticing the direction of Alex’s gaze, Milo said simply, “I wasn’t hungry.” He was slurring less, presumably having slept off his inebriation. Looping two empty wineskins over his shoulder, he motioned Alex to follow him out of the chamber. “We’ll have our walk, but first I must get these filled.”
“How do you expect to walk all that distance,” Alex ventured carefully, “if you’re sotted?”
“A damn sight better than I could if I were sober.” Milo began his quavering descent of the twisting stairwell, one hand braced on the wall while the other clutched the cane.
Alex reached out to assist him, but hesitated, remembering what Nicki had said about his not wanting anyone but her and Gaspar to do so.
“It’s all right,” Milo said. “You can help me. A tumble down these stairs would finish me off for sure.”
After stopping at the buttery to fill Milo’s wineskins, the two men began their torturous trek toward the Seine, Alex staying close enough to his cousin to grab him if he fell. The setting sun cast a glaze of gold over the rooftops of Rouen and the trees fringing the path on which they walked. Insects hummed; birds giggled and sang. Alex smelled the river up ahead, an elusive undercurrent in the balmy breeze.
“Are you certain you want to do this?” Alex asked after his cousin had stumbled for the second time.
“Have to talk to you alone,” Milo muttered breathlessly as he squeezed some more wine into his mouth. “Blasted castle is too damned crowded. Too many sets of ears.”
“You must be used to that. Isn’t Peverell crowded?”
“Soldiers mind their own business.” The castellan of Peverell—at one time an appointed position, now hereditary—served as a sort of constable for William, maintaining an active force of fighting men at his ready disposal.
“The men-at-arms live in the castle with you?”
Milo shook his head. “Gaspar quarters them in barracks, but they have the run of the great hall during the day.” He took another swallow of wine. “They keep to themselves, for the most part. ‘Tis an adequate arrangement.”
Alex squinted at the water in the distance, glittering as if it had been showered with gold dust. His chest hurt; he grieved in his heart over what had become of his cousin. “We’ve got six more days of feasting and tournaments ahead of us. Think you’re up to it?”
“What do you think?” Milo sneered as he tottered along, grimacing.
“I think you must be half-mad to have come here at all.”
Laughter rattled in Milo’s bony chest. “After this evening, I daresay you’ll think me a raving lunatic.”
Alex was about to ask what he meant by that when Milo said, “Aye, I’ll stay the entire week if need be.”
“If need be?”
Milo offered his wineskin to Alex, who shook his head, having resolved to keep his wits about him this evening.
“Why did you come here, Milo?” Alex asked.
Shrugging, Milo avoided Alex’s gaze
. “Perhaps I merely thought it would be a pleasant diversion from Peverell. Have you ever been there?”
“You know I haven’t.” Alex was growing impatient with Milo’s obvious stalling.
“‘Tis a gigantic old stone keep, twice the size of the Tour de Rouen, and ten times as drafty. A crypt for the living. Or,” he added, indicating himself with a shuddering sweep of his hand, “the barely alive.”
“A crypt, eh? Isn’t that a bit...dramatic?”
“Wait till you see it.”
“I’ve no plans to go there.”
“Yes, well...” Milo squirted some more wine down his throat. “I suppose I haven’t painted a particularly attractive picture of it, have I?”
“Hardly.”
“‘Tis a dreadful old place, but at least it’s mine—more or less.”
“I take it Nicolette inherited it from her uncle?”
Milo sighed uneasily. “In a manner of speaking. Along with the castellany, which became my responsibility when the old man died, six weeks after our wedding.” His gaze slid toward Alex. “I know what you’re thinking. What should have been my duty has become Gaspar’s.”
“I make no judgments.”
Milo smirked. “Lying cur. You think me an idle, wine-soaked knave. Duty is your lifeblood. Honor and allegiance and all that military trumpery. If you’d ended up master of Peverell, you’d have been castellan in more than name—you’d have seized the office with both hands and done right by it. Tell me I’m wrong.”
The only way Alex could have ended up master of Peverell would have been by marrying Nicki. He wondered how much, if anything, she’d told her husband about the summer that had culminated in their betrothal.
“I’m sure you’re happier at Peverell than you were in Périgeaux,” Alex said in an effort to redirect their conversation to safer ground. “I know how much you resented living under Peter’s roof.” Unlike Alex and Luke, who’d committed themselves as youths to mastering the arts of war, their erudite cousin had cared no more for soldiering than for the Church. His destiny, he maintained, was to be the lord of a great manor, and he resented that the new system of inheritance gave his sire’s entire estate to his older brother, Peter.
“‘Twas living under Peter’s thumb that was so vexing. The burden of matrimony seemed a small price to pay for the privilege of becoming Lord of Peverell.”
“You were so certain Henri had named Lady Nicolette as his heir?”
“Her mother confided in me about the terms of Henri’s will.”
So Milo had married Nicki for Peverell, but still....Despite her shortcomings, she was, quite objectively, a woman of exquisite beauty and grace. And, given her learnedness, she had much in common with Milo. To think of marriage to her as a burden struck Alex as extraordinary.
“Does her mother still live with you?” Alex asked.
“Lady Sybila?” Milo shuddered. “She met her maker a while back. Three, four years ago. Perhaps five.” He rubbed his forehead. “My memory isn’t what it could be. I recall the night it happened, though. She was dressing down her daughter for venturing outside the solar with her hair uncovered. ‘Twas late, and Nicolette had simply run down to the hall to fill the bed warmer with coals, but Sybila never did put much stock in excuses. Hissing and sputtering like a wet cat she was, then all of a sudden she simply keeled over. Dead as a stone, just like that. Damnedest thing you ever saw.” Grinning and shaking his head, Milo filled his mouth with wine.
Alex made a quick sign of the cross—an automatic and meaningless gesture. It would be self-delusion to pretend that he honestly regretted the lady Sybila’s passing.
By the time they arrived at the bank of the great river, the sun was but a gleam on the horizon of a violet sky, and Milo was trembling with fatigue. Alex helped his cousin to sit on a boulder, then leaned against a tree to watch him empty the first skin and start in on the second.
“I don’t think you came here to get away from Peverell,” Alex said, “no matter how big and dreary it is.”
Milo wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his tunic. “Nay?”
“Luke seems to think you came here to see me.”
Milo paused with the wineskin halfway to his mouth, then slowly lowered it. “He’s too perceptive by half, that brother of yours. Sees everything. Gaspar’s much the same. For all that he’s a godsend, the bastard really gets on my nerves. You know why I always liked you so much?”
Alex rubbed the bridge of his nose. Milo was delaying again.
“With you,” Milo said, “everything’s on the surface. I don’t have to crack open your armor and go digging for your secrets. There are none.”
“Everyone’s got secrets.” Was Milo just tormenting Alex for sport, or did he honestly not know about him and Nicki?
“Not you.” Milo snorted. “You wear your soul on your chest. You’re tediously honest, disgustingly forthright. Ever in a good humor. I remember, back when we were drinking companions in Périgeaux, wanting to punch you in the nose just to erase that idiotic smile from your face.”
“I never knew my contentment troubled you so greatly, cousin,” Alex said dryly.
Milo wheezed with laughter. “You were so...comfortable with yourself. So satisfied with your lot. Quite the opposite of me in that respect. Things were simple for you. If something was the right thing to do, you did it. If it was sinful, you didn’t. If something was on your mind, you said it. If you made a promise, you kept it. You’re still that way. I can tell.”
“What do you want from me, Milo?” Alex asked quietly.
“I loved you like a brother,” Milo said, his voice rawly earnest. “I still do.”
“Milo...”
“There’s a favor I want to ask of you.” His appealingly sheepish smile reminded Alex of the old Milo, the charming, good-natured companion of Alex’s youth. “‘Tis a rather...unusual favor. I couldn’t ask it of just anyone.”
“Out with it.”
Milo fortified himself with a quick gulp of wine. “I want you to father a child for Nicolette.”
Chapter 4
The blood rushed in Alex’s ears. “Did you say—”
“I want you to get her pregnant.” Milo’s gaze was direct and sincere.
“You want me to get your wife pregnant.”
“Aye.”
Alex pushed roughly away from the tree, astounded that Milo would ask him, of all men, to perform this extraordinary “favor.” “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know damn well what I’m saying. I want you to lie with her, and plant your seed in her belly, and get her with child.”
In his mind, Alex saw the shift of white silk folded on the scarlet pillow...breathed in the scent of roses and spices and warm womanflesh. He shook his head, raking his fingers through his hair. “‘Tis the wine talking. It’s deranged your senses.”
“I told you you’d think me mad before the evening was over.” Milo smiled sadly. “In truth, I came to this decision during one of my few drearily sober moments—if it’s any comfort to you.”
“Comfort? This whole bloody notion makes me feel sick. Does Nick—” Careful. “Does your lady wife know what you’re asking of me?”
“Nay. She’d be horrified.”
“Quite rightly. What you’re proposing is...it’s abominable. How can you ask this?”
“I thought you might be a bit put off.”
“Put off?” Alex was quivering. “God, Milo, what kind of a man are you?”
“You want to know what kind of a man I am?” Rising from the boulder with some difficulty, Milo took a faltering step toward Alex. “I’m a man who can’t even sit astride a horse anymore without falling off. I rode here in a covered litter, Alex, like an old woman, while my wife rode on horseback. I’m a man who can’t summon up even the pretense of respect from his own subordinates. The soldiers under my command—or, more accurately, under Gaspar’s—laugh at me behind my back...and sometimes to my face. I’ve been known to wake up
soaked in my own piss, like an infant.”
“Christ, Milo.”
“Do I disgust you?”
“Your self-pity disgusts me.”
“You’d pity yourself, too, if you couldn’t even remember the last time your cock got stiff enough to—”
“I’ve heard enough.” Alex turned and began striding back up the path toward the castle.
“Nicolette has a little over a year to produce a son,” Milo called after him. “Or she loses Peverell.”
Alex paused, hands fisted at his side. Grudgingly he turned around. “You’re making no sense. Peverell belongs to her. She inherited it. You told me so yourself.”
“‘In a manner of speaking,’ I said.” Milo took another unsteady step in Alex’s direction. “My wife’s uncle was childless, you see, and he left a rather...complicated will—which Duke William approved, of course. There’s no way to contest it.”
“Get to the point.”
Milo licked his cracked lips. “Nicolette is not Henri de St. Clair’s heir. Her firstborn son is. By the terms of his will, she must produce a son by the ten-year anniversary of Henri’s death—that’s fifteen months from now—or forfeit Peverell to the Church. There’s an abbey in St. Clair which is to assume control.” He drew in a shaky breath. “We need a son, Alex.”
Alex felt as if his brain were swelling inside his skull. “And you expect me to sire him?”
“I’m afraid I’ve proven myself...unequal to the task.” Milo made his way back to the boulder and sat down, as limp as a rag doll that’s lost half its stuffing. “Not for want of trying—in the beginning, that is. When we were first married, I made a gallant effort to start a babe growing in her belly. ‘Twas a doomed enterprise, though, and one to which neither of us brought the slightest shred of enthusiasm. Do you want to know something?”
“Nay.” Alex turned his back, but he did not walk away.
“I could only rouse to her when I closed my eyes and imagined she was Violette.”
Squeezing his own eyes closed, Alex swept from his mind the disconcerting image of Milo diligently tupping Nicki, and thought instead of Violette, whom his cousin had loved since his youth. The daughter of a saddle-maker, she was too far beneath him for marriage, and uneducated to boot, but they were devoted to each other all the same. Alex remembered her easy laughter, much like Milo’s. The laughter ceased for a time when the babe she bore him, a girl, perished of a sudden fever within days of her birth. It ceased for good, Alex was told, after Milo married Nicki and left for Normandy.
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 106
