The Longing (24 page)

“And if…?” She did not want to ponder the alternative, but she must prepare for it. “If she denies my nephew’s claim to Cheverel, what then?”

“He will have a place here at Wulfen.” Everard’s lack of hesitation evidenced he had already considered the possibility. “And when his training is complete, he shall make his own way as a knight whose services are highly sought after.”

Though the thought of being parted from Judas nearly broke her heart, it was gratitude that brought tears to her eyes with such force she had to look down, for it was well known that nobles vied to place their sons and heirs at Wulfen. “I thank you, Lord Wulfrith—more than ever you will know.” 

“I am glad to do it for Judith’s son. But what of you, Susanna? Have you considered what you will do if he is denied?”

There was nothing to consider, for there seemed only one course available to a lady of twenty and five who, possessing no dowry, had no prospect of marriage. Staring at the pink ovals of her nails, she said, “As Cheverel is my family’s home, I shall return there.”

It would be a sorry existence beneath Lady Richenda’s rule, but surely it could not be much worse than all the years she had been subject to Alan’s authority. If she could make herself useful to Lady Blanche, there was hope her life would have some meaning, that the days and nights would not stretch intolerably long, that moments of happiness might even be found—perhaps with little Alan. Of course, how likely was it she would be entrusted with the care of the one who had displaced Judas?

She felt her tears quicken.

You will not cry! Certainly not over something that may never come to pass.
She closed her eyes.
Please Lord, do not let it come to pass. See Judas given what is rightfully his.

“I will leave you now, my lady.”

She jerked her chin up, met Everard’s gaze, quickly looked away in hopes he had not seen how wet her eyes were. “Of course, Lord Wulfrith. I have kept you too long.” She stood and, feigning concern over her wrinkled skirts, smoothed her hands down them.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pivot toward the door. Only then did she return her gaze to him. A moment later, he went from sight.

When she heard his voice and Sir Rowan’s, she drew the pendant from her bodice and watched it unwind upon its chain, the movement causing the scent of roses to waft upon the air, though not with the intensity of weeks past. It was time to replace the dry, crushed petals—

“Nay.” She closed her fingers around it. That time was past, the pendant’s purpose spent. Or soon would be. “If I dare…”

The chapel had not been his destination, for there was much to be done in preparation for the arrival of his younger brother, Abel. And yet here he stood before the altar, more thoughtful than prayerful as he tried to order his thoughts so that he might turn them into prayer.

He clenched his hands. More often than not, he knew where he stood with himself, conscious of his emotions and their origins. However, since Susanna had come to Wulfen, he had encountered tangles and knots in his consciousness, so intricately woven and tightly drawn that he sometimes felt as if he had stepped out of himself into another man. It was certainly what he had experienced when he had gone to the tower room an hour earlier and acknowledged his attraction to her.

That had been but the beginning, for it was he who had moved the conversation from Judas to her in advancing that her brother had not treated her well. He had been as taken aback by his query as she had seemed to be and struggled to make sense of his feelings, but hardly had he begun than she spoke in defense of her brother, and that had led to Judith.

His response had been harsh, though not only because he did not wish to discuss the woman he had lost. He had truly wanted to know more about Susanna, but without the shadow of Judith or any other falling over her. Just Susanna.

Remembering what he had done, he splayed the hand that had lifted her chin as he had sought to explain his reason for refusing to speak of Judith. It had not seemed to be his hand, not his thumb that had felt the tremble of her lower lip, not he who had tried to distance himself from his own response by picking the rush from her veil.

He might have succeeded in detaching himself if he had not felt compelled to ask what she herself would do if the queen refused Judas his inheritance. Staring at her bent head, he had longed to ease her worry but had told himself he had nothing to offer her—a lie, and for that he had quickly departed.

The truth was that she would not have to return to Cheverel, for he could appeal to his mother or sisters to make a place for her in their households. Unfortunately, that would require an explanation. More, on the rare occasions he visited, he would find himself in the presence of a woman who represented a past he ought to put as firmly behind him as once he had done.

Everard shoved a hand over his raspy scalp that evidenced it would soon be necessary to take a blade to it again, then lowered to the kneeling bench. He was much in need of prayer, though not in the matter of what the Lord would have him do about Susanna de Balliol—at least, not with regard to ensuring she had a choice as to whether or not she returned to Cheverel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

She wished she could blame it on impulse, but she had given it enough thought to know that what she planned was imprudent and another breach of her agreement with Everard. After all, there were other ways to achieve the same end. But this way…

By the light of the candle she had set upon the stair, she considered the square of folded linen she had bound with a pale blue ribbon made soft by years of securing the ends of her braids.

Aye, this way it would be done and, henceforth, she would not have to think on it again. Too, she could ease her concern, slight though Everard’s assurances had made it, over Judas. And it was not as if she had not managed it once before.

Ignoring the small voice that told her it was not too late to turn back, she released the catch.

She had returned, though so deep was the sleep he came up out of that he did not awaken to her presence until she was partway to the bed.

Easing the hold he had taken upon the dagger beneath his pillow, he watched as she drew nearer than she had done before. Indeed, it seemed this time the bed was her destination rather than the mere negotiation of it in order to reach the curtained entrance.

Amid shadows thrown by the canopy overhead, made all the more secure by the limited reach of the dying fire, Everard saw Susanna’s dark figure advance, breathed in air that was absent the scent of roses unlike the last time she had come within—and all those other occasions he found himself in her presence. Then she was alongside the bed.

She stood unmoving as if searching him out where he lay at the center, the breath that sustained her so softly drawn that only if one listened well might they hear it.

He did not want his thoughts to venture where next they went, but then they were there, suggesting she had come to bargain between the sheets. Immediately, he rejected the idea, not only because she would be foolish to reveal her knowledge of the hidden passageway and more foolish to do so with his squire sleeping mere feet away, but because it did not fit the woman who made him lose sight and control of his emotions. True, Sir Elias had told that exchanging favors was her way, but not with him.

She bent, and when he caught the sound of a hand sliding across fabric, he considered he might be wrong about her and that she did, indeed, seek his bed. But then she straightened and turned away.

As on that first night that she had ventured through his chamber, she went around the bed, carefully picked her way across the rushes to the curtains, and slipped into the hall. This time, he did not follow, certain she would seek out Judas to assure herself he was well and quickly return to her chamber as she had done before.

In the meantime, he searched a hand across the bed to determine if she had left evidence of her reason for venturing so near. He found nothing. But as he pondered her behavior, it occurred to him the sound he had heard might have been of something being slid between the bottom, wool-stuffed mattress and the top feather mattress.

Three minutes could hardly have passed before Susanna retraced her steps, went behind the tapestry, and closed herself inside the hidden passageway.

Everard dropped his legs over the side of the bed. Moments later, he drew from between the mattresses a cloth folded around something small and hard.

He crossed to the hearth that lent its glow to revealing what Susanna had risked much to leave behind—surely to be found when she was gone from Wulfen. He loosened the lightly knotted ribbon, pushed aside the layers, and felt a blow with the weight of eleven years behind it.

“Almighty,” he rasped. In sharp contrast to the white cloth it lay upon, crimson facets captured the light within the chamber. Still, the ruby’s brilliance paled compared to how brightly it had shone the day he had given it to Judith as proof of his love.

How had Susanna known it belonged to him? Merely a guess from when she had noticed his dagger was missing a gem? That seemed unlikely, and yet he did not believe Judith would have told her of the gift, not the girl who would have run to her brother with tale of it just as she had done with tale of the kiss. Perhaps Judith had been careless in her keeping of the gem and Alan de Balliol had discovered it and wrung the truth from her…

Everard closed his hand around the ruby and tried to calm his roiling, but he wanted answers. Now.

Do not,
he told himself as he strode across the solar.
This is not who you are.

He pulled from the top of his clothes chest the clean tunic his squire had laid out in preparation for the early morning run.

Think first, act second
, he heard again one of many youthful lessons as he dragged the garment on over his head.

Then he was advancing on the tapestry. Shortly, he ascended the hidden stairway in unshod feet and utter darkness, having given no thought to footwear or a torch. Not that either was needed, for he knew the way well.

When he came out onto the steps that led to the tower room, he felt a swirl of tepid night air that evidenced Susanna had left her window unshuttered and door ajar. However, before he reached the landing above, he realized her chamber was not the only way by which air entered. Almost as forcefully, it blew in through the door that accessed the roof. Knowing that was where he would find her, he did little more than glance into the room in which a single candle flickered wildly in its struggle to remain lit.

Quickly, he climbed the ladder. Though he expected to see her the moment he emerged, for the night was endowed with a good moon hindered only by sheer, swiftly moving clouds, she did not immediately come to notice, and when his gaze did find her, the reason was apparent. Back turned to him, garments of a color as bland as the battlements before which she knelt, head bowed, she sat back on her heels. And that sight, regardless of whether or not she was at prayer as she appeared to be, calmed him sufficiently that he did not approach as forcefully and thoughtlessly as he would otherwise have done.

Standing amid the restless air that tugged at his garments, moaned around and over the castle walls, and caused the long grasses of the meadow and leaves of the trees to chatter amongst themselves, he strained to catch Susanna’s murmured words of supplication. However, he heard no sound about her, and the only movement was the shifting of her unbound hair. He stepped forward.

Fool!
Susanna berated as she stared at the pendant she had emptied of its rose petals when she had removed the ruby from its center.
Never could it have been as easy as it seemed—possibly once, not twice. Not with a man like Everard Wulfrith. Fool, fool! You dared to ease an ache you could only guess at so you might indulge in the childish, dimwitted belief of unrequited love. You risked what did not need to be risked, what could have been left for another day when his goodwill no longer mattered, or even a day that never came. And all this after you agreed to his terms and he showed you naught but consideration. If you are set outside these walls, it will be by your own hand. And Judas—

Nay, he was safe. He would not be made to pay for her sins. And that was all that mattered.

She closed her fingers around the pendant and, when footsteps revealed Everard was nearly upon her, said, “You were not asleep.” Unlike Judas who, this night, had not roused when she had kissed his untroubled brow. 

She sensed Everard’s hesitation, but still he came. Head lowered, having not moved since catching the creak of the ladder when panic had dropped her to her knees, she saw his hosed legs and bare feet come alongside her.

“I
was
asleep.” His voice was harsh. “But just as your trespass awakened me three nights past, it awakened me this night.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. She was surprised and yet not that he had known of her first foray through his bedchamber, for it better fit his character that he had not visited her the day following Judas’s breathing attack to assure her of her nephew’s well-being. After all, since she had verified it herself, it had not been necessary. But why had he ignored that first trespass and not this one? Had he discovered what she had left behind? As much as she hoped it was not so, that the linen square remained hidden between his mattresses, it was a thin hope.

The hand he thrust forward brushed her hair. “How did you come by this?”

A hope so thin he had seen right through it…

As she did not need to look upon what he proffered, she returned her gaze to what she cradled in her own palm—that which had secreted the gem for nearly eleven years. “Judith entrusted it to me.”

He expelled a word that was not an oath but sharp enough to sound like one. Then he closed a hand around her arm, pulled her to standing, and set her back against the battlement. “
That
is a lie.”