Rexanne Becnel (31 page)

“He wants to know his child, Wynne. To give his heir the full benefit due him. How can that be wrong?”

“No!” Wynne jerked away from him. She wanted to leap from the water, to attack Lord William. To kill him with her bare hands if necessary. But Isolde and Bronwen were weeping in her arms, and if the sounds from the men’s bathing area were any indication, the boys were doing the same with Druce and Barris.

“Get out of here,” she ordered, glaring at Cleve over the girls’ wet heads. At that moment, as he stood there tall and expressionless, his gray tunic wet with water, she truly hated him. He’d brought her to this bleakest moment of her life, him with his easy smile and seductive glances. He’d wooed the children first, then he wooed her. But it had all been in the name of achieving his initial aim.

Their gazes met and held, hers cold as winter, his shuttered, hiding whatever emotions he felt.
If
he indeed felt any at all.

She took a slow, shaky breath. “Make everyone leave. Everyone. I’ll dress the children. Then and only then may your English lord enter.”

“Trust me, Wynne. ’Tis time to trust me. I can help you in this.”

A flicker of emotion showed in his eyes, but Wynne did not care. Her smile was bitter. “You only wish to help yourself. Just … just leave me be.”

After a moment he sighed and shrugged. Then he turned on his heel and moved past the curtain. She heard him murmur and Lord William’s indignant reply. “I just want to see their toes!” But Cleve’s reply was firm, and after a little shuffling the door closed with a thud.

“Arthur? Rhys, Madoc? Are you all right?”

“Can we come in with you?” Arthur’s voice came, thin and wavering.

“Of course, love.”

Water sloshed, and three sets of feet hit the stone floor. At once the boys barreled past the curtain and clamored into the women’s tub, bare bottoms gleaming in the dim light. As she clutched them all to her as best she could, Wynne remembered another time, four years earlier. How overcome with responsibility she’d felt as five toddlers had clung to her for comfort. She’d been so inadequate to the task then, but she felt even more inadequate now. She wanted so much to protect them—from the horror of their terrible conceptions, from the difficulties life would present them. But she couldn’t do it. Not anymore. She couldn’t even keep them with her any longer.

Her tears mingled with theirs as they huddled in the tub, no longer comforted by the warm water and the pleasant fragrances. This was England, and they were surrounded by enemies.

“Why—” Madoc hiccupped, then began again. “Why does he want to see our toes?”

“Is he going to make fun of them?” Rhys added.

Wynne tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. She was so accustomed to the slight difference in the twins’ toes that it hadn’t occurred to her that it might be an inherited trait like any other. Oh, why hadn’t she foreseen this? “I think that perhaps he has the same sort of toes.”

Arthur straightened and pushed his wet hair from his eyes. “You mean Lord William has duck toes?”

“They’re not duck toes!” Bronwen cried in sudden defense.

“Hush, my darlings. Hush. Of course they’re not really duck toes. But they do have that extra bit of flesh between them, and I suppose, well, that you probably took that trait from one of your parents.”

She pressed her lips together, willing her voice to stay steady. “I have my father’s blue eyes. Arthur, Isolde, and Bronwen all carry some English traits in the color of their hair or their eyes. But you two, Rhys and Madoc, you are so dark-haired and dark-eyed. You have always appeared Welsh through and through.”

“Except for our toes,” Rhys said.

“I think so.”

They sat in silence a moment. The sobbing had ceased save for an occasional trembling breath, and the hiccups also were easing. Then Bronwen pulled a little away from Wynne.

“Will Rhys and Madoc have to stay here with their … well, with their father?”

The words of denial Wynne wished to speak died unsaid. Their father. Could it be true? Could that great blustering oaf actually have fathered her sweet, troublesome twins? Unbidden, his tremulous question about their mother came back to her. He’d wished to know if she’d ever spoken of him. And his face had gone gray to hear she had died. He’d gone so far as to claim that the woman had loved him.

Wynne gazed down at the twins’ dark heads. She was far too confused to keep her thoughts in order. If the woman
had
loved him … And he seemed in his own crude fashion to have cared for her …

She swallowed against her terrible choking fear and tried to pick her words carefully. “Perhaps … perhaps they will wish to stay
if
Lord William is their father. But I will not see any of you forced into a life you do not wish,” she added vehemently. She forced her tears away. “Come, now. Let us complete our bathing and greet Lord William once more.”

“I wish Sir Cleve was my father,” Arthur remarked, more to himself than to anyone else.

Wynne helped the boy climb from the tub. “There are many,
many
more worthwhile men in the world,” she muttered. “Welshmen.”

“Shall you not marry him after all?”

Wynne frowned. “Use that toweling to dry yourself, Arthur. And I never intended to marry him. I told you that. Anyway he is to wed the Lady Edeline.”

Arthur sighed, and after a last wistful look he did as he was told.

“Lady Edeline is very beautiful,” Isolde said once the boys were out of sight.

“Druce was staring at her all through the meal,” Bronwen added.

“Well, she is betrothed to Sir Cleve,” Wynne retorted as she rose dripping wet from the tub. “And that is that.”

Wynne had convinced herself of that very fact when she bid Lord William, Cleve, and the others to enter the bathing chamber. The children hung behind her, all clean and dried, with damp hair combed back from their wary faces, and fresh gowns and tunics on. But they were all barefoot.

Lord William, too, had shed his shoes, and his toes fairly wiggled with anticipation. But it was the expression on his face that disturbed Wynne the most, for his aging features were suffused with a longing and a hopefulness that made him appear almost young again.

Her gaze shifted of its own accord to Cleve, and she recognized the concern in his eyes. But it was too little, she told herself. And it came far too late.

“Come here,” Lord William commanded in a hoarse voice barely more than a whisper. “If you have funny toes—duck toes, my mother used to call them—then show yourself to me.”

Wynne’s heart pounded so hard, she surely thought it would explode. She could not move. But Arthur did. He nudged his brothers forward. “Go on. Show him. He’s your father.”

Wynne did not witness the rest. She could not. Rhys and Madoc stepped hesitantly forward, encouraged by Lord William’s wondrous smile and Cleve’s reassuring presence. They compared toes—old, hairy toes with long, yellowing nails against plump, little toes, rosy from the bath. But all were made the same by the odd flange of flesh that connected the second and third toes together.

With a glad cry Lord William fell to his knees and embraced the startled twins. But Wynne’s tears blinded her to their reunion. She clutched her remaining children to her breast, unable to contain her sobs any longer.

“My sons!” Lord William wept with heartfelt emotion. “Oh, Angel, my Angel. At last I have our sons!”

K
IRKSTON CASTLE WAS NOT
a place arranged for privacy. Although Wynne slipped down the dim stone stairwell, servants and retainers abounded, curled in their rugs and robes, asleep wherever a niche presented itself. In the hall itself Lord William still sat, toasting his great fortune—two sons!—with whoever managed still to match him toast for toast, drink for drink. Even the forecourt was not empty, Wynne found. A merry bonfire flamed high, and the servants who had not yet succumbed to sleep milled around in excitement. The birth of a son was always a joyous occasion in any noble household. With the arrival of
two
sturdy sons, however, Lord William’s castlefolk clearly anticipated some display of generosity on his part.

And well he should be generous, Wynne thought, leaden-hearted. Not often was a man blessed with such fine sons as Rhys and Madoc—not that the man deserved them. He’d done no more than spill his seed, and indiscriminately at that.

Yet he claimed her precious boys as his now, and no one was inclined to challenge him save her.

Wynne pulled her hood about her face and wrapped her mantle tighter around her arms. But the cold that enveloped her, setting her teeth to chattering, came not from without but from within. Her heart—her very soul—was frozen. She could no longer feel anything at all. But it was the only way she could function, at least until she could find some private place to collapse in helpless grief.

As if she hadn’t cried enough already, she thought as she peered about through red-rimmed eyes. She’d cried before them all, revealing her complete devastation and upsetting the children. When had she first begun to lose all control over her emotions?

The answer was obvious. When Cleve FitzWarin had made his fateful ride into Radnor Forest. From before she’d even laid eyes on him, he’d begun his insidious attack on her emotions. And now he’d won.

She edged around the bonfire, staying beyond the reach of its flaming light, keeping well to the shadows. Past the kitchen and the bath house she crept, searching—she did not know precisely what she searched for. Around a heavy timbered corner and then along the rough stone outerwall, she let her left hand trail along the cold stones as she moved through the darkness. Once she heard a man’s voice somewhere above her. A guard on the ramparts. Was there no place for her to find solace?

Then, in the pitch-darkness of the overcast midnight, her hand met with wood. She stopped and ran inquiring fingers around the weathered surface. It was the postern door—probably leading to the river, if her bearings were correct.

She found the heavy ring and pulled. To her surprise the door opened with very little protest. She peered inside, then driven by her desperation, she stepped within the depths of the thick castle wall. At once she stubbed her toe on a bucket, and when she reached out to prevent herself from falling, her hand knocked down several slender poles. Fishing poles, she realized, once she’d righted herself. This door must indeed lead to the river.

Through a door, twin to the first, she went, and suddenly she stood outside Kirkston’s mighty walls, perched on a little stone landing.

It might have only been her imagination, but Wynne doubted it. The air was indeed clearer here, fresher and cooler. She sucked it into her lungs in great drafts, feasting upon the scent of the forests and fields, the river and sky.

The storm had left that washed scent over the earth, and the river plunged and fought the banks on its downward course to the distant sea. Did this river lead to Wales? she wondered, caught in a huge wave of homesickness. Could she simply fling herself into its watery embrace and be delivered into her homeland?

Oh, that would be so easy. But it was only wishful thinking.

Not conscious of her movements, she shed her hood and mantle. Next she removed her shoes and stockings.

Then she gingerly stepped down the steep ladder that slanted from the narrow landing to the rocky spit of land that edged the straight castle wall.

Two small boats lay upon the steep incline and rested now upside down. Wynne saw their pale bottoms but dimly in the darkness. However, the rushing water she sensed well enough. Like a living creature it heaved and twisted, glinting back whatever meager light the heavens offered.

How angry that river seemed. How mournful.

She moved forward, feeling her way with her toes until she felt the icy spray. Further she went, hiking her skirts above her knees and reveling in the frigid tug of moving water on her ankles and calves.

The sounds of the river enveloped her, and its winter-cold caress consumed all her attention. Kirkston Castle no longer rose at her back. This was not England at all. She was, for that moment at least, in her beloved forests, standing barefoot in a river she claimed as her own.

Then without warning another presence filled her, and she knew—as she’d known that very first day—that Cleve was there.

She didn’t turn. She stayed as she was, wishing she could will him away, wishing she could send him to the most distant edges of the far-flung world. Far beyond the reaches of Christendom itself. Yet in the very same moment she was perversely gratified by his nearness.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice a quiet sound against the wild, rushing night.

She shook her head in answer. What use in pretending? So he might ease his conscience?

She sensed when he moved closer. If she reached out behind her, she could have touched him. But she stared straight ahead, peering through the darkness, across the waters to the invisible shore beyond.

“Wynne.” His voice came from even nearer than she’d suspected. “I know this day has been … well, hard for you.”

A bitter smile flitted across her face. “Hard? Perhaps that is the word you would choose. But then, I’m surprised you even admit to that, convinced as you’ve been all along that this was best for my children.” She paused, and swallowed the lump rising in her throat to choke her. “As if
you
could know what was best for them.”

“Ah, Wynne. In many ways I do know. I
was
them, remember?”

She whirled to face him at that. “It’s not the same!” she cried, almost relieved to confront him at last. “You had your mother. You never lost her. But I … I have lost them!”

Though the darkness lay like a chasm between them, she accused him with her eyes and knew he received the message.

Yet he forged on, relentless as ever. “Do you mourn for them or for yourself? And think hard on your answer before you give it. Do you fear they shall suffer their loss less than shall you?”

Wynne drew herself up, but she was unable to completely still the trembling that overtook her, head to toe. She clenched her hands into fists so hard that her nails gouged her palms. “They shall not suffer a roof over their heads. Nor food for their bellies. Fine garments. Fine steeds. Everything that man may purchase they will undoubtedly possess. But what of a parent who loves them—?”