Fairest Of Them All (17 page)

She exchanged salt cellar for goblet, her eyes dewy with surprise. “Does my costume displease you, sir? I thought only to honor your generosity.”

Austyn recoiled, his eyes watering. Her breath positively reeked of wintergreen, the crisp blast of mint overwhelming even the pungent aroma of the leeks. It disgruntled him further to learn that he preferred the sweet, faintly floral, scent of her natural breath.

“Aye, it pleases me,” he lied. “That veil belonged to my grandmother.”

A fetching giggle escaped her. “I do hope you asked her leave before you borrowed it. I’d rather she not drift into my chamber at midnight, wailing and bemoaning its loss.”

Austyn’s lips twitched, but he scowled to keep from smiling. No woman had ever dared mock the family ghosts before.

But nor had any woman dared to share his trencher without an invitation, to soothe his mood with bright chatter about the rustic charms of Caer Gaven-more, to feed him tender bits of mutton from her fingertips. Oddly enough, it was Holly’s hands with their rein-chapped palms and bitten-to-the-quick fingernails that stirred him most. They fluttered about him like two delicate-boned birds, beguiling him with their grace, enticing him with their unspoken desire to please.

They stilled when Brother Nathanael’s shadow feU over them. “I sought you earlier, my child, but Elspeth said you were napping.”

“Then I was.” Holly slanted an inscrutable look up at the priest, before bestowing an amused smile on Austyn. “He calls me ‘child,’ forgetting that he is only a few years older than I.”

Brother Nathanael flushed as Austyn himself might have done beneath her blithe mockery. He indicated the bowl tucked beneath his arm. “I spent the morning foraging in the forest for walnuts, my lady. Your favorites.”

“No, thank you, Brother,” she replied sweetly. “I seem to have lost my taste for them.”

The priest set the bowl on the table, his walnut-stained fingernails more ragged than Holly’s. “ Twould benefit you greatly to partake of these. I’ve never seen a meat so tender, so succulent” He reached to urge a walnut into her hand.

Austyn’s arm shot out, sweeping the bowl into the floor. “She doesn’t want them, dammit! Are you deaf?”

As the echo of his roar faded, Austyn felt the weight of shocked gazes bearing down on him. His father cowered against the tapestry as if he might weave himself into its threads. More damning than the shock was the bald concern reflected on the faces of Emrys, Winifred, and Carey. A concern not for their own well-being as it should have been, but for his.

“Forgive me, sir. I should not have troubled you.” The priest retreated with a stiff bow, crushing walnut bits beneath his sandaled feet Holly was the only one who appeared bemused rather than offended by Austyn’s outburst “Don’t mind Nathanael. He’s only feeling slighted because he’s been denied the privilege of hearing my prayers today.”

Austyn steadied his hands around his goblet, as confounded as the rest of them by his unexpected surge of temper. “And what would you pray for, my lady? A more reasonable husband?”

She grazed his jaw with the backs of her fingers, jarring him with her tenderness. “Why I’d pray for you, sir.”

He gazed into her eyes, their quizzical brightness robbed now of all mockery, and wondered if she knew how prophetic her words might prove to be. She might very well be the last hope of salvation for the noble name of Gavenmore. The final prospect of redemption for his own jaded soul.

“Pretty lady.”

At first Austyn feared the hoarse croak had come from his own lips. But he looked up to discover his father had crept out from his hiding place to hover shyly at Holly’s shoulder.

“Pretty lady,” the old man repeated, brushing his gnarled fingers over the silk of her veil.

“Why, thank you, Father.” Holly tossed a smile over her shoulder before whispering to Austyn, “He should take care on the stairs. The poor dear’s eyesight must be failing him.”

This time Austyn failed to smother his grin. Perhaps his father, like himself, was intrigued not by his bride’s beauty but by her unabashed lack of it

Holly rose, giving Elspeth a cryptic signal. The nurse approached to present Austyn with a folded garment.

“If my efforts please you, husband,” Holly said, her hands folded demurely over her plump little belly, “perhaps on the morrow I might assume more of my wifely duties.”

Austyn watched her climb the stairs, wishing he could keep his lecherous mind off the one wifely duty he had assured her she would not be expected to perform. He barely noticed when his father tiptoed after her, skulking in Elspeth’s shadow.

“Let’s have a look at her handiwork, man,” Carey said, he and his parents crowding eagerly around Austyn. “What did I tell you? Give a woman a chance to fuss over you and you’ll soon have her purring like a kitten in your lap.”

Carey’s mother whacked him with a wooden spoon. “What do you know of women? I see no ladies rubbing up against your ankles.”

To spare his man-at-arms further indignity, Austyn hefted the garment. His surcoat unfurled before him like a crisp crimson banner.

As Carey examined the seam, his smirk of triumph faded to a baffled frown. “I don’t understand. She hasn’t mended it at all. Why I can still put my fist through the tear.” He did so to prove his point.

The surcoat began to quiver, then to emit gruff choking noises. While they exchanged alarmed glances, Austyn turned the garment, displaying its back for all of them to see.

Sewn across the broad shoulders of the garment in delicate stitches that must have taken exquisite workmanship and an even greater surfeit of patience was an intricate border of glossy green ivy.

Austyn chuckled ruefully as he wiped his streaming eyes. “It never occurred to me that our definitions of needlework might vary to such a degree. God, if I’d have known having a wife was going to be so damned amusing, I’d have sought one long ago!”

Hugging the garment to his chest, he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

The others might have joined in had they not been stunned to silence by a shock even more keen than that they’d felt upon witnessing Austyn giving vent to that infamous Gavenmore temper he kept under such rigid control. They’d seen rare flares of rage before, but it had been twenty long years since they’d heard the music of their master’s unbridled mirth.

From that day forward, Sir Austyn was rarely seen in any other surcoat but the crimson one with the delicate chain of ivy emblazoned so boldly upon its shoulders. To Winnie’s chagrin, he refused to let her mend the torn seam, preferring to expose the tunic beneath rather than risk offending his bride.

His extravagant praise of Holly’s handiwork was so convincing that within a week, a majority of his tunics, his surcoats, and even his stockings, sported frivolous chains of daisies, plump bouquets of posies, and tiny pink butterflies flitting from hem to cuff. He finally begged Carey to help him hide the surcoat he wore in battle, fearing his industrious wife might embroider a meadow of hollyhocks on its padded chest while he slept

Faced with the daunting challenge of becoming mistress of her husband’s castle, Holly came to the humbling realization that she had been trained to be a bride, not a wife. She could sing a complicated round of “Sumer is Icumen In” in perfect pitch and dance a sprightly carol with nary a stumble, yet she was helpless to master the intricacies of baking a loaf of bread over the kitchen fire. Her flaming puddings fizzled. Her mulled wine soured. Her cream curdled.

Winifred took to keeping a bucket of well water by the hearth to extinguish the daily blazes ignited by her efforts. Emrys trailed behind her in the garden, digging up the hemlock and nightshade she inadvertently planted among the neat rows of sage and thyme.

Rather than reproving her for her incompetence, Austyn greeted all of her domestic tragedies with profound interest and a fond tweak of her nose.

After soaking several pairs of her husband’s hose in a vat of boiling water, shrinking them to the size of sausage casings, she earned a disbelieving bark of laughter from Carey upon informing him with a yearning sigh, Tour master must truly be a saint He has no temper to speak of, does he?”

It was Winifred, desperate for a reprieve, who finally shoved a wooden bucket and a handful of rags into Holly’s eager hands. Delighted to find something she could excel at Holly devoted those first golden days of summer to restoring Caer Gavenmore to its former grandeur. She polished the brass torch holders until they gleamed, tore the cobwebs from every corner, and swept the flagstones clean.

Twas a full fortnight before she screwed up the courage to attack the shadowy landing at the foot of the stairs winding up to the haunted tower. Her task brightened considerably after she broke out the rotted shutters that had sealed the gloom for nearly fifty years, flooding the landing with sunlight and sweetening the stale air with summer’s breath. She batted her way-through a dervish of dust motes, then dropped to her knees to scrub the wooden planking, thinking how her papa would chuckle if he could see his “wMe angel” now.

Her days were no longer filled with trivial amusements and desultory boredom, but with hard work and satisfying results. Instead of tossing restlessly in her bed at night, plagued by nameless yearning, she slept deeply, dreaming of the day when she would coax her husband to surrender his heart She no longer felt like a canary trapped in a gilded cage, but like a graceful curlew gliding high over the river Wye at sunset, free to pursue its dreams.

Austyn was warming to her as slowly but undeniably as the black Welsh soil was warming to the summer sun. His boyish grins had grown more frequent, his silences less brooding. And even more promising, she’d not seen him slip his hand into his tunic to finger that elusive token of his lady’s love for nearly a sennight

Charming a man without twirling a spiral curl around a crimson fingernail or puckering her rouged lips in an inviting moue had proved an even greater challenge than molding beeswax candles that did not go limp at the first kiss of flame. Yet Holly had embraced the challenge, savoring each tiny victory— each fleeting glimpse of the dimple that softened the rugged angle of her husband’s jaw—as a herald of a more lasting triumph.

She sank back on her haunches to rub a trickle of sweat from her brow. Exertion had warmed her, only making the icy prickle at her nape more pronounced. She swiveled to peer at the yawning mouth of the stairwell. No amount of sunshine could banish the miasma of despondency that seemed to come rippling down the narrow stairs like a pool of tears.

Holly rose to her feet, sternly reminding herself that her disquiet was only a childish fancy. She’d already banished one of the legendary ghosts of Caer Gavenmore, proving the eerie rattling in the south corridor to be nothing more than the mischievous bobbing of an iron candelabra designed to be raised and lowered on chains for ease of lighting. She crept toward the stairwell, refusing to be cowed by a growing sense of unease.

Resting her foot gingerly on the first step, she peered upward into the shadows, knowing a door must be hidden just beyond the curve of the wall. Her spine tingled as a faint scraping sound reached her—like the desperate scrabbling of fingernails on wood.

“Mice,” she muttered.

She climbed another step, brushing aside a veil of cobwebs. A musty breath of air, as fragile as a woman’s sigh, struck her face, making her flinch.

“Naught but a stray draft,” she pronounced, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.

As her foot came down upon the third step, a low-pitched dirge swelled around her, rising to a lamentation so keen it sliced Holly’s tender heart to the quick. Clapping her hands over her ears to block out its sorrowful warning of broken promises and shattered hopes, she fled, kicking over the bucket as she went

Austyn was in the solar, poring over a parchment scroll yellowed by age and neglect, when Holly went flying past the doorway, her face so pale she might have been one of the Gavenmore haunts. He rose from his chair, then forced himself back down.

He was getting as addled as his father, he thought, tempted to trail after his young bride like one of his own hounds besotted by a leg of mutton. He scowled at the mildewed plans for the completion of an outer curtain wall. His bride’s unflagging exuberance must be wearing off on him. Not a stone had been lifted toward finishing Caer Gavenmore since that cold, rainy autumn of 1304, yet here he sat, daring to dream of castles in the clouds.

His restless gaze drifted to the door. Perhaps he’d do wefl to follow Holly and see what nonsense she was about today. He’d been reviewing the accounts with Emrys only yesterday morning when a shrill cacophony that sounded as if every demon in Christendom had been summoned down upon their heads had sent them all careening toward the south corridor. They had arrived to find Holly riding up and down on a rusted candelabra, squealing with glee at each dizzying ascent to the rafters.

Austyn had plucked her down the moment she came into arm’s reach, choking his heart from his throat to deliver a stern lecture on the dangers of such reckless behavior. Her nose tilted at an unrepentant angle, she had vowed to take more care before offering the gentle suggestion that she might not have had to exorcise the ghost of his great-great-great grandfather’s bride had the malicious old rogue not burned her at the stake.

Snapping the scroll shut, Austyn rose to his feet He was not a man given to stealth, but it wasn’t as if he were following Holly just to study the beguiling habit she had of tucking her little pink tongue between her teeth when she was concentrating on some arduous task. Or to puzzle over the hint of gloss the morning sunlight evoked in her drab hair, as shimmering and elusive as a raven’s wing.

Suppose she took a notion to ride the bucket down the castle well? Or curl up for a nap in the bowl of the catapult? Reassuring himself that a husbandly concern for his wife’s well-being could hardly constitute spying, Austyn slipped from the solar, looking both ways before following in the path of Holly’s rapid footsteps.