In the Shadow of Midnight (53 page)

“Arthur!”
Eleanor’s shivered cry drew Henry’s shocked gaze downward again. “Arthur … sweet, merciful Jesus, where is Arthur? Not dead. Not dead!
Not dead!”

Eleanor twisted so suddenly, Marienne lost her grip. The princess reared up, flailing her arms, sobbing and screaming soundlessly as she went through the horrific motions of trying to escape some torment from which there was no escape.

Henry caught one wrist, then the other, surprised by the strength of her pain. He crossed her arms over her chest and drew her back against him so that she was pinned firmly against his body. He held her there, through one tremendous struggle after another, until they were both panting and running with sweat.

Marienne watched, her hands covering her mouth, her cheeks wet with tears. She knew it was over when Eleanor
shuddered and went limp in Lord Henry’s arms, and she knew this episode had been worse than many others because of the anxieties roused by the escape. She was thankful Lord Henry had been there to help. Thankful he was helping still by holding the princess and rocking her gently as he smoothed the silvery web of hair back off her face.

His hand shook visibly when he lifted the last few tendrils away, for the shadows in the cavern had almost made it seem as though her eyes were simply closed against the intrusion of the firelight. A further heart-stopping illusion made him imagine the scars were crescents of golden lashes and that any moment they would lift over eyes so blue they would sparkle like a deep clear lake.

“Does FitzRandwulf know about this?” he asked quietly.

“He knew she suffered them as a child. It was one of the things they had in common.”

Henry’s head shot up.
“FitzRandwulf suffers fits?”

“Oh no, my lord. Not fits.” She hastened to explain, “I am told he … used to suffer nightmares. Terrible nightmares, and when my lady first happened to see him in the midst of one—she was but a child then—she thought it a common bond they shared. Truly, ‘twas only nightmares. And my lady’s fits are so very mild, they could almost be mistaken as such themselves. Indeed, there were a number of years when she suffered none at all. But now, with Arthur … and all else …”

Henry looked back down at the Pearl of Brittany. She was sleeping deeply; exhausted. One of her hands was curled around his neck and her body was burrowed against his for warmth. She was so thin and fragile, so pale, so lovely, so …

“My lord—?”

Henry shook away Marienne’s worried frown. “She is asleep. Soundly now, I think.”

Marienne offered a tremulous smile of thanks as she helped him ease Eleanor down onto a bed of cloaks. He waited until there was no longer any excuse for him to remain on this side of the blankets, and when he turned awkwardly to leave, he felt Marienne’s hand on his arm again.

“Thank you, my lord. Not just for this, but … for everything.
I am quite certain, you see, that the king was come to Gorfe to settle things with my lady once and for all.” “Settle things?”

“He has tried so hard to break her mind and her spirit, I have no doubt he was counting on her to succumb long before now. I have even less doubt he had decided to have Gisbourne arrange an accident, so you see”—she folded her hands tightly in her lap—“whatever happens now can only be better than what would have happened had we stayed behind. And if it is true, if it is at all possible for my lady to find safe haven at Kirklees … I … I know she will find peace. I know she will be released from these demons that haunt her.”

Henry felt, suddenly, as if his whole body was on fire. His arms burned where they had held Eleanor and his heart pounded in his chest with such force as he had never felt before, in the heat of battle, or passion.

He gently pried one of Marienne’s hands free and sandwiched it between his with a fierce promise. “She will find haven at Kirklees,” he rasped. “You have my word on it … and my life.”

He sealed the pledge by raising the young maid’s captive hand to his lips. A last glance at Eleanor of Brittany sent him ducking quickly between the blankets; the need for cool, clean air sent him across the cavern and out into the gloom of the tunnel. Confused by too many new, emerging emotions, his composure took a sharp plunge downward when he rounded a curve in the tunnel and saw more than just the rushing gray-green wall of water.

   Ariel leaned into the warmth of Eduard’s body, her own beginning to display amazing recuperative powers by moving eagerly against the rhythm of his caressing hands. A few minutes ago, tottering on legs as weak as those of a newborn fawn, she would not have thought it possible to feel her blood racing anew and yet it was. Racing and flushing through her limbs so adamantly she heard Eduard press a deep, throaty chuckle into the soft pink curl of her ear.

“Once, Vixen, is shameless,” he murmured. “Twice would be …”

Ariel lifted her mouth to his and silenced his censure with a kiss that left them both short of breath and caution. Ariel moaned in assent as he started to lift her again, but a movement in the shadows turned her passion to shock as she pushed herself out of Eduard’s arms and scrambled hastily to pull her tunic down over her bared thighs.

Eduard saw the look of horror on Ariel’s face and turned, alerted to the presence of someone behind them. His hand moved instinctively to his waist, to the sword that was not there but leaned against the stone wall more than two full strides away. His second instinct was to shield Ariel with his body, which he did by turning to meet the threat face to face.

Lord Henry de Glare, his tawny hair glinting gold against the flare of light emanating from the cavern, moved forward with slow, measured steps. Neither Eduard nor Ariel had heard his approach over the rush of the waterfall, nor did they know how long he had been standing there observing them. To judge by the rigid look on his face, he knew they had not merely been enjoying a few minutes of private conversation. To judge by the way his fist opened and closed around the hilt of the dagger he wore thrust in his belt, he was not amused by what he had seen.

It was a reflex action that sent Ariel’s hands down to further smooth the wrinkles in her tunic and to draw the edges of her cloak over the sudden chill in her flesh. Henry’s eyes scorned the gesture as much as the grim lines of his mouth suggested such modesty was late in coming.

“Here?” he asked coldly. “Without so much as a bed or haystack for comfort?”

Eduard fisted his hands. “Since your sister has agreed to be my wife, I would advise against offering too many insults.”

Henry’s hazel eyes held FitzRandwulf’s for a few hard moments, then sought the pale sliver of Ariel’s face where it peeped out from behind her lover’s shoulder.

“Is this true?” he asked.

Ariel slipped her hand into Eduard’s larger, warmer one.

“No. The
absolute
truth is that I offered to be his mistress if he would take me anywhere but to Gloucester … and he refused me. I had not even dared to hope he would take me to wife, but alas—” She looked up into Eduard’s bemused eyes and smiled. “He said it was to be thus or not at all, and so dear brother, I have accepted.”

Henry opened his mouth, but snapped it shut again. His gaze flicked from his sister’s face to FitzRandwulf’s, but when he realized they had eyes only for each other, he threw his hands up in the air and turned on his heel to glare at the wall of sheeting water.

“I know I have asked this before, but have you … have either of you … any notion of what you are doing? It is all very well and good to make dewy-eyed plans in the heat of passion, but … have you given thought to what you will do when the heat wanes? Where will you go? How will you live? Good God, man—” He swore loudly and rounded on Eduard again. “Half the king’s men will be hunting for you and the other half for us. Your father and our uncle will have to publicly disown us and disclaim having any prior knowledge of our intentions if they are to have
any
hope of avoiding the king’s retribution. They will have to declare us renegades and traitors and will no doubt have to make the gesture, at any rate, of helping the king try to hunt us down. Had you not crippled and castrated Gisbourne, we might have been able to exile ourselves to Navarre or Aragon—or even to Rome to plead our case before the pope. But Gisbourne will want our heads to stick on pikes and John will give him full rein to chase us to the edges of the earth.”

“You
castrated
Gisbourne?” Ariel asked, glancing up in mellow surprise.

Eduard shrugged. “It was an accident. He fell on Robin’s blade.”

“Better he should have fallen on it with his heart,” Henry remarked grimly. “And I should still be thinking seriously of ripping yours out of your throat for doing what you have done to my sister.”

“Believe me,” Eduard said quietly. “I had not planned to take a wife back to Touraine with me.”

“And I had not planned to let the man live who despoiled my sister,” Henry countered.

“Meaning you have changed your mind?” Ariel asked, barely daring to breathe.

Henry stared. He sighed and shoved his fingers through his hair, then sighed again. “Allowing that there are now two signed, legal contracts binding you to two different men in marriage … are you certain you will not change
your
mind again? Are you certain
this
is the man you want? The life you want?”

Ariel saw her life at Pembroke flash before her—the staid, noble existence that had somehow always seemed so empty, so lacking in purpose. She had been restless without knowing why, defiant without knowing what she was striving to defy. The suitors she had rejected, regardless of the reasons, had all been alike, all come in search of an heiress of good blood and hearty breeding stock. Love had never been a consideration. Affection had never weighed as they mentally checked her teeth, gums, width of hips, and declared her healthy enough, wealthy enough for their purposes. Life with any of them would only have meant more restlessness, more emptiness.

Whereas life with Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise would be a life filled with passion and excitement and love. Bearing his children would be her joy, not her duty. Sharing his destiny would be a challenge, a pleasure, a headlong rush into the unknown that made her heart pound just to think of it.

“I love him,” she said, answering Henry’s question in the simplest terms she could apply. “Nothing will ever change that.”

Henry’s response took another full minute to form, and it did so with a slow shaking of his head. “In a way, I suppose this is all my own fault. I should never have agreed to plead your case before Uncle Will. I should never have agreed to take you out of Pembroke, and surely never have agreed to take you to Normandy. I should have just given you to the Welsh prince of thieves then and there … rapped you on
the head and put you in front of the altar too dazed to concoct any more of your schemes let alone draw me into them. But alas,
I
have never been able to say no to you, Puss, have I?”

Ariel moved forward, skirting around Eduard’s tall frame. She went to her brother and put her arms around him, resting her head briefly on his shoulder.
“I
am sorry about Cardigan.
I
know it meant a great deal to you to have the De Clare name restored to its proper place.”

“It never meant as much as your happiness,” Henry murmured, wrapping his arms around her in turn. “And
I
warrant”—his eyes rose and sought Eduard’s across the gap—“if having a Wolf’s cub is what will make you happy—?”

“Delirious,” she whispered.

A glance passed between the two men, leaving each with a mutual respect for the other’s commitment to Ariel’s happiness. In its wake came the glimmering beginnings of a genuine friendship.

In its wake also, came another sigh of exasperation, for it had all become too much for Sparrow to bear in silence.

“St. Bartholemew and all his blundering acolytes look down upon us with mercy!” he groaned, staggering out of the shadows at the mouth of the tunnel. “I lived through this once, with that selfsame Wolf whose cub, methought, had an even thicker layer of armour ’round his heart. I swore then
I
would not survive it a second time, God aggrieve me if I did not. I swore it, and now look you here: I am dead.”

With a dramatic flair that would have been the envy of a dozen swooning beauties, Sparrow clutched the shaft of the bolt that protruded from his shoulder and pitched face forward in a dead faint.

T
he moon hung bright and cold in a velvet sky. The light it cast was as strong as daylight, washing the stone walls of the abbey a ghostly gray. A rising wind sent little swirls of silvery Stardust across the ground, for it had snowed earlier in the day, leaving a thin layer of crystalline powder clinging like hoarfrost to the frozen grasses and branches.

Kirklees sat upon the crest of a gentle roll of land. In summer, sheep grazed on the meadow below and a thousand birds built a thousand nests in the branches of the ancient apple orchard someone had planted a thousand years earlier. Behind the orchard, along a narrow gorge and beyond the crest of yet another graceful hillock, loomed the seemingly endless and impenetrable denseness of the royal forest known as Sherwood. Even in winter, with the huge oaks and ashes stripped of their glossy leaves, the woods were dark and forbidding. Spirits were known to dwell there. Demons and fiends, wizards and witches made the glades and gorges their homes and anyone with the wit or will to retain possession of his soul knew better than to venture into Sherwood alone.