So Great A Love (26 page)

“My lord Royce.” Sir William appeared in the
great hall, bringing with him a cloaked and gloved man who, by his
red cheeks and nose, was newly arrived after a long ride. “Here's a
messenger from Sir Tristan of Cliffmore.”

“I'm glad to see you,” said Royce to the
newcomer. He was speaking no more than the truth. The new arrival,
fresh-faced and bright-eyed, was a pleasant relief from Phelan and
his son. The messenger bowed, pulled a folded parchment from his
tunic, and presented it to Royce.

“Help yourself to food and drink,” Royce
said, indicating the morning meal spread out on a table placed near
to the warmth of the fire. “Sir Tristan and I have not met for many
years, not since before he left for the Holy Land, and I was
unaware that he has returned to England. Does he expect an answer
from me?”

“I am not certain, my lord, but if you wish
to send one, I will gladly take it to him,” said the messenger.

Royce broke the seal and read. A slow smile
curved his lips and his eyes began to sparkle.

“Of course,” said Royce, his eyes on the
parchment. “I should have thought of it, myself.”

“Thought of what, my lord?” asked Sir
William. For the moment he and Royce stood alone together in the
center of the hall. The seneschal sent a quick glance in Phelan's
direction and kept his voice just above a whisper when he spoke
again. “You do not look displeased over what you are reading.”

“This letter brings wonderful news,” Royce
said. “Arden is already at Bowen Manor, and Sir Tristan is on his
way to join him there, before the two of them, along with Tristan's
lady, come here for a visit. The letter is to tell me of their
plans and ask leave for them to stay at Wortham for a week or two.
Tristan adds that he and Arden have information they believe I will
want to take to King Henry.”

“Bowen, eh?” Sir William repeated
thoughtfully. “My lord, are we of like mind on this?”

“We are, indeed,” Royce said. “Catherine
loves Bowen, and so does Aldis. They always go with me when I make
an inspection there. It's a hard ride to Bowen from Sutton Castle,
and it's not a place Phelan would think of. It's well hidden, and
so many miles off the main road that it's not likely he'd consider
it, especially if the snow is deep enough to hide the path that
leads to it. All of which will have made Bowen appealing to my
clever Catherine.”

“You think we'll find the ladies there?” Sir
William asked.

“I hope so,” Royce said. “I believe so. But
if I've guessed wrong, Bowen is the ideal place from which to mount
a search. It's nearer to Sutton than Wortham is, and from it my men
can fan out across the border country and into Wales, if necessary.
What's more, we can enroll Arden and Tristan and the men-at-arms
who are with them in our efforts to locate Catherine and her
friend.

“Unfortunately,” Royce continued, “we will
have to take our guests along, and they will want their own men
with them. William, see to it that my men-at-arms outnumber
Phelan's. And let's not tell them where we are going. I don't want
anyone, especially Phelan, to ride ahead of us and reach Bowen
before we do. I will not allow Phelan to take out his anger on
Catherine if she's there, as I expect. Or on Aldis, either.”

“Sir Wace will be overwhelmed,” William said.
“Bowen is scarcely large enough to hold so many people.”

“We'll manage. When I visited last autumn,
the cellars were packed full of supplies for the winter. No one
will starve. Except, possibly, poor Lady Margaret, if her father
decides to withhold food from her,” Royce finished with a grimace
of disgust for Phelan's lack of tenderness toward his daughter.
Royce dearly loved his own daughter and he would listen to what
Catherine had to say before deciding how best to punish her for the
present escapade.

“So, William, we will set out for Bowen just
as soon as I can convince my two remaining guests to mount their
horses,” Royce said. He took a step in Phelan's direction, then
paused, considering a fresh idea. “I will also ask Father Aymon to
ride with us. We may have need of a priest as peacemaker, if the
present state of Phelan's temper is any gauge of what he may yet
do.”

“Or a priest to bury the dead,” William added
wryly, “in case Phelan's temper runs out of control. And if it
does, may heaven help us all, for I fear that angry man will not
stop without a full-scale battle over the advantages he imagines he
has lost as a result of his daughter's recalcitrance and Lady
Catherine's clever planning.”

“Merciful Lord of Heaven!” Arden swore,
staring in shock at the red and blue banner borne high by the
mounted man who was just entering the palisade. Arden knew that
banner, had known it all of his life, and the riders who followed
the first horseman impressed themselves upon his vision with the
awful inevitability of a nightmare from which he could not awaken,
no matter how hard he tried.

He stood on the landing at the top of the
flight of stone stairs that led from courtyard to manor house
entrance. In order to see clearly he was forced to squint against
the bright sunshine that sparkled on the ice and snow covering
ground and trees and buildings. The tops of the logs that formed
the palisade wall shone as if they were tipped with beaten silver,
and above the scene the sky arched blue and cold.

As Arden watched with a sense of growing
despair, a mounted band of fully armored knights, men-at-arms, and
squires came pouring through the palisade gate and into the
courtyard. The horses' hooves churned up the mud and ice beneath
the partially melted snow, turning the area between gatehouse and
manor entrance into an unappetizing brown stew. Arden counted
twenty-five men in full chainmail and more than a dozen others in
padded tunics and boiled leather helmets. He stopped counting when
he realized the futility of the exercise.

“I came to Bowen because I wanted to be
alone,” Arden exclaimed, unable to hold back his mounting
frustration. “The more fool I, for since I've come here seeking
solitude, I have had to deal first with my sister, my cousin, and
my – my sister's friend,” he stammered, unable to think of a better
term to apply to the woman who haunted his dreams and his every
waking hour.

Seeking the sight of her as if just seeing
her could save him from the inevitable pain of the next few hours,
Arden looked behind him, glancing past Tristan, who stood at his
right shoulder, and into the entry hall where Margaret waited with
Catherine, Aldis, and Isabel. All of them had been brought to the
doorway by the shouts of the sentries and by the hastily delivered
message of a squire who was sent to Arden by Sir Wace with news
that the baron of Wortham was approaching Bowen.

“Next you arrived, Tristan, and your wife,
and all the party with you. Now my father is here.” Arden's mouth
clamped shut on the irritated words. He wished he could wave a
magical wand and send every one of the unwelcome intruders away
until he was ready to deal with them.

“You knew we were coming,” Tristan said,
unmoved by Arden's complaints. “Old friend, you invited Isabel and
me. Furthermore, many of the men who came with us are your own
people, who would be at Bowen even if Isabel and I were not
here.”

“My men are not the problem,” Arden snapped.
He felt cornered, as if he were a wounded boar backed against a
rock with a pack of dogs and a dozen armed hunters about to bring
him down and slay him. “Tristan, you should not have sent a message
to my father. I did not invite you to do so, and you know why. I
explained to you that I wanted to meet my father on my own terms,
and in my good time.”

“Whereas, I wanted Royce to have adequate
time to prepare to receive Isabel,” Tristan said, speaking with all
the ease of a man who understands his friend and knows from long
experience when to discount his grievances. “I deemed it no more
than common courtesy to inform your father of our plans, and to
inform him that we have serious news to impart. I never thought
Royce would decide to come to Bowen to meet us. I assumed he'd stay
at Wortham, to await us there. It's what most men would do.”

Arden was about to remind Tristan that Royce
of Wortham was not like most men, a fact which Tristan had
apparently forgotten during their long absence from England, when
he was prevented from speaking by two feminine voices in the entry
hall.

“Uncle Royce is here?” Aldis cried. “I am so
glad. Surely, Arden will tell him where my father and brother are,
and Uncle Royce will tell me. It has been difficult to be patient
with Arden.”

“Arden, I fear I have more bad news to give
you,” said Margaret. As she pressed up behind him to look over his
shoulder and into the courtyard, Arden caught a faint hint of her
delicious perfume. “Even without the squire's warning to tell us, I
could make no mistake about the identity of the leader of those
horsemen. The color of his hair is the same as Catherine's, and the
bones of his face are similar to hers.”

“Yes, the tall man in the green cloak is my
father.” Arden looked with sad longing upon the parent who would
surely be glad to see him at first, but who undoubtedly would soon
reject him.

“I regret to inform you,” Margaret added,
“that the red-faced man riding next to Lord Royce is my father, and
behind him is my brother, Eustace.”

“Lord Phelan is here with my father? Truly?”
Catherine exclaimed in a breathless voice. She pushed against
Arden's dark woolen sleeve, trying to make him move aside. He would
not be moved and Catherine, who, unlike Margaret, was too short to
see over anyone's shoulder, was forced to settle for the view she
could achieve by peering between her brother's sturdy form and
Tristan's. “Oh, yes, it is Lord Phelan. Ah, Margaret, I am sorry my
hiding place has failed you. It's plain we've been found out.”

“I should have known,” Margaret said to
Catherine, “my scheme would not work, and if I involved you, my
father would apply to Lord Royce for help in locating us. It's I
who should apologize to you, for dragging you and your family into
my troubles.”

The barely suppressed fear in Margaret's
voice made Arden take his gaze from the men who were dismounting
into the mud of the courtyard, to look at her again. What he saw in
her face made him put his own concerns aside. Margaret was pale as
her severe white wimple, with not a trace of color in her cheeks.
Her lips were pressed firmly together, yet Arden detected the
trembling of her mouth that she was trying to hide. Her gray eyes
were far too wide, and far too bright, as if they were filled with
tears that she was determined not to let fall.

Arden discovered to his surprise, in the
midst of his unhappiness over the unexpectedly imminent meeting
with his father, the fear and self-loathing he felt when he
considered all he was duty-bound to confess to the parent he loved
in spite of everything, and his concern for Aldis' wellbeing –
still, Arden's strongest emotion in the moment when his eyes met
Margaret's was the desire to protect her. It seemed a terrible
thing to him that Margaret, who was guilty of very little, should
be as afraid of her father as Arden, with far more cause, was of
Royce.

He did not dare to touch her, for if he did,
he would not be able to stop himself from gathering her into his
arms and promising to keep her safe. That would never do, not if he
really wanted to protect her from all harm, and certainly it was
not the thing to do within the sight of the grim-faced fathers who
had left their horses in the care of squires and who were
approaching the manor house stairs.

With his foot on the first step Royce looked
up at the son he had not seen for more than a decade. After a
heartbeat or two he transferred his gaze to Tristan, whom he knew
of old. Finally he sought out Catherine, still squeezed behind and
between the two men. The frown Royce sent in Catherine's direction
made her tremble so hard that Arden felt it against his arm.

Royce's gaze moved on from his daughter, to
the place behind Arden where Margaret stood. His eyebrows rose and
he looked startled, as if he could not believe the
innocuous-appearing Margaret, with her huge gray eyes and pale skin
emphasized by her white linen wimple, was the young woman who had
caused so much trouble to her parent and her brother.

And then Royce was smiling and running
lightly up the steps to embrace Arden.

“You have been sorely missed,” Royce said,
his eyes glistening. “It's good to have you home, my son, and for
more reasons than you can possibly know.” He threw his arms around
Arden and kissed him on both cheeks.

After a momentary stiffness Arden returned
the embrace. Long ago, before his heart had frozen over, he and his
father had always expressed their mutual affection without any
reservation. Nor could Arden deny to himself the tug of old emotion
that threatened to undo all the careful barriers he had erected to
prevent himself from feeling too much at this long-desired,
long-feared reunion.

“My dear boy, I will not embarrass you by
playing the overly affectionate father just now, while we are in
public.” Royce, ever sensitive to the reactions of others, quickly
released his son. “We will make an hour or two for ourselves later,
when we can talk in private and say all that's in our hearts.”

Royce turned aside from Arden to greet
Tristan and Isabel, whom Tristan brought forward to introduce. Next
his eyes lit on Aldis.

“I have been told how you allowed yourself to
be caught up in one of Catherine's schemes,” Royce said, chiding
her.

“Not at all.” Aldis responded with lifted
chin and unfaltering gaze. “I was a willing conspirator, and with
good cause, as you will hear.”

Royce raised his eyebrows at Aldis'
unexpected firmness. Then it was Catherine's turn.