My True Love (7 page)

Ian frowned down at her, his stance watchful. As if he were on sentry duty and she was an approaching shadow.

“Was it worth Hannah being injured and Douglas lost?” he asked, when she said nothing.

He was not, in that moment, unlike the boy who’d taunted her. He did not spare his words in case he might cause her hurt.

If he’d asked her the moment they’d arrived at Harrington Court, she might have confessed to her confusion. There was no castle, and the man who’d come to their rescue in the meadow was a forbidding stranger.

It was only later, when she’d held Stephen, that she’d felt that sense of connection to him. That man, adrift in pain and fevered, had been more like the one she’d known. As if illness had stripped him of a shell he had worn, revealing the true man beneath.

“Does it have anything to do with him?” A glance back at the house made Ian’s meaning clear enough. Anne was surprised at the question, at the insight it revealed. “You haunt the hallway outside his door, Anne, as if you cannot bear to be away from him even in sleep. Even when Hannah sends you from her room, you do not stray far from the house.”

She could feel her cheeks warm.

“Do you think yourself invisible? I am not the first who has noticed it.”

“But you are the only one who finds it necessary to comment upon it.”

She frowned up at him, willing him to go away. It was not in her nature to be rude, but at that moment she wished to be. She wanted to silence him. He spoke of things he did not understand. But she would not make it more clear to him.

“The sooner we are gone from here, the better, Anne,” Ian said curtly.

She watched him as he walked away. And felt a guilty pleasure in his departure.

Chapter 5

H
annah sat in a chair beside her, eyes closed. But when a knock sounded on the door, she readily answered it. She feigned sleep, but was as alert as a magpie. Anne didn’t bother hiding her smile.

The maid bustled into the room with Hannah’s morning tray. Something Hannah heartily disliked, being waited on with such assiduousness. But in this she was a captive. She could barely move due to the soreness of her ribs. Rest was the very best thing for her. A fact that even she recognized, although she would have denied it had she been asked.

“Place the tray on the table first, Muriel.” Betty stood in the doorway, hands folded at her waist. She looked around the room with the proprietary air of any goodwife. Did the windows need washing, the pewter polishing, the brass shining? She frowned at the fireplace, looked swiftly at the floor. Anne knew that as soon as Muriel left the room, she would be given orders to sweep both.

Anne looked up at Betty’s entrance and returned the housekeeper’s smile. Her first sight of Betty had been when she was eight. Back then, she’d appeared a tall woman with large hands. But to a child all adults are tall. Now she appeared only of average height.

She felt a fondness for the housekeeper and thought that it might be reciprocated. A bond had been forged between them the night she’d knelt at Stephen’s side. A conspiracy of care.

Amidst the clink of china and Hannah’s and Muriel’s voices, she asked the question she had asked every morning for a week.

“The earl? He is well?”

Every day Betty brought her word of his progress. “The physician says he is healing and such sleep is good for him” had been the message for three agonizingly long days. The news had gradually improved. Two days ago his fever had broken. Yesterday he had insisted upon getting out of bed.

Today, however, she answered Anne’s question with a smile. “He is up and dressed. Insisted upon it,” she said. “He looks much his usual self,” Betty said. “Although a little more pale and somewhat thinner.”

Relief flooded through Anne so quickly and fiercely that she felt almost lightheaded from it.

“I feel it is a bad sign, indeed, Muriel, when your mistress and Anne are deep in conversation,” Hannah said, eyeing them both with some disfavor. “Either you are to be punished, or I am to be starved.” She poked at the toast on her tray. “A plan that looks to have already begun.”

“You will frighten Muriel, Hannah,” Anne said, looking over at her. She smiled at the maid. “I can tell you that she does not mean half of what she says.”

“I do not?” There was a frown on Hannah’s face.

“No,” Anne said. “I think you are being quarrelsome simply to see what kind of reaction you can get.”

“I am not,” Hannah protested. “I am simply tired of this room and tired of remaining in it.”

“Then I will ask the physician to see if you cannot at least begin to walk tomorrow. Would you like that?”

She slitted her eyes at Anne. “I am not a cat to be coaxed to purr, Anne. And I am capable of asking him questions on my own.”

“If you were a cat,” Anne said, feeling absurdly cheerful, “then I would simply rub you between the ears.” Hannah’s lips twitched. “He has promised to pay you a visit this afternoon. Ask him then,” Anne said, daring her.

“He is a pompous know-it-all,” Hannah said.

Anne said nothing, but her smile broadened. Prior to every visit from Richard Maning, Hannah had insisted her hair be brushed and her face washed.

Hannah eyed her as if she’d heard her thoughts or could divine them in her smile. “Go away, Anne. Go for a walk. Take the air.”

Betty caught her look and smiled. “I’ll ask my husband to set up a stool and a table in the garden. You might wish to sit and draw there.”

Anne looked over at Hannah, torn. She would have dearly loved to spend a few hours outside, instead of the few minutes she allotted herself each morning.

Betty’s hands were folded at her waist, her head tilted, a bit like an inquisitive bird. “I’ll be within hearing distance of the bell,” she said.

It was, in the end, too tempting to be gone from this room, to sit in the garden for a little while. Anne nodded, capitulating.

“See? We all agree,” Hannah said. “It is your mood that needs improving. Not my own. I am a thoroughly pleasant individual. A truly amiable soul,” she said, turning to Muriel. The young maid looked somewhat stunned by such sweet-tempered attention, Anne thought, as she left the room.

The knot garden was imposing from above, but almost overpowering up close. Instead of the intricate designs cut into the hedges, all that was truly visible was their size. She felt as if she were trapped in a maze, one created for giants. With relief, Anne found herself in a smaller place, a garden with its beds mulched and readied for the first blossoms of spring.

Betty’s husband turned out to be a short, wizened man with a face filled with wrinkles and the most charming smile she’d ever seen. He reminded her of what a gnome might look like if he’d been transported to the surface of the earth and instructed to marry and live among humans.

“Did Betty send you out, then?” His blue eyes twinkled at her. “I’m Ned,” he said, nodding back at her. “Been married to the woman since Adam was a boy. Know her right enough I do. She’s a great one for the freshness of the air.” He smiled once again, then turned his attention to placing the table where she wished. With a wave he disap peared behind the knot garden, gnomelike.

She sat on the stool Ned had provided and laid the drawing board down on the table. The board had been a present from her father on her eleventh birthday. Its surface was only about a foot square, making it easy to carry. It had been constructed to act primarily as a slate. The wood had been bleached until it was nearly white, then oiled until it shined. Such a surface allowed her to practice a sketch with charcoal. When she was finished, she needed only to wipe it clean. Two knobs at the top held paper when she was ready to render her sketches onto a more permanent surface.

She removed the drawings she’d started from the pocket of her cape. Unlike her father’s mapmaker, she didn’t so much as draw what she saw as much as feel it. An explanation that might have amused the man.

People rarely sat still long enough for her to sketch them. Dunniwerth was a busy place, with most of its inhabitants given duties to perform. Therefore, a glimpse might be all she had of a face or a smile. She learned to store an expression away in her memory, to be unearthed when there was time. The emotion a smile carried or a laughing pair of eyes was more important to her than color.

Perhaps it was because her work was done in monochrome. Shades of gray and white and black. One day she hoped to work in colors, to take the knowledge of what she’d learned from shadow and transform it into a painting that might last for a hundred years. Instead of a sketch that lasted only a few.

She began to work on her drawing. Such occu pation eased her, hid all of her worries and fears. The past week had been an unbearable one. Constrained by propriety, by the cordon of servants that stood between them, and perhaps his own wishes, she’d been unable to help nurse Stephen. But the wish was there, and the wanting, too.

She’d had to be content with hearing of his recovery from Betty’s daily reports.

Would she see him soon? Another concern that was supplanted by her work. Too many questions, not enough answers. But then, Stephen had always been a mystery. At least now, she knew he was real.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Richard scowled at him from the doorway.

Stephen handed the two lists to William.

“My duty,” he said shortly. “Give the list of foodstuffs to Betty,” he told William, his young aide. “Tell her I understand that we are short on supplies. What she needs can be obtained from the village.”

He had already sent out scouts to find General Penroth’s location. The general’s proximity concerned him. He disliked the idea of the Parliamentarians being this close to his home. Should Penroth wish to fight him, he was woefully unprepared. Sixty men against six thousand were not odds he would choose.

William nodded. He was the son of the mayor of Langlinais, had been with Stephen since Edge-hill. He had been, like so many of the regiment, untried in war. But unlike most, William was suited for it. It was rumored that Oliver Cromwell pos sessed the same type of instinctive military nature.

“You’ve barely recovered.”

“But I have,” Stephen said, standing. His left arm was bent and bound to his chest, a position it would retain until his wound healed.

“You would coddle me, Richard.”

His suite of rooms occupied the whole of the east wing. A commodious series of chambers. Enough space to raise a family if the rest of the house disintegrated around him.

He’d discovered in the last days, however, that it was not altogether a comfortable place. The bed was soft, the furnishings as elaborate as any in the house. The windows let in a soft light. The wall-coverings were in a soft hue, unlike the garish green parlor. There were enough touches to remind him that it was his chamber and therefore home. But it was too quiet and left too much time for thoughts he’d rather not have had.

In his study, he could at least be of some use. Time was fleeting, and he’d lost too much of it in illness.

“I want you well,” Richard argued.

Stephen smiled. “I am as well as I can be. The king will expect me.”

“Must you return? The war will get on well enough without you.”

“I’m not sure the king will. His commanders are quarrelling, and his advisors are idiots.”

“You sound more like a Parliamentarian than a Royalist,” Richard said. His look seemed to measure the effect of his words.

“You are not the first to have made that pronouncement.”

“Then why fight on the side of the king?”

“I am the Earl of Langlinais,” he said simply. “My home is six hundred years old. A kingdom at least as venerable as the king’s, if not divinely acquired. I can understand his wish to keep his intact.”

“So it is empathy that makes you fight?” Richard’s look was one of skepticism.

“Perhaps,” Stephen said.

“I’ve not your compassion,” Richard said. “But I can admire your loyalty, even though I think it misplaced.”

“A great many Englishmen feel as you do.”

“Why do I think you are one of them?”

Stephen said nothing. There was, after all, nothing he could say.

Richard studied him intently. “Have you grown that cautious in the past years?”

“It is better to remain silent at court, Richard. Words are often twisted, while silence can never be misinterpreted.”

“Then I do not envy the role you’ve chosen,” Richard said. An expression of emotion that surprised Stephen. “If you cannot put faith in your companions,” Richard said, “perhaps it is time to trust your enemies.”

He left the room before Stephen could answer. Another dilemma. What could he have said? There was too much truth to Richard’s words.

Stephen walked to the window, stood staring out at the panorama.

This morning an encroaching storm cast dismal colors over the landscape. The lowering clouds, were dark, almost black, swept across the sky by winds that bowed the branches of tall trees and fluttered through the thick grass. A monochromatic array of black and gray tinted the hills.

He loved his home. Loved it almost as much as he hated war. Yet its very existence would be threatened if he did not leave to fight for the king. A paradox he accepted even as he wished it were different.

The house echoed with life around him. Six men of his regiment were at Harrington Court. They were soldiers who had not come from Lange on Terne or the neighboring villages, or they had no place to stay with relatives.

It was an odd billet, his ancestral home. The floorboards creaked overhead, boots tapped against wooden floors in a strange tattoo. Water gurgled in the pipes from the cistern on the roof.

He’d learned from Betty that the supply of ale had been replenished twice. Plus two of the maids fancied themselves in love. He only hoped that the sentiments were returned and his men had not taken advantage of the young women employed at Harrington Court.

A motion caught his eye. He glanced below. Anne Sinclair sat in the garden, her head bent over her task, her cape fluttering in the breeze. What did she labor on so diligently? Why was she here? Where had she been going when the soldiers had waylaid her?