Although why she should care what Raymond thought, she didn’t know.
Margery took one look at the shiny swords and produced the scream Raymond had asked for. Loud, long, and piercing, it contained all the terror of a young girl whose worst nightmare had come true. Diving for Ella, she dragged her sister into her arms and the girls huddled together—two muddy, scared children.
“Here’s dirty work at the crossroads.” A tall, well-formed knight held them hostage with the point of his sword.
A bobbing, florid-faced little man in armor echoed, “Here’s foul play.”
Raymond and Keir arrayed themselves in a wedge, pushing the girls behind them, as Raymond demanded, “Explain your purpose here.”
“You’re bold for a muddy peasant,” the little man said, waving his sword close to Raymond’s nose.
“He’s not a muddy peasant, Felix,” the other knight observed. “Listen to him speak. No serf of mine has travelled so far he speaks French with an accent like that.”
The sword threatening Raymond’s Adam’s apple withdrew. Felix tried to scratch his head, but the chain-mail hood he wore deflected his fingers. By the time he had displaced the heavy hood enough to reach his scalp, all the men were gaping at him. When he realized it, he grinned, revealing a gap between his two front teeth. “Got a dreadful case of lice. Hope Juliana’s got the herbs to kill ’em.”
Raymond’s concern eased. “Juliana?” he asked cautiously.
He was nudged from behind by the sharp elbow of a child, and one little head peeked around the curve of his hip.
The long arm of the tall knight—in Raymond’s assessment, the knight in charge—reached out again. “Lady Juliana of Lofts. The mother of those children you’ve abducted.”
The word smacked Raymond’s mind and rang it like a gong. “Abducted?” He couldn’t contain his laugh, and as he caressed the top of Ella’s head, the tall knight’s eyes narrowed. “I have not abducted Lady Juliana’s children.”
Keir dug a warning elbow into his ribs and said, “There would seem to be a mistake.”
“Aye.” The tall knight leaned forward, and placed the point of his sword on Raymond’s chest. “And you’ve made it.”
Ella said, clear and high, “Be careful, Uncle Hugh. The mud’s awful slick.”
“My lady?”
Juliana opened the eyes she’d squeezed shut and pressed a hand to her forehead.
Valeska handed her the horn mug, filled to the brim with foamy ale. “Drink this. ’Twill ease your fears.”
“I’m not afraid,” Juliana snapped reflexively, then grimaced when she realized what she’d revealed. She smacked the woven cloth hard with the batten. “That is, I was wondering how long Master Raymond has been a master castle-builder.”
“What a question, my lady.” Valeska polished Juliana’s loom with a cloth.
“Aye, a good question, and one deserving of an answer.” Because Raymond sometimes forgets the names of tools and how to use them, Juliana wanted to say but didn’t. Even though Sir Joseph was hard of hearing, she feared to express her doubts in front of him. Instead, she said, “Master Raymond has such an air of unconscious authority about him. How long has he been a master castle-builder?”
Valeska squinted at her reproachfully. “My lady, my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
Juliana didn’t believe it, and she summoned a lad who struggled to serve a pitcher of ale. “Your father is Cuthbert, my carpenter, is he not?”
The youth grinned. “Aye, m’lady, th’ best in th’ village an’ far beyond.”
“What thinks he of Master Raymond?”
His grin faded. His intelligent face grew blank. “M’lady?”
“I asked what your father thinks of Master Raymond’s building skills.”
The youth scratched his head. “M’father? Why, he says Master Raymond’s a right good…That is, Master Raymond never…” He let out his breath audibly, then jumped as the drooping pitcher spilled ale on his shoes.
Dagna ended her song with a discordant twang. “Look what you’ve done! Now clean up before you serve dinner.” As the lad scurried into the darkness of the stairwell, she showed Juliana all her amber teeth in a smile and said comfortingly, “He’s a good boy. He just needs more training.”
And really, Juliana thought morosely, why did she care how competent Raymond was? The play of light and shadow on his face reminded her of a picture, and she wanted to paint him. The movements of his body reminded her of a melody, and she wanted to dance with him. The ripple of his muscles reminded her of a horse, and she wanted to ride…She caught herself with a gasp. She was a widow, a mother, a noblewoman betrothed by the king himself to a powerful man. She had no right to lust after a mere castle builder. But Raymond had proved to everyone he was a man to be trusted.
A man.
To be trusted.
To her, those phrases were totally unrelated, and nothing could change her mind.
Except that Raymond made her remember a time when men had been nothing to fear. His handsome countenance preyed on her mind, afflicted her gestures, brought forth the coquette she thought had died a painful death. But some women would only appreciate his beauty. Some women would dream about the liquid silk of his dark hair in their hands. They would make fools of themselves for a smile, and titter about the dimples it brought forth. Some women would let themselves be seduced by the long body, long legs, long thighs.
Juliana was not so foolish. It was the compassion in him that attracted her. The way he courted her children, anxious to be included in their play. The way he dealt with the maids, firmly dismissing their passionate ploys, yet treating them with such appreciation they loved him still. The kindness he showed to those two odd women, feeding them, tending them, letting them tend him when he’d proved to Juliana he could fend for himself. He and his absurd friend Keir made Juliana smile, freed her to plan a Christmas that would be truly merry, rather than a travesty of Christmases past.
“I hear them coming, m’lady,” Valeska murmured in her ear.
Juliana looked at the old lady without recognition, then half rose as the sound of shrieking came in on the draft from an open doorway. Hurriedly she seated herself, and took hold of the batten. She assumed a serene pose and fed a thread through the warp of the wool.
As she expected, Ella ran in first, yelling, “Mother, Mother!”
Margery followed close on Ella’s heels, no less vocal.
Both girls were barely recognizable.
Juliana forgot her forced serenity, forgot everything as she stood. In a voice no less loud than Ella’s, she shouted, “What happened to you?”
“We fell in the mud,” they chorused, giggling until they were convulsed.
“You fell in the—” Her gaze fell on Raymond and Keir, equally blackened and hovering behind the girls like two shamed hounds. She drew herself up to her full height. “Explain this, if you please.”
Raymond relished the vitality her anger brought to her, and he swept her an elaborate and flourishing bow. “Your elder landed me such a blow, she knocked me into the mud, and before I realized it, a delightful brawl developed. Keir and I”—Keir swept an identical bow—“were defeated handily by your miniature warriors.”
Margery and Ella postured as great warriors should, grinning with overweening self-congratulation.
“My daughters defeated you? How is that possible?”
“A hereditary fierceness and a natural bellicosity, combined with feminine mistrust.” Raymond grimaced with remembered pain.
“I really did it, Mother.” Margery doubled her fist and thrashed the air.
Jumping up and down in little jiggling movements, Ella bragged, “You should have seen her, Mother. She defeated Lord Raymond before he realized the battle was even joined.”
“The best way to defeat Lord”—Juliana’s eyes narrowed as she refashioned his title, and she stepped toward the grubby group—“Master Raymond would surely be before the battle is joined.�
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As straight-faced as if he’d never participated in the mud fight below, Keir warned, “Do not discount your daughters’ fighting skills.”
Anxious to turn her attention from her daughters’ too accurate assumption, Raymond said, “We would even now be kneeling before these mighty fighters, begging for mercy, but for our timely rescue by Felix, earl of Moncestus, and Hugh, baron of Holley.” With the flourish of one presenting a gift, Raymond stepped aside to reveal the well-armored visitors hidden behind him in the hall. He anticipated pleased exclamations, but Juliana froze in her tracks, then frantically pushed her children behind her.
With a shock, Raymond recognized her. This Juliana was the Juliana he’d first met and subdued. The woman who had struggled for her freedom with every savage impulse.
The knights ignored Raymond with all the disdain of lords for a man of the earth, and when Raymond looked back at Juliana, she had conquered her panic with an effort Raymond could only salute.
“Welcome, neighbors. You surprise and…please us with your presence, my lords.” She was clearly uneasy and wanting to flee. “You are old friends, and my daughters are cold. I hope you’ll avail yourself of our hospitality while—”
“What is this madness of yours that allows you to leave your daughters in the hands of such inadequate nursemaids?” Hugh cast a fulminating glance toward Raymond, then toward Keir, who restrained Raymond with an unbreakable grip on his arm.
“They’re not nursemaids!” Ella shouted.
“They’re warriors!” Margery said, squirming as Juliana tightened her grip on her daughters’ shoulders.
Raymond cringed at the children’s bold defense. “Damn,” he muttered, subsiding in Keir’s clench.
“They sound like your father. Shouting when they should be learning their manners and minding their needles.” Hugh pointed at the bogus castle-builder and the blacksmith. “These warriors”—he mocked them—“are without the intelligence to keep your valued daughters inside the walls!”
“And they allowed your daughters outside the walls without protection,” Felix complained.
Sir Joseph chuckled with rich malice. “Did I not warn you of your negligence, Lady Juliana?”
Raymond and Keir exchanged weighted glances, but before Raymond could speak, Layamon stepped forward. Twisting his hat in his hand, he said, “’Twas not quite as bad as that, m’lady. Master Raymond instructed me most severely about me duty afore he took th’ girls t’ see th’ construction, an’ I watched most heedful-like from th’ wall. When I saw th’ troop aridin’ up, bristlin’ wi’ swords an’ such, I called me men an’ we surrounded th’ lords after they surrounded th’ trench wherein Master Raymond an’ yer little ones were, ah, workin’.” He moved with shambling embarrassment and peered at the aggravated neighbors. “Naturally, I knew th’ noblemen, but Master Raymond had given me m’orders.”
“My thanks, Layamon.” Juliana nodded to the young man. With a strained smile at Hugh, she said, “I’m not so irresponsible as you believe.”
Hugh’s indignation withered at the sight of her white face, and he bowed. “A thousand pardons, my lady. I thought that”—he darted a glance toward the place where Sir Joseph sat—“I thought unworthy thoughts.”
“Make yourself welcome,” Juliana repeated. “I must tend my children.”
The girls now shivered miserably. With the clap of Juliana’s hands, the maids came flying and dragged out the great wooden tub from the corner where it had rested unused all winter. Warm water, heated on the anticipatory orders of Valeska, arrived in buckets from the undercroft. Dagna placed the great folding screen before the master bed to separate it from the great hall, just as she did every night when Juliana retired. As the women disappeared from view, the men seemed released from a spell.
With a glower that spoke volumes, Hugh stepped close to the fire. Short in stature, swarthy, and plump, Felix followed. He combined a habit of peering up from beneath his beetle brow with one of nodding his head to an unheard rhythm, and Raymond never doubted who made the decisions in the odd pair.
“You!” Hugh pointed at Raymond. “You’ll do. Remove my armor.” He held out his gauntlet-clad hands, challenging Raymond with his command.
As all knights did, Raymond had trained in his youth as a squire. Well he remembered how to remove another’s armor, and Hugh’s intended insult went astray as Raymond relished the chance to confront the baron.
As Raymond approached, Felix complained, “He’s dirty.”
“An understatement of the grossest kind.” Hugh’s lip curled as Raymond came into the light and the warmth of the fire. “You stink, my man.”
“’Tis clean mud,” Raymond answered, stepping up, toe to toe and eyeball to eyeball. “Unlike the horseshit knights delight in.”
Keir groaned, and Hugh lifted a fist to cuff the man he’d claimed as squire. Raymond’s steady gaze weighed Hugh, and Hugh stopped with his hand clenched in readiness. “Who are you?” he whispered.
Raymond longed to tell him, but he itched to know all of Juliana’s secrets, and Hugh was a simple man. He could be manipulated. The bride Raymond had come to claim was more than a conquest now; she was a mystery to be solved.
“I’m the king’s master castle-builder,” he told Hugh.
Hugh lowered his fist, but his rancor obviously flamed higher. Raymond wondered at such youthful animosity in a man of Hugh’s maturity. The man perceived a challenge in Raymond, and his hostility grew.
“Bring him warm water,” Hugh said. When no one moved, he shouted, “Warm water!”
Valeska darted about, clucking like a hen whose master was honing his axe. “Warm water,” she screeched. “Get warm water for Raymond.”
Hugh’s lip curled as he watched Valeska appropriate a bucket from the long line of open-mouthed youths who carried it from the kitchen below. “Your mother?” he said sneeringly.
“God did not so bless me.” Raymond plunged his hands into the water and shuddered as the warmth crept into the cracks and scrapes of his skin. After scrubbing the dirt away, he accepted with a smile the rag Valeska offered him. “My mother is ugly.”
Valeska flushed at the compliment and ignored Felix’s snicker. Using her yellowed knuckles, she brushed the flaky mud from Raymond’s cheeks and beard. “There’s more water warming for you below. You might wish to shave this day.”
“Why?” Raymond asked.
She glanced at the knight glowering at them and lowered her voice. “He’s a comely man.”
Raymond looked, too. “I will shave.”
“Let me see your hands,” Hugh demanded. Raymond complied, thrusting his fingers so close under Hugh’s nose the man had to push them away to view them. “They’ll do. There’s dirt under your fingernails, but what could I expect from a castle builder?”
Grinning, Raymond removed Hugh’s gauntlets and gloves and glanced pointedly at Hugh’s fingernails.
Hugh jerked his hands back and snarled. “Remove my hauberk.”
His chain-mail cap slid off easily, revealing a receding hairline. The scars of some early encounter with a sword shone in red and white glory, lending him a fierce appearance and giving Raymond a respect for Hugh’s fighting skills.
“Dreadful of me to challenge you below,” Hugh said in counterfeit apology. “But I’ve long felt a responsibility for Lady Juliana and her family.”
“A responsibility?”
“We grew up together, you understand, and I care for the little coward.”
Felix piped, “I grew up with you. I was her friend, too.”
Raymond scarcely heard him, and it seemed Hugh didn’t either, so intent were they on each other. Holding the strings that tied Hugh’s hauberk close against his neck, Raymond questioned him. “Coward? You call her a coward?”
“What else would I call a woman who refuses to visit her other demesne?”
“Not a coward,” Raymond objected, remembering how valiantly she’d faced him when he snatched her from the
teeth of the snowstorm.
Hugh laughed with loathsome superiority. “A coward, I tell you. She depends on Sir Joseph to tend Bartonhale Castle, to check the accounts and make sure the steward isn’t cheating her. I’ve told her it’s not wise to trust even so ancient and valued a servant, but still she huddles here at Lofts.”
“Then she doesn’t listen to you,” Raymond observed cordially.
“She has listened to me through the years.”
The strands broke in Raymond’s grip. Hugh only smiled at this destruction of his property.
“She listens to me, too,” Felix said.
“’Strewth! So old a friend as you”—Raymond flung the strings aside—“must have known her husband.”
With a wave of his muscled arm, Hugh dismissed the husband. “Millard? He was a youth, chosen only for his wealth and too sickly to live long. He gave her only girl-children. Not man enough to keep Juliana’s passionate nature satisfied.”
This was the man, Raymond decided. The one who’d put Juliana in the position to be humiliated by Sir Joseph. The one who had no thought to her reputation. Had he been her lover? If once, then no more, for Juliana was his. His to protect, to cherish, and this shiny-domed warrior would rue the day he’d hurt her.
“As we’ve grown older,” Hugh said with ever-increasing confidence, “we’ve found our affection growing and changing.”
Raymond wanted to rip the hauberk off, and in the process take Hugh’s head, but the respect of a fighting man for armor—any armor—kept his hand steady as he lifted it off. To retaliate for his control, he retorted, “Affection is like an hourglass. As the brain empties, the heart fills.”
“How intelligent you are for only a castle builder.” Hugh watched as Raymond examined the hauberk for injury or wear. “One would almost believe you had personal experience with chain mail—your concern is tangible.”
Castles in the Air Page 9
