Yearning Heart (2 page)

Stephen leaned back in the carriage to give it some thought.

* * * *

“You cannot do this, Oliver,” Lady Elizabeth said.

Her face had whitened and for the first time in years, a rebellious expression replaced the usual indifference.

“Rebecca is but sixteen. She does not know the ways of a wife. Or does he plan to keep her and not marry? The royal ladies of the court gossip that Sir Stephen is not interested in marriage, only in sleeping with many to satisfy his desires.”

“It does not matter, my wife.” Sir Oliver growled at Elizabeth as he paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. “It is all I could do to hold onto my lands. What would you have me do?”

“Mayhap you could one time think of your family before engaging in such games.” There was bitterness in Elizabeth's voice as she stood to walk from the room.

Sir Oliver whirled but one look at her face stopped him. Elizabeth never disagreed with him no matter the subject. Never had she argued about his decisions where Rebecca was concerned. He had found her crying when he sent Rebecca to school in London for two years, but she did not object. Today was different.

“You will not argue with me, Elizabeth,” he said and started across the room to her.

“I do not argue, my lord.” Her voice was quiet, disturbing. “I am saying that you are a stupid, arrogant, selfish man who will do as he wishes no matter it hurts his family. You are the reason Richard lives alone across the hills, the reason Peter and Margaret come to this house to visit only at Christmas time.” Her head lifted. “Perhaps you do Rebecca a favor. Mayhap Sir Stephen will be a gentler master than you.”

She picked up her skirts and, ignoring her husband's spluttering protest, walked briskly from the room.

* * * *

Rebecca knelt carefully, knees locked for balance. One eye closed, she sighed, bit her tongue between small white teeth. The singing twang of the arrow sent a quiver through her body, a thrill of knowledge that she had handled the heavy bow with more skill than usual. As the young rabbit scampered away, the arrow caught him cleanly, and he dropped.

“'Allo, Rebecca. Great shot.” Her brother, Richard, emerged from a grove of trees, his face wreathed in a big grin. “Mayhap papa will be happy for fresh meat on the table for which he does not have to part with money.”

Rebecca skipped to meet Richard. He was her favorite brother, gentle, kind, patient with his sixteen-year-old sister who tagged after him in the fields when she could escape Lord Oliver's watchfulness.

Papa expected work from her, sun up to sun down, with no time out for pleasures such as sitting with Richard as he tended flock or walking behind him along the straight rows he plowed. Richard was not one to run to Papa with tales, and she was safe to enjoy small things such as riding one of the pastured horses bareback, writing poems and reading them aloud to Richard, laughing over silly words, and sometimes being serious. Richard was fun, a brother who returned her admiration and love full measure.

“Hark!”

Richard cupped his hand to his ear.

Rebecca heard it, too. Papa's command blast on the horn:
Get yourself hither, young lady
, was the content of the angry sound.

Rebecca reached up and kissed Richard's cheek.

“I must needs go before Papa cracks his crown,” she said.

Richard rumpled her tangled blonde curls and laughed.

“Take the rabbit and papa will forget his anger.”

Rebecca knew better. Papa needed no reason to swat her backside other than to remind her that she was his daughter to do his bidding at all times.

Richard watched the slight figure race away, the rabbit dangling from her small hand. Rebecca was such a lovely, sweet child, and he resented Lord Oliver's treatment of her. That was why he had built his two-room lodging on the far side of Grinwold's acreage and seldom darkened his father's door.

He looked now at the crumpled page of vellum Rebecca had left him. One of the many poems she wrote for or to him or about the school she'd attended years before. Words where she could wish for her own knight in shining armor. One more reason for papa to take a whip to her should he find such nonsense on her person. Mayhap one day some kind gentleman would come by Grinwold and take Rebecca away to a better life. Richard wished with all his heart that this would happen.

Rebecca hurried through the wild tangle of rushes along the small stream, jumping from stone to stone, missing one and muddying her already dirtied slippers. Papa would be unhappy about that. Papa was always unhappy. She couldn't remember ever pleasing him in her entire sixteen years. The only way she could have made him happy, she guessed, was to have been a third son.

Richard, she loved dearly. Peter, the oldest, married to Virginia, was distant and cold—like papa—and Rebecca did not care that he visited Grinwold seldom.

* * * *

“What is this?”

The angry roar stopped Rebecca in her tracks, and she looked up to see papa. Bushy brows drew together in thunderous disapproval, and she had no time to dodge as he lunged toward her, swinging her around by her arm to lay his thick hand to her backside.

“Canst not remember that young ladies do not hunt in the fields like a lowly serf? Richard causes such disobedience.”

Papa's hand fair stung her bottom, but Rebecca blinked back tears, defiantly refusing to say Richard was with her. She held out the rabbit to Sir Oliver.

“'Would make fresh meat for the evening meal for you and mama,” she said.

“Take it to the cook room and make haste to the front hall,” Sir Oliver said, his lips curling in distaste. He turned and strode away from her, grumbling his displeasure.

Rebecca made her way to the big room where the meals were prepared and left the rabbit with cook who was cleaning vegetables by the back door. Then she went toward the room where papa waited.

Rebecca stopped outside the heavy door and knocked, pushing inward at the strident command from within. Her father stood in front of his desk, black waistcoat gaping over a protruding stomach. His ruddy face shone as though polished with the oil Nora used on the ugly dark wood furniture. A self-satisfied smile pulled thin pink lips back over too-perfect teeth. He smiled—until he saw the condition of his daughter.

“Rebecca!” His shout was enough to halt her slow steps just inside the door.

Inwardly, she sighed, looking down at her soiled shoes, dirt-spattered skirt, and blood from the rabbit streaking her hands. She pushed at her blonde hair with one hand and blew upward at the straggly wisps falling into her eyes. She could well imagine what her father saw when looking at his only daughter. She did not really care. Since the day she was born, she had never pleased him.

Hand upraised, Sir Oliver grunted in rage as he took a step toward Rebecca. She closed her eyes, waiting for the blow.

“Sir Oliver.” The words were soft-spoken, but they stopped her father. He sputtered, thrusting his hand behind his back.

Until then, Rebecca hadn't noticed the other man standing across the room. She opened her eyes as he moved toward her and stopped, bowing from the waist.

“Stephen Lambert, Lady Grinwold,” he said. For a moment, a sympathetic grin touched his mouth and deep blue eyes sparkled with laughter as he took in her smudged nose and tousled hair. His expression once again solemn, he faced Sir Oliver.

“You have told Rebecca of our agreement?”

“She will agree.”

Sir Oliver rubbed smooth hands together, a confident smile making small eyes disappear into cheeks grown fat through overindulgence.

The man glanced once more at Rebecca.

“I would speak with milady about the arrangement.”

Sir Oliver frowned at her, his black eyes promising punishment should she say the wrong thing.

“Go change your clothing, Rebecca.” Papa didn't just speak, he ordered.

“No need. I will speak with her now.”

“Of course, Sir Stephen.”

Her father's frown disappeared as he answered his guest. With a last threatening scowl at her, he walked behind his desk out of her line of vision. She could feel him hovering, waiting to strike should she disobey him in some way.

She stared at the man who introduced himself as Stephen Lambert, wondering at his ability to make her father listen to him. She had not known anyone to override Oliver Grinwold's temper as this stranger had done. Her gaze went over the tall, straight figure, recognizing the best quality of material in the well-cut, light-blue waistcoat laced over matching pants tucked into shining black boots.

“Rebecca?” The deep, even tone of Sir Stephen's voice interrupted her thoughts.

She brought her gaze upward to meet dark blue eyes set wide apart in a rough-angled face. Blond hair, the color of the ripe grain in her father's fields, curled away from his face and lay on his coat collar. His chin beneath a dark blond beard was square and hard.

She dipped her head. “My lord.”

A deep chuckle brought her head up once more.

“You say that with doubt, Rebecca.”

“Nay, my lord.” Her denial was quick, hoping Sir Oliver wouldn't bellow his displeasure at her attitude. It would not do for him to hear her voice with less than respect for this man.

“Then you do agree with the plan?”

“What plan is this, my lord?”

“Sir Oliver has agreed to give you as my wife.” But why in hell did I ever agree to it? he wondered. She is but a child.

Rebecca stared at Sir Stephen, eyes widening to overflow her thin face. She should not be shocked, but she was. She should have known ... the pursing of papa's narrow lips when he looked at her, appraising dark eyes disappearing behind soft flesh as they went over her slim body. She looked around at papa, and then back at the stranger she was promised to.

Sir Oliver was finally getting rid of his unwanted daughter. He didn't need a daughter; he needed a third son to work his vast land holdings. Richard and Peter could use help in the fields. She would gladly have worked alongside Richard, the gentle one, but she was not allowed because she was a woman. She was only capable of doing housework, a chore she detested as much as Sir Oliver disliked her.

Rebecca lifted wide eyes to meet the questioning look in the man's expression. How like papa to marry her off to a complete stranger, trade her like the cows and pigs on market day. Her throat clogged, and her eyes stung.

“And what does Sir Oliver get in exchange for a skinny, ugly, unwanted daughter?” she said.

She stood straight, turning once more to stare into her father's face, took a step closer to him and continued. “More lands for Peter to lord it over? More sheep you can skin the wool from the way you have long wanted to skin me? An empty bedroom to house pilgrims and minstrels to bring in money where you must, at the least, feed me? What?”

The triumphant look on Sir Oliver's face disappeared in an angry frown. His hands made into fists, and he started to raise them, but looked instead at Sir Stephen.

“It is not your place to question a business transaction between Sir Stephen and me.”

“Not even when I am the one traded like an unhealthy cow?”

“Rebecca.”

Sir Stephen put a hand on her arm. He had thought to take her and not marry, but now he knew he could not. I will have to marry her, he concluded to himself at that instant. She would not make a good mistress. He felt reluctant sympathy for her and couldn't bring himself to quiet her, as he knew he should. It was a cold, heartless contract viewed from the child's eyes.

Rebecca whirled on Stephen. Tear-glazed eyes fastened on the third hook of his waistcoat as she shook off his hand.

I will not go with you, she thought. I will run away. I will hide in the next carriage to pass and ...

“Be good enough to pack what you will need for a three-day journey. I will wait for you here,” Sir Stephen said. “I must leave for Glastonbury today.”

“Today?”

She meant her answer to be loud and protesting, but it was only a whisper. How could she run away if he took her now? Her eyes locked with the stranger's and for a moment, she imagined sympathy in the brooding look he gave her.

“Now,” he said brusquely, turning his back on her to walk to the window. “I have paid well for you. Do as I say.”

So. I trade one master for another, she thought, smarting from his cold order. At least, he is more handsome than papa. But to marry. It meant sleeping with him, allowing him to fondle her body and ...

Head high, she whirled. Sir Oliver stepped from behind the desk, but she shoved him aside as she rushed out the door and up the stairs to the small bedroom assigned to her. However grudgingly. Left to papa, she would have been bedded down with the sheep.

Inside the room, she looked around. Small, yes, but her own privacy. Her dreams began here and went with her the miles she walked and ran through papa's lands. He didn't allow her to ride, but she did anyway, smiling her way past the smitten stable boy when papa was away on business. Elizabeth never asked where she had been. She didn't want to know should Sir Oliver inquire as to
her
daughter's whereabouts.

Glastonbury, Sir Stephen had said. The only thing she knew about the distant city was what Sister Emilie taught in Suffolk School. It was on the coast, a rocky, rugged coastline twisting its way along the water, misty and forbidding, of poor farmland, of scattered sheep and few human beings.

Among them, one Sir Stephen Lambert. Soon-to-be husband of Rebecca Grinwold.

She crossed the room to drag a carrying case from the narrow closet. Inside it were the sheets of manuscripts kept hidden from Sir Oliver, treasured to read over and over. He had seen she was educated enough to justify being his daughter, but he knew nothing of the precious parchment pages she kept pressed beneath her mattress.

If Sir Oliver ever discovered the pages and learned how she came by them, he would beat her, and then take them to offer ingratiatingly to some nobleman in exchange for a gambling debt. Or just to show Rebecca she was going beyond reason in owning such treasures.

There had been a fire at school over a holiday when she was not allowed to go home because Lady Elizabeth was away with Sir Oliver for an extended trip. Rebecca had been asleep when fire broke out in the classroom. She, along with a few other students, ran down the steps to gawk at the brilliant flames.