LordoftheKeep (10 page)

Sarah brought Angelique close. She went down on one knee at
Emma’s side. Emma ignored her and threw her shuttle as if naught else concerned
her.

“Forgive me, Emma. I did not think when I spoke just then.”

Emma’s hand trembled. “No need to apologize for truth.”

“Stop.” Sarah captured Emma’s hand. “I’ve insulted you.
Please, forgive me.”

Emma shook her off. She retrieved her shuttle and set to
work. The words her friend had spoken merely reinforced her own conviction that
to give in to her desires for the lord of the keep was folly. She had made her
vows.

Desire him she might, have him, she could not.

Chapter Eight

To shake off his dire mood, Gilles threw himself into the
restoration of his castle wall. For the next few weeks, he labored alongside
his men, drove them and himself to exhaustion. Each night, when he returned
spent and the younger men rallied and turned to wenching or dice, he was
reminded most sorely of his age. His rewards were few, physical or mental. At
the end of one particularly fruitless day of labor, he entered his chamber, wet
and filthy.

He turned on Roland who’d followed him there. “This damnable
sandy soil! It will not surprise me should we wake on the morrow to find we’ve
sunk into the sea itself. Are we built on a bed of quicksand? And why is
this
winter so capricious? Yesterday, bitter cold, today as warm as spring.”

“Did the men determine what caused this latest slide?”
Roland asked, settling himself at Gilles’ table.

“Aye. ‘Twas merely shoddy work done decades ago. Poor
excavation, impatient building. ‘Tis a bloody waste and naught to be done about
it. God’s holy blood, when will this damnable rain end?” Gilles stripped off
his sopping wet clothes. He tested the water of the tub that stood steaming by
the hearth, and then sank into its soothing depths. He closed his eyes on the
memory of the flattened skull he’d seen when he’d helped lift some fallen
rocks. As several weeks had passed since the man’s death, there was no blood to
be seen, but the sharp shards of bone had turned his stomach. The youth of the
dead man saddened his heart.

“Why, Roland, is one man chosen and another passed over?” He
did not wait for his friend’s reply. “Like myself? I stand at the end of life’s
road burying dead men who should have one foot at the start.”

“I have no answer, my friend.”

When Gilles heard Hubert gathering the filthy clothes, he
opened his eyes. “Bring me plain bread and some of that Rhenish wine.” Hubert
hurried to his duties, and Gilles scrubbed his hair and body of the mud and
memories. When he had rinsed clean, he turned to look at his friend. “You are
not here to scrub my back. What do you want?”

Roland d’Vare rose and strode to the hearth. He traced the
painted designs that bordered the chimneypiece with his fingertips. “My Sarah
plagues me. I fear for my manhood should I try to bed her in her present mood.”

Gilles grinned up at his friend. Roland and he were friends
from childhood, when Roland had been a page to Gilles’ father. “What ails the
termagant now? She seemed amiable enough this morning.” Gilles closed his eyes
and rested his head back on the tub edge.

“William Belfour.” Roland had no need to say much more. “He
oversteps himself. He is causing a furor among the spinners and weavers.”

“Weavers!” Gilles sat up. “How so?”

“Constantly about. Pestering one and all. Nearly had my
Sarah spitting blood.”

“
Jesu
.” Gilles surged from the tub.

“You’ll have need of your skin on the morrow,” Roland
remarked as he watched Gilles dry himself.

“Speak plainly. I am sure Sarah can handle William’s
arrogance. She certainly handles mine!” Gilles swept up a flowing robe from the
bed. The embroidery that edged the sleeves and front was as black as the silk
it graced. It had been a gift from old King Henry. Roland jested often that it
made Gilles look like the very devil himself.

He tied the robe closed with the blue-green cloth belt made
by Emma’s hand, then flung himself into a chair by the hearth. The contrast of
the cold silk and the searing heat of the fire made him shiver. He idly stroked
the belt.

“Sarah would have me speak plainly. You may hide your
interest from others, but not from us.” Roland drew a second chair to the
hearth. “Claim the wench before William does.”

The two men stared at each other. Gilles did not need to
hear more. “I see.” Gilles stretched his feet closer to the heat of the flames,
rested his elbows on the wide oak arms of his chair, and steepled his fingers.
“So…William plays his usual games of seduction.”

“Aye, ‘tis a shame you may not speak more plainly to
William,” Roland said into the silence.

“Nay.” Gilles leapt to his feet. “Spare me the old
arguments.”

“If William knew he was your bastard, he would be less
likely to trespass where your interests lie.”

Gilles paced before the fire in agitated silence. Roland’s
words simmered and steeped in his mind. Finally, he halted. Legs spread, arms
crossed on his chest, he faced his friend. “I will speak to William as lord to
vassal and he will listen and obey.”

“If you say so.” Roland looked skeptical and sighed.

“
Jesu
. I have kept his parentage from him for these
twenty-odd years. I’ll not speak now. He will have coin enough when his mother
dies. I settled a fortune on her to take herself from this keep and never
return.”

“Aye, she could not help but kiss your hem when she saw what
a few times in the hayloft had earned her.”

“Damnation, Roland, I could not shame my wife. What a callow
youth I was to bed the wench when Margaret was swollen with child.
Jesu
,
Nicholas was but six months old when William was born. I did what I thought was
best.”

“Don’t flail yourself so. William’s mother was beyond
beautiful, and Margaret stirred your lust no more as a virgin bride than when
she was great with child. No one would blame you for taking your pleasure with
a beauty such as Alice Gray.”

“
I blame me
. I’ve been ensnared with William’s mother
in one way or another since first she lifted her skirts. I’ve provided well for
her, found her a worthy husband, and truthfully, who’s to say that William is
even mine? Yet I took her word for it at the time. He has not the look of me,
but it matters not.

“We have this same discussion once a year. I will not change
my mind. William’s mother agreed to her silence, and I have agreed to her keep.
I have fostered William, made a knight of him, trained him well. Spared him bastardy.
It is enough
.”

They fell silent as Hubert entered and set a tray of bread
and wine on the table.

“We have wandered far from our path,” Roland said when the
youth had gone. He poured wine for himself and Gilles. “Sarah thinks William
will soon tire of May. Should he turn to Emma…well, the maid has not the nature
of a leman. Marry the wench.”

“Again, I have no wish to wed.” Gilles stared down his
friend.

Roland sipped his wine and smiled.

“Marry.
Mon Dieu
. I’ve neither the inclination nor
the need to wed. Especially a woman half my age. And what has she to increase
my wealth or power? What could she bring me? Her spindle?”

“And what of love?” Roland asked.

“Love is a jongleur’s game. We speak here of lust, nothing
else.” Gilles could not tell Roland that Emma considered herself pledged, out
of reach. He personally thought little of words spoken in bed; they meant only
that the heat of the moment had addled one’s brain, but Emma may take some time
to come to that same conclusion. She was very young, her abandonment new—and
there would always be the child who would be naught but a bastard if Emma
denied her vows.

A thought, more painful than any yet considered, swept
through him—mayhap Emma still loved the man who denied her. Nay, she had stated
to him she no longer believed in love. But what woman did not believe in love?

“A woman that young will find an equally young lover if you
don’t take a step to prevent it, Gilles. She may seem uncommonly innocent, and
more gently born than her circumstances, yet Sarah thinks—”

“Enough.” Gilles thumped his fist on the armrest. Innocent
and possibly still in love, and yet…alone.

It was Emma’s gentle and ladylike manner that kept him from
speaking to her—and her youth. How young she had looked as she’d spoken of her
vows. Too young to know that little said in passion lasted beyond the spasms of
physical satiation.

Yet, here he was, lying awake each night, thinking of her
like some besotted page. He conjured her face, the sound of her voice. He
imagined he could scent her, taste her. The last few weeks had been a torture.

“I’ll tell Sarah I did my best.” Roland sighed. He rose and
drained his cup. “She’ll plague me to death one day.”

“Roland,” Gilles said. Roland stopped at the door, his hand
on the latch. “I
will
claim Emma. She will come to me—vows or not.”

When Roland was gone, Gilles began to pace. He was a turmoil
of anxiety within. For all his commanding words, he did not know how to
approach Emma after their last conversation.

Roland’s remarks about William had touched a raw nerve. How
could he expect Emma to resist a man such as William? No woman whom William
decided to pursue, be she highborn or low, resisted him for very long. He must
assume William visited the weavers for May—whose thighs his son had ridden a
score of times.

Flinging back the door to his chamber, Gilles sought the
wall-walk. He must put his claim on Emma before William’s attentions to May
began to wane.

The rain had stopped, though the wind still whined wildly
around the stones. He barely heeded the cold, slick wood beneath his bare feet
as he turned his face to the wind, breathed in the scent of damp, mossy stone,
and wished fervently for what he could not have—that she would come to him.

For he could not go to her.

* * * * *

Emma set her hand loom on the table and lifted Angelique
from the basket at her feet. She walked slowly to the long room housing the
spinners. There, she moved quietly to the last pallet and the woman who sat
there cross-legged, mending a worn shift.

“May, would you consent to watch Angelique? I’d like to see
if I might be useful in the hall. I cannot sleep.”

“Oh, aye, but this is becoming a habit. You will become ill
if you don’t have some rest.” May tucked the sleeping babe against her,
smoothed the curly hair, and looked up at Emma. “Go now. She will be safe here
with me—as long as need be.”

Emma thanked her and left her child in May’s capable arms.
Bleakly, she realized that since her milk had failed, Angelique seemed just as
content with May who played and jested, as with her mother who toiled every
hour of every day. She worked to fight temptation.

Her heart beat in her throat. She did not look to the left
or right as she climbed the steep stairs to the hall door. The sentry there
opened for her without challenge.

Restless, Emma wandered the hall, stepping quietly by the
men and women wrapped in blankets and sleeping on rows of pallets. A small boy
she recognized from the village caught her eye, a boy whose parents had died
the previous spring and whom Emma suspected existed through thievery. He
crouched by a knot of men who sat by the fire, talking softly among themselves.

“Robert?” The boy turned and stared up at her. He had deep
brown eyes that were dark holes in his thin, nearly starved looking face.
“Come, find a pallet. Rest.”

He ignored her, flapping a hand at her as if she were a
burdensome fly, turning once more to the men. A burning look of concentration
was on his face. She dropped at his side and followed his gaze. A massive man
with arms like tree trunks was holding forth on some matter. The armorer—Big
Robbie. “He is a kindly man,” she whispered to the boy.

“Who cares of kindness. He makes the best swords in all of
Christendom.” The boy duckwalked a bit closer to the group.

Emma smiled. “In all of Christendom! Well, well.” With a
smile, she rose and shook out her skirts. The boy barely subsisted in the
village. How little of joy must he have in his life. She would not take this
small time of hero worship from him. Thoughts of another man, another who could
be called heroic, entered her mind.

As she moved about the hall, she realized there was little
to do save join the beggarly eavesdropper. The fatigue of the busy weeks had
taken its toll on young and old. Yet she could not return to her bed. Her eyes
searched feverishly for the sight of him. He was not in the hall.

She paced up and down the aisle of the chapel. Finally, she
found herself at the foot of the stone stairway to the castle tower.

He slept above. He was from another world. He wanted a
leman. He needed her. Whenever their eyes met, she saw it there, as tangible as
the need she felt within herself.

Inexorably drawn, her mind in a turmoil, Emma mounted the
stairs. Her heart warred with good sense. She passed his chamber door on soft
footsteps, lest she disturb him, and continued on to the arched opening of the
wall-walk to seek the night air and its cleansing peace. How could she banish
this wild ache she felt for him?

He merged with the black night, but she instantly knew he
was there. Had she known all along? Had some intangible thread between them
brought her here to this place at just this moment?

Even if she had wished it, she could not have stilled her
progress toward where he stood. His hair lifted and blew about his shoulders
like part of the dark night as his robe billowed and swirled about his body.
Emma halted beside him.

Gilles turned and saw her. His chest felt suddenly tight. A
need for her burned low in his belly. He raked his hair back from his face with
his hands, then extended them to her.

Her hands were very strong, and he measured their strength
as she entwined her fingers silently with his. Staring at her, oblivious to the
whip of the wind or the beads of moisture that collected on his skin from the
light mist, he drew her hands to his mouth and caressed her palms with his
lips, breathing his warmth on her. He stepped closer and watched her as he
gently held her fingers to his mouth. All the words he could not speak crowded
in his throat.

It was she who broke the silence. “I tried to stay away.”

Her words were whispered. Sorrowful. They raised an ache in
his heart. He understood. He, too, had tried to put her from his mind. “You
will never be sorry.” He kissed the backs of her hands, first the right, then
the left.