Unbidden (The Evolution Series) (3 page)

Chapter Four

David stood in front of a weathered wood door, oblivious to the bustle of Aix-la-Chappelle around him
. Behind the door, inside what appeared to be a rather shabby rented house, waited his future wife. Theo had been unexpectedly detained at the palace, so David would have to manage alone what could be an awkward introduction. However, Theo had reassured him that the letter to Rochelle’s mother had been explicit in the reason for their being summoned to Aix. There should be no surprises. He would collect Rochelle and her mother, escort them to the palace, and become betrothed. That was the plan for today. He adjusted the scabbard hanging from his thick leather belt, then banged forcefully on the door.

N
o one answered.

He raised his hand to knock again when he heard faint shuffling
. The door grated open ever so slowly to reveal a man older than the earth, a wool cap pulled down tight over his head. Sharp blue eyes peered up at David.

Motion deeper in the room caught David’s attention
. It was a woman rising from a tipsy bench. “Ye are not Theophilus,” she stated.

“Correct,” he answered, guessing this was all the invitation he was going to get as he stepped inside
. He scanned the meager low-ceiling room, finding a few poor pieces of furniture the only other occupants besides the woman and the old man who now struggled to force the door shut. A narrow set of stairs climbed to a closed door at one end, presumably to a single sleeping room above. “I am David. From Bavaria. Theo —Theophilus — asked me to escort you to the palace.”

The woman
was short. The top of her head would barely reach his armpits, and blindingly red hair burst from beneath her veil. Her piercing green eyes were small, rimmed with bright red lashes and eyebrows against a pale, freckly complexion. She held her hands in a gentle clasp. His warrior’s eyes could see the tension she tried to hide. A quick guess at her age suggested she was the mother. And just as he studied her, she studied him. He wondered if she was disappointed to see a man plainly dressed, with simple brown hair, instead of a duplicate of Theo’s carefully tailored clothes and trimmed hair.

She nodded slightly to herself
, then glanced at the skeletal old man still waiting by the door. “Go to the kitchen, Gilbert.”

David swore he heard creaking in the man’s joints as he wobbled toward a crooked door at the back of the room.

The woman sank to her seat. She weakly waved to the chair across from her. “I am thinking ye are the one.”

David remained standing
. “I am. And you are?”

“I am Rochelle’s mother
. Marian is my name.”  Her accent distracted him. The dialect of Francia was familiar enough, partly because of his history with Theo, and partly because most of Louis’s subjects spoke one derivative or another of the old Roman language. Yes, he understood her easily, yet there was a lilt to her speech he couldn’t geographically place, perhaps related to the sketchy ancestry Theo had mentioned.

“You know of the emperor’s request?”  David asked.

“I know of his plans for Rochelle.”  She picked at the fine wool of her tunic. “Theophilus has been a blessing to me. I have never been to court and he has helped us so much in the last week. I think the emperor must have forgotten what I am in his need for loyal subjects in Francia.”

“What you are?”  A noise from upstairs caught his attention
. He swiveled to glance at the steps along the far wall and the single door at their apex.

“No time for that now,” Marian
whispered urgently. “Rochelle will be down! Oh, I wish Theophilus had come. Ye must get her to the emperor. Ye must make her agree to his demand.”

David looked at her in confusion
. “Are you saying Rochelle is resisting Louis’s decision?”

Marian avoided his eyes. “She may yet be a bit unclear on the specifics.”

David disliked her evasive manner. She skirted around the truth for her own reasons, about which he cared not a whit. “You have not told her Louis intends to see her betrothed today?”

The woman s
hifted as her hands fluttered together into a clasp again. “Oh dear. Not in so many words, no.”

David did not remember his own mother and had had very little interaction with any one else’s, but even his nearly nonexistent experience did not allow for such maternal neglect
. “Why on earth would you do this to her?”

“If I had told her the truth, I would never have gotten her here.”

Well, that put a different color to it. “Your daughter is willful enough to ignore the summons of her emperor?”

“Willful is a strong word,” Marian said, smiling at him unconvincingly
. His stony stare quickly broke her feigned cheerfulness. She looked down to study her clutched fingers. “She is not spoiled, if that is where yer thoughts be heading. It is just that…Rochelle has not been exposed to the outside world much. Her father and I failed her, I fear. In hindsight, at least, it seems we chose a path that was easier for us.”  The wooden latch on the upstairs door began to rattle. “But made her own way in life harder.”  She rose slowly, her hands gripped in a white-knuckled clench. “Perhaps. But she is a good lass. You will see.”  She nodded vigorously.

David turned his head as the noise from the door escalated, unsure what he expected to enter his life
. Given her mother’s shocking hair, he didn’t hold his hopes too high for the girl’s appearance, no matter what Theo said. The need for deception to even get her to Aix did not indicate a particularly biddable personality. Based on the increasingly violent rattling from the latch, she couldn’t even open doors for herself.

He was about to climb the steps to offer assistance when the door finally wrenched open, releasing a storm of muttering about city workmanship and rotten carpentry carried in a whirlwind of deep blue linen
. She all but flung herself onto the narrow staircase. Not exactly light of foot nor entirely graceful, she rushed down the stairs, noticing his presence in time to abruptly stop on the bottom step.

She stared at him
.

From across the room he could feel the chill of cold caution
. Even so, his concern about her looks evaporated. She stood taller than her mother, clear skinned, with eyes of a soft green. The gold circlet on her head held her veil neatly in place, covering what it was intended to cover. An unexpected desire to see the color of her hair shot through him. He could only approximate it from her eyebrows:  not quite brown, but certainly not red either. And her female attributes remained a mystery to him as well, hidden under layers of varying shades of blue, though a heavy gold girdle studded with aquamarines suggested narrow hips.

“Mother?” she queried
.

David reluctantly turned to Marian, who, it appeared, had been watching him stare at her daughter
. A small smile quirked her lips. Her tightly clasped hands now lay on her chest as if in prayer. She did not find her voice until David cleared his throat expectantly.

“Rochelle!” she said too loudly
. “Theophilus, the gentleman who has helped us so much, sent this burly young man to escort ye to yer audience with the emperor. He is called David. A Bavarian, no less!”

David raised his brow at her rather obtuse explanation of his
role in the upcoming event. Marian gave him a slight warning shake of her head. Well, if the woman hadn’t the courage to tell this girl the truth of the matter, he certainly did. He didn’t know much about getting along with women, but he guessed that starting his marriage with deception – and necessarily short-lived deception at that – could not be wise.

As he opened his mouth to explain exactly who he was, Rochelle spoke, “I do not see why I need an escort
. I found the palace yesterday.”  She lowered herself off the last step and strode toward him with a confident swing of her arms. “But if Theophilus wants to share his guard, so be it.”

Marian bobbed her head
. “It was quite thoughtful of him.”

David held up a hand
. “I am not Theo’s guard. And did you just suggest you were wandering about the city yesterday, alone?”

Rochelle studied him assessingly
. Yes, assessingly was the only word for it and, God help him, she was lovely up close. Her not brown, not red brows arched over green eyes flecked with hazel. A dusting of freckles decorated a thin nose that flared pertly at the nostrils. Her soft pink lips were slightly parted exposing straight teeth.

“Not alone
. Our servant, Gilbert, was with me.” 

“Gilbert, the bag of bones who opened the door?” David scoffed
. “He could not keep a street rat away much less a pack of thieves. From this day forth, you will not leave here without an able-bodied man at your side.”  She smelled nice.

Rochelle placed her hands on her hips, pleasantly outlining a slim waist beneath her clothing. “What has given you the idea you can make pronouncements such as that to me?  I will go where I wish, when I wish, escorted or not, as I wish!”  Her chest heaved a bit and there were breasts under that tunic, he could tell, and damn it when was the last time he’d lain with a woman?  He mentally bridled himself
. First, betrothal. Betrothal was the task set before him today. It was time to attend to that task.

He stepped forward, purposely crowding her and letting his hard gaze bore into her fiery eyes, daring her to challenge him
. “I will tell you what gives me the right –“

Marian made a strangled sound before finding her words. “Ye should be going!  It will not do to be late to the palace.”

Rochelle eyed first him, then Marian, before backing away to grasp her mother’s hands. “Mother, I do wish you would reconsider. Certainly the nobles have forgotten your circumstances by now. Father would want you to have the honor of meeting Charlemagne’s son.”

Marian laughed a bit shrilly
. “No, that is no place for me. Ye shall have the glory today, daughter. Here is your cloak.”  She kept babbling as she closed the gold and aquamarine clasp at the neckline of the pale blue garment. “David will keep you safe. Do as he says, my dear. He is in charge of you today. And possibly tomorrow.”

Rochelle chortled
. “Mother, do not be ridiculous. This will be over in an hour or two and then we are going home!  Home, where I also do not require an escort!”  She fixed David with a significant look before she walked to the door, wrenched it open with relative ease, and stepped onto the street without him.

Escort, indeed!

Rochelle turned quickly to the right as she left the house, then nearly toppled backward when that man
— that Bavarian! — grasped her elbow and tried to force her in the wrong direction. “Unhand me,” she barked.

“You are going the wrong way,” he answered calmly, his fingers slipping away nonetheless.

“I am most certainly not. I determined this path just yesterday. Five streets up, then two across, then ten in the other direction.”

“Or five back this way.”  He jerked his thumb over a shoulder.

Her role on the estate gave her vast experience in appraising men. This one was entirely unnerving, and nothing like the other men Theo had sent to escort them from Alda to Aix. This Bavarian’s brown eyes had locked on her earlier with an intent curiosity, the source of which she did not recognize, followed by a direct challenge in his stare, and now he observed her with amusement, the arrogant sod. Each unsettling look implied an interest in her that extended beyond this afternoon’s brief visit to the palace. Why else would he even be half as interested?

He exuded confidence, self-control, and power. His clothing differed from what she’d seen in the city thus far
. No silly hats to cover his wavy brown hair. No vivid colors or flashing gems. A thick gold clasp held his simple brown cloak of fine wool. A cream linen tunic hung to his thighs, cinched at the waist with a hide belt carrying two worn leather scabbards that contained blades, one at least double the size of her little eating dagger and the other ten times the size!  His legs were covered with brown wool braies and soft leather boots that rose over his ankles. All well made and of the finest materials, but simple. It forced one to examine the man instead of the wrappings. And such a man. Even though she’d already decided not to like him, she had to admire the way God had put him together.

He spoke
. “Can we begin walking?  We are in danger of being late.”

She sniffed, unembarrassed at being caught in the midst of evaluating him
. She’d learned to take her time when faced with a new person or situation. “Of course. Perhaps I have gotten a bit turned around,” she said. She let him take her elbow again to guide her through the crowded streets and was not too proud to admit her relief, at least to herself. She knew her own estate backwards and forwards but found Aix-la-Chapelle completely overwhelming. She’d never dreamed there were so many people on the whole earth, much less in one city. Streets seemed to converge every few steps, and there were obstacles everywhere, everything with it’s own disgusting stench and cacophony of noise. Garbage and carts and street vendors and gutters of liquid in which she wouldn’t let her pigs wallow. Alda was a sweet-smelling paradise compared to Aix.