“My lady,” Brice said to Alda, “may I present
our visitors? You have already heard their names from
Mirielle.”
Alda inclined her head when Giles and Hugh
bowed to her. Not the least sign of interest showed on her lovely
face, a fact for which both men could be grateful. In a world in
which any interruption to daily routine was regarded as an excuse
for celebration and, in the case of visitors, a chance to hear
entertaining news of life outside the castle confines, Alda
appeared to be singularly unconcerned with her guests.
“It is cold in the hall,” Alda said, taking
her seat in a high-backed chair. “I want my green shawl.”
“Is this it, my lady?” Hugh reached behind
Alda to take up the shawl that was laid over the chair arm. He
draped the wool around Alda’s shoulders. As if he were one of the
least of her servants, she did not trouble herself to thank
him.
Giles watched the scene with a growing chill
at his heart. This was the lady of Wroxley, wife to the absent
Gavin, mother of the young heir. The boy was not present. He was
old enough to be a page by now, so he was most likely fostering at
another castle. Nor had Giles seen any sign of Lady Alda’s second
child. For there had been a second child who, if it had survived
infancy and early childhood, would be almost eleven years old.
“You have already met my ward, the lady
Mirielle,” said Sir Brice.
“We have, indeed. She made us most welcome.”
Giles wished Lady Mirielle would put out her hand so he might have
an excuse to touch her, but she only smiled a little and nodded at
him and Hugh.
She was a rare beauty, slender and graceful
of figure but not fragile. There was a strength to Mirielle that
went well with the kindness of heart she had displayed toward
Robin, and toward two unexpected guests. There was intelligence in
her sweet face and her silvery gray eyes. Looking into her eyes,
Giles thought he could find peace with such a woman, and rest from
the worldly problems besetting him. He put the thought aside with
some difficulty, telling himself he could not afford to lose
himself in a woman. He had important work to do.
With Brice organizing the seating at the high
table to his own taste, Giles was placed next to Mirielle and Hugh
sat beside Alda. Making a remark about the shortage of chairs and
benches that was intended to be humorous, Brice took the chair
usually reserved for the baron of Wroxley, seating himself between
the two women.
From Mirielle’s point of view this
arrangement was both awkward and unseemly. She wished Brice would
not act as if he were the lord of Wroxley. Too often when guests
were present he took the baron’s chair. Sooner or later a guest
offended by this usurpation of rank would carry word of it to King
Henry, and if Henry in turn were sufficiently annoyed, he might
well remove Brice from his post as seneschal.
On this particular evening Mirielle had an
even more personal interest in the arrangement at the high table.
She had planned to take the place beside Hugh for herself. She had
sensed upon first confronting him in the gatehouse that Hugh was a
brother soul, for by his indistinct features she had recognized
another who was cloaking himself in disguise as she was then doing.
And she had known, with a natural instinct well honed by Cerra’s
teaching, that Hugh was honest. Eager to improve her understanding
of the Ancient Art to which she was devoted, Mirielle wanted to
speak privately with Hugh, to ask him many questions. Since he was
so well-traveled, she was sure there was much she could learn from
him.
Sitting beside Hugh would also resolve
Mirielle’s most immediate personal concern, for it would put her at
a safer distance from Sir Giles. This second guest frightened her
and excited her at the same time. She did not think he was
handsome. It was difficult to tell for certain, with his face
covered by his thick beard and mustache, but his nose was straight,
if a bit long, and his brow was high and wide. Unlike Hugh, Gavin
was not a mage, of that Mirielle was sure. Yet his blue eyes burned
into hers as if he could read all the secrets of her soul, all the
hopes and wishes she kept so carefully hidden. Giles was big—much
taller than Brice—and muscular and healthy looking. Much too
healthy for a man who claimed to be troubled by chronic pain from
an old wound.
Mirielle suspected that Giles’s supposed
wound was an excuse formulated to allow him to remain at Wroxley
Castle beyond the single night that Christian charity allotted to
wayfarers. If he had some ulterior purpose for wanting to stay at
Wroxley for several days, then Mirielle believed it was her duty to
discover what that purpose was. She also admitted to herself a deep
curiosity about him. This was why she had arranged for the two
guests to sit at the high table. She knew Brice would question the
men about their recent travels. Their responses might provide some
useful information. While she considered how best to go about
learning what she wanted to know the servants began offering food
and Giles started his own polite interrogation.
“Have you always lived at Wroxley?” he
asked.
“No.” Mirielle sensed that he intended to
direct their table conversation into the areas where he wanted it
to go. Very well, let him lead. She would follow with apparent
docility, while not giving away any information that might
compromise Brice, or Wroxley Castle and its inhabitants. “I was
born in Wales. Sir Brice is my cousin. When my parents died, I
became his ward.”
“Then Sir Brice is also Welsh?” Giles glanced
at his host as if he were trying to recognize him but could not
recall a previous encounter.
How odd. Mirielle did not think the two men
had ever met before. Or had they?
“Like me, Brice is half Norman, part Welsh,
and part Saxon,” Mirielle said. “A very mixed heritage.”
“You appear to have inherited the best
qualities of all three races.” Giles smiled at her. The effect on
her ability to think clearly was devastating, making her forget the
questions she had been planning to ask of him.
“I have never heard it said that Normans
thought well of either Welsh or Saxon.” Irritated by her own
reaction to the man, Mirielle responded rather too sharply. Oh, why
could she not turn her eyes from his?
She had a piece of meat in her fingers. She
was holding it over the trencher she and Giles were sharing, while
she let the gravy drip from the meat back into the trencher so it
would not stain the tablecloth. Giles reached for a succulent
morsel for himself and the back of his hand brushed across hers.
Mirielle shook with an emotion she could not identify. A tiny spot
of fatty brown gravy soiled the white linen. She stared at it,
appalled by this evidence of a lack of self-control on her
part.
“Tell me how you came to Wroxley,” Giles
urged, apparently oblivious to her discomfort.
“It is an ordinary tale.” What was wrong with
her? She had been properly schooled in manners and she had acted as
Brice’s hostess on many previous occasions. She knew how to make
light conversation with passing guests who would be on their way
within a day or two, never to be seen again. Why should this
evening be different? Why should this one man affect her so
strongly? She knew why it was so. Sir Giles was connected to the
image she had seen in her crystal globe. Something about this
stranger tugged at her heart—and something about him started a
warning bell ringing in her mind.
“Ordinary or not, I would like to hear your
story.” Again that smile, that flash of remarkably even, unbroken
white teeth, accompanied by a glint of humor in his blue eyes. His
deep, mellow voice was so persuasive that Mirielle had no desire to
resist what he asked of her. “How old were you when you were
orphaned, Lady Mirielle?”
“I was thirteen.”
“And you became Sir Brice’s ward
immediately?”
“It was his wish. Brice has been kind to
me.”
“He has not found you a husband.” The words
were disparaging; the slightly raised brow that accompanied them
was even more so.
“I have no desire to marry,” Mirielle said,
annoyed. “Being the daughter of a poor nobleman, I have no dowry,
so no one is likely to ask for me. At age twenty-three, I am too
old to think of marriage any longer. I am grateful to Brice for
bringing me to Wroxley when he came here. It is charitable of Lady
Alda to allow me to stay.”
She stopped, asking herself why she was
talking so freely to a man she did not know. She had sounded like
the fox in the old fable, who declared he did not want the grapes
he could not have, because they must be sour. She did not feel that
way about marriage. She wished she could have a good husband, but
since she could not, she would make her spinster’s life as useful
as possible.
“Forgive me if I speak improperly, my lady,
but I have noticed how the servants follow your bidding as if you
were in charge of all domestic arrangements. I do believe you earn
your keep here.”
“I simply help as best I can. Lady Alda has
other interests.”
“Which do not include fulfilling her duties
as chatelaine.” His quiet voice suggest a low opinion of the
beautiful lady of the castle.
“I have no complaint to make of Lady Alda.”
That was not entirely true, but Mirielle did not intend to divulge
her opinion of Alda to Sir Giles. “Nor will I hear a word against
her from anyone else.”
“Admirable discretion. Perhaps we should
speak of another subject. Tell me, my lady, did you learn your
conjuring skills in Wales?” Giles lifted their wine cup. He sipped
from it, then passed it to her. Again their fingers touched, and a
new tremor rocked her.
“You cannot deny your skill,” he said. “When
first we met you convinced me with a single gesture that you were
aged and homely. Which is plainly not the case.”
“Your friend was not similarly convinced,”
she told him, trying to deflect a compliment she was afraid to
acknowledge.
“Hugh is not easily tricked.”
“Why are you here?” She abandoned all
pretense. “I do not believe you are merely pilgrims traveling
homeward. I sense some other reason for your presence at Wroxley.”
At her words he went very still, watching her while Mirielle stared
boldly back at him.
“Why, my lady,” he said at last, “what reason
could two strangers have for entering such a strong fortress under
false pretenses? Outnumbered as Hugh and I are, what could we hope
to gain?”
“I do not know.” Mirielle ran her tongue
across lips suddenly made dry by fear. “My every instinct tells me
you are an honest man at heart, yet I fear your coming means
danger. Sir Giles, I beg you, do no harm to my cousin Brice.”
“You love him.” It sounded like an
accusation.
“Brice is the only true kin I have left since
a terrible sickness took the rest of my family from me. Yes, I love
him—and I owe him all my loyalty.”
“Lady Mirielle, I give you my word. As I am
the honest man you think me, I will never do harm to another man
who is honest.”
“That is only half an answer.” She was made
even more fearful by his words, for she knew things about Brice
that might give another man cause to wish her cousin harm. “Please,
do not hurt Brice.” Her hand touched Giles’s forearm. She felt the
solid strength in him, and she wished she could put her head on his
shoulder and pour out all the fears and the concerns that too often
kept her awake with worry far into the night.
Then Brice, turning from Hugh and Alda, with
whom he had been talking all this time, asked Giles a question
about his journey from Compostela to England. Mirielle took her
hand off Giles’s arm, telling herself she owed her loyalty to
Brice, not to Giles. She spent the rest of the evening in a state
of confusion, trying to convince herself that she could not be
feeling what her heart and her body warned her she was feeling.
“I cannot bear this cold hall any longer.”
Lady Alda stood, pulling her shawl close about her shoulders.
“There are too many drafts here and there is nothing interesting to
do, no one worth talking with. I will seek my own room, where it is
warmer. Sir Brice, you will attend me.”
Hearing this speech, Mirielle glanced at
Brice. If Alda was unaware or did not care that she had just
insulted their guests, at least Brice was not completely immune to
social niceties.
“Good sirs, I apologize for leaving you so
precipitously.” Brice rose from his chair. “I would gladly remain
here to talk with you, but my lady Alda is in fragile health. It is
my duty to see her safely to her room.”
Alda tapped her foot in impatience, heaved an
exaggerated sigh, rearranged her voluminous shawl to better display
her bosom and, as if to give the lie to Brice, managed to look as
if she were in the very best of health.
“Since you will remain at Wroxley for a
second night,” Brice went on to Giles and Hugh, “I hope we will
have time to talk longer on the morrow.”
“Brice!” Alda’s full lips pouted, her
golden-brown eyes signaled her annoyance. “You will escort me at
once!”
“Of course, my lady. I am ever at your
service.” Brice extended his arm, Alda laid her fingertips on his
wrist and together they stepped down from the dais and left the
great hall.
This kind of scene on Alda’s part was so
commonplace that no one in the household paid any attention. But
the guests did. Giles and Hugh had risen as soon as Alda stood.
Mirielle noticed that Giles’s teeth were clenched and his hands
were balled into fists. A moment or two after Brice and Alda
disappeared from view, Giles moved with purposeful stride to the
door they had used.
“Stop him before he does great harm.” Hugh’s
voice was little more than a whisper but Mirielle heard it clearly,
for Hugh echoed the warning in her own thoughts. She looked at him
with a question in her eyes.