Love Everlasting (26 page)

The last thing he wanted was to care for a
second wife, who also might be stolen from him. He told himself yet
again that the safest place for Julianna was Wortham Castle, with
Michael to watch over her while Royce stayed well away, kept at
court by his duties to King Henry.

Perhaps, in time, he’d forget the
blood-chilling horror of seeing Julianna clinging to a chunk of
carved wood as she dangled high above the great hall. Even more
frightening to Royce than that sight was the unthinking compulsion
that flattened him onto the gallery floor and made him reach for
her, knowing he must haul her back so he could hold her in his arms
once more.

And then, when he had her safe, he’d been so
enraged at Kenric for nearly killing her, at himself for his scheme
to prove her loyalty that had left her open to Kenric’s
machinations, and at Julianna herself for the brave act that had
almost resulted in her death, that he’d been unable to do aught but
seize physical possession of her. Having more than once in his
career been in imminent danger of his own life and having
experienced the reaction to that danger, he had understood
Julianna’s willingness for his embrace, her eagerness to assure
herself that she was still alive, with her blood pumping furiously
through her veins.

Only after the passion and the rage were
spent did he fully realize what a hold she held over him, and he’d
told himself he had no choice but to send her away. He could not -
would not! - allow himself to care for her.

The realization of her love for Royce stunned
Julianna. She didn’t know what love was, had never experienced it,
never expected to feel it. Yet there it was, a flaming sword that
seared her heart and soul and left her breathless - and left her in
no doubt as to what the emotion was.

It was yet another burden, one more guilty
secret that she could not confess to Royce. He did not care for
Julianna. He loved the memory of his dead wife, and that would
never change. Everyone who knew him said so. Even Janet, who was
Julianna’s friend, said he’d loved Avisa with utter devotion and
complete faithfulness.

As Julianna saw her situation, she had no
choice at the moment. Noblewomen seldom did have a choice. Only a
very few ladies, like Janet, dared to oppose the dictates of men.
Whenever Julianna had attempted to fight her father or her two
previous husbands, she’d been severely punished. She didn’t think
Royce would beat her, but she had seen how cold and hard he could
be, and she did not want them to part with yet more anger between
them. For part they must. She would obey her husband’s command and
travel to Wortham, where she’d try to be the best possible
chatelaine.

She drew courage from the secret hope that
lay buried deep in her heart, where the memory of their passionate
nights together offered a promise that some day he would want her
again. He carried the same memories, though doubtless they did not
mean as much to him as they did to her. Still, he would have to
visit Wortham sometime. Or an occasion would arise when he’d have
to bid her return to court. When the time came, she would be ready.
She’d seize the opportunity to prove to him that they could build a
life together.

Her packing completed, she found Janet and
the children and made her farewells. With Sybilla and Alexander she
was bright and cheerful, making the journey to Wortham sound like a
great adventure and promising to visit them at Hatherford Castle as
soon as she could. When she was alone with Janet, she could express
her true feelings a bit more freely.

“Royce is far from being a fool,” Janet
declared, “but he is acting like one right now. Men! They can be
worse than naughty little boys.”

Her friend’s indignation left Julianna
laughing through her tears.

An hour later, with grave courtesy she
endured her audience with King Henry and Queen Adelicia, accepting
their expressions of gratitude for her actions in the queen’s
behalf.

Royce was present. He stood beside her,
saying not a single personal word to her. He was scrupulously
polite and rigidly formal and, so far as she could tell, completely
indifferent to her pain.

He did not come to her that night. She’d
known he wouldn’t. He didn’t believe that she hadn’t known what
Marie and Kenric were planning. Royce thought he was finished with
his wife. Julianna knew he was wrong.

At their leavetaking the next morning he was
polite and formal again. Their parting words were spoken before the
king and at least a dozen curious courtiers. Royce’s lips on her
cheek were an icy benediction, as cold as his eyes and his heart.
She turned away from him before she could forget her fine
resolutions and create an unpleasant scene. She did not look back
at him as she rode out of the castle gate and away from Norwich.
Unwanted and unloved though she was, still she had her pride.

With a peculiar tightening around his chest,
Royce watched her ride away. He told himself for at least the
twentieth time that Julianna would be safer at Wortham, and that
her absence would make his work easier.

Almost immediately, he began to receive
subtle hints, and some not so subtle, from a few noblewomen that
he’d be welcome in their beds. He refused them all, politely but
firmly, and slept alone. Completely alone. In a cold bed, where the
mattress seemed suddenly to have developed a great many
uncomfortable lumps that made actual sleep nearly impossible.

Each morning he rose from his lonely bed with
sandy eyes and a hollow ache in his heart, which he tried to ignore
while he made plans and listened to the latest reports from his
agents. No one could find any trace of Kenric, a fact that
convinced Royce he was heading north to meet the noblemen who were
rumored to be fomenting trouble in an always fractious area.

“If I find Kenric, I’ll feed him a story
about your bitter frustration,” Dunstan promised during one of
their infrequent meetings on the battlements. “Kenric will happily
believe he has outfoxed you.

“Now, see here, my lord,” Dunstan suddenly
sputtered, sounding angry, “I wish you would keep your distance
from me. I grow weary of your nasty and repeated insinuations
against my honor.”

“Do you, indeed?” Royce snarled. He, too, had
noticed the squire lurking a short distance away. Spinning around,
Royce caught the young man by one shoulder. “Is this one of your
spies, Lord Dunstan?”

“Not mine,” Dunstan answered. “I thought he
was one of your spies.”

“My lords,” the squire cried, “I am not
spying. With your permission, I’ll leave you now. I don’t want to
interfere.”

Released from Royce’s tight hold, the squire
hurried through a door that opened upon stairs leading to the lower
levels. Royce peered through the door for a moment before he closed
it.

“He’s gone, most likely to inform his master
about what befell him up here,” Royce said, turning back to
Dunstan. “You do realize, my lord, that our false quarrel is the
only entertainment I enjoy these days.”

“Perhaps our quarrel has gone far enough,”
Dunstan suggested. “We don’t want to overdo it and alert anyone. I
think we have provided sufficient excuse for me to leave court by
the end of next week.”

“You may be right.” Royce took a long breath
of icy air. “Let’s keep our distance from each other, as if we
cannot stand to be in the same space. If I need to tell you
anything, I’ll send word by Timothy.”

“Agreed. I know your squire by sight, so I
won’t mistake him.” Dunstan then took a liberty that brought him
dangerously close to a real quarrel with his friend. “You’ll soon
be desperate for entertainment when I am gone. Perhaps you should
have kept your wife at court.”

Royce made a fist, but before he could hit
Dunstan, the man had followed the squire through the door and down
the steps.

Royce smashed his fist against the wooden
door instead of into Dunstan’s jaw.

Then he went perfectly still, staring at his
scraped knuckles and knowing he had to get better control over his
emotions. Self-control had never been a problem for him before.

Before Julianna.

Royce stayed where he was, growing colder and
colder as the winter wind blew across the battlements and sleet
dampened his hair and his face. Perhaps, if he remained there long
enough, the cold would penetrate his heart and he’d stop feeling
anything at all.

Throughout the journey to Wortham the weather
was dreadful. At first Julianna and her companions rode through
days of icy rain. Later, as they moved inland and farther north,
snowstorms slowed them. Several times they were forced to halt
altogether so the baggage carts could be dug out of deep drifts.
The torturous journey lasted almost three weeks and by the time
they finally reached Wortham, Julianna was heartily sick of riding
for long hours each day and of sleeping in unfamiliar beds in abbey
guest houses, or in the women’s quarters in castles and manor
houses that too often were cold and dirty.

Wortham Castle, which she first saw through a
veil of late January snow, looked to be anything but a haven for
her aching heart and damaged pride. To her, it seemed more like a
ghostly prison. Set on a slight rise with wide meadows all around
it and a half-frozen river meandering nearby, the whitewashed stone
walls rose so high that Julianna was sure the huge bastion was
utterly impregnable...and unescapable.

The road to the castle ran straight through
Wortham Village, a cluster of well-kept houses and barns that
Julianna scarcely noticed because her attention was fully fixed
upon the open gate a short distance ahead. With only a shouted
greeting to the guards at the gatehouse, they clattered across the
drawbridge and entered the outer bailey.

“Cadwallon! Welcome back.” A plain-faced
knight who looked to be in his mid thirties hurried toward the
riders, one hand extended in greeting. “And Michael, it’s good to
see you again. Where is Royce? Is he following you?”

“Royce is delayed at court,” Cadwallon
answered. “He asked us to escort his new wife home. This is Lady
Julianna of Louvain,” he finished with a supremely graceful gesture
of one big hand.

“Royce’s wife?” The knight’s face went blank
with surprise. He stared at Julianna for a long moment. Then,
recalling his manners, he lifted his arms to help her dismount.
“Forgive my momentary rudeness, my lady. I am Sir William, Royce’s
seneschal, and I cannot tell you how glad I am to meet you. My own
wife will be even more happy. You must be cold and weary. Come
inside and warm yourself. The keep is this way. The squires will
see to your horses, and the servants will attend to your baggage.
Will you want a hot bath? Yes, of course, you will.”

The seneschal kept talking, which was a
relief to Julianna. So long as he was speaking she wasn’t obliged
to say anything. She let his words flow over her like a warm and
welcoming stream until they reached the great hall. There she
halted in dismay.

The hall was large and beautifully
proportioned. Fine tapestries hung from the walls and, beneath the
tapestries, gold vessels sat upon carved wooden storage chests.
Several branched candelabra held thick wax candles to light the
place.

But the richness of Royce’s chief residence
was obscured by dust and clutter, the air was befouled by scraps of
food and rancid rushes on the stone floor and by the smell of damp,
smokey firewood. A few overturned benches showed where men-at-arms
or squires had arisen hastily and no one had bothered to set the
furniture upright again.

Knowing how fastidious Royce was, Julianna
could scarcely believe what she was seeing. Surely, Royce would
never live like this. She turned to Cadwallon and saw him shaking
his head in unconcealed disgust.

“Alice!” Sir William shouted. “Where are you,
wife? We have a guest. Oh, no, not a guest. Our lady has come home.
Bid the cook prepare a feast. Alice?”

“She’s not here, my lord,” said one of the
squires, hastening forward. “The twins are sick again. Lady Alice
is in the nursery.”

“Please don’t bother her,” Julianna said
quickly. After noting the condition of the great hall, she wasn’t
sure she wanted to meet Lady Alice at all. “It would be unkind to
take a mother away from her sick children. Sir William, I assume
the twins are hers and yours?”

“They are teething,” the seneschal explained.
“Both of them at the same time.”

“That seems likely, if they are twins,”
Julianna said, though the little she knew about children she had
learned while briefly tending to Cadwallon’s son and daughter. “I
assure you, Sir William, I will be content with cold meat, bread,
and cheese for my evening meal. The welcoming feast can wait until
tomorrow.”

“My lady, are you certain?” The seneschal’s
face displayed an odd mixture of relief and discomfort as he gazed
about the great hall, apparently seeing it for the first time as a
newcomer must, in all its dusty disorder.

“Don’t worry, William,” said Cadwallon,
clapping a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Lady Julianna won’t mind
a cold meal. She knows you weren’t expecting us. I suppose we
should have sent a messenger ahead to warn you, but the weather has
been so miserable that I feared a man traveling alone would be lost
to cold and ice and never found again.”

“That is certainly true,” Michael added.
“William, I trust my room hasn’t been disturbed since I left?”

“Of course not.” Sir William grinned
shamefacedly. “Not a man or woman in this castle would dare to
enter your quarters without permission.”

“Sir William,” Julianna said, realizing that
she’d have to be decisive in Lady Alice’s absence, “please order a
bath prepared in the lord’s chamber, and braziers lighted there for
warmth.”