Domning, Denise (24 page)

She shook her head in frustration. "You are right, I do know better. But, Temric, his anger comes exploding out at me from deep inside him. Dear God, I could not live with the shame if he were to beat me before my own servants." Her last words were almost a sob.

"Nay, this is again something you need never fear from Rannulf."

"You might be right if it were anyone other than I at whom his anger is directed. When I should remain calm to soothe him, he says the one thing that drives away all my common sense and control. I find myself goading him, although I cannot explain why I do it. I thought if I were silent, he would come to care for me—so, I gritted my teeth and humbled myself—aye"—the word sprang from her in enraged anguish—"I have borne it all while it ate my stomach through to my spine. I do not know who I hate worse for it, him or myself."

"It has not been all silence." His calm, certain tone told her he knew they shared their bed as man and wife.

"Ilsa talks too much," she said darkly.

"I do not need old women to tell me what I can see in my brother's eyes."

"If that is what I must do to keep my home," her voice died away into the night.

"Now you are truly lying."

"Let me," she snapped back. "It does not hurt as much if I say it so."

There was a long, quiet moment broken only by the echo of music from the hall and the rustle of wild creatures moving within the garden. In that time, the moon lifted above the wall. Its pure light made silvery trace work from branch and bough.

Temric sighed, and she studied him. His harshness was gone or at least hidden for the soft illumination revealed only sadness. "I would have warned you, but I was loath to interfere in my brother's life. There'll be no peace for you here, at least not of the kind you knew at your convent. How you must regret what you have lost."

She hesitated to answer, for what she could not have from the church she'd found here. "Nay, I have no regrets." Then, suddenly, she straightened. "Do you say that my lord intends to send me back? Then you may tell him that I will fight him with every ounce of my strength. If I must stay locked in with my women for the remainder of my life, I'll not leave Graistan."

Temric's chuckle rumbled deep within his chest. "To the best of my knowledge, he has no such intentions. My brother needs your pride and your arrogance, not the quiet nothing you have shown him. If you had been a biddable child, he'd not have married you."

"You are wrong," she returned with firm certainty. "My father forced him to fulfill their contract. He accepted me only to avoid losing my inheritance."

"And I tell you, my brother went to Benfield that day to say he would not complete the deed despite the richness of your holdings. Do not forget that I was there as well and saw what you saw, but also what you did not see. Your father could never have forced Rannulf if my brother hadn't found something about you he could not refuse."

Rowena stared at him, as if she could pick the truth out from the white and black relief of his face. "Even if that is as you say," she replied quietly, "I fear your words have come too late to be of any help to me. I have held my anger too long and vented it too soon. I did not only accuse him of intending betrayal. I have also told him I want no more to do with him and have sworn to confine myself to the women's quarters."

To her utter astonishment, he laughed aloud. "Good work, my lady. First you show him your jealousy, then you remove yourself from his reach.

That'll tweak him right merrily. It looks as though you needed no help from me after all."

"How can you laugh," she said, a little irritated by his amusement. "You come to see why I stop trying, then laugh when I say I have not only quit fighting, but have also left the battlefield. You laugh when I have now lost all rights to the title 'Lady Graistan?"

He only smiled. "You have lost nothing. Of your rights to this keep, you took those in one masterful stroke on your first night here and will hold them as your own until you choose to release them. You know that. It is my brother you want. Do not shake your head at me, for only a blind man could not see it. If you had no place for him in your heart, Maeve's words would not have given you a moment's pause."

Stung into silence by his statement, she watched him straighten as if to signal the end of their unexpected conversation. "There has been an ocean of heartbreak here that has trapped us all in its chains until we believed we'd never again be free. Yet in you come and sweep most of it clean, as if it was no more to do than lift a spilled cup and wipe away the slop. You have opened the door for him, now Rannaulf must free himself."

"What happened here? What plays between Rannulf and Gilliam, and how is it Maeve has such a hold over them?" she asked softly, but his upraised hand forestalled any further question.

"Ask your husband. If you are the woman I think you are, he will tell you."

"It is too late," she whispered to herself.

"Not yet," he answered easily.

"So you say," Rowena sighed. Despite his words, she found no reason to hope. "But, I thank you for your friendship. Oftimes, I feel so alone. Until I came to Graistan my solitariness never pained me. Here, where there are so many who love me and I should feel accepted, the hole in my heart seems greater than ever."

"You, lonely? I am surprised," he said, sounding genuinely so. "You know who you are."

"Know who I am? What do you mean?"

"I mean that you are noble by class."

"What was peerage to do with loneliness or identity?" she returned in quiet confusion. "A title did not spare me from being an unwanted daughter, rejected by my mother simply because I was my father's spawn and only desired by my father as a weapon to use against her. Who am I now but the Lady Graistan, except that Lord Graistan will not acknowledge that that is who I am." She plucked a pink and held the bloom to her nose. Its warm, rich scent eased the throbbing in her head. "Identity has nothing to do with being common or noble nor should you judge it so."

"My apologies. It is an unfortunate habit of mine, since I am both and neither." His smile gleamed lopsidedly in the moonlight.

Rowena leaned forward a little to brace her elbows on her knees. "But, Rannulf loves you so. I cannot believe he would deny you if you asked him for your acknowledgment as the son of his father."

"Oh, he would give it to me, all of it, Graistan included. But it is not his to grant. If my father—" His voice went so flat and hard, he had to turn his face away from her for a moment to escape the pain he'd revealed.

"You are the elder," she said in understanding. If not for his bastard birth, he would have been Lord Graistan.

The man's tenseness drained away, she saw it in the steady drop of his shoulders. When he again faced her, she read resolve in his shadowy outline. "Well, I have pried ham-handedly into your deepest secrets. It is only just that I should grant you the same courtesy. Aye, I am the older by only months. My mother was Rannulf's nurse, for his mother was sickly and died giving him birth. But, do not think I have ever coveted him his birthright, for I have not."

"You would not care so for him if you did." And in speaking these words, she knew Temric was right. It was no title or building she fought for, she ached for what these brothers shared, the thing that touched every soul within this keep and of which she'd had so little in her life. Their love for each other was like the mortar that held Graistan's walls stone to stone. It created an unbreakable bond that even Maeve, for all her trying, had been unable to destroy. And suddenly she knew it was only her husband who could fill the hole in her heart, no other. And this he would never grant her for she, herself, had dealt her chances a deathblow.

"We were raised together, trained together, and would have been knighted together, had our father lived or so Rannulf insists." Temric spoke on even as her despair deepened.

"And you were not knighted?" It was with great cost that she kept her voice unemotional.

"Nay. We were nigh on eighteen when he died, and Rannulf, being so close to his majority and forward for his age, took his spurs along with his inheritance."

"There was nothing for you?" It seemed odd that a man who so loved his bastard child to raise him in the hall with his heir would forget him in his will.

"Why should there have been? I was not his legitimate son." Try as mightily as he did, he could not hide how it had hurt him and how it hurt him still. The harshness in his voice was not meant for her, and she knew it. He sighed, then stepped away from the tree. Even if she had not seen it, she would have known his expression was once again closed and hard. "Now, mayhap, you might do me a good turn, my lady."

"If I can, I will." It would be her only chance to repay him for his friendship. There'd be no further confidences between them, not this night and most probably ever again. It was not his way.

"My mother is recently widowed and has asked me to come to her. She and my stepfather were wool merchants and makers of parchments, and my half brothers are yet too young to be of great help to her. She claims to need my company, but what she really wants is my strong back for some time to come." He paused here, as if thinking on his mother's situation.

"You must leave Rannulf," she said in slow understanding, "and he does not suffer his family leaving him with much grace."

"You have put the problem in a nutshell, my lady. But, go I must. There are two sides to my family, and I cannot be torn down the middle, even to please him. I have promised her to be there before Midsummer and that is now just weeks away. Mayhap you can make him understand."

"Well, I cannot imagine I will have the chance, but I will try," she said, then rose to her feet.

"That is all I ask," he said, his sudden smile so like his brother's. "Now, let me see you back to the hall. You really should not wander about unescorted in the dark. These men of mine are a rowdy crew when they've had a drink or two too many."

Rowena smiled wanly as he offered her his hand. "I was not thinking when I left, or I would never have come this way, but you know that."

"So I do." He led her out of the garden and to the base of the outer stairs. "Now, go quickly. I will watch until you are safe within."

From his chair near the hearth, pushed well to the side and out of the way of the celebrants, Rannulf watched his wife reenter the hall. She wasted no time in crossing the room and nearly ran up the stairs. It was as if she could not wait to reach the women's quarters to be free from his grasp.

There was no cause for her to hurry. He wanted nothing more to do with her. He drained his cup, wishing he could as easily wash away his now bitter regrets. This marriage was an error of the gravest sort, and her wealth was his only compensation he'd ever gain from this union. Once he'd settled her inheritance, she could take up residence at Upwood and be out of his life.

Hours passed. The servants ended their amusements and pulled out pallets and benches to find their peace in sleep. Yet, he lingered on, unwilling to retire to the tower chamber that had been prepared for two and would now be occupied by one.

The summer night had begun its swift descent into dawn, and there was naught but embers on the hearth when Temric entered the room. Rannulf watched as his brother crossed the hall, stepping carefully over snoring bodies.

"What do you want," he asked sourly when he came near enough.

"So you've not been able to drink yourself into forgetfulness after all."

Lord Graistan made a sound that was only half laugh. "Unfortunately not, although I can no longer feel my feet. There's nothing strong enough to stop the ache in my head. Are you so solidly in her camp that you've come to taunt me?"

"Do not put me in the middle of your silly spat," his brother said mildly.

Rannulf made a low, angry noise. "Not so silly. She accused me of planning to betray John with Maeve."

"Did she? I didn't know she cared enough to worry over whom you bedded. I thought the two of you didn't speak."

He gave his brother a sharp look. "I doubt she was jealous over me. She has only two concerns— her pride and her coins. Anyway, I am sick to death of her vicious tongue. See what price I again pay for my foolish desire to own a pretty thing? I should have learned my lesson from the last time when it ended in disaster."

Temric stared down at him for a long moment, then shook his head almost sadly. "You cannot compare her to Isotte. They are cut from different cloths. Open your eyes, Rannulf. Will you destroy a fine wife in order to prove yourself cursed?"

Lord Graistan jerked as if the words had physically impacted with him. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak, Temric continued. "I came to give you this, not to discuss your marital problems. Oswald's man tapped at the postern only moments ago." He dropped the leather scrip into his brother's lap.

Rannulf dug into the packet and found the message, then squinted in the low light to make out the words. "Oswald," he said and laughed, "you devious fox." He glanced up at Temric. "Our cousin has whispered reminders into the bishop's ear of how wondrous the hunting is in our chase. The bishop, being extraordinarily fond of the sport, can be convinced to bide awhile here before he completes his return to Hereford. It will then be convenient for him to take this time to determine if the wills should be set aside and the inheritance reconsidered. I doubt it can hurt our cause if the hunting is as good as promised." He grinned widely. "I am to meet them where the river crosses the north road on the morrow to make a formal invitation.

"In the meanwhile, Graistan must be readied." He briefly studied the message once again. "The bishop presently travels with two knights, for whom only one must be provided with a bedchamber, besides Oswald and his master, of course. There are some twenty others, all of lesser consequence, servants or soldiers."

He came to his feet already eager to be gone. "Bear this message to my wife for me when she rises. She is to tear the purse strings from the purse and not to stint in the slightest thing. If we haven't enough in coin, she is to borrow what she needs. Tell her the bishop eats but once a day, but that meal must be rich with delicate sweets and soups to accompany his fish and fowl. And he requires wines of the finest quality."