Wild Wind (37 page)

“I haven’t tried to use it against you, have I?”

“Nay, nor will you. Throw it that way.” Alex pointed so that Gaspar could see, toward the woods on the other side of the path from Nicki. “As hard as you can.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Why the devil should I?”

Gaspar gripped the mallet with both fists, his eyes as flat and lifeless as Nicki had ever seen them, his mouth curving in a predatory smile. She was about to call out a warning to Alex, but it wasn’t necessary. Before Gaspar could act on his impulse, Alex twisted the sword slightly, which made Gaspar wince. Swearing colorfully, he hurled the mallet into the woods.

“Where’s Lady Nicolette?” Gaspar asked.

Still holding the sword on Gaspar, Alex said, “She’s no concern of yours. Saddle up and be gone.”

Gaspar walked up to his horse and turned to face Alex. “I came to tell you to be more discreet. It won’t do, you staying out all night with her. People will—”

“Don’t you presume to tell me what to do,” Alex said.

“What of her ladyship’s reputation?”

“Why should it damage her reputation to take shelter from a storm?”

Gaspar smiled salaciously. “Are you saying that’s all that went on last night, after the way you and she have been—”

Alex advanced on Gaspar in two strides, pressing his sword so hard against the big man’s throat that he had to bend backward against his horse to keep from being cut; fear widened Gaspar’s eyes. Nicki stared in unblinking fascination. This was a side of her easygoing Alex she’d never seen—the veteran mercenary soldier who could open a man’s throat with a flick of his wrist.

“Who in Hades do you think you are?” Alex demanded in a low, fierce voice. “If you ever again dare to imply such things about her ladyship, in anyone’s hearing, you’ll answer to my steel. And believe me,” he added with bared teeth, stepping closer to slide the edge of the blade lightly across Gaspar’s throat, “I’ll relish the excuse to slice you open.” He stepped back. “Now, get out of here.”

Gaspar licked his lips nervously. “I need to get my mallet first.”

“You can get it later.”

Bested, Gaspar mounted up. Apparently it gave him confidence to be on horseback, because he said, “I wasn’t planning on coming back this way today. Be a good fellow and fetch it for me. I can do you no damage with it from up here.”

“You overstep yourself, asking me to fetch for you.”

A tide of red rose up Gaspar’s neck; he glared at Alex with a loathing that chilled Nicki. Alex’s comment had reminded Gaspar of his station, increasingly a sore spot with him. For the first time ever, she felt truly afraid of him.

“You will be coming back this way later today,” Alex informed him. “I want you to bring a cart and fetch her ladyship’s mare. She’s dead in the stream about a mile from the abbey.”

Gaspar’s chin jutted out. “I don’t take orders from you, de Périgeaux.”

“But you still take them from me.” Nicki stepped out from behind the tree, to Alex’s obvious displeasure.

Gaspar blinked at her. “My lady. If I’d know you were there, I wouldn’t have said...I—”

“You wouldn’t have insulted me to my face, only behind my back, is that it?”

The red stain spread up Gaspar’s throat to his face. His gaze lit on Nicki’s hair, hanging loose, and her wrinkled tunic. All too aware of the dampness between her thighs, she felt much the same under his scrutiny as she had twelve years ago, after losing her innocence to Phillipe in the stable. But she was no longer a cowed sixteen-year-old girl, and she’d be damned if she’d surrender to her fear of this man.

“Make no mistake, Gaspar,” she said. “The only reason I don’t dismiss you today is that you’ve been assigned the stewardship of Peverell in the event my husband and I are obliged to relinquish the castellany. ‘Twould anger Father Octavian if I were to remove you now, and I must endeavor to remain on good terms with him. But don’t think you can push me any further than you already have. Any more insolence from you and I’ll toss you out on your ear. Or perhaps,” she added with a small smile, “I’ll hand you over to Alex.”

Alex smiled at her in a way that suggested she’d impressed him. She felt ridiculously proud.

Gaspar regarded her stonily.

“When you come back for Marjolaina,” she told him, “bring a sling and plenty of rope—and a couple of strong men, fellows who aren’t afraid to work. Not those worthless curs of yours—dependable men. She’s heavy.”

Gaspar bowed, his jaw set. “As you wish, milady.”

“Good day, Gaspar,” she said in dismissal.

“Good day, milady.” Turning to Alex, he added, perhaps as a parting shot, “Young sir.”

Kicking his mount, he thundered off down the path.

“WHERE HAVE YOU
been?” Milo called out the next evening as Gaspar entered the great hall.

Gritting his teeth, Gaspar turned to face the desiccated creature in the bed. “At the abbey.”

“So late?”

“Father Octavian...needed my help with something, and it took longer than expected.”

“You missed supper.”

“I wouldn’t have had the appetite for it.” Not after this afternoon. Gaspar’s hands curled into fists as he fought back the urge to fly into a mindless, screaming rage. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He wanted to strangle all of them—Octavian, Nicolette, Milo, and most of all Alex de Périgeaux, whose reappearance after all these years had ruined everything. If not for him, Gaspar could have gone ahead with his original plan to dose Nicolette’s wine and sire a child on her unawares. As it was, he was now forced to wait, playing Milo’s compliant retainer and Father Octavian’s...was there even a word for the role he performed behind the locked door of the abbot’s office? How much longer would this have to go on before de Périgeaux’s seed took root and he could implement the next phase of his revised plan?

“I was waiting for you,” Milo said. “I wanted some wine, and those two won’t bring me any.” He nodded toward de Périgeaux and Nicolette, playing chess at the high table; but for them, the great hall was empty.

Gaspar fetched Milo the wine and poured it down his throat until he was good and soused. Drunkenness made him more receptive to Gaspar’s notions, and the time had come to broach his idea regarding the problem of Alex de Périgeaux.

Softly, so as not to be heard by the couple across the hall, he said, “From the looks of it, they fancy themselves in love.”

Milo gazed toward his wife and cousin with a thoughtful, rather melancholic expression, and then drained his goblet.

“Has it occurred to you,” Gaspar asked as he poured a refill, “that she may not be content to remain here with you once she’s carrying his child in her belly? He may find it easier to talk her into running off with him this time. Then where would you be? With no heir to inherit Peverell, you’d be cast out of here and begging on the streets before you know it.”

Milo’s head wobbled as he shook it. “Won’t happen,” he slurred. “Alex won’t go back on his oath—I told you. And my wife would never go along with it. ‘Twould ruin her precious reputation—and she’d be giving up Peverell. Never happen.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“I am sure.” Milo swallowed some more wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I know them both—better’n you do. They’ll do what’s right if it kills ‘em.”

“Perhaps,” Gaspar murmured, glancing at Nicolette and Alex as they laughed over something. “But what if they don’t? People have been known to act contrary to their natures—especially in matters of the heart. What if he convinces her to follow him back to England?”

“Why should you care?” Milo’s gaze was remarkably astute, considering his condition. “You get to stay on here no matter what happens. Nicolette told me you got Father Octavian to name you steward. How’d you talk him into it?”

Talk? He wished all it had taken was talk. Gaspar chose to ignore Milo’s second query and answer the first. “I care because I’d rather serve as your retainer than Father Octavian’s steward.”

“Is it because of his...inclinations?”

Gaspar stiffened.

“They say he’s a sodomite.” Milo took another drink, staring at Gaspar. His gaze when he lowered the goblet was too knowing. “How’d you say you talked him into naming you steward?”

“It didn’t take much talking.” Gaspar wanted to punch that blearily smug look off of Milo’s face. “He wanted a military man for the job. I was the best candidate.”

“I see.”

“But as I say, I’d rather serve you than him,” Gaspar said smoothly, eager to get to make his point and deflect the conversation from its present course. “Which will be impossible if your cousin absconds with your wife. We must prevent that.”

“I assume you have a plan.” Milo lifted the goblet to his mouth. “You always have a plan.”

Gaspar glanced around to make sure no servant or soldier was creeping about. “He could take ill and...keel over dead. It happens all the time.”

Milo lowered the goblet slowly, his incredulous gaze trained on Gaspar. “Nay.”

Gaspar leaned closer. “Poison hemlock and white hellebore. Very difficult to detect in spiced wine.”

“Nay!”

“No one need ever know. And I wouldn’t do it till she’s with child, of course—”

“Nay! He’s my cousin, for God’s sake.”

“This is not the time for sentimentality,” Gaspar said between clenched teeth. “The man is a menace.”

Milo sat upright for the first time all day, scowling in astonishment. “You’re telling me you want to murder an innocent man with poison, and you say he’s the menace?”

“Innocent? He talked your wife into betraying you.”

“Because I asked him to!”

“You asked him to seduce her body, not her heart. You never asked him to woo her like some moonstruck youth. You never asked him to steal her away from you.”

“Alex is not going to steal Nicolette away from me.”

“Your faith in him is quite touching,” Gaspar said snidely, “but potentially disastrous. Spare his life and you’ll end up sorry.”

“I’m already sorry.” Milo sank back against his pillows, a sad-eyed living corpse. “Sorrier than I can say, for ever having relied on you...for letting you insinuate yourself into our lives this way.”

Gaspar backtracked swiftly, wary of losing Milo’s trust in him too soon. He needed that trust for a little while longer. “I can’t tell you how those words sting, milord.” He lowered his head contritely. “I’d kill myself before I’d relinquished your confidence. What I said, about the poison...’twas my concern for you, and our position here, that prompted such a rash idea.”

“You won’t do it, will you?” Milo demanded. “You won’t go behind my back—”

“Nay, of course not!” Gaspar said, reinforcing the denial with what he hoped was a credible expression of outrage. “‘Twas just an idea, nothing more, and a foolish one. I’d never dream of going against your wishes.” Not until Lady Nicolette was pregnant, at any rate. Until then, he must bide his time and put on as convincing a display of servile obedience as he could stomach—while keeping a close watch on her ladyship, lest she cook up any more clever schemes for keeping Peverell. He must not abandon his practice of following her if she rode away unescorted, especially at odd hours. So far the practice had proved most enlightening.

“Good,” Milo said, but Gaspar saw it all in his eyes—the skepticism, the apprehension. He knew, or at least suspected, the truth—that Gaspar would do what Gaspar saw fit, regardless of Milo’s instructions.

Gaspar might almost have been worried if he thought there was a possibility that Milo would remember any of this tomorrow.

“You’re troubling yourself over nothing, milord,” Gaspar soothed, pouring some more wine into his master’s goblet. “Drink up and get a good night’s sleep, and you’ll feel ever so much better in the morning. I feel certain of it.”

ALEX LOOKED UP
from his tablet to study Nicki as she fetched their apple cider from the stream, where it was cooling. He loved watching her—her graceful walk, the restrained elegance of her movements as she flipped her braids out of the way, then crouched and pulled the string attached to the flagon of cider.

A leaf spun down from the forest canopy above and landed on his tablet. Sitting up, he lifted it by its stem and twirled it. It was the pale red of claret, with just a smudge of rust near the tip. Dozens of similar brightly hued leaves littered their blanket, strewn by a breeze that had grown inexorably cooler over the past few weeks.

At Hauekleah, Faithe would be preparing for next week’s harvest feast to celebrate Michaelmas, the twenty-ninth of September, which marked the official beginning of winter on their Cambridgeshire farmstead. Faithe would supervise her staff as they decorated the barn with the last of the wheat sheaves. During the feast, she and Luke—and probably Robert and Hlynn—would dance in a circle with their devoted villeins, to the accompaniment of cowbells, tambourines and reed flutes.

Closing his eyes, Alex could almost hear it. It had its own distinctive, sound, the music of the Saxon peasants—whimsical and mellow and so oddly compelling that he only had to hear a tune once and it was burned into his memory.

Christ, but he missed England. He missed Luke and Faithe, and of course the children, terribly, but most of all he just missed England—the lush green smell of it, the damp richness of the soil, the robust people and their powerful connection to the land. Not that he’d been dwelling on it during his stay in Normandy; had it really been nearly three months already? He’d had other things on his mind, to be sure, and there could be no sweeter diversion than Nicki. But sometimes, as now, something would remind him of things English and he would feel an empty longing deep in his chest.

“What are you thinking of?”

Alex opened his eyes to find Nicki lowering herself to the blanket; she sat facing him, her knees touching his comfortably.

“England.”

Nicki nodded. She knew how he felt. He told her everything—everything he wasn’t bound by oath to conceal from her. They talked endlessly, here in their secluded haven by the stream, when they weren’t bending their heads over their lessons or making love beneath the sheltering trees.