Heart of a Knight (18 page)

Lyssa dealt first with
Stephen, whom she found pacing in her chamber. When she entered, he whirled angrily. "My lady, how can you simply free that brute to do as he wishes? Do you not fear for the women here?"

She met Tall Mary's eyes briefly, and took the cup of ale the girl offered. "I do not worry," she said. "He has ever been chivalrous and noble, and I am quite sure he did not do this to Isobel."

No fool, Stephen narrowed his eyes. "Then what?"

"Please, sir, sit. Your pacing and clattering spurs are like to drive me mad."

He perched on the edge of a bench. "Is Isobel a wanton? Was I to be the fool who was left to the task of beating her the rest of her days?"

"Nay." Lyssa considered her words carefully. She wished to make the betrothal today, and wondered how best to bring that wish to fruit. "Not a wanton," she said quietly. "But of an age to be hungry, and a nature that is too sensual by half. She needs a man in her bed, and soon, but it needs be a husband."

"She cannot desire that rough beast!"

"Stephen, she is sixteen, and all the women hereabout have been mad for Dark Thomas. He is kind to them, and he knows the right word to drop, and he has not shown one morsel of interest in Isobel." She smiled wryly. "As you may have seen, she is a vain and tempestuous girl, and she's convinced herself she loves him."

"Love," he snorted. "What has marriage to do with love?"

"Just so," Lyssa said. "But you are young, and handsome, and you might woo her if you are wise. Teach her to love you."

Stephen scowled. Unable to sit, he poured a cup of ale and strode to the embrasures, his spurs clanging. Lyssa gritted her teeth, and chanced a glance at Mary, who pursed her mouth in that way she had of keeping a smile swallowed. Secret mirth rose in her eyes, and she looked hastily away, as she had so often done when they were children, finding the same things funny.

It was unexpected, and warming after all that had transpired this morning.

Stephen turned, still frowning. "In truth, Isobel is exactly what I wish in a wife. Surely she can be tamed."

"Aye." Lyssa did not look at Mary, for fear of revealing her own inner laughter. "She needs only a husband who can tame her."

He straightened. "Then the banns may be read this morning, ere I ride to my father's."

"I will arrange it."

He nodded, and the intelligent blue eyes narrowed. "Warn her, Lady Elizabeth, that I will not be shamed by my wife."

Lyssa bowed her head.

At the door, he paused. "And mark me, lady, Thomas of Roxburgh has made of me a mortal enemy."

He closed the door behind him, and Lyssa looked wildly at Mary, who covered her mouth with her hand, holding back her laughter until they could be sure the knight was well out of earshot. Then they dissolved into gales of laughter, clinging to each other as they once had so long ago. It was laughter born of the tense morning and the pomposity of the very young knight, and genuine relief.

And when Lyssa, slowing, lifted her head, it was Mary who clung to her this time. Into Lyssa's hair, she breathed fiercely, "Thank you, Lyssa."

Lyssa's throat tightened so she could not speak for a moment. Quickly, she squeezed Mary's arm, then turned away briskly. "Now, my sweet, I must prepare me for a day of war and revels." She flung open her trunk. "Send Alice to me."

"If you'd give leave, my lady, it would be an honor to array you for such a day."

Lyssa met her eyes. "I'd be glad of your help."

In deference to his grim night, servants brought a wooden tub and linen towels and hot water to

Thomas's chamber. He sat on the bench beneath the embrasure, watching with a sense of distance as they hurried in, heavy laden. Cheese and bread, even a little cold meat from the feast the night before, had been brought, but Thomas took no interest in it. His shoulders ached from leaning all night against cold, damp stone, and the cut on his face shamed him, and he felt dull and soiled, and weary.

How had he come to this?

The bath was at last prepared, its steam sending scented coils into the air, the towels and soap and brushes laid out, a matron from the kitchen ready to perform the task of washing him. "Come, milord," she said gently. "'Tis a tonic for what ails ye."

He shook his head. "You may go, Peg."

"Ah, now, they told me you would say as much. Come now, I'm no silly maid, hoping for a glimpse of you." Her eyes glittered as she patted the mound of her pregnant belly. "Have me a man already."

Her good humor soothed him. "Very well." He removed his shoes and stockings, then stood and took off his belt and shucked his tunic, padding over the cold stones in his undertunic. Next to the tub, he halted.

"I'll close me eyes, then," Peg said with a chuckle.

When she had done so, Thomas stripped off the remaining garment and stepped into the hot water and quickly sat. He groaned a little in pleasure.

"There ye are," Peg said briskly. "You just close yer eyes and let me shave ye. I promise I won't take but a little peek at all that—ooo, well, now maybe a little longer peek, then."

He opened his eyes, managing a small grin. "Wench."

She lifted a brow and dabbed soap on his jaw with a brush. "We wouldn't want ye thinking any of us thought any the worse of ye."

Thomas sobered, thinking unwillingly of the soldiers swarming around him, and Isobel's triumphant gaze. "Do ye not now?"

"We do not. Where would we be without our Dark Thomas, we asks ourselves." Finished with the soap, she took out a razor and began to shave him. "Dead, that's what."

With the razor on his jaw, Thomas could not speak, so contented himself with accepting the ministrations of a genuine ally. Through the embrasures he could see the hills on the horizon, and closer in, thick trees glittering in the yellow light. Within was his sumptuous bed and the bath with its fragrant herbs easing the trials of the past hours. He closed his eyes and thought of Lyssa, standing barefooted in the grass of the yard, her hair unbrushed down her back, her belted robe hiding nothing of her graceful body. He thought of her putting out her hand to halt the sword arm of the foolish young knight.

Never had he known a woman like her.

When Peg finished the shaving and started on his hair, he asked, "Tell me of Lord Philip. Did the lady love him?" Peg poured a bucket of water over his head to wet it. The scratch on his cheek stung and he cursed Isobel silently.

"Nay, she did not love him." Peg scrubbed his scalp with strong fingers. "He were an old man and brought his spoiled children to make her life a misery, and only an old man's cold hands to warm her bed." She rinsed his head and straightened. "Now, seein' as yer so modest a lord, I'll be leavin' you to the rest of it."

Absently, Thomas nodded and sunk deep in the warm water, feeling it ease tight muscles and weary bones and his humiliation. His chest burned with it, with standing like a common thief in the yard, his hands bound, a knot of nobles ready to cut his throat, and a village full of hapless peasants wringing their hands. God's blood, but the rage had burned in him then! He could yet feel it slithering, serpentlike, through his veins.

As a boy, he'd endured humiliations aplenty about his odd mother, and sly hints at his bastard status, and he'd burned then, too. Above all things, he loathed being put on public display, made a centerpiece of ridicule. After the comfort of Woodell, where none knew him and did not jeer, he'd found humiliation a doubly difficult burden to endure.

A knock came at the door, and thinking it was Peg, returning for some forgotten thing, he growled entrance.

Alice Bryony swirled in, all hair and skirts and the scent of her herbs all around her. In her arms, she carried a red velvet tunic, edged with gold embroidery, and new stockings. "The lady sent this to you—'twas her father's."

Thomas glared at her as she spread it out over the bed, smoothing the fabric with a loving hand, but she seemed unaware of his annoyance. "She said it would suit you," Alice said, "and a fine eye she has."

"I do not want it."

She lifted her head, her usual enigmatic smile in place, but Thomas saw the narrowing of her eyes, the betraying lift of her chin that bespoke her fierce will. "Oh, do you not?"

He stared at her, remembering again the burn of humiliation, the impotent fury. "Nay," he said distinctly, and rose, unmindful with Alice of his nudity. So long had she tended him that he thought not of it.

She gave him a towel. "Is your pride wounded, my little pet?" The words were sharply edged.

"You were not there to witness it." Rigorously, he dried himself, taking a fierce pleasure in the sting of his skin. "And were it not for seeking you last night, 'twould never have happened."

"Ah. So 'tis my doing, then, is it?"

"'Tis
all
your doing. All." He wrapped the towel about his waist and padded to the trunk that held his clothes, deliberately ignoring the velvet tunic Lyssa had sent. "I'll not take a guilt offering, like Tall Mary and the clothes Lyssa gives her."

"Curse your pride!" Alice said. "Do not let it make you a fool, Thomas. She sends it not as a cast-off, but as a gift to make you look a king at that betrothal at Nones. Nothing in that trunk is so rich as this."

Thomas ignored her, cursing silently her meddling ways. Stubbornly, he took out a well-woven but plain linen tunic.

Alice made a sound of frustration and crossing, the room like a fury, slammed the lid closed. "Think!" she cried, her eyes a blue so fierce they near burned in her face. "The lady wishes you no ill. She saved you from death, and you would repay her by sulking about in your oldest clothes, to spite me?" She glared at him. "Always you dreamt of being a prince. Now she's given you a chance. Do not toss it away."

He lowered his head. "It grieves me that 'tis all based in falsehoods and half-truths," he admitted. "She deserves better."

"Better than you?" she asked quietly.

"Aye," he said gruffly, tossing the old tunic aside. "Better than one who will be hanged ere a year is gone."

Alice sobered. "With care, Thomas, you will win this game."

"Will I?"

"Come," she said quietly, "be a prince today, for all the world to see. For the lady, who wishes it, if naught else."

He gave in. "Ah, what does it matter. I'll wear the cursed thing if you'll cease your nagging."

As the hour for the betrothal grew nigh, Lyssa could no more avoid a talk with her stepdaughter. With misgiving in her every step, she made her way to the chamber the girl shared with Nurse. At the door, she took a breath and smoothed her skirts, and knocked, hearing with satisfaction the sound of a lock being turned to give her entry. Nurse, face sober beneath her white wimple, opened the door to her. "She ain't stopped snivelin' since I brought her here."

Lyssa looked over the woman's black garbed shoulder to see Isobel huddled into herself, her golden hair gilding her back and arms and hiding her face. "You may go, Nurse."

"You'll be needing my help, milady. She vows she'll not be betrothed today."

Lyssa sighed. "Wait outside, then."

Isobel rocked on the wide stone sill of the embrasure, her shuddering breath a sign of her long weeping. Her feet were bare below her gown, and Lyssa found the sight of her bare white toes, as gracefully made as the rest of her, strangely moving.

And suddenly Lyssa saw what she'd been too stubborn to note before this. Isobel and she possessed very different personalities and interests, but they were united in one thing: both were women who had no say in the shape of their lives. Isobel had acted out of desperation. It did not matter that the man she was forced to marry was young and handsome—Stephen was not of her choosing. Isobel wished to decide her own fate. As Lyssa wanted to choose her own.

Lyssa hesitated in the finely appointed room, with its tapestries hung to keep the cold and damp out, and the bed with its piles of embroidered pillows and the fine coverlet and the neat piles of furs on the bench. Bread and a tankard of cider waited untouched on the table nearby the embrasure where Isobel huddled.

Lyssa took a breath and crossed the room, settling on the sill at Isobel's feet. Gently, she touched the bare toes, and finding them cold, put her hand over them to warm them. Isobel made a soft sound and drew them under her skirt. She did not raise her head.

Finally, Lyssa spoke. "Forgive me, Isobel," she said quietly. "I have treated you as a daughter these long years, when there was not time enough between us, or wisdom enough of my own. I should have made you my sister, not my daughter."

A sound of renewed weeping came from beneath the tangled yellow hair, and Lyssa reached out a hand, hesitated, and then smoothed a lock that ran over Isobel's slim arm. "I did not know you were so set against marrying, Isobel, I swear it."

The girl raised her face, and it was even more ravaged than before, the bruises washed with tears, her eyes red and swollen, her entire pretty face blotchy and reddened. "Did you not?"

Lyssa moved to the table and wet a cloth with cool water. She carried it back to Isobel. The girl did not resist when Lyssa tilted her chin and eased the girl into a leaning position against the wall, and put the cloth on her face. "Truly, Isobel, most girls wish to wed."

"Not I." Her voice was weary. "I saw how my father treated you." Tears leaked from below the cloth. "It was cruel, and you were so beautiful and so young, and he should have been kinder."

Stung, Lyssa only blotted Isobel's forehead. "But Stephen is young and handsome, and besotted. He will treat you as a queen."

Isobel flung herself suddenly into Lyssa's arms. "Oh, do not make me wed him, I beg you!"

"S," Lyssa whispered gently, smoothing Isobel's hair. "Can you not tell me why it grieves you so, my sweet? Can you not let me help you in some way?"

Isobel only sobbed the harder, her fingers digging painfully into Lyssa's back.

"What drove you to so desperate an act last even, Isobel? Do you love the lord?"

Isobel lifted her head, hiccuping in her long distress. She could not speak, and only shook her head.