Love Everlasting (35 page)

“Of more urgent importance,” she added, “our
dead must be buried quickly, before a pestilence develops. Father
Aymon will tell you how we’ve been storing bodies in the crypt for
weeks now. I’m sure you realize how unhealthy that arrangement
is.”

Royce’s gaze rested on her face for long
moments, and she could not begin to guess what he was thinking.
When he spoke, it was abruptly and his words bore no apparent
connection to any of her remarks.

“You have not met my son and son-in-law,” he
said, beckoning forward the two tall young men and presenting
them.

Braedon, the baron of Sutton, who was married
to Royce’s daughter, Catherine, was very handsome, with dark, curly
hair and an engaging manner. At once Julianna liked his easy humor
and his boyish smile.

Royce’s son, Arden, lord of Bowen Manor, was
a different matter. When Royce introduced him, Arden greeted
Julianna with the same sort of cool formality that she employed in
unpleasant situations. Arden’s pale blue eyes, which were the exact
shade of ice in midwinter, regarded her from a hard, narrow face.
With his sharp cheekbones and straight black hair, he was so
physically different from Royce that Julianna realized he must
resemble his mother. She saw no warmth in Arden and no humor,
either, so she chose to be blunt.

“I have no wish to take your mother’s place,”
she told him. “From what I’ve heard of Lady Avisa, no one ever
could. But for your father’s sake, for his peace and comfort, I
hope that you and I will not be enemies.”

“Only time can decide that,” Arden said.

“I would like to meet your wife,” she
suggested, venturing a smile.

“Margaret is with child and cannot travel
just now,” he said.

“Very well, Arden.” She struggled to maintain
her smile. “Take your time.”

Arden bowed and walked away, and suddenly
Julianna felt very tired. She wondered how long it would be before
she dared suggest to Royce that they retire to the lord’s
chamber.

She saw Alice embracing William and noticed
how they whispered together before they left the hall, headed in
the direction of their own room, and her heart ached with
loneliness. She wanted Royce’s arms around her in the same tender,
familiar way in which William’s arms had gone around Alice - if
only Royce would forgive her many sins and embrace her.

Royce’s next command drove all tender
thoughts from her mind and made her forget her need for rest.

“Bring Kenric to me,” Royce ordered one of
his men-at-arms. “I will see him in Sir Michael’s office. My lady,
you will join us.”

He held out a hand to Julianna. She dared not
refuse to place her hand in his, lest he judge her guilty of some
new misdeed. With his fingers wrapped firmly around hers, he
escorted her to the chamber where Michael worked.

Alice had once referred to the room as the
scriptorium, as if it were part of a monastery, and Julianna had
laughed and agreed. Books and scrolls, unused leaves of parchment
in baskets, scraps of parchment sliced from the edges of those
leaves to make them more regular in size and then saved for short
notes, a wax tablet and stylus, ink jars and quill pens, several
slates with rough pieces of chalk hewn from the cliffs of southern
England, filled the room, but all were kept in scrupulous
order.

A long trestle table sat beneath the single
window. A chair with arms was drawn up to the table, so the light
would fall over the writer’s shoulder. These two pieces and a stool
in front of the table were all the furniture. Royce took the chair
and motioned Julianna toward the stool.

“I prefer to stand,” she said.

“As you wish.” Royce gave a shrug that she
interpreted as indifference.

She had expected Cadwallon and Michael to
join them, but she was disconcerted to see Arden and Braedon also
enter the room. Wanting to put a bit of distance between herself
and Arden, she went to stand at one end of the table. From that
position she could observe both Royce and Kenric, yet she wouldn’t
appear to intrude upon the business conducted by the men.

Kenric had been divested of his armor and
given water so he could wash. He entered wearing a slightly damp
woolen tunic and displaying the air of sullen defiance that
Julianna remembered well from the days when Deane of Craydon was
still alive.

“I will begin,” Royce said to him, “by asking
what your reason was for besieging Wortham?”

“Julianna knows,” Kenric said. “Ask her.”

“I am asking you.” Royce’s voice was icy
cold.

“Why did you subvert the loyalties of Othmar
and Edmund?” Cadwallon demanded.

“Ah, well, that’s a simpler matter,” Kenric
said. “Both of them are Saxons. Fighting against what they see as
Norman oppression is second nature to them.”

“The Norman conquest happened almost sixty
years ago,” Cadwallon objected. “Anyway, both Othmar and Edmund
willingly took oaths of fealty to King Henry.”

“They swore themselves to Louis of France
first.” Kenric’s smile was sly and very nasty.

“In that case, they are doubly foresworn,”
Royce stated, “and spies as well as traitors.”

“Well, but a man can only die once.” Kenric’s
smile did not waver. “Or a woman,” he added, his sharp gaze falling
upon Julianna like the edge of the headsman’s axe.

“You have not answered my question,” Royce
said. “Why did you choose to attack Wortham?”

“You call yourself a spy and yet you ask me
that?” Kenric mocked. “How can you not know the answer? ‘Twas to
punish you and your wife for continually interfering with my
plans.”

“What plans?” Royce demanded in the quiet,
dangerous voice that Julianna knew well.

“Why, my plan to be rid of Julianna,” Kenric
said. “It was really quite clever, and perfectly simple, as all
great plans are. I would make a show of attempting to capture
Julianna while she and her maid were apparently trying to carry out
a treacherous scheme aimed at Queen Adelicia. When Julianna
resisted my attempt at capture, which I was certain she would do,
I’d have a splendid excuse for killing her. Meanwhile, Marie was to
commit the murder and, though she didn’t know it, she would then be
killed by my associates. You do realize, don’t you, Royce, that
Julianna is all that stands between me and the lands my late Uncle
Deane held?”

“I’ve always known you wished me ill, but how
could you imagine such a scheme would work?” Julianna gasped.
“Kenric, you are truly mad.”

“Indeed he is,” Royce said, “if he imagines
King Henry would ever have granted Deane’s estates to him. Kenric,
the king is well aware of your devotion to Louis of France. He’d
never bestow any lands on you.”

Julianna noticed that Royce did not add that
he had married her precisely to keep her vast inheritance out of
the hands of men like Kenric. But Kenric didn’t seem to understand
that simple fact of royal policy, as his next words proved.

“Deane was going to send a written plea to
King Henry, asking him to grant those lands to me,” Kenric
insisted. “But, curse him, he put off writing. When I pressed him,
he said he was too sick to see to it just then and he’d do it
later, when he felt better. Then he died, leaving the letter
unwritten, and his entire estate passed through Julianna to you,
Royce. I had no choice but to plot Julianna’s ruin and death.”

“All of the destruction here at Wortham,”
Julianna cried, “all of these innocent people who have been hungry
for weeks, some wounded and some dead - all because you wanted
Craydon for yourself? And, what of Marie? I never liked her, I know
she was your creature, yet I saw you kill her. Why?”

“She botched her task,” Kenric said, sounding
as if the maidservant had merely burnt a pudding and needed to be
punished for it. “My plan was that Queen Adelicia was to die in
such a way that you’d be blamed for her death. I was to be
acclaimed a great hero for killing or capturing you soon
thereafter. Of course, if you survived your capture no one would
believe your protestations that you knew nothing of the plot - not
when your disreputable past came to light. You would be executed,
your properties would be confiscated by the king, seized from
Royce’s control. Then Deane’s estates would be granted to me, his
nephew, as a reward for my brave service. As baron of Craydon, I
would be in a perfect position to continue my work for King
Louis.

“One of the great advantages to my plan,”
Kenric continued, “was that Royce would be discredited when his
wife was judged a murderess and a spy. His secret work for King
Henry would end in a cloud of suspicion. King Louis especially
liked that part of the scheme. The sweetest bit of the joke is that
Julianna really is a spy. She has been working for the French for
years.”

Julianna made the mistake of looking at Arden
just then. The expression on his face terrified her. In that moment
she was certain that if Royce didn’t kill her with his own hands,
Arden would. To her surprise, Braedon came to her defense.

“As a former secret agent, myself, I can
think of several reasons why a woman may be induced to spy,”
Braedon said. “Perhaps, even induced against her will. Julianna, is
Kenric’s accusation true? And, if it is, have you an explanation
for what you did?”

“I never wanted to become involved,” she
said, trying to think through her fear and despair to find a truth
that she doubted Royce would believe when he heard it. “Deane
ordered me to gather information for him, and when I objected, he
said it was a sin for a wife to refuse her husband anything he
asked of her.”

“How old were you at the time?” Arden
demanded.

“I had just turned seventeen. Deane and I
were newly married.”

“You neglected to mention that you were a
widow when Deane agreed to marry you,” Kenric interrupted her
attempt at an explanation. “A remarkably well-seasoned widow, too,
after almost three years of marriage to a first husband who was
desperate to produce an heir.”

“Deane married me for my dowry, at my
father’s arrangement,” Julianna cried, risking a quick look in
Royce’s direction.

“That’s enough,” Royce said, and brought his
hand down hard on the table surface to emphasize his statement.
“Julianna’s marriage to Deane of Craydon is not the issue
here.”

“Oh, but it is,” Kenric contradicted him.
“Deane taught Julianna everything he knew about spying, because he
was a spy, himself. Unfortunately, she made a poor agent. Always
she resisted, but Deane had his little ways and, eventually, she
did whatever he wanted. I observed his methods, and by the time he
died, I knew how to make her obey me, too. Didn’t I, Aunt
Julianna?” he ended with a sneer.

“I am not your aunt,” Julianna said.

Royce sat with his fists clenched on the
table before him. Julianna could see how hard he was trying to
control his raging anger at Kenric. And, no doubt, his anger at
her, too, for her activities undertaken at Deane’s insistence had
put Royce’s work, and his reputation, at serious risk.

“I suppose it’s useless to ask who are your
other accomplices here in England, or in Normandy?” Cadwallon said
to Kenric.

“I’m going to die anyway,” Kenric responded.
“Why should I tell you anything?”

“Because if you don’t tell us now,” Braedon
said, “King Henry’s people will wrench the information out of you
before you finally die.”

Kenric turned a shade paler, but he lifted
his head and laughed his defiance.

“The devil take you all,” he said.

“I rather think he’ll take you first,”
Michael told him.

“Get him out of here,” Royce said from
between clenched teeth. “He pollutes the very air he breathes. Send
him to the dungeon with his friends and have a special guard placed
on him.”

Cadwallon and Braedon took Kenric by the arms
and hustled him through the door to the care of the men-at-arms who
were waiting outside. Then they returned and closed the door again,
their continuing presence telling Julianna there was more to
come.

Royce spread his hands upon the tabletop and
stared down at them. Arden glared at Julianna with cold
distaste.

“Royce,” Michael said, “you cannot think
you’ve heard the entire story from that lying Kenric.”

“I do not,” Royce said very quietly, still
not looking up from his long fingers.

“While you were gone, Julianna was an
exemplary chatelaine,” Michael continued. “When Kenric and his
friends and their army arrived, she acted as any man would hope his
wife would act. Julianna sustained all of us with her hopefulness
and courage. She and William agreed never to surrender to
Kenric.”

“Her behavior could have been a clever ruse,”
Arden objected, frowning at Michael.

“That’s not William’s opinion,” Royce told
him. “William, Baldwin, Father Aymon, Alice, and everyone else who
has spoken to me - all of them have nothing but praise and respect
for Julianna.”

“Royce,” Julianna said, seizing at the crumb
of hope his words offered, “you already knew most of what Kenric
said here. Surely, you knew he would reveal nothing of any
importance. Why did you pretend to question him? For it was
pretense, wasn’t it? And why did you insist that I be present?”

“Perhaps I hoped to hear a new story.” Royce
sighed and heaved himself to his feet. “I suddenly feel old.”

“Oh, Royce, my dear, you are not -”

“It’s past midnight,” he said, interrupting
her protest. He wasn’t looking at Julianna. She thought he hadn’t
really heard her, for he was resting his measuring gaze on each man
in the room in turn, on his son, his son-in-law, his friend, and
his secretary.

“I scarcely know how to thank all of you,”
Royce said. “Without your help, I’d have spent many weeks trying to
retake Wortham and by the time it was mine again, far more people
would have died and greater material damage would surely have been
done. Now, we all need sleep. Take the rooms that were yours when
last you were here. Make free with the bathhouse, and with whatever
supplies of food or clothing you need. We will decide on our next
course of action after the midday meal.”