Secret Heart (11 page)

“
I am not
running away. I am merely avoiding a situation that would be –
that
ought
to be
– extremely awkward for all parties.”

“
Especially for Garit. Your closest friend since you were
squires together. Loyal Garit, who loves and wants Chantal and
thinks he may have found her again in Jenia. Tell me, Roarke,” Lord
Giles’ quiet voice pursued him into the corridor, “what do you
want?”

“
I?”
Roarke paused to look back at the man who had been more loving and
honest toward him than his own father. “As you taught me so well,
my lord, I serve my king. I
will
learn what has happened to Chantal and, if she
still lives, I will restore her to Garit no matter where the search
takes me or what it costs.”

“
Shall I
join you in Calean City?”

“
You
would do that?”

“
For you,
and for Garit, I would. You’ll need my help against the intrigues
that grow with every day, thanks to the spies Domini Gundiac sends
to the capital. Well, then.” Lord Giles smiled at the younger man.
“I’ll take a dozen men-at-arms for my escort and perhaps a few
squires, too, to give them a taste of life at a royal
court.”

“
You will
corrupt them,” Roarke said wryly.

“
You were
not corrupted. Garit wasn’t. Shall we say, five days from now, in
King Henryk’s great hall, at the midday meal? Just in case Jenia
needs a bit of extra protection.”

“
You
rarely employ your magic, yet you’d invoke it for her
sake?”

“
Gladly.
She’s worth a bit of effort, don’t you agree?”

Roarke stared at him from outside the solar,
seeing the faint, glimmering aura of a true mage as Lord Giles
gazed back, straight into his eyes. Roarke was incapable of magic;
the ability had to be born into a person. But he knew how to defend
himself against it. At his request Lord Giles had taught him how,
years ago. He had never felt the need to protect himself against
Lord Giles, so his mind was open to his old friend and teacher.

So much anger. So much pain.
Lord Giles did not speak the
words aloud; they simply appeared in Roarke’s mind.
You
will never find peace until you put aside your anger.

I
know
, Roarke answered
silently.
But
I cannot. Some betrayals are unforgivable
.

“
Do not
allow old humiliations to cloud your present vision,” Lord Giles
said aloud, “or prevent your future peace.”

“
Sometimes,” Roarke told him, “I believe I’ll only find
peace when I am in my grave.”

“
To spare
Roarke’s horse the burden of carrying two riders,” Lord Giles said
to Jenia at sunrise the next morning, “I must insist you ride one
of the horses that I keep for my squires to use during their
training.”

He had come to the stable with Jenia and her
companions and he gestured to indicate the long row of stalls.

“
As you
can see, I have more than two dozen horses available. The lads I am
presently working with won’t miss one of them. You may send the
animal back to me when you no longer need it,” he said. “I believe
my late wife’s saddle remains in good repair. Just let me ask a
groom to find it.”

“
If you
don’t mind,” Jenia said, laying a hand on his arm to make him pause
for a moment, “I’d much rather use a squire’s saddle, if you can
spare one. That way, I can ride astride, so we can travel
faster.”

“
Whatever
you wish, my dear. You have only to ask for anything you need,”
Lord Giles responded with a kindly yet shrewd look that suggested
to Jenia he was expecting her to ask for his magical help. Or,
perhaps, hoping she would ask.

She
couldn’t do that to him. The responsibility for fulfilling her
dangerous quest was hers, and hers alone. Roarke and Garit were
taking her to Calean City for their own purposes, but she intended
to make sure everyone at the royal court understood they were not
acting on her behalf. She expected to die, but she wouldn’t drag
anyone to the grave with her if she could avoid it, especially not
a man who reminded her of her grandfather.

“
Since
you offer, my lord,” she said, “I do have two other requests. You
may find one of them rather peculiar.”

“
Do you
think so?” Lord Giles smiled and his pale eyes began to twinkle.
“After so many years of dealing with rambunctious young men,
nothing is peculiar to me.”

“
You will
have to ask one of those same young men for what I need,” Jenia
said. “I want a pair of hose to protect my legs while I ride
astride.”

Lord
Giles winked at her, then loosed an understanding laugh. Jenia
allowed herself a brief answering chuckle before she gulped and
sobered because she suddenly felt like weeping. She wasn’t used to
kindness such as his. Lord Giles seemed not to notice the way she
bit down hard on her lower lip to stop its trembling. When she
turned away from the older man in embarrassment at revealing so
much emotion, she saw the sharp look that Roarke was casting in her
direction. She showed her back to both men until she regained her
self control.

An hour
later Jenia rode out of Nozay wearing beneath her dress a pair of
hose borrowed from one of Lord Giles’ squires. Her skirts were
hiked up to her knees so she could ride astride. She had wrapped a
short squire’s cloak, her second request of Lord Giles, around her
shoulders to keep her warm in the chill of an early autumn
dawn.

Watching her as she moved ahead of him,
Roarke thought he would very much like to know where she had
learned to ride so beautifully. She was a bit stiff, as if out of
practice, but her back was straight and she handled the reins with
unconcealed pleasure. He could not doubt that her horse knew who
was in command.

They did
not retrace the narrow path they’d taken to Nozay, but rode across
the fields instead to reach the forest on the far side of the
manor, where they picked up a similar track. Almost at once they
entered an area of fog as thick and quiet as the mist they had
encountered on their arrival. Roarke thought little of it; he was
used to the misty barrier that protected Nozay from unwanted
intruders.

“
According to Lord Giles,” Garit said, speaking over his
shoulder as he led the way, “this path will take us to the road
that leads directly to Castle Auremont.”

“
I have
no idea where I am, so I will have to trust Lord Giles,” Jenia told
him. “And trust you, too.”

The
remark earned her a bright smile from Garit. Since Roarke was
riding behind her and knew she couldn’t see his reaction, he was
free to scowl at her back as much as he pleased.

He had
good reason for scowling in Jenia’s direction, for he was finding
it almost impossible to keep his gaze away from the sight of her
shapely calves. Roarke had seen enough undressed women in his time
to know that Jenia’s legs were exceptionally lovely. To make
matters worse, those enticing limbs were encased in bright green
hose that were too small for her. The fabric was smooth and
unwrinkled because Jenia had pulled the hose tight over her legs
and had fastened them at her waist.

Roarke
found the curving length of green too exiting to ignore. The flash
of color between her brown wool skirt and the well-worn brown
shoes, fastened with leather thongs at her slender ankles, caught
and held his attention. The movements of Jenia’s legs as they
gripped the sides of her mount nearly drove Roarke mad. It was all
too tempting to imagine those limbs wrapped around him.

Appalled
by his lascivious thoughts toward a woman who could be his best
friend’s love, Roarke grimly wrenched his gaze away from Jenia.
While he squinted through the mist at the narrow path ahead of him,
he tried to consider the many details of his plan to present Jenia
as Chantal, details that he needed to work out and discuss with
Garit before they separated. He wished he could be the man to leave
Jenia at Castle Auremont with Garit, while he continued on to
Calean City to make the necessary arrangements there. Given his
unseemly yearning for Jenia, that would be the wiser course for
him, but he knew it was impossible.

Garit was
the emissary from the king of Kantia to King Henryk’s court and in
that capacity he had certain duties to perform. Roarke could not
replace him. Therefore, Roarke must stay at Auremont to guard Jenia
and to keep her presence there a secret, while he taught her what
she would need to know in order to pretend she was Lady
Chantal.

After two days in her company he suspected
that she already knew how to behave among nobles, though he
anticipated learning quite a bit more about her mysterious past
while he provided instruction that he was beginning to believe was
unnecessary. She was a noblewoman born and bred, of that much he
was certain. He had observed the quiet confidence with which she
dealt with Lord Giles, his squires and servants, and the grooms and
stable boys.

She knew
horses, too. She had looked over Lord Giles’ stable most carefully
before choosing her own mount. She hadn’t favored the usual tame
lady’s palfrey, though several such horses were available for the
younger squires to ride. Nor had she chosen an overly restive
creature. Instead, she had picked a sturdy, calm-tempered gelding
that was perfectly suited to carry its rider a long distance
without tiring. At first skeptical about letting her make her own
selection, once it was done Roarke had unhesitatingly approved of
the horse she wanted, and so had Lord Giles.

He had
watched with interest as she responded with a burst of quickly
concealed emotion to Lord Giles’ amused acceptance of her request
for hose and a cape. Roarke couldn’t help wondering if she had
never before been treated with parental generosity. The woman was a
riddle, a lovely and alluring enigma, who teased at his senses with
no apparent effort on her part. Her every action and every word
raised questions in his mind.

If she
wasn’t Lady Chantal, then who in the name of heaven was she? Why
did he, who recognized most of King Henryk’s nobles and their
ladies on sight, have no knowledge of a woman so similar in
appearance to Chantal of Thury? Roarke told himself the mystery
would soon be solved, for someone at court must know who she was.
So remarkable a resemblance could not have passed unnoticed or
uncommented upon.

Why did she have to have such incomparably
beautiful legs?

Realizing that his gaze had returned to Jenia
without him willing it, Roarke groaned aloud. Jenia turned in her
saddle to regard him with a questioning look. Roarke glared at her
until she shrugged and faced forward again.

With an
effort of will that made his teeth ache, Roarke dragged his
attention away from Jenia and forced himself to resume planning the
best method of smuggling her into the king’s fortress at Calean
City.

Castle Auremont was a bleak little holding,
squarely and solidly constructed upon a hilltop with no effort at
grace or charm. Auremont was built for security. The guards at the
gatehouse were alert and, once they recognized Garit as their
returning master, they welcomed him and his guests with a pleasure
that Jenia suspected had a great deal to do with their hope for
relief from boredom.

Inside the bailey, with the walls soaring a
good thirty feet above her head, Jenia ought to have felt safe.
Instead, she was oppressed by the weight of stone around her, by
the austere architecture, and by the square tower keep that loomed
ahead, its plain stone facade broken only by a narrow entry door
and a few arrow slits. She could too easily imagine being confined
in that keep during a siege or, worse, being consigned to the
dungeon that surely lay beneath it.

She shivered uncontrollably at a dark memory.
Then, seeing how Roarke looked at her with raised brows, she
straightened in the saddle and made herself smile at Garit, who was
offering a welcome speech.

“
It’s a
plain place, I know,” Garit said to her, “but since King Henric
granted the estate to me two years ago, I have begun making some
improvements inside the keep. I think you will be comfortable
enough, my lady.”

Within
the hour Jenia understood that Garit’s improvements were devised
with Chantal of Thury in mind. She was conducted to a chamber high
in the keep that, to her eyes, was most certainly intended for
Chantal’s private use. The stone walls had been plastered and the
plaster painted pale blue, with a design of scattered, tiny flowers
and leaves in darker blue, yellow, and green. Blue wool curtains
enclosed a large bed. A finely carved wooden clothing chest sat in
one corner. The ewer and basin on a table were made of silver. So
high above the reach of any arrow, windows could be larger than the
usual, narrow slits. Twin arched windows in a niche included a
stone seat that was cushioned with thick pillows.

“
My
lady,” said the middle-aged maidservant who had escorted her up the
curving tower steps, “shall I order water for a bath?”

“
Yes,
please,” Jenia said, “though I have no other clothes to wear once
I’m clean.”

“
Oh,”
said the maid, laughing, “that’s no problem. Lord Garit ordered
clothing prepared for you.”