The Maiden Bride (6 page)

"A cottage in the village."

He snorted. "In that village?" He pointed beyond the gates.

"Scoff if you wish, Master Nicholas. But each man who comes to live and work here will have a cottage for himself and his family."

"And this is what will bring your outlaw baker galloping through the gates of Faulkhurst."

"It will, sir. But only if the gate is left open."
She shot the last bar and yanked the door wide.

And there, just beyond the portal, in the pale yellow spill of light from Nicholas's lamp was the long, thin muzzle of a droopy-eyed horse, and beside it, the weary face of a withered, white-bearded old man, whose bony fist was raised to knock.

"Your pardon, milord, for disturbing your fine evening. But we saw the light in your tower."

Nicholas met his wife's glance, a dazzling pageantry of angelic innocence and devilish cunning that made her eyes sparkle and upturned the corners of her mouth.

He warily turned to the old man, all too aware of the sort of God he was dealing with.

"Are you a baker, sir?"

"Ah, no, no, no. 'Fraid not, milord." The man's leathery frown drew up into a smile somewhere inside the fall of his scrappy moustache.

Nicholas turned to offer his opinion of wildass miracles to his wife when the old voice rattled on, "But m' wife here was the best baker in all the
Marches
. Weren't you, Hannah, dear?"

Nicholas followed the old man's adoring gaze inexorably upward to the ghostly face that appeared out of the darkness as the horse stepped forward.

A baker. On a bloody horse.

"Bloody hell."

He steeled himself for his wife's chortling "I told you so," but she was deep into her beaming welcome, gathering up the horse's reins and the old man's hand and coaxing them both over the threshold of her castle and into the midst of her wayward dreams.

Worst of all, he wanted to laugh. For the first time in long years, a great, rolling belly laugh slammed around inside his chest, wanting out, wanting freedom. But that would be a mad sound, indeed.

Absurd woman.

Wild-hearted vixen.

Wife.

"You
must be hungry after your journey, and cold to the bone. Here, Mistress Hannah, please wear my cloak."

On she went in her lavish welcome as he helped the spry woman off the mare. "I'm Lady Eleanor Bayard, and this is Master Nicholas." She flashed Nicholas a smile that any man would die and die again for. "My steward."

His heart thumped, proud, pleased, famished for her, for her touch.

"Is he, then, my lady?" Hannah turned back toward Nicholas, her wrinkled brow creased, a deep chuckle in her throat. "Imagine me, my dear—thinking the handsome lad was your husband."

Bloody, bleeding hell.

Chapter 6

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"
A
n honest error, Hannah." By the look of appalled horror on Nicholas's face, though, the old woman might have been suggesting that he be drawn and quartered. Surely he could imagine a more miserable fate than being mistaken for her husband.

She'd never been a ballad-inspiring beauty, but she'd never lacked for a partner at May dances, and had fended off more than her share of eager embraces.

She'd even been soundly kissed a few times, and had liked it quite well.

And
he,
Master Snort and Growl, was hardly a prince himself—not in the husbandly sense. Not the sort to snuggle close to on a wintry night. Though he certainly radiated enough heat to warm a chamber.

Perhaps that wasn't quite so unthinkable—snuggling against him. Beneath a counterpane, on a feather bed, mounded with lavender-scented pillows. She'd probably kiss him.

Oh, hell. Hannah's impression had been a simple misunderstanding; there was no reason for him to grimace and start unlashing the panniers from the horse with such determination. He was taller and broader-shouldered than anyone she'd ever known, fashioned of timber and stone, and could bellow as though he had commanded his share of battlefields. Easily mistaken for the lord of the castle.

Too easily.

He was a powerful, compelling presence she'd have to guard against, if she were to contain the man's judgments.

"Go, madam. Take your new
tenants
to the keep, if you wish. Out of the cold." He dropped the pannier into a small wheelbarrow, his suspicions of her as plain as his lordly overreaching. "I'll see to the mare."

"And you'll mind the gate as I asked you, steward."

He studied her overlong, with that raking gaze that shoved her off-balance and stole her breath. "Milady."

He said the last with a nearly imperceptible bow, then disappeared into the darkness beyond the barbican. The old mare followed him like a stray pup, nudging her nose into Nich
olas's hand, finding an idle caress there. A friend.

Insufferable man. Well, stubborn at least. Yet she shouldn't be complaining at all. She needed a steward, and he was perfect in many ways.

All in all, a remarkably well-spent day, considering how it had begun. Whatever Nicholas's opinion of her plans and the role he would be forced to play in them, he could hardly doubt that Fergus and Hannah and their agreeable bay were anything but one huge miracle.

"Did you come a long way, Master Fergus?" Eleanor gave him the lamp, then lifted the barrow handles and started toward the keep.

"From up Berwick way. But I'll push that, my lady." Fergus took hold of her elbow with his trembling, bony hand and stopped her. "We already owe you so much."

"You don't, Fergus."

"But we do," Hannah said, alongside her husband. "Tell the lady, Fergus." The lamplight caught Hannah's weary smile, and her cross-hatching of wrinkles. "She needs to know why we come here. Honestly."

"It wasn't the light in the tower?"

They both looked shamefaced. "Nay, your light only gave us hope that the rumors were
true, my lady. Them being unbelievable tales."

Rumors and tales of Faulkhurst? Already!

Eleanor wanted to shout with delight, wanted to find her steward and share the news with him. Aye, and to gloat just a bit.

"What sort of rumors?"

"Hardly creditable, my lady." Hannah drew the cloak around her and huddled up against Fergus's insubstantial chest, an
enviable place
of love and comfort she must have known for decades. Her partner. "But the tattle was that the lady of Faulkhurst was giving away a cottage to every man."

Eleanor tried not to laugh out loud. "Well, it isn't tattle, Hannah. It's true."

They both gasped. "A cottage for us, Fergus!" The pair shared a married glance, took hands as Fergus continued, more agitated now.

"There were also wild rumors of shops and the rights to a guild craft."

Eleanor's heart was racing madly. That too! They'd heard about Faulkhurst all the way up in Berwick. "Aye, Fergus. A craft and a virgate of tillable land."

"Oh, Hannah!" Fergus sat down hard on the wheel of the barrow. "Could you ever have imagined it?"

"Never at all, my love." Hannah took
Eleanor's hand in hers. "Oh, my lady, the towns are filled with outlaws in the guise of lawful burghers. Terrible prices for goods. And the barons do prosecute those unwilling to work for them."

"Prosecute?" She'd never heard of such a thing, not in town, where freemen lived. "And they get away with it?"

"They need every hand at the plow and forge, yet they take greater advantage than before the pestilence."

Here was her skeptical steward's answer as to why she would have no trouble attracting tenants. But there was one enticement that even she was apprehensive about, one that he would surely balk at when he learned of it.

"There was something else, Lady Eleanor," Hannah said. "A false rumor, to be sure, impossible to credit. You may even laugh, for you know how swiftly gossip travels and grows till it swamps all truth."

"What gossip is this, Hannah?"

"Well—that come next year's harvest, the Lady of Faulkhurst—you, my lady—would be tithing to her tenants." Fergus and Hannah both laughed uneasily, as though they had pushed the limits of her hospitality and feared she would send them packing.

But it only made her grin. "That is true as
well, Hannah. I will be tithing to my tenants—but only for the next five years, and only if they work hard."

"Oh, my. We shall."
Hannah clutched her laced up hands to her bosom. "We're home, Fergus. God bless and keep you forever safe, Lady Eleanor."

Eleanor grinned all the way through the dark bailey, her fears banished for a time.

As they entered the portico, poor Dickon woke into a scrambling start.

"Ho, there, scoundrels!" he shouted. "Stop where you are!" He clapped at his chest and then at his belt as he searched in vain for his long-bladed dagger, his highwayman's reflexes gone thankfully dull in this new life of his.

"It's all right, Dickon."

"Ah, my lady! 'Tis you. And—" Dickon blinked at the newcomers with sleep-bleary eyes.

"Hannah and Fergus. They brought a horse with them, Dickon."

Dickon snapped his mouth shut in the middle of a yawn. "A live one?"

Fergus laughed. "Her name is Figgey."

"You found a grandmere, Nellamore!" Pippa came racing out of nowhere to grab
Eleanor's hand, but hung back shyly among her skirts. "Hello."

"Pippa, this is Mistress Hannah." Eleanor knelt beside the girl and took her sleepy warmth into her arms. "And her husband, Master Fergus."

"Do they stay with us, Nellamore? Please, can they?" she asked in a noisy Pippa-whisper.

"I hope they will stay forever."

"Me, too!" Her delight uncontainable once again, Pippa slipped her hand into Hannah's and tugged the startled woman toward the hearth. "Lisabet, come look what Nellamore brought for us!"

The great hall clamored with noise for the next hour, and only settled down after the fire was once again banked and Eleanor had seen the newcomers tucked in among everyone else in front of the hearth.

Everyone but Nicholas—though he certainly didn't need tucking in. He was probably prowling the ramparts with his sword drawn, watching for dangerous outlaws like Fergus and Hannah to come swarming through the gates and over the walls, now that he was steward.

She had sprung the news on him rather abruptly, and without thinking the matter through completely. She ought to find him and make his appointment to the post official. She owed him that much, for his mostly civilized patience while she tried to make him un
derstand that
most people only needed the chance to start over.

She also needed to set down a few rules.

It hadn't been anything he'd said, exactly, that made her decide to take him on as steward; the man was as opinionated as a mule with a toothache, and would fight her at every turn.

Nay, it had been the smile that he'd tried so vainly to hide when he saw Hannah sitting on old Figgey. That and his gentleness as he lifted the old woman down from the saddle.

A man who was that frightened of his joy needed all the clemency she could bring him. Whether he wanted it from her or not.

Where and how have you been living all these
months, steward? And why did you stay?
He was part of the castle itself, as craggy and windblown.

And so terribly lonely.

Eleanor took up the lamp again, and a small sack of sugared plums that she'd been holding for a special occasion—never ever expecting that she'd use them to tame a gargoyle—and made her way to the stables.

Figgey had been carefully unsaddled, curried and blanketed, and now stood dozing amongst tall weeds and newly sprung grass
in
the middle of the neglected enclosure.

Her steward had paid the mare every courtesy, down to a freshly filled water trough. But—damn his eyes—the main gate was closed and barred.

"You'll learn that I mean to win this round, Master Nicholas. And every other one that rears up between us through the years." Even if she had to lock him in the cellar and sleep against the gate door all night long.

But when she reached to unseat the upper bar, she noticed that a thick rope had been threaded through the grated spy hole high in the door, outside the gate. It draped heavily across the center of the barbican, then looped upward into the dimness of the ceiling and disappeared.

Whatever kind of device it was, it hadn't been there an hour earlier.

Leaving the mysterious rope hanging there, she climbed the circling stone gatehouse stairs until she was standing in a round room, amid the jumbled workings of the chains and pulleys that had once operated the portcullis. They were badly fouled now and in need of repair.

The rope from below passed in front of the raised portcullis like the thick strand of a giant spider's web, draped over a rafter, then vanished into a place above that her lamplight wouldn't enter.

And beneath all this tangled mystery lounged her steward, fast asleep in a tipped-back, leather-slung chair that seemed far too small for him. The heels of his tall boots were propped on a rust-frozen gear, and his broad chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

Hannah had called him handsome. He was that, indeed. Extraordinarily so, though not in the perfection of his features, for they were rough-hewn and angular. It was the overwhelming sense of him that drew her, that made her think astonishingly of the children she would never have with her husband.

It made her think of just … leaning down and kissing him. This cold-cast man whose hands were broad and strong and enchantingly warm—and which spoke so powerfully of possession and tightly stoppered passion. The memory of them wrapped roughly, eloquently around her waist, of his fingers raking through her hair, made her face flame to the tips of her ears, made her heart zip along, dancing like a honeybee beneath her breasts.

Jesu! Where the devil were these thoughts coming from? These utterly capricious fantasies about a man whom she'd just met, who had the power to level her world in one stroke if she didn't monitor his every move. She'd never had so much trouble with her wicked imagination as she was having today, when she ought to be planning her strategies, setting unerasable boundaries between them. She took a deep breath, leaned over, and tapped him on the knee.

"Nicholas?" She got her hand trapped tightly for her boldness. He opened one eye slightly, a sliver of dangerous moonlight breasting a hill.

"What, madam?"

Such a low and craggy voice, tucked here among the rafters. The roughness of it hummed and shimmered along her forearm and lodged low in her belly.

"What?" he said again, because she was staring and her face must be red as new clover.

"I—" His hand was
larger than her memory
of it and startlingly heated, holding hers fast against his knee. "What are you doing here, sir?"