The Wolf of Harrow Hall (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms Book 7) (6 page)

I
slept restlessly that evening
. My previous two nights in the castle, I had enjoyed more or less uninterrupted slumber, but try as I might, I couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position in my borrowed bed. Which seemed silly, considering how its feathery, downy softness was far more luxurious than the straw mattress, suspended by ropes, that I slept on at home. No, I feared the bed was not at fault here.

Perhaps it was only the memory of his lordship’s hand in mine, the heat I had experienced — and which he had obviously felt as well.

Who are you?
he had asked, and I still wasn’t sure how I would answer, if he should ever deign to speak to me again.

To all outward appearances, I was no one very special at all. My mother had apparently been the village beauty — not that such an accolade was terribly difficult to acquire in a hamlet as small as Kerolton — and my grandmother always said I resembled her greatly, although she had blue eyes, like most of the people of North Eredor, while mine were as dark as my hair.

My father’s eyes? Most likely, but no one had ever seen him to tell me one way or another. My mother had gotten with child on a midsummer night when she was barely eighteen, and refused to tell anyone who had dishonored her. Privately, I suspected someone passing through, a tinker or traveling merchant, while my grandmother believed the man in question must have been one of the former Lord Greymount’s men-at-arms.

I always considered that possibility to be wishful thinking on her part, for such a man could have been compelled to give me his name, as well as some form of monetary support. But no one had been able to prove his identity one way or another, and once my mother was gone, well, the truth of the matter went with her.

Most of the time, I did not care. My grandfather stepped in to help take care of me, and I had never found myself lacking a man’s influence while growing up. After he was gone…well, that was more difficult. I somehow doubted Master Wisegrot would have been quite so insulting in his proposal to me — offering to take me off my grandmother’s hands, since no one else would have me — if Grandfather had still lived.

At any rate, the peculiarities of my birth set aside, I certainly possessed no special gifts or abilities, nothing that would have caused such a strange spark to kindle between his lordship and myself. As I lay awake, staring up at the dimly lit ceiling in my chamber — for the fire had not yet gone out — I began to wonder if Lord Greymount had been asking the wrong question. Perhaps that spark had come from him, and had nothing to do with me.

Certainly, he did seem to be a strange man. Handsome, yes, but that quality only led me to ask why someone blessed with his appearance and wealth should be living in this grand castle with no wife, no children, only the bare necessities to ensure that the household ran more or less smoothly.

A household with no female servants. There was a knot I would dearly like to unravel, for I had certainly never heard of such a thing. Men were usually not the sorts to keep the scullery clean, or to scrub the chamber pots.

Unfortunately, it did not seem as if I would have answers to my questions any time in the near future. No, probably the best I could hope for now was that his lordship would let me alone, and suffer my presence in his castle until the storm abated at last and he sent me on my way.

That thought sent a pang through me, although I wasn’t quite sure why.

After all, what difference did it make to me whether I ever saw Phelan Greymount again?

B
ecause my last
meeting with Lord Greymount had been so disastrous, I truly thought I would be kept in my chambers for the duration of my stay in the castle. How long that might be, I did not know; when I awoke that next morning, the wind still howled and the snow still blew. Now I was quite sure that the drifts had covered the ground-floor windows. Perhaps it was more protected in the courtyard, where Master Merryk took those two beautiful dogs to get their exercise, but my room looked out over the open lands which led to the castle walls. In the summer, it was most likely a pleasant prospect, if those rolling hills were covered in green grass. Now, though, the landscape beyond my window was bleak and almost featureless, every landmark smoothed away by the enormous snow drifts.

When a knock came at my door, I was not terribly surprised. True, my morning meal had come and gone, but the steward did check in on me occasionally for reasons that had nothing to do with meals. I still had no entertainment, although by that point I had almost grown used to my idle state. Almost. Who would have ever thought that I would yearn for a pair of socks to darn?

I got up to open the door, then stood there, astonished. For the man standing before me was not Master Merryk, but Lord Greymount himself, with the dogs Doxen and Linsi nosing about in the corridor behind him.

“Good morning,” he said pleasantly, as if that terrible scene between us had never occurred. “How are you today, Mistress Sendris?”

I bobbed probably the most inelegant curtsey he had ever seen, while at the same time a furious flush heated my cheeks. “I — I am quite well, your lordship.”

“Excellent. Master Merryk tells me that my dogs have taken quite a liking to you. I thought it rather selfish to deprive them of your company.”

Was that his oblique way of saying that he himself could have done very well without seeing me? I slanted a brief look up at him, but his expression was bland, betraying nothing. Whatever had caused his fury of the afternoon before, it seemed to have disappeared now. The sudden alteration in his behavior discomfited me, but I knew better than to let Phelan Gremount see how confused I was by his appearance at my door.

“They are very lovely dogs, my lord,” I said, and that was true enough. “I should be glad to better acquainted with them.”

“Then call them to you,” he told me, a slight curl at the corner of his mouth, as if he did not quite expect them to come at my command.

I was far from certain, either, but I told myself the worst that would happen was that they would ignore me, and perhaps Lord Greymount would have a chuckle at my expense. Well, I had suffered worse.

“Linsi, Doxen!” I called, leaning down slightly with my palms pressed against my skirts.

At once they left off smelling a particularly intriguing patch on the floor and trotted over, then sat down next to me. Both dogs looked up at once, clearly imploring me to scratch their ears again.

Which I did, even as I attempted to keep a smile of triumph from my lips.

“That is rather extraordinary,” his lordship commented, watching the spectacle.

“How so? They seem like very friendly dogs.”

“To you, perhaps.” He crossed his arms. “But they are
fenskar,
dogs descended from the great white wolves of the north. They are fiercely loyal — but to one master only.”

“They seem to tolerate Master Merryk well enough.” I straightened so I could look up at him and not down at the dogs. They both whined gently, and Linsi appeared as if she wanted to scratch at my velvet skirts and then thought better of it.

“‘Tolerate’ being the relevant word here. They will go with him because I have trained them to obey his commands, but if any other member of the household should go near them without my permission — well, the outcome would not be pleasant.”

I had a brief vision of the scarred man-at-arms having the seat of his trousers torn out by an angry Linsi, and had to fight to keep a smile from my lips. Of course I would never wish harm on another person, but a little embarrassment? That did not seem very terrible.

“So you see,” Lord Greymount went on, “that is why I am rather astonished by their reaction to you. And since they must find it dull to be around me all the time, I thought it might be a treat for them to spend some time with you.”

“Dull” was not usually a word I would associate with Phelan Greymount’s company. Even now, though I was still rather off-balance from our last interaction, I couldn’t prevent myself from taking in every detail of his appearance that I could — the way his sooty hair brushed against the collar of his doublet, the thin, finely cut lines of his mouth.

And that, I knew was foolish. I should not be admiring him. He was the lord of these lands, not some handsome apprentice I might find it amusing to flirt with. Not that Kerolton had all that many apprentices, handsome or otherwise.

“And you must find it tedious to be trapped in here, day after day. Let me show you something of the castle.”

“I — I would like that, my lord,” I said. At the same time, I hoped the tour he had planned would be confined to the upper levels. I had no great wish to see the scar-faced man-at-arms any time soon.

As if he would dare to act in such a way in his lord’s presence,
I scoffed at myself.
No, he would be on his very best behavior, I think.

Most likely. Still, it never hurt to avoid a confrontation when possible.

“This way, then,” Lord Greymount said, and headed off down the hallway.

I told myself I should be glad he had not offered me his arm, for I would not have known whether to accept it. At any rate, the dogs had decided to range back and forth between the two of us, sometimes close on his lordship’s heels, and sometimes nearly stepping on the train of my dress, and it would have been difficult to walk arm in arm.

“The castle was built some two centuries ago,” he told me with an absent wave of one arm. “By my great-great- — well, a great many ‘greats’ ago, I suppose. It has withstood fire and flood and siege, although I do find myself somewhat concerned by what this storm might wreak. Already the roof in one of the towers has given way under the weight of the snow.”

“Oh, no!” I exclaimed, while at the same time finding myself glad that I had not been housed in one of those tower rooms.

A faint smile. “Oh, yes.” But then he gave a negligent lift of his shoulders and said, “It is more a nuisance than anything else, as we were only using that tower for storage. However, we will still need to effect repairs at some point — if the storm ever lets up, that is.”

“It must eventually.”

Lord Greymount stopped then and turned toward me while wearing a smile that hovered somewhere between teasing and malicious. “Oh, eventually, I would suppose. But in my grandfather’s time, there was a storm that lasted for thirty days and thirty nights, and they were reduced to eating the rats.”

“The rats?” I could feel my eyes widening, even though I had the impression that he was telling a tall tale to force a reaction from me. “Why, I have seen no evidence of rats in Harrow Hall. It seems a very tidy place.”

My reply only made his mouth twitch, even as the smile disappeared. “I will send your praise on to Master Merryk. No doubt he will be gratified that you find his housekeeping adequate. But I do not think we have much to fear. The castle is well-stocked, and although this storm is fierce enough, I misdoubt that it will range for another twenty-five days.”

Which meant I’d already been trapped here for five days. I had thought the count lay somewhere in that vicinity, but truly, time already felt as if it had begun to run together, one day overlapping the next with no real distinction between them.

Five days. Everyone must think me dead by now. And how had my grandmother fared in this storm, out in her cottage all by herself? True, the supplies we had laid by would last twice as long, for she would only have to worry about feeding herself. Even so, they would run out eventually.

Something in Lord Greymount’s expression shifted then. When he spoke, it was in a much gentler tone. “What is it, Mistress Sendris?”

“Oh,” I said, and lifted a hand, as if to wave away my fears. “It is only that I was thinking of my grandmother, all alone in her cottage. She has no way of knowing that I am well, and while the cottage has a new roof and we had a good supply of food, it cannot last forever.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Indeed, at first I thought he’d intended to step toward me, to perhaps offer some comfort. But no, that was a foolish notion. My sorrows must be of very little concern to him.

And if he had reached out to pat me on the arm, or made some other gesture, what on earth would I have done? The mere thought of him touching me again made a strange thrill go down my back.

Then he said, his voice a little too hearty, “I am sure she is faring much better than you fear. And I doubt very much that this storm will last the week. Soon enough we will be able to send word that you are well, even if it will not be safe for you to venture forth at that point.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I inquired. Linsi came up and pressed her cold nose against my fingers, and I gave her ears a scratch as I waited for Lord Greymount’s reply.

“Have you ever walked through six-foot snow drifts, Mistress Sendris?”

“Not through them, no,” I confessed. “But on top of them, yes. My grandfather had a pair of stout snowshoes, and he taught me how to use them when I was only a child. Do you not have such contrivances here at Harrow Hall?”

At those words, his lordship let out a laugh. Doxen, who’d settled himself at his feet while we paused to have our conversation, looked up, cocking his head to one side.

“Why, yes, we do, Mistress Sendris. After a storm such as this, it is the only way to get around, for even the horses are unable to venture forth. But I must confess that I would never have expected a young woman such as yourself to know how to use them.”

“Well, perhaps when the storm subsides, we can snowshoe together, my lord.”

He smiled — no, grinned — and shook his head. “Perhaps. In the meantime, let us press on.”

As soon as we began to move, the dogs fell into place beside us. I thought how companionable that was, with Lord Greymount on my left and the dogs on either side, almost as if they knew something we didn’t.

Again I wanted to shake my head at my overactive imagination. As he’d told me himself, he was only taking me on this expedition so the dogs might have some occupation beyond sleeping at his feet. To infer anything else from his behavior was quite ludicrous. All the same, it did feel quite grand to be walking at Phelan Greymount’s side, almost as if we were equals, rather than master and supplicant.

We came to a door at the end of the hallway. I assumed the chamber which lay beyond that door was our destination, an assumption proved correct when he led me inside, saying, “Forgive me for not thinking of this earlier. It might have helped to pass the time for you.”

I looked around and saw that I stood in a large room with a fine, tall window cut into the wall opposite the door. The view it afforded — which now was no more than the same blowing white I’d seen for the past five days — was probably not the reason why his lordship had brought me here, however. The other three walls were covered in shelves, and on those shelves sat a multitude of books. Tall books, short books, thin books, plump ones that practically begged to be held in your lap while you sat in bed.

Words quite failed me. I truly hadn’t expected such riches to be concealed within the castle’s walls, for although I had heard that an enterprising man in Sirlende had somehow invented a device that could print many books at once, rather than having a scribe labor over one for hours and hours, still they were costly things, worth almost their weight in gold.

Apparently discomfited by my awestruck silence, Lord Greymount sent me a piercing look. “Can you read?”

“Of course I can read!” I retorted, my tone sharper than I had intended.

“Forgive me, but that is not always a foregone conclusion with someone — ” He paused then, as if realizing he’d been about to say something that might offend me.

The damage was done, however. I crossed my arms and tilted my chin up at him. “Someone of my station?”

“Well…yes.”

Although I knew it was foolish for me to be vexed, I couldn’t quite smother the flame of anger that burned somewhere deep in my breast. “I can read quite well, Lord Greymount,” I said, not bothering to keep the irritation from my tone. “I must confess that I don’t often have the leisure to do so, but — ”

He held up a hand. “That will do, Mistress Sendris.” A pause, during which he sent me a piercing look. “Do you mind if I ask you a question of a rather personal nature?”

That request sounded daunting. Nevertheless, I responded, as calmly as I could, “Not at all, my lord.”

Even though I had granted him the permission to make the inquiry, he didn’t speak at first, but rather went over to one of the bookshelves and ran a finger over the spines of the books that sat there. Doxen and Linsi gave him a questioning look, then seemed to decide he was not in the mood for ear scratching or other activities of interest to a dog, and lay down, their snouts almost touching. Despite my worry over what Lord Greymount was about to ask, I couldn’t help smiling slightly.

Then his lordship turned back toward me. “I noted when we first spoke that you didn’t sound much like a common villager, Mistress Sendris.”

“Indeed? Then my grandmother would say her work was done.”

His brows pulled together in obvious puzzlement at my response.

Relenting, I went on, “It is not that strange a story, my lord. My grandmother is not from Kerolton. Rather, she is the youngest daughter of a tin merchant from the mining town of Karthels, in the Ozar Hills.”

“Then she is quite a long way from home, is she not?”

True enough. Karthels lay nearly thirty leagues from the village that had been my only home. I had never seen it, and when I tried to get my grandmother to tell me more of the town where she was born, she’d only shaken her head and said there was not much to tell, that mining towns were never known for their beauty and that she much preferred the forests of Sarisfell.