Castles in the Air (10 page)

Taking the wet towel Fayette offered, Juliana cleaned her greasy hands. Each finger must have required special attention, for she kept her gaze on them while she answered, “Aye.”

Hugh’s shaking finger pointed at Raymond. “Because
he
taught you to trust again? Is he in your bed yet? For I would remind you, Lady Juliana, that after your last scandal, it would be too easy to destroy your reputation and perhaps remove from you the guardianship of your children and your lands.”

She grasped the edge of the table with her hands. “Your suspicions blemish the purity of your soul.”

“The castle builder’s a liar!”

“He is not!”

Embarrassment struck at Raymond. What would
his lady do when she remembered this spirited defense? How would she overcome the humiliation? For she would be humiliated. No woman so proud she disdained the fawnings of an earl could be less.

“He hides the truth,” Hugh accused.

Juliana folded her arms across her bosom. “What truth?”

“I know not, but he’s more than a simple castle-builder.”

Beside Raymond, Keir whistled under his breath and said, “Lord Hugh is too observant.”

“I thought him a simple man.”

“Simple, but not stupid,” Keir said, “and very determined to protect Lady Juliana to the best of his ability.”

Raymond ignored him. The time of his own unveiling was months away. It would be springtime, at least, and by then…ah, by then, what? What were his plans? Without ever telling Juliana who he was, he had impressed her. Without knowing his reputation as a warrior, she’d trusted him with her precious daughters. Without actually seeing his credentials, she had trusted him with the building of her defenses. Without knowing his relationship to the king, without knowing about his family’s wealth, she’d come to like him. Without knowing his reputation as a lover, would she come to his bed?

“I don’t like him, either,” Felix pronounced.

Juliana turned on him, and asked sarcastically, “Why not, my lord?”

Felix reddened under the collective fascinated gaze of everyone in the room. “He’s, ah, insolent. And he…he’s more than he appears to be.”

Keir muttered, “And that lord is a mimicking moron.”

Raymond nodded agreement, but he basked in her sweet defense.

“Look at him!” Hugh leaped to his feet. “Look at him. He swoons like a moonstruck youth over the chance to lift your skirt, and if you believe any different, you’re a fool.”

She did look. She looked, and in the tender appreciation of her gaze, all Raymond’s plans seemed nigh on to being fulfilled.

“Sweet Saint Sebastian!” Hugh said. “You should see yourself. You look as moonstruck as he, for less reason. Do you think he sees you as some dream of love? Nay, he sees you as lands, as security, as an appetizing body.”

Still she looked at Raymond, half smiling, relaxed, and from the place where Sir Joseph sat, hunched and malevolent, came an accusation. “She’d never pass the test of Saint Wilfrid’s needle.”

Raymond and Keir exchanged a puzzled glance, and Keir asked, “What is Saint Wilfrid’s needle?”

Juliana lifted her chin. “Only a chaste woman may pass through the narrow passage in Ripon cathedral called Saint Wilfrid’s needle.”

“And you’ve proved you’re not a chaste woman,” Sir Joseph sneered.

Goaded beyond sense, Hugh shouted, “You’re behaving like a whore!”

The sweet spell was broken with the repetition of that word Sir Joseph had chosen as a label. Not Hugh’s grimace of apology, not Juliana’s disgusted exclamation could stop Raymond as he rose from his bench and stalked toward Hugh. “I’ll feed you those words until you choke on them.”

Hand on his dagger, Hugh stepped forward. “Only a knight could fight me and win,” he said. “Are you a knight?”

“Do you doubt I could fight you?”

“I doubt you are a castle builder. I wonder where you learned this courage, developed those muscles, learned to move like”—Hugh cocked a brow—“a knight.”

Juliana looked troubled. Keir cursed under his breath. Raymond gritted his teeth.

“Mayhap Lady Juliana gives her trust too easily,” Hugh said, snarling.

“My trust is none of your get,” Juliana retorted. “If you wish to fight, then fight someone who—”

Layamon interrupted from the doorway. “M’lady?” He held a wet, shivering man in a traveller’s cloak beneath his hands. As Raymond watched, Layamon pushed the fellow forward. In English, he said, “Nary a word can I understand from this knave, but he keeps repeatin’ yer name an’ waving this letter.” He placed the paper in Juliana’s outstretched hand. “It has th’ king’s seal on it.”

Juliana examined the seal and looked at the traveller who had been so roughly treated by her man-at-arms. “What language do you speak?” she asked in Norman French, and was rewarded by a babble of heavily accented, rapid Poitevin French.

“My lady.” The traveller fell to his knees. “My lady.” He kissed her hands. “I have been treated ill by that peasant.” He tossed his hood back, and his jowls jiggled in Gallic indignation. “He said he didn’t understand me, but he proves he can speak a civilized tongue to you.” With a large, white cloth, he dabbed at his damp forehead and wiped his mustache dry. “’Tis nothing more than part of the travails of journeying through such a barbaric land. If the king had not insisted, I would not have come at all.” He mopped his cheeks. “Or at least not until spring.” Hindered
by his kneeling position, he produced a half-bow. “But of course King Henry was most insistent, and when he told me of your beauty and charm, he did not exaggerate.”

He tried to kiss Juliana’s hands again, and she seized the chance to speak. “I don’t understand. Why did King Henry send you to me?”

Surprised, he gestured. “You asked for me.”

Raymond’s heart sank.

“I asked King Henry for no one. No one except—” Her gaze swung to Raymond and back to the portly man at her feet. She leaned down, peered into his eyes, and asked, “Who are you?”

“I?” The excitable Poitevin touched his hand to his chest. “I? I am Papiol.” He struck a pose and lifted a finger into the air. “I am the greatest master castle-builder in all of the kingdom!”

Juliana stared at
the jowled, expressive face of the stranger who called himself the king’s master castle-builder. She watched him gesture, she saw his lips move. She knew he was speaking, but she couldn’t hear him. She could only hear Sir Joseph, cackling with evil amusement. Somewhere inside her, hurt throbbed like an untended tooth. Somewhere inside her, tears welled for the poor, silly woman who’d trusted a man and been betrayed yet again. But she didn’t feel the hurt or cry the tears, for all she experienced was anger. She could taste it, feel it roil in her veins, smell the fire and brimstone it engendered. Absolute fury shook her. She formed the words carefully, like a drinker who’d overindulged in potent wine. “Who did you say you were?”

The man kneeling before her stopped gesturing, stopped speaking, stared as if she’d run mad. “I am Papiol, the king’s master castle-builder.”

He spoke with the deliberation of one speaking to an idiot, but she wasn’t offended.

“Which king?” she demanded.

“My lady?” Papiol mopped nervously at his neck with the well-plied cloth.

“For which king are you master castle-builder?”

The bulging brown eyes bulged even more. “Why, for our sovereign liege, King Henry.” Still on his knees, Popiol inched away. “May his line prosper.”

“If you are the king’s master castle-builder, then who is that?” She pointed at Raymond.

“My lady, I am not acquainted with any of the courtiers who surround you.” Papiol paled when she glared at him.

“Just tell me if you have ever seen his leering, lying, deceitful face before.”

Moving as if she were a fierce animal whose attack would be triggered by haste, Papiol turned his back and looked. Cocking his head to one side, trying to keep one eye on her, he said, “Nay, my lady, I have never seen this man before.”

Juliana’s breath flamed, her skin crackled from the heat of her outrage. She wanted to look at Raymond, to accuse her betrayer, but she found her body responded sluggishly to the commands of her brain, for anger consumed her energy. Her knees creaked like the timbers of a burning house as she stood. She raised her hand to point, and was surprised her fingernails hadn’t grown to talons. “Kill him,” she commanded.

Sir Joseph stopped cackling. The room stopped humming. Papiol fainted. Hugh reprimanded, “My God, Juliana!”

“Kill him,” she repeated.

Hugh tried again. “Juliana, you can’t just kill—”

She turned on him with a snarl. “Watch me.” She snatched her eating knife from the table. Short and sharp, it would gut a man if used properly. She stalked toward Raymond, and Raymond prudently backed up. Backed up until he rested against the far
wall and they stood well away from the table. As she jabbed with the knife, he caught her wrist.

“Allow me to introduce myself, my lady,” he said softly.

“I don’t want you to introduce yourself.” She twisted her arm free and plunged at him. “I just want to bury your nameless body in a grave outside the churchyard.”

He caught her wrist again, and again spoke so only she could hear. “I am Geoffroi Jean Louis Raymond, Count of Avraché.”

Her breath cooled, caught in her throat, clogged it like ice. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I am Geoffroi Jean Louis Raymond—”

She slammed the sharp edge of her free hand into his chest. “This is impossible.”

She was pleased to note he had to suck in some air before he could reply. “My lady, I vow it is the truth.”

His gaze, frankly regretful, infinitely kind, curdled her fury into some lesser thing. Mortification, perhaps, or shame.

For the first time, she was aware of the people who observed them. Some had only observed through the past hours. Some had observed through the past days and weeks. All had seen too much, and she was going to have to face them. She didn’t want to crawl away. Not yet. But humiliation tapped at the edges of her perceptions and before long it would drill into her being. She knew it. She recognized it.

“Sweet Juliana, don’t look so.” Raymond’s bass rumbled with worry. “I never meant to hurt you.”

She jerked her hand out of his grasp. Her knife clattered to the floor. “Don’t say that!” She heard the shriek in her voice. Steadying herself, she lowered
her voice to say, “Men never want to hurt women, but they do it so well.”

“What can I do to convince you—”

“—who you are?” She pounced like a cat on a mouse. “I want to see the letter.”

“The letter?”

Perhaps he feigned puzzlement, but she didn’t think so. He wasn’t as good an actor as he would like to think he was. “The letter you showed to Layamon. The one with the king’s seal on it.”

“’Strewth!” His horror made her all the more determined. “That letter’s not for you.”

“I never thought it was, but I want to see it now.”

He fumbled with the tools on his belt and mumbled excuses, but he kept the king’s letter on him—in case of trouble, the king’s seal would provide protection—and in the end he yielded.

Juliana didn’t know whether he gave in due to her indignation or to his own guilt. Once she’d read the letter, she just didn’t care. Henry’s jests were directed against her temperament—“shrewish”—and her looks—“horrific.” His advice to the solitary bridegroom ranged from the crude—“swive her till she can’t stand”—to the absurd—“seduce her.” It was a missive written by a king who had never had to mince his speech. She turned her back on Raymond. If she could, she would have mutilated the parchment, but the words burned themselves into her heart, and she couldn’t forget them.

Worse, they proved Raymond was who he finally claimed to be.

The wall where she leaned was cold stone, and she wished her heart were as hard and cold as that stone. It was not. It wept blood, it ached with betrayal.

“Juliana.” Hugh sounded hesitant as he approached,
and she braced herself to look him in the face. “Juliana, what do you wish me to do?”

Hugh would be the vanguard of greater, more loathsome spectators, and, like a child who’s been disciplined by her parent yet seeks comfort from that same parent, Juliana glanced back at Raymond.

More insistent, Hugh said, “Juliana. I’ll kill him if you want, but we should first discover who he is.”

Her knees collapsed. Hugh stood before her, Raymond stood behind her, and she fell backward like some hedgerow harlot. Raymond’s hands caught her. He massaged her elbow, rubbed the rigid muscles of her back. He gave her the warmth to slow her shivering, loaned her the strength to stay erect—and Juliana hated that. She mocked her own emotions when she pretended to despise him, but she suggested, “Shall we rack him, or thrash him until he confesses his sins?”

“I suspected he was a knight and not the castle builder he claimed to be. He stands too proudly. He has the body of a fighting man. He must be a scout for someone who wants your lands or your money,” Hugh said.

Felix’s querulous voice called, “Juliana, have you been trifling with men again?”

Sir Joseph’s hideous cackle grated on her nerves, and she realized that not only her knees were collapsing. Her hope for recovery, her shy, maidenly fantasies had been shattered. Startled by Hugh’s query, Raymond was examining her from head to toe, and the humiliation formerly held at bay gripped her by the throat. She knew what he thought. She knew what he saw—a pale, gangly woman dressed in shapeless brown homespun and flaunting a red sash. A sash that pleaded for attention, that dreamed of style.

How pathetic.

No wonder he hadn’t told her his identity. He didn’t want a woman who’d been scarred by another man. He didn’t want a widow with two children. He couldn’t even understand why Hugh believed a man could want her. Raymond of Avraché was a lord of the court and—she snuck a glance at him and groaned—still as beautiful as the sunset.

“My lady—Juliana—please.”

Raymond was a nice man, too, Juliana noted, for her distress seemed to break his heart.

“I will do all I can to ease this awkwardness. Please.” His breath brushed her cheek, then a sword reached between them.

“Get your hands off her, you cretin.” The point pressed toward Raymond’s throat, and Hugh smiled unpleasantly.

She should have been grateful to Hugh, but he only stirred the night soil in the bottom of this cesspool. Wrapping her hand around the hand that held the sword, she swung it away. “Don’t be a fool, Hugh. He’s not a master castle-builder, or even a spy. He’s Raymond, Count of Avraché, come to claim his bride.”

Sir Joseph’s laughter was cut as if by a knife, and Hugh’s face mottled with rage. His sword and his hand shook under hers, and he shouted, “Raymond of Avraché?”

If there were any in the hall who hadn’t heard his name, they knew it now. Hugh turned on her like a maddened beast. “I’ll kill him for you.”

Alarmed by the bloodshot eyes that glared so furiously, she said, “Nay, you won’t.”

“Aye, kill him.”

Juliana didn’t recognize the low male voice, choked and thick with hatred, that called from beyond. Her
glance grazed the assemblage, but so many emotions existed on so many faces she couldn’t tell who would incite such outrage. Felix stood beside the remains of his meal, eyes darting, head bobbing, trying to act as if he understood the situation. Sir Joseph sat gripping the table, shock bleaching his ruddy face. Sword drawn, Layamon stood between everyone and the door. Opposite him, Keir waited, tensed for action.

Who had called for Raymond’s death?

Valeska and Dagna were disappearing into the undercroft, and in the background, her servants hugged each other, smiled and sighed with relief.

Relief? she wondered. Why relief? But she had no time to discover, for Hugh gestured extravagantly, and she tightened her grip on his fingers.

“Who would know?” Hugh persisted. “We’ll tell the king he never arrived, or he died of the flux, or he hanged himself of melancholy.”

“Who would know?” she repeated, the emphasis different when she said it. Raymond stepped back, out of her vision, but she couldn’t watch him go. She could only keep her wary gaze on Hugh and wonder how this evening had so quickly turned into a farce. “Who would know? Only every dogsbody here. If a secret kept by three is no secret, what is a secret kept by thirty?”

“You were going to kill him,” Hugh accused.

“Don’t be a fool.” She rubbed her forehead. She ached as if she’d been beaten. “I would never have been able to kill him.”

“This knife—” He nudged it with his toe.

Raymond and Keir, Valeska and Dagna consulted together in a tight circle, and she wondered at Raymond’s strategy. Surely any man who could plot so devious an infiltration into the home of his
betrothed would have an agenda for every occurrence.

She said, “I’m not a knight, Hugh. I’m not a man. I don’t hold life cheap, nor beat my servants to hear them cry, nor get a babe on some serving girl for fun. I wouldn’t have killed him.”

Insulted, Hugh drew himself up. “Because he’s your lover.”

“Don’t be an ass. If he were my lover, everyone would know.” She pointed. “The screen that separates my bed from the great hall allows no pleasures to go unheard, no sins to go unseen.”

Hugh’s sword dangled from his hand, a dejected symbol of his defeat. “There will be no sin when you have to wed him.”

“Wed him?”

Lowering his voice, he queried, “Surely when he announced himself you must have realized you would have to wed him.”

Oddly enough, she hadn’t realized it. With her hand at her throat and the pulsing of blood beneath her fingers, she knew the fragility of her needs, her desires, her fears.

“Don’t you feel trapped?” he taunted.

“Trapped?” She explored her emotions as she spoke. “I should, but I don’t. Maybe tomorrow, when the immensity of my error will have lodged itself in my mind. For tonight, there is only humiliation.”

“Think on it,” Hugh urged.

“Why do you delight in this?” she asked. “I thought you were my friend.”

“Your friend is not what I wish to be.” Hugh caught her shoulder and pressed it until she winced.

The blade of a sword slipped between them, and as one they followed it with their gazes to its owner.
Raymond stood, balanced with the casual care of a fighting man.

“Let go of her,” he said.

Hugh’s hand crept from her shoulder, and as she rubbed the bruises he’d left, she demanded, “Where did you get that sword?”

Raymond never took his eyes from Hugh, urging him away from Juliana, but he answered her. “From the king.”

“Nay, I meant”—he knew what she meant, but the castle builder had vanished, leaving an arrogant knight—“where did you store it in the castle?”

“Valeska is in charge of my armor. Dagna is in charge of Keir’s.” His gaze flashed her way, inviting her to join him in the humor. “They are our squires.”

Juliana found she had no humor tonight, nor any night. “I was not aware of swords in my castle.”

“If you had known of the swords,” Raymond said, “you would have suspected my ruse.”

What he admitted oppressed her, and she said bitterly, “Instead you perpetuated your deception without this poor tottyhead ever suspecting.”

Valeska sidled close. “Oh, you suspected, my lady. Remember when you asked me about him? I was too sly for you, but you suspected.”

“Aye, my lady.” Dagna hovered just beyond Valeska’s shoulder. “There’s no need to berate yourself when you had so many enterprising folk working against you.”

The two old ladies showed capacious grins as they jostled for positions as targets for her wrath, but Juliana was thinking too clearly for comfort. “Should I blame you, then, for my own stupidity in trusting this liar? Should I blame you for his conniving disloyalty?”

They drew back with little hisses of dismay, and
Valeska croaked, “Nay, my lady, that’s not how it happened at all. He takes care of two old women who are no good to anyone. Look at him!”

“That’s true, my lady.” Dagna sang the same lyrics with a sweeter voice. “We’re from a far land with no way to get home, but he feeds us and treats us like his family. And you—you’re a kind lady who deserves a man who’ll warm your bed, give you children, keep you safe. You could travel the world over and not find a man as fine as Raymond. Look at him.”