Fairest Of Them All (16 page)

He was too awash in regret to hear Carey come rustling up the path from the river, a string of fish dangling from one hand. “I say, fellow, have you seen Sir Aus—” The fish flopped from his fingers to the grass. “Good God, man, what have you done?”

“Proved myself an utter clod,” Austyn replied absently, laying aside the misericorde and towel to rescue his tunic from a nearby rock. ‘Trampled my wife’s delicate heart into the dirt”

“And if s not even noontide yet But I was talking about the beard.” Carey wiped a missed streak of soap lather from Austyn’s cheek. “Why I’d forgotten how comely you were or I might have wed you myself!

Austyn cuffed him lightly on the chin. “My face was never good for naught but attracting the very sort of women I sought to avoid.”

Carey sighed wistfully. “Ah! Beautiful women. Exquisite feminine creatures with soft, creamy hands and lush, rosy lips eager to ...” He shook himself out of his reverie.

Austyn buckled a crimson surcoat over his tunic. “Now that I’ve a wife and am protected from such dangerous temptations, I thought it safe to shave.”

Carey snorted. “God pity fee harlot that incurs the wrath of your bride. The little minx would doubtlessly snatch her even balder than—” He lowered his eyes. “Sorry.”

Austyn picked up the memento he had carried next to his heart since that night in the moonlit garden, studying it with troubled eyes. “My wife is a most curious girl. She doesn’t seem the jealous sort Tis almost as if she doesn’t deem herself worthy of fidelity.” Still haunted by her fleeing image, he closed his hand, crushing the forgotten treasure heedlessly in his fist “When I told her my heart was pledged to another—”

“You told her such a thing? Have you lost your wits, man? Women despise candor.”

Austyn scowled. ‘To lie would have been a dishonor to her. And had I not told her the truth, she might have thought I found her”—it was his turn to lower his eyes—”distasteful.”

“Ah, but now you wish to make amends?”

What Austyn wished for was his beard to hide the flush he could feel creeping toward his clenched jaw. In matters of the heart, he had no choice but to bow to Carey’s superior wisdom. To avoid any entanglements that might inadvertently cost him his soul, Austyn had chosen to bargain for the majority of his pleasures. He’d learned to bring a woman to shuddering ecstasy when he’d been little more than a lad, but knew nothing of wooing one. His coin had always been persuasion enough.

“
Ill
not praise her virtues in honeyed verse if that’s what you’re thinking,” he growled. “I’d rather she gut me with my own sword than repeat that debacle.”

Carey absently picked up the misericorde, tapping its hilt against his pursed lips as he contemplated how best to display his sophistication. “Women, particularly new brides, love to receive gifts. And they adore any excuse to fuss over their menfolk. Offer the girl some tokens of your affection. Give her a bit of mending to do.”

“Mending? But I’ve nothing that requires it. Your mother does all—” Yelping, Austyn jumped back as Carey jabbed the misericorde toward his side, splitting the seam of his surcoat and barely missing his ribs. He shot his man-at-arms a disbelieving glare. “What are you trying to do? Give her the pleasure of stitching up my hide?”

“Only as a last resort I’m sure you can scrape up some more garments to go on the pile.” Carey clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Take heart, man. The girl has probably had little enough wooing in her life. I wager ‘twill take but a handful of pretty trinkets to win back her favor.”

Holly glared at Austyn’s offerings, fuming with impotent anger.

After fleeing the bluff and the regal stranger masquerading as her husband, she had spent hours restlessly prowling the castle, giving only the shadowy stairwell that wended its way to the haunted tower a wide berth. Twice she had thought she heard shuffling steps behind her, but had whirled around to find herself alone. Perhaps ‘twas only rats, she had thought bitterly, or the shambling specter of her own idiocy.

She had retreated to her chamber after noontide to find a silver tray resting on the chest. A silver tray containing an array of exquisite offerings: a tiny replica of a misericorde no bigger than her smallest finger, its wooden blade carved to a delicate point; a pewter box brimming with fresh cut herbs, their wintry aroma making her nostrils tingle; a silken veil so gossamer it might have been woven from nothing more substantial than the dreams of wistful spiders.

Holly picked up each item in turn, surveying them with brutal candor. “A veil to spare my lord the sight of my face. Herbs to sweeten the foulness of my breath. And a pick to clean my rotten teeth. How thoughtful.”

A knock sounded on the door. Holly marched over to it, wielding the tiny toothpick like the most lethal of daggers. She was only too eager to plunge it into her husband’s churlish heart.

Winifred stood on the threshold, teetering beneath a mound of garments. She staggered over to the bed, dropping her burden with a grunt of relief. “From the master, my lady. He remembered your papa boasting that you were proficient in needlework.”

“Proficient?” Holly echoed acidly. Twas rumored throughout England that she could sew a man’s flapping tongue to his chin before he’d finished declaring his eternal devotion to her. “Thank you, Winifred,” she said stiffly, ushering the tiny woman out the door.

She wheeled around to shoot the innocuous-looking pile of garments a baleful glare, thankful to have been given yet another gust of irritation to fan the embers of her rage.

“Of all the masculine arrogance! Why the sheer vanity of it boggles the mind! He must think it the most esteemed privilege for me to prick my fingertips raw in his exalted service!”

She snatched a crimson surcoat from the top of the pile, wringing it between her hands as if it were Austyn’s thick neck. An achingly familiar aroma wafted to her nose. She buried her face in the garment, breathing deeply of an intoxicating hint of leather, horse, and crisp minty musk.

A despairing moan escaped her. She sank to her knees on the bearskin rug, still clutching the garment.

How Nathanael would laugh if she allowed him to discover her predicament! she thought How many times had he sneered his approval while she scoffed in the crestfallen face of some poor man whose only transgression was to allow his heart to be drawn into her snare by a flutter of her silky lashes or a provocative pout?

Yet she had allowed herself to be beguiled by nothing more than the hint of an unlikely dimple in a man’s stern jaw, the wry quirk of his chiseled lips.

A dry sob, half laughter, half grief, broke from her lips. She was lying to herself even now. In truth, she had began to feel the first stirrings of infatuation for Sir Austyn as early as the tournament, when his valor on the jousting field had proved him a man of honor. She had behaved as the most abominable brat on the journey to Gavenmore, yet instead of punishing her as she deserved, he had rewarded her with patience and compassion.

He had forfeited both his freedom and the hope of a future with a woman he truly loved to wed a stranger and protect a father too tormented by grief to ever fully appreciate the sacrifice his son had made. Oddly enough, even Austyn’s fidelity to that faceless wraith of a lover stirred Holly almost as much as it pained her.

She rubbed the worn samite of the surcoat against her cheek, realizing that she was trapped in a web of her own deceit. Once she might have captured the heart of a virile man like Austyn with nothing more than a crook of one elegant fingernail. But now her fingernails were shredded to the quick and Austyn’s heart was bound to another. Her father had warned her too late of the grim consequences of forever seeking her own way.

“Oh, Papa,” she whispered. “What have I done?”

Don’t rely solely on your disguise to repel him, girl. Just be yourself.

Her father’s enigmatic advice rose unbidden in her mind. A wild hope flowered in her heart. If she could repel Austyn with her shrewish temper, might she not also win his favor with the sweetness of her demeanor? Then for once in her life, she would be assured that someone loved her for something other than her fairness of form.

And once she’d won her husband’s favor, she would be free to confess her trifling deception. Freshly dazzled by the promise of her beauty, he would gather her into his arms and seal his pledge of eternal devotion with the tenderest of kisses.

Holly sighed, enchanted by the blissful vision. It took several dazed moments for the bright crimson of the surcoat to come back into focus. When it did, she jumped to her feet, giving the garment a brisk snap. If she was going to be the sweetest, most attentive wife a Gavenmore had ever been blessed with, there was much work to be done.

She tossed a handful of wintergreen into her mouth before throwing open the door. “Elspeth!” she bellowed, chewing vigorously. “Elspeth, fetch my sewing box this very instant’”

Austyn dragged his gaze away from the stairs winding down into the great hall long enough to slide his rook across the length of the carved board to protect his queen.

“Ha! Checkmate!” his father crowed, seizing Aus-tyn’s hapless king in his fist. “How many times have I warned you, son, not to leave your liege unguarded while you trot after the skirts of some woman? She may appear delicate, but the treacherous bitch can look after herself.”

Twas almost worth letting the old man best him to witness his glee, but Austyn was not in the mood to endure one of his father’s rambling lectures on the evils of the fair sex. Yet he knew there was only one other topic compelling enough to keep his father from sliding back into brooding silence.

Austyn leaned back on the bench, stretching his long legs. “You would have bested me anyway, Father. Your king’s strategy was far superior to mine.”

Twas all the distraction Austyn had need of. Rhys of Gavenmore launched into a fevered recitation of the triumphs of his beloved Welsh kings—Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, Llewelyn the Great, even the mighty Arthur, a warrior so elusive that none of them truly knew if he had been flesh and bone or just a noble phantom forged from dreams of glory. From there, his father rushed on to castigate the English cur Edward.

Which Edward was irrelevant In his father’s twisted imagination, the first Edward still sat the throne. The Edward whose visit to this very keep in the autumn of 1304 had brought them all to ruin. The Edward who died three short years later after stripping them of their earldom, their vassals, and all other Gavenmore holdings, leaving them nothing but a crumbling ruin on a barren promontory overlooking the river Wye and the fading echo of a woman’s laughter.

Austyn ruthlessly blocked out his father’s prattling, a trick he’d been forced to learn long ago to preserve his own capricious sanity. His temper was growing more irritable by the minute. He glowered at the stairs, longing for nothing so much as a glimpse of his homely little bride. If she did not choose to join them for the eventide meal, he would have to assume his gifts had failed to soothe her wounded feelings.

Carey crouched with his back to the circular stone hearth in the middle of the hall, idly plucking the strings of a lute. Brother Nathanael had tucked himself in the corner and sat cracking walnuts into a wooden bowl. A curious pursuit for a priest, Austyn thought, puzzled by the hint of rancor around the man’s mouth. The persistent crack-crack sound was beginning to fray Austyn’s tightly strung nerves even more than his father’s droning or Carey’s discordant plucking.

He drummed his fingers on the table, disturbing a furred film of dust After growing up in the splendor of Castle Tewksbury, he feared Holly must find the ancient keep little more than a hovel.

Crack-crack.

A stale layer of rushes carpeted the flagstones. A haze of smoke from the crude rushlights drifted over the hall, too cloying to be sucked out of the circular smoke hole cut in the vaulted roof above the hearth.

Crack-crack.

Austyn flexed his hands, fearing that if one more denuded walnut skittered into that bowl, he was going to rush over and crack the priest’s skull.

Brother Nathanael was spared that grim fate by the appearance of his mistress on the stairs. Austyn came to his feet without realizing it. His father’s blustering tirade subsided on a fretful note.

Lady Holly descended the stairs with regal grace, her broad hips swaying, her features obscured by a fall of gauzy silk. The train of her gown rippled behind her, rescued from the grimy taint of the stone steps by her nurse’s loyal hands. Her mincing steps did not betray her until she misjudged the last step and trusted her dainty foot to thin air.

Austyn rushed forward to catch her before she could topple forward, frowning to realize the veil must make vision difficult, if not impossible, in the murky light He cupped her bare elbows through her slashed sleeves, marveling at their silken texture. No matter how fair the face, he’d yet to meet a woman with comely elbows.

“Good eve, my lady. Shall we sup together?”

A smile warmed her voice. “If you wish it so, my lord.”

She turned away from the table, forcing Austyn to capture her shoulders and gently guide her in the right direction. He fought a ridiculous impulse to lift the veil and steal a peek at that downy nape of hers. As they approached the table, his father retreated to huddle against the faded tapestry, still clutching his captured king.

Holly nodded at Carey as she slid onto the bench. “Good eve, Winifred. I hope my tardiness has not allowed the food to cool.”

Carey opened his mouth, but Winifred mercifully bustled in at that moment, bearing a tray of trenchers. The bowls of coarse brown bread overflowed with steaming portions of mutton and leeks. “The master’s favorite, my lady,” she said, slapping a trencher down between Austyn and Holly. “I hope it pleases you.”

“I’m certain it will, Winnie,” Holly replied mildly. “It takes very little to please me. I hope you’ll find it the least taxing of your duties.”

Austyn stared at his wife in patent disbelief while the others gathered at the far end of the trestle table. Yesterday she’d been nigh on impossible to please. He was beginning to resent the veil. He missed judging Holly’s mood from the imperious angle at which she tilted her nose. Missed witnessing the first sparks of violet fire in those extraordinary eyes. When her groping fingers closed around the salt cellar, bringing it to her lips for a drink, he flipped the veil away from her face, growling beneath his breath.