The Unveiling (16 page)

Garr returned to memories of that morning at Lincoln when he had looked upon the young man’s lifeless form swinging from a tree. He had cut Jonas down and, that afternoon, following a bloody contest between Stephen’s men and Henry’s, had begun the journey to Castle Lillia.

What he had not expected was to be met by a girl who looked more a boy and who blamed him for her brother’s death as if she saw through his lie. What he had hoped was that Jonas, in his finest tunic and hose, the ceremonial misericorde of Wulfen girded—the same dagger awarded to Garr the day of his knighting—would be set in the ground without any discovering the rope burns around his neck.

To spare the girl and her uncle shame, he had lied. A good reason, he had believed, but the marks of hanging had been revealed and, thus, his lie. He should not be surprised that the discovery added to Annyn Bretanne’s belief he was responsible for her brother’s death. What he had never expected was for her to make good her vow that were she a man she would kill him.

Grudgingly, he acknowledged what anger had previously held from him:
were
Annyn Bretanne a man, her attempt at revenge would be warranted—though not in God’s eyes—by the unveiling of his lie. Truly, her only trespass was in taking another’s name and disguising herself as a man to enter Wulfen.

“By faith!” Garr touched the scores on his cheek left by the young Annyn Bretanne. They were so faint he could not feel them, but they were there. He pushed a hand back through his hair. What was he to do with her?

“Brother?” Abel peered around one of the great doors that granted passage to the inner bailey and smiled apologetically. “’Tis a chill night and there are yet two hours of sleep to be had ere rising.”

This the reason Garr had left Annyn Bretanne to herself—to return those of Wulfen to their beds. He beckoned for the men to enter.

Lavonne was among the first to clamber through the doorway. The night air striping his cheeks pink, he surged toward Garr. “I demand to speak with her!”

Her
, not
my betrothed
, not
Lady Annyn.
“For what?”

“Henry gave her to me. ’Tis my right.”

Garr made him wait while he silently ticked through the preparations to be made before departing Wulfen. Finally, he said, “Your rights ended when she raised a dagger to me. But if ten minutes will suffice, I shall grant it.”

“Ten minutes!” Lavonne’s nostrils flared, mouth twisted, and color went from pink to crimson.

Though the man before Garr was one only glimpsed during his years of training at Wulfen, he had always existed. If not that Garr’s father had put loyalty before sense, the same as he had done with King Stephen, Lavonne would not have been allowed to complete his training here. But Drogo had insisted, placing the Wulfriths’ one hundred year ties with the Lavonnes above Wulfen’s reputation for turning out honorable men.

Loyalty!
Garr silently scoffed at his father’s failing. Admirable, but only where due. He ground his teeth and silently begrudged that Drogo was not alone in that failing. He himself struggled with it as if it had been passed through the blood from father to son. England was in dire need of a worthy king, and neither Stephen, nor his son, was or could be that.

In that moment, Garr accepted the answer to prayers he had long prayed. Though it wrenched his gut, it was time for him to join Henry.

He focused on the man sent by the one who would be king. “Ten minutes or naught.”

Lavonne drew a harsh breath. “Very well.”

As he strode toward the dais, Everard stepped alongside Garr.

“It seems you have won your wager with Abel,” Garr said.

Though Everard had to be pleased, there was no gloating on his face. “You are taking her from here?”

“Within the hour. I shall leave Wulfen in your care.”

His brother inclined his head. “I will not disappoint.”

“This I know.” Garr looked around the hall, caught Abel’s gaze, and motioned him forward. “I regret you shall not gain the two hours of sleep you desire. You will accompany me from Wulfen.”

“I knew ’twould be me.” Abel sighed. “And our destination?”

Garr looked again to Lavonne as the man tossed the curtain aside and entered the solar. “We go to Stern.”

“Stern?” both brothers exclaimed.

To that place where Garr had been birthed and been but a visitor since leaving it as a young child. He did not wish Annyn Bretanne among his mother and sisters, but there was no other place—at least, until he determined her fate.

He breathed deep. “Aye. Stern.”

It was Wulfrith she expected, not the man who strode toward her with the unsure step of one still suffering the effects of too much drink.

Annyn rose from the chair she had lowered into moments past, and with one hand gathered her parted tunic together. “Lord Lavonne.”

He halted within an arm’s reach, stared a chill wind through her, and swept the back of a ringed hand across her cheek.

With a muffled cry, Annyn dropped into the chair.

He slammed his hands to the arm rests and thrust his face so near hers she knew not only his deepest pore, but the depths of his sour belly. “I, Baron Lavonne, betrothed to a woman who runs from me, then disguises herself as a man?”

Denying herself the comfort of pressing a hand to her throbbing cheek, Annyn held his gaze.
Naught to fear. He can do no worse than Wulfrith.

“Do you know how they laugh at me?”

She narrowed her lids. “The same as Lord Wulfrith, I presume.”

He caught a fistful of her hair and forced her deeper into the chair. “Witch!”

Though tears burned her eyes, she held his gaze.

Abruptly, he released her and turned away. “Why?”

She knew what he wished to know, but though inclined to deny him, she decided it could do no harm. If nothing else, he might reveal something that would allow her to see Jonas’s death more clearly, especially considering his drunken state. She gathered her tunic closed. “Retribution for my brother’s murder.”

Lavonne chortled and looked around. “Wulfrith did not murder your brother, fool woman!”

Then she was wrong about Wulfen’s lord? Chest filling with what felt like relief, she asked, “If not Wulfrith, who murdered Jonas?”

He put his head to the side and winced as if pained by the movement. “No one murdered him. Your brother hung himself.”

Annyn’s relief withered as Wulfrith’s words returned to her:
Your brother’s death was not honorable...most dishonorable.

All of her rejected what both men told. Jonas, never sure of anything more than he was of himself, would not commit suicide, especially after he had found God. Either Lavonne lied or someone had told him a lie.

“How do you know this?” she asked in a voice so strained she hardly recognized it.

He shrugged. “All who were there that day at Lincoln know it. Wulfrith merely put the wound to Jonas to spare your family shame.”

She could hardly breathe. “What shame?”

“That your brother sided with Henry.”

“The same as you, Lord Lavonne.”

“The same as I do
now.
”

She wondered about that. “Very well, but what has that to do with his death?”

“Everything. He stole a missive delivered from Stephen to Wulfrith that revealed plans of attack against Henry’s army. Fortunately for Stephen, it was found in your brother’s pack ere he could deliver it across the lines.”

Another lie. Or was it? Annyn’s hands trembled on the chair arms. Jonas had to have loathed squiring for a man allied to Stephen, but would he have betrayed Wulfrith? Had he, it would have given Wulfrith cause to hang him.

“For his treachery,” Lavonne continued, “Wulfrith intended to send him home, but the shame was too much for your brother and he hung himself.”

Annyn sprang to her feet. “You lie!”

Lavonne gripped her arms so fiercely she would surely be marked.

“Unhand me!”

He jerked her forward, causing her to fall against him. “You are mine, Annyn Bretanne, as is Aillil. I shall have you both.”

She dropped her head back. “There is naught that would convince me to take a drunk for a husband.”

He released her, but only to once more raise a hand to her.

Annyn threw up an arm to deflect the blow, but it did not land.

With a strangled cry, Lavonne released her.

Warily, Annyn lowered her arm.

Pain shone beyond the fury contorting the baron’s face. Right hand clasping his left forearm against his body, blood running between his fingers, he stared at the misericorde that protruded from his upper arm—Jonas’s dagger.

“You and your men are leaving Wulfen now,” Wulfrith said from where he stood before the curtains.

“See what you have done to me!” Lavonne cried as he dripped crimson on the rushes.

“Surely you remember lesson eight, Lavonne.”

The baron bared his teeth. That a man so comely could turn so unbecoming was frightening.

“I am no longer your pupil, Wulfrith.”

“As you should never have been. Now gather your men and be gone from Wulfen.”

The baron pointed at Annyn. “She belongs to—”

“Now!”

Lavonne sneered. “Henry shall hear of this.”

“I expect so, and when he does, tell him that if he wishes to speak to me he should send a grown man.”

As Lavonne sputtered, the curtain parted to admit Sir Everard with a sword in hand.

Resisting the longing to probe her tender cheek that his gaze paused upon, Annyn clutched her torn tunic together.

“Baron Lavonne is leaving,” Wulfrith said. “See that he does not tarry.”

Sir Everard eyed the man. “Will you require a cart to convey you from Wulfen, Lavonne?”

The bloodied man traversed the room. As he neared the curtains, Wulfrith proffered a hand. “The dagger.”

“I shall bleed to death!”

“Then you had best remove yourself quickly from Wulfen that you might tend your injury.”

With a grunt of pain, Lavonne wrenched the misericorde free and glanced at Everard who tensed in readiness. Muttering an oath, he turned the misericorde hilt first and slapped it in Wulfrith’s palm. “My blood upon you, Wulfrith. Next time, it shall be yours upon me.”

“Only if by foul means,” Wulfrith demeaned the man’s honor.

Lavonne stared at him for what seemed time interminable, then stepped to the curtain. Everard followed him into the hall.

Feeling Wulfrith’s gaze for the first time since he had entered the solar, Annyn averted her face and dropped to the edge of the chair.

She heard Wulfrith’s feet on the rushes, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him cross to the small table beside the bed. He set the misericorde on it, dipped his hands in the basin, and wiped them on a towel. Next, he strode to his chest and produced a key to the lock she had attempted to open before Lavonne had entered the solar.

As he searched the chest, Annyn stroked beneath her right eye. Not only was it tender and beginning to swell, but Lavonne’s ring had drawn blood at the corner.

A shiver crept over her as memories of her mother’s bruises returned. Annyn’s father had been such a man as Lavonne, the kind she had vowed she would never marry. And she would not. She was almost grateful her end lay with Wulfrith.

Once more struggling to put down his anger, Garr dragged a white tunic from the chest, crossed to Annyn Bretanne, and dropped it in her lap. “Don this.” He would have turned away, but what he glimpsed on her face made him look again. However, she dropped her chin before he could confirm what he had seen.

Anger spreading as if his first lesson had never been taught him, he caught her chin. She allowed but another glimpse of the injury before jerking free.

Aching for a sword to hand, Garr turned. And stopped two strides short of the chest.
The woman tried to murder you. What do you care what Lavonne did to her? She is no better than he. Worse.

Or was she? She believed her brother was murdered.

Garr eyed the chest where his sword lay. Though he longed to twist a blade in Lavonne’s gut, he denied himself. Were Lavonne and his men not already gone from the castle, they would soon be.

He returned to the chest, pushed aside his sheathed sword, and lifted out the salve that Brao—Annyn Bretanne—had returned to him.

When he looked around, he saw she had risen from the chair. Keeping her back to him, she pulled the tunic over the one he had put the misericorde through and smoothed it down her hips. A woman’s hips—slightly flared for the making of children.

Why Garr allowed his mind to wander so, he did not understand. He traversed the solar, but though she surely knew he was at her back, she did not turn. He caught her arm, but before he could pull her around, she gasped and wrenched free. Lavonne again?

“Sit,” Garr ordered. When she warily complied, he dropped to his haunches before her.

Though he thought she would hide her face again, she looked up.

Why had he not seen the woman in her? Though it had struck him that Jame Braose was pretty, he had pondered no deeper in spite of the squire’s peculiarities. Had a man ever been so blind?

In spite of her shorn hair and the blow to her cheek, she
was
pretty. Not beautiful, but comely with a pert nose, delicately arched eyebrows, bowed mouth, softly curving jaw, and large, pale blue eyes—eyes that, if ever they smiled, might melt a man.

“Are you quite finished?” she snapped.

Berating himself, he looked again, but this time as one assessing a prisoner. There was no self-pity in those eyes, not even hatred. Indeed, if there was a name for what braced her, it would be determination. She had endured a sennight of knighthood training, had her plans for revenge wrested from her, been revealed for a woman, and suffered Lavonne’s assault. Yet she did not succumb to despair. Unlike most women Garr had met, Annyn Bretanne was strong. If not for her purpose at Wulfen, he might admire her. Or perhaps in spite of it, he did.

He offered the salve to her. Though she didn’t flinch as she smoothed it across her cheek, her jaw tightened.