Suzanne Robinson (7 page)

Tristan rubbed his temple. “Marry, why keep her at all? You’ve stolen her from someone. Give her back and allow me some peace.”

“Interfering arrogance,” Pen began.

Holding up one hand, Tristan stopped her. “Peace, mistress. My condition this morn admits for no quarrels. Just tell me why you can’t return the creature.”

“I owe you no explanations, sirrah.”

He stopped arranging his clothing, leaned against a wall, and grinned at her.

“Verily, you do not. But then, I could always let Margery out of her chamber in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t you attempt it!”

“I but asked for an explanation. Why not return her?”

Pen threw up her hands. “Oh, the devil take you. I can’t do that. Ponder has to learn not to sow salt in my fields, and the best way to teach him is to keep Margery for a while. He loves Margery.”

“Who is Ponder?”

“Sir Ponder Cutwell. He owns half of Penance Isle and hates me for owning the rest. He tried to buy
Highcliffe long ago, but Father wouldn’t sell it, and when I came, he tried again. He even tried to get it by wooing me. Now he plays the scorned suitor, but I know his pride and his purse were wounded far more than his heart. The Dark Forest lies between our two domains, and my lands stretch through it. The boundary runs north above the standing stones at the western edge of the island.”

Pen found herself unable to take her gaze from Tristan’s fingers as they began tying the laces of his shirt. “When my parents died and Cousin Osbert inherited the title, I came here to live.” Her voice trailed off as his hands smoothed back hair from his forehead. Then she realized how foolish she must seem, and resumed.

“Highcliffe was my mother’s and came to me. It’s all I have but for a small inheritance which buys spices and such from the mainland. Ponder has nursed a lust for Highcliffe for more years than I’ve been alive.”

Glancing up at Tristan’s furrowed brow, she grew confused. He’d done nothing. He merely stood there, his body vibrant with unleashed power. How could his very nearness agitate her and destroy her composure? To cover her confusion, she gave him a falsely bright smile.

“You see, Ponder served old King Harry under his majesty’s minister, Thomas Cromwell.”

“Mean you he had a hand in ruining the abbeys and monasteries?”

“Aye,” Pen said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “It’s said that he was a lowly clerk who rose in Thomas Cromwell’s favor by helping him conjure up false charges against the nuns and monks and priests. It’s said that he once put the torch to an abbey himself, and was rewarded with half this
island for his diligence in serving Cromwell and the king.”

Forgetting her ill humor in the telling of the tale, Pen hardly noticed when Tristan bent down to catch her next words.

“And they say that to this day he’s haunted by the ghosts of the monks who died in the fire. And Ponder also smuggles. He has a carrack, and the funds from his smuggling most likely paid for Much Cutwell.”

Tristan bent down to meet her gaze. Pen gulped at finding his lips so close to hers. After a moment in which she forgot what she was saying, she stuttered, then gave him a jittery smile to hide her growing disquiet.

“They say he fears hellfire and the rack of Satan. I say Ponder is a mean old blister who hates folk and loves pigs, no doubt because he and they share so many qualities in common.”

She heard her voice trail off into nothing, but couldn’t seem to prevent it. Part of her understood that he was doing it again, remaining silent and compelling her with the sheer force of his gaze and the power of his body. That part of her didn’t seem to care. She stared into his eyes, fascinated by the darkness she found there. They weren’t the deep, dark brown people usually called black, but almost obsidian black—true, sparkling black.

As she held his gaze, his expression changed. Black fire flared in that look. Neither of them moved, and yet both began to breathe quickly. Inside her head, Pen shouted at herself to retreat, to turn and run. But she remained where she was, impaled by the force of Tristan’s mere presence simply because he willed it. Eternity seemed crammed into the small space during which they remained motionless. Finally Tristan murmured
to her in a voice low with pent-up and brimming excitement.

“Gratiana, reckless mistress of storms. Do you know what a tumult you stir in me?”

As he spoke, he lowered his head. She watched his lips near hers, but he paused with them barely touching.

“I read your eyes,” he said. “They speak of need, Gratiana. Need.”

Need, Pen thought. Was that what these feelings were? She tried to think calmly, but he was kissing her, and all thoughts dissolved. She would have been lost if a crash outside hadn’t made her jump.

“Oh, I forgot Wheedle.”

Pen brushed past Tristan and sprang for the stairs. He gave a frustrated curse and caught her arm.

“What is a wheedle?”

“Wheedle, the pig girl.”

Grateful for the disruption, Pen raced down the stairs with Tristan close behind. They hurried to the outer bailey, which seemed filled with milling, bloated pigs.

Pen stopped on the edge of the herd near the girl called Wheedle, and Tristan joined her. He surveyed the roiling mass of pork.

“Pigs again.”

Wheedle shrieked at two muddy figures swimming in the midst of the herd—Dibbler and Sniggs. “Get out of there, you poxy fools!”

As she shouted, Sniggs bent down to retrieve a rusted pikestaff and a wooden bucket. A pig bumped him, and he fell over Dibbler. They plunged into the mud.

“What happened?” Pen asked.

“Sniggs stepped on that sow,” Wheedle said, “and she charged him.”

“But what is that he’s put on his head?”

“A bucket, mistress. He’s cut out one side to leave room for his face, and he’s using it as a helmet.”

Tristan pointed at Dibbler, who had managed to right himself and put his makeshift helmet back on his head. “God’s toes, he’s carrying a halberd. You aren’t going to allow that knave to carry a halberd, are you?”

“Shh!” Pen hissed. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“Hurt his feelings?” Tristan gaped at her. “What care I for his feelings? The fool hasn’t been trained. Know you how long it takes to master the halberd and the pike?”

He was censuring her again.

“How long?” Pen asked with as much mockery as she could summon.

Tristan threw up his arms as Sniggs accidentally poked Dibbler’s ass with his pike. “In this instance, longer than those two have left to live.”

“Then they must be careful.” Pen called to the two men. “You will take care with those weapons. And don’t leave Wheedle and the pigs alone. Ponder may try to steal one of our sows. And you know what to do when the time comes.”

Tristan’s mouth fell open. He closed it. “Are you saying that this Cutwell knows who took his sow?”

“Of course,” Pen said with impudent cheerfulness. “Saints, Tristan, who else is there?”

She’d pitched him into speechlessness. Satisfied, she turned her back to him then and watched the parade of the pig guard. Dibbler and Sniggs shouldered their long weapons, fell into step, and marched under the portcullis. Soon they could hear the patter of dozens of pig feet over the drawbridge.

Tristan gave his head a slight shake as the last pig vanished. Wincing, he muttered to himself.

“Jesu deliver me.”

“No time for prayers,” Pen said, tugging on his arm. “We must hurry if I’m to show your possessions again as you asked. I have more to do than tend your needs.”

An unfortunate choice of words. He leered at her. She flushed and set her jaw while waiting for him to bait her.

He unsettled her by smiling as though he would like to meet her needs right there and then, saying, “God protect me. I’m in the lair of a lady thief.”

“I,” Pen said as she marched along with Tristan in her wake, “am not a thief. I rarely steal things. Hardly at all. And only if necessary.”

Perhaps it was a blessing that she was already red-faced, for she couldn’t blush any further when he drew everyone’s attention with his laughter.

As they strode across the bailey past a line of villagers armed with flails and winnowing baskets, Pen felt as if she would either melt from the heat of embarrassment or scream from provocation. Head held high, she led Tristan back to the keep in search of his possessions, which she’d cleaned and stored away after he’d seen them the first time.

In the well room she paused. He’d disturbed and flustered her so that she couldn’t quite remember where she’d put his things. She stopped in the middle of the well room and turned around slowly, gazing at the arras over an archway, at the tattered hangings on the walls, at the well and the bucket hanging from its pulley.

“Hmmm.”

Tristan walked over to join her in contemplating the well.

“I know I put them away most carefully.”

Groaning, Tristan leaned against the well and rubbed
the bridge of his nose. “Tell me not that you’ve lost my only possessions.”

“Oh, not lost.”

Pen tapped her fingernail against her front teeth.

Tristan winced. “God’s breath, don’t do that.”

“Pardon, but it helps me think.” When he sighed, she resumed her tapping. After a few minutes, she broke off. “Not here. Perhaps in the hall.”

“God protect me,” she heard him say. “Addlepated as well as reckless.”

She glared at him, then veered away in an attempt to avoid another quarrel in which she played the fool and lost. In the middle of the room she paused once more and looked around at the rounded arches that marched down the long sides of the room, at the trestles and benches stacked against the walls, at the fireplace in the center of the room. On the dais at one end, servants were laying a cloth over a table. Behind the table was the newer fireplace set in the wall, and above it, high on the lofty wall, hung the dusty banner of her mother’s family.

“Now I remember.”

Not looking to see if Tristan followed, she went to the dais and the fireplace. Beside it rested an old cabinet that had been in her mother’s family since the time of Edward I. She opened the battered oak door, and out fell a dulcimer. Tristan stooped and caught it before it could crash to the floor.

Setting it aside, he knelt while Pen rummaged through the cabinet. She handed him a pair of sheep shears, a pile of scarves, and several sleeves of taffeta and grosgrain. Tristan’s arms began to fill as she placed a pair of tongs on top of the sleeves and then added a heap of her unfinished embroidery, a spoon, her sewing basket, and a half loaf of old bread.

“You put my things in here with all this, this, this refuse?”

“Do you wish to examine your possessions or not, sirrah?”

“Oh, I wish it, if you can find them.”

Pen bit back a retort and reached deeper into the cabinet, finally sticking her head inside and pulling out an old gable headdress. This she tossed onto the heap in Tristan’s arms along with a broken clock.

“There it is.”

Pen backed out of the cabinet, whirled, and tossed a bundle at Tristan. The bundle sailed at him, but he couldn’t see it for the clock, and it hit the timepiece, which fell against his nose, dislodging the gable headdress, which poked him above the eye. Tristan yelped and dropped his burdens.

Tongs, sheers, spoon, and clock crashed to the floor. Tristan followed them. He landed on his ass with the gable headdress planted sideways on his head. As he came to rest, Pen gaped at him, snickered, then covered her lips with her fingers while she tried not to burst into a noisy guffaw.

“For-forgive me, my lord.”

Swiping at the headdress, Tristan blew a wispy silk scarf off his nose and scowled at her. “By the rood, Mistress Fairfax. You’re worse than any thunderclap or ravening storm.”

Pen knelt in front of him, laughing. “Oh, Tristan, you looked so wondrous foolish.”

“God’s breath, you did that apurpose. I’ll teach you to-”

He lunged at her. Pen scrambled away, tossing the headdress at him, then the spoon. He batted them aside and kept coming. This time she scooped up the bundle wrapped in goatskin and slammed it into his
stomach as he came at her. His hands locked around it, and he stopped.

To Pen’s relief, he seemed to forget their quarrel. He shook his head and looked down at the bundle. She knew his memories of seeing the contents were slightly blurred. It was clear he was trying not to hope too fervently that another look would spur his memory. Pulling at the twine that bound it, he unwrapped the parcel. A belt of fine leather appeared first. This he touched lightly. He ran his palm over the surface but said nothing.

The belt was laid aside along with the pouch that hung from it. Beneath the belt lay a pulpy mass bound in a kerchief. Tristan examined the shapeless stuff, then glanced up at her.

Pen shook her head. “I tried to dry it and pry apart the leaves, but it was hopeless. I hoped the sight of it or the color of the sealing wax might be familiar to you.” She felt a jab of pain in her heart at the bleak look he gave her.

“No, I remember it not.” He closed his eyes, his lips turning pale at some effort at self-governance. Then he looked at her again. “But I thank you all the same.”

There it was again, that courtesy that concealed an agony of mind. Pen felt her own sympathy grow and smother her offended pride.

“Think you not that it’s odd that you would wear no ring, no chain or sword by which we could divine your name?” she asked.

Tristan sighed as he held up the remnants of his shirt and stared at her through the holes in it. “Mayhap I left off wearing ornaments aboard ship. Mayhap I had none.”

Pen pointed to a worn place on his belt. “You wear a sword.”

“Mayhap not in a storm,” he replied.

Pen offered him a length of shredded hose and laces and watched him tangle his fingers in a length of expensive wool. “None of these things yet seem familiar?”

His hands clenched into fists. He sucked in his breath and pressed his fists against his forehead. Alarmed, Pen scooted close to him and touched his arm. She could feel the tautness in his body.

“Fear not,” she whispered. “The blankness will pass.”