Malia Martin (20 page)

He opened his eyes and saw darkness.

“Awake, Robert de Guise!” One of Robert’s men stood at the opening of his tent. “William has need of thee.” He left, letting the tent flap fall behind him.

Robert swallowed once, painfully, realizing the full depth of disappointment as the
happiness of his dream faded into heartbreaking reality.

With a low groan, Robert laid his forearm over his face and relaxed for a moment in his cot. In his mind’s eye he saw Aleene again, at the beach. They had played like children. The woman of the wounded eyes had smiled. She had laughed. She had opened her heart, and he had smashed it beneath his heel.

He was ashamed. He had fought it at first, justifying his actions. After all, her king had stolen the crown of England from its rightful owner. But, of course, that was not his main reason for being there. He wanted wealth. He wanted the power to control his own destiny rather than be a mere underling all his life like his father before him. And so, to achieve that he had continued in his ruse.

And then he had begun to care. Still, if he had truly cared, he should have left. He should have lost himself to her so she would never know his true identity, never know even more heartbreak than she had already.

Robert huffed a dark laugh as he hauled himself from bed and pulled on his leather shoes. He had been torn. Caring for the woman, he began to see through the layers of armor, and caring also for the wealth she could bring him. Robert shook his head. He needed to forget for now, put her from his mind. He had a war to help win.

Into the dark, crisp night, Robert trudged, his breath making a soft white mist in front of his face. He pulled his cape up around his ears and hunched his shoulders. It was getting colder, and they had no supplies.

They would have to do something soon, or die out here. As Robert nodded to the sentries on duty outside William’s tent, he chuckled. It sounded hollow and foreboding in the chill night. Wouldn’t it just be perfect irony if William accomplished the imposing feat of bringing an entire army across the English channel, just to have them all die of starvation?

“You laugh, Robert de Guise?” William’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Robert focused on his leader’s candle-lit face in the dark tent. “You are happy, then, about our surprise visitor?”

“De Guise?” Another, familiar voice came from the shadows. “How fitting.”

Robert turned, straining to see her in the flickering light. “Aleene, what do you here?” He looked sharply at William. “Have you kidnapped her?” Robert moved quickly toward the duke, stopping just in front of him. “You cannot, my lord. She is my wife, before God.” He could barely speak through his labored breath. “She is my wife.”

William looked as if he might speak, but then Aleene said, “I come of my own accord, dear husband. Although it is quite heartening to see that you care so very much for my welfare. I am glad, also, that your nose is looking so much better than the last I saw.”

The bitterness made Robert wince. He took a deep breath, his hand going unconciously to his still-tender nose.

“Your wife accompanied Hugh Margot, who took the message to Harold. We are to have a battle.”

The duke kept his voice light, but Robert knew that his leader’s heart was anything but. Robert knew that William spoke flippantly for Aleene’s benefit. He wanted no one to know the pain this confrontation caused him.

“And your wife has come to be with you in what may be your last days upon this earth.”

William smiled toward Aleene. “A most heartwarming gesture.”

Aleene smiled back. Her ice-smile. Robert recognized it. He had melted the smile before, but he had many doubts of his ability to do so again. He looked from his wife to his liege, his loyalties to them at odds with each other, but still present within his one heart. And one always the more important. Robert’s gaze came to rest upon William.

“Take your wife, then, Robert. Take her to your tent and thank her rightly for coming to you on this bone-chilling morning.” William turned his gaze back to Aleene. “Keep her close to you.”

Robert read his warning and nearly laughed, but bit back the bitter sound. Aleene lifted one side of her mouth in an ugly smirk. Obviously she also realized William’s warning. Another irony, that she should now be the spy among his people as he had been among hers.

As he took her elbow and led her out into the cold dawn, he wished them all to hell. His people and hers. It seemed absurd, suddenly, that they should both fight so hard for their separate causes. Did those causes care one whit for the people they were? He and Aleene? But then he stopped those traitorous thoughts, his mind confused at the way his heart had taken over.

Aleene jerked her arm from his grasp, and he sighed. “Why did you come, Aleene? You would be safer elsewhere. Truly you should be safe at Seabreeze. Duncan would see to
that.”

“I don’t wish for safety!” She turned on him, her shoes squishing in the mud. “Especially in the hands of a Norman!” she spat the word as if it tasted vile.

Robert again took her elbow and urged her forward. She went, fortunately, although she shook free of his hand. “Duncan is not a Norman. He is Scots.”

“You think that makes subjection easier?”

“It is not subjection. You are still the lady of Seabreeze Castle. In fact—” Robert held his tent flap open for her, only she did not bend to enter. Instead she stood, pinning him with an icy glare. “In fact,” he said on a sigh, “I am probably the only person in the world who will actually fight to keep you as such.”

With a disgusted grunt, Aleene broke eye contact and went inside the tent. Rolling his eyes, Robert followed. This promised to be a wearing morning.

“You dare to say such a thing?” Aleene said as he entered, her back still to him. “You dare?”

“’Tis but the truth.”

“Ahhh, and so now you are a bringer of truth?” Aleene whirled around. “Forgive me if I find that hard to believe, my lord.”

Robert took a deep breath and scratched at the beard that had grown in the last couple weeks. He had thought to purge her from his thoughts and now she stood before him in the flesh. He was doomed to have to deal with this now. He decided suddenly to use a stratagem taught to him by his mother, one he hadn’t often used. He told the truth. “I have come to care for you, Aleene.”

“No!” She came forward and slapped him hard across his face.

He winced at the sting, but did nothing else. So much for the truth.

“Do not take me for a fool twice, Robert
de Guise
.” Her chest rose and fell. He could hear her harsh breathing, taste the hate that vibrated from her. “I will not allow it. You do not care. You take. You have come to take a land not yours. You have taken my pride. You have taken the trust of the people of Pevensey. You will take no more.”

He could say nothing, for what she said was true.

“King Harold is the king of our people. He will not allow you and your Bastard Duke to take what is ours. And I will do anything possible to make sure that you don’t. I was stupid before, seeing only what I wanted. I must thank you for that one thing. You opened my eyes. With a Norman ruling Seabreeze, I now realize that I had more to fear than Aethregard in that position.”

“Aleene, I...”

“No! I will listen to no more. You made me a traitor to my people, and I will listen no more to your lies.”

“A traitor?” Robert shook with fear. “They have branded you a traitor?”

“No,
you
have branded me a traitor.”

“Do they pursue you? Is that why you are here? Do you run for your life?”

“King Harold is a man of God, you piece of filth.” The venom in her eyes was pure hatred. “He has forgiven me my stupidity. But I have not. Nor will I ever. I will fight to my death to right the wrong I did when I married you to preserve my own holding.”

Robert sank to the edge of his cot, running his fingers through his hair. “Ahhh, Aleene, I am sorry for this. What I did was wrong. But at first I saw only the opportunity. And then I felt such pity for you.”

“Pity?”

Robert clenched his hand in his hair. Wrong word, Robert, he thought.

“You dare to pity me?” She moved away stiffly. “There is nothing to pity, Norman. I am the wealthiest woman in all of England. An England that shall never be under the rule of any Bastard Duke. There is nothing to pity.” She turned and left quickly.

He knew he should go after her. William would not want her alone within his camp. But Robert let her go. For in that moment he wished William to hell. And it scared him.

She didn’t look around her as she stalked outside. She did not count men, or inspect their arms, or investigate the number of horses. She went through the camp, looking neither left nor right, and made for the trees. Once there she sank down on a rotted log and wished for oblivion. She wished it for a long time, in fact, but it never came. The cold sun kept filtering through the trees and the leaves kept swirling around her ankles as a bitter wind kept slithering through her clothes to trail icy fingers along her skin.

Nothing stopped.

It seemed it should. How could everything continue as if nothing had happened? As if she were still the undisputed heir to Seabreeze, fighting to keep control? As if an army did not sit beyond these trees, waiting to tear apart her people’s world? As if some beautiful,
hateful man had not torn apart her defenses and stormed her keep . . . her heart.

“I have brought you dinner.”

She had heard someone approach, and so she didn’t jump. She had been half-hoping that oblivion finally did come to her on stealthy feet, through crackling leaves. But, alas, it was only Robert. The very antithesis of oblivion. Aleene sighed and kept her gaze on the small woodland creature that pushed its nose from its burrow. Would it brave the outside after hearing them? She watched.

“’Tis not much.” He sat beside her and opened a folded cloth. “Hard bread and harder cheese.”

The nose peeking from the ground twitched. Ah, the terrible agony the poor creature faced. She knew his fear, yet he hungered. And now what must to him be a tantalizing aroma drifted toward his small, hidden home.

She felt something being pressed into her hands, and she wrapped her fingers around it.

“I did not pity you.”

She listened, barely.

“I admired you, your strength. I hurt for you, your pain.”

Before she might have struck out at that. Her pain. She had not acknowledged such a thing. Now she realized she lived with it constantly. The pain of betrayal. The pain of a loveless life. It would not have been so painful, truthfully, if it had not been preceded, so closely, by the life she had shared with her father, a life full of love, a life full of contentment.

And yet the pain had forced her strength. The pain had been necessary for her to realize the fleeting character of those things she had believed so strong before, love, loyalty, security.

“I would rather you be angry with me than enforce this silence.”

The creature on the forest floor had stopped moving, but she could feel his anxiety still. He wanted the dinner in her lap, but he feared her.

“How is it,” she finally asked, “that William rides under the banner of the pope?” She did not ask to fulfill her wish to spy on William and his men. She asked because it was one thing she truly didn’t understand.

“Lanfranc secured that.”

Aleene finally turned, the stunning beauty of the man beside her still causing a breath to catch in her throat. But she squinted against the sight of his bright hair and strong chin and asked again, “How?”

It was Robert’s turn to look away. “William put his plans to invade England in front of the pope as a crusade.”

“A crusade?”

Robert cleared his throat. “Yes, a crusade to reform the English church.” He crumbled the bread in his hand and threw the crumbs on the ground.

“Explain.” She could say no more.

Robert threw some of his cheese on the ground. “It is hard, Aleene, to explain. Edward the Confessor promised the throne to William years ago when Harold and his father, Godwin, were in exile. William even obtained Harold’s support. The man promised that support by swearing an oath over sacred relics. I know, I saw it happen. And then Edward died, and Harold used trickery to seize the crown . . .”

“Seize the crown?” Aleene surged up from the log, scattering her supper upon the
ground. She heard something flutter about in the leaves and realized that the creature had come out of his burrow to eat the food Robert had thrown for it. She stopped a moment, watching the animal’s backside disappear again into its hole. She shook her head and turned back to Robert. “How do you say Harold seized the crown? No such thing happened.”

“He is not in line for the crown. If not from force, how did he obtain it?”

Aleene closed her eyes for a moment, amazed at Robert’s accusation. “The witan.”

Robert looked blank.

“The witan, the council of wise men, met and agreed that Harold should wear the crown.” Aleene could not believe what Robert had said. “In fact, from what I have heard, Harold was reluctant to become king. How do you come to think otherwise?”