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“You may put me down, my lord,” Siân said. “I’m certain I can walk.”
By now more than willing to put distance between them, Hugh let her down.
Apparently still slightly dizzy from her fall, Lady Siân took one step, then staggered a little. Hugh quickly wound an arm around her waist and, with an impatient sigh, guided her carefully along the rugged terrain.
Siân was unaccustomed to this kind of gallant, masculine attention, and her reaction startled her. She’d never thought herself capable of the emotions churning through her now. To think that one strong, male—Saxon—arm around her could cause such an upheaval! It was ridiculous.
She may as well have spent the last few years in St. Ann’s cloister for all she knew of men and their habits; how hard and powerful a male body could feel against her own. After all, no man had ever shown the least interest in her before, and Siân had had little use for them in all her nineteen years.
At least until now.
“Satan’s heels, Hugh,” a voice called out as they moved through the woods, “where have you been?”
“On a fool’s errand,” he muttered.
“I resent that!” Siân whispered back.
In the small clearing, Hugh and Siân came upon a man saddling his horse. With a thick mane of light blond hair and pleasing features, Hugh Dryden’s companion was easily the most comely man Siân had ever seen. And she had seen many, in Wales as well as in England, though none of the preening, conceited louts had roused her interest in the least.
Nor had she particularly roused theirs, unless she counted a few unsuitable advances made by some of her brother’s highborn Saxon friends.
“Nicholas Becker at your service, my lady,” the man said, smiling, showing his perfect white teeth. He bowed courteously.
Hugh grunted and introduced her grudgingly. “Lady Siân verch Marudedd.” He didn’t miss Siân’s open and guileless appreciation of Nick’s pleasing countenance. Nor did he begrudge Nicholas his golden good looks. Hugh had never been able to compete with Nick’s success with the ladies, even before he’d been scarred and maimed. And they’d been friends too long to let a mere woman come between them. “From Castle Clairmont.”
Nicholas turned a wry expression on Siân. “Conditions are a trifle rough at Clairmont?” he asked with humor, indicating the condition of Siân’s clothes and hair.
“Surely not,” she said, a little breathlessly. For a Saxon, Nicholas Becker was well endowed with charm. “This did not happen at Clairmont. A boar chased me through the woods and his lordship rescued me.”
Nick raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“He shot the beast through the heart,” Siân said, “and again betwixt the eyes.”
Nick turned to look at Hugh. “I thought your sight was still damaged.”
“’Twas a lucky shot.”
“Two lucky shots?” Nicholas queried.
“Aye, well…” Hugh cleared his throat and bent to pick up his saddle. He lifted it and threw it over the broad back of his destrier. “We’ll break our fast on pork at Clairmont today.”
Two horses and three riders. ’Twas awkward, but Nicholas was able to convince the lady to take her seat ahead of him on his mount. Hugh found himself fuming quietly as Nicholas and Siân bantered easily with each other, but he did not speak out.
Lady Siân verch Marudedd was nothing to him.
Breaching the castle gate a short time later, they found Clairmont a hub of activity. The setting reminded Hugh of Windermere Castle, the now-prosperous family seat of his friend, Wolf Colston. Perhaps marriage and stewardship of Clairmont would not be such an onerous thing, Hugh told himself. After all, Wolf and his lady wife seemed content. With their lively little daughter, Eleanor, and another babe expected within the month, Wolf and Kit were more than content. They were delighted with life.
It was quite beyond Hugh.
Reaching the great hall, Hugh dismounted and watched as Nicholas assisted Lady Siân from his horse and guided her up the stone steps. As if that were necessary, Hugh thought as he regarded the lady’s sprightly step. Any evidence of her prior mishap was absent now. Deliberately turning his back on his two companions, Hugh spoke to the page who had arrived to take charge of the horses and instructed the lad to have someone fetch the great boar in the woods.
Ignoring the familiar hollowness inside him, Hugh began his own climb up the steps to meet his intended bride.
Chapter Two
Fresh rushes coated the floor of Clairmont’s great hall, and all the trestle tables were covered with clean cloths. No one lazed about, not even the dogs that were commonly seen in the great halls of the kingdom. Sunlight filtered in through lofty, narrow windows, and colorful banners hung from high oaken beams.
An elegantly dressed, efficient, silver-haired man approached them. “Lady Siân!” he exclaimed, noting her disheveled appearance. “Your brother—”
“—need not hear of my mishap, Sir George,” she said, a little too brightly as she gathered her skirts in hand and moved away from the newcomers to the castle. “All is well…No need for concern…I shall see to my little scrapes and bruises….”
Then she turned and was off, flitting like a candle into the dark stone depths of Castle Clairmont.
And Hugh wondered why the analogy of the candle came to mind.
“Lord Thornton, Lord Alldale,” the man said, still taken aback by Siân’s disheveled appearance. “I—I greet you on behalf of the lady Marguerite, and her son, Lord John. I am Sir George Packley, steward of Clairmont.”
“Thank you,” Nicholas replied, his German accent causing his speech to be distinctly different from that of his peers. An illegitimate grandson of the Margrave of Bremen, Nick had grown up in his grandfather’s court, along with his cousin, Wolf Colston, and Wolf’s young squire, Hugh Dryden. They’d gone to France together to serve King Henry in his pursuit of French possessions, and all three had been rewarded handsomely with English lands and titles.
Hugh, however, was the only one to never have laid claim to his estates. A trusted steward administered Alldale, but Hugh had not yet seen it. Two years before, he’d been ambushed and taken prisoner by the earl of Windermere, a cruel and perverse relative of Wolf Colston’s. Hugh had been kept chained to a wall in one of the damp, dark caverns under the castle, and tortured by the corrupt and wicked earl. With him in that terrible donjon had been the earl’s mad stepmother, whom Windermere had personally tortured and killed before Hugh’s eyes.
Though he’d never spoken of his ordeal under the castle, the atrocities committed were etched all over his body. One eye gouged out…a finger dismembered. Burns and lacerations covered him. Dehydration, filth…It was a wonder he’d survived.
But that’s all he’d done. Survived. Hugh had recovered to become a mere shell of his former self. He was a man alone, without purpose or intensity.
It was Wolf Colston’s wife, Kit, who was especially determined to see Hugh’s soul restored to him. A fair and compassionate woman, Kit wanted to see her husband’s closest friend healed in every way. The start of negotiations for Hugh’s marriage to Marguerite of Clairmont had been, in good measure, Kit’s doing.
Not that Lady Kit believed marriage would be the answer to Hugh’s indifference, but Clairmont was of strategic importance to the crown. Near the Scottish border, Clairmont lands provided the buffer between the northern warlords and England. A strong leader, a man with military experience, was essential to maintaining the integrity of the northern border.
Kit Colston hoped that if Hugh married Marguerite, he would take seriously his duty to defend the border for England, and protect Clairmont holdings for Marguerite’s infant son, John. She was confident that this challenge would rouse Hugh as nothing else had in the last two years.
And if his marriage should become a happy, fruitful one, then all the better.
Sir George escorted Hugh and Nicholas to a pair of chambers where they were to spend the night, and were informed that Lady Marguerite would see them at midday meal, as she had other matters to attend at present. Though they were both somewhat taken aback that Lady Marguerite did not deign to greet her guests immediately, they were even more surprised by the steward’s next words.
“The queen, however,” Sir George said, “is most anxious to see you.”
“The queen?” Nicholas asked. “Catherine is here?”
“She is,” the steward replied as he pulled open the heavy curtains covering the windows. “The royal entourage is here at Clairmont for the remainder of the month…Lady Siân Tudor is part of the queen’s party.”
“Tudor!”
“Squire Owen’s sister,” Sir George explained.
Both men knew Owen Tudor from his presence in the court of Henry V. Neither of them had known, however, that he had a sister—a sister who’d chosen to identify herself in the old Welsh way rather than call herself Tudor. Hugh wondered if there was some reason she hadn’t wanted to be associated with Owen.
Hugh and Nicholas remembered Tudor as a competent young man in King Henry’s court, a man with winning ways. He was exceptionally handsome, ambitious yet careful, and absolutely loyal to the crown. Hugh could not imagine any reason for Siân’s reticence to be associated with her brother’s name, but he let the irrelevant matter drop from his mind, and went along with Nicholas and Sir George to a spacious solar high in the castle tower.
“Your Majesty!” Nick said as he and Hugh knelt before their queen. She was a young woman, as lovely and elegant as ever, tall and slender, with intelligent, light-brown eyes sparkling in welcome. Neither Hugh nor Nick had seen her in over two years. Their last meeting had, in fact, been at the marriage of Kathryn and Wolf Colston in London.
“Your Majesty, it is an unexpected pleasure to see you here,” Nicholas said.
Catherine smiled sadly. “Ah, but London is tiresome this time of year,” she said.
“London?” Nicholas asked.
“Oui. London.” The queen’s eyes sparkled. “And…my brother-in-law and his uncle.”
“So, Gloucester and Beaufort are at it again?” Hugh asked.
Catherine bit her lip and looked away. “I will not become a pawn in their despicable power struggle.”
“What is it this time?” Nicholas queried.
“A hideous little plot to get me wed.”
“Wed? To whom?” Nicholas demanded. Only the council could approve the queen’s marriage, and neither he nor Hugh had heard of any such consent. But the Duke of Gloucester and Bishop Beaufort wielded a great deal of power among the lords of parliament. If either one were to choose a suitable husband for Catherine, and a guardian for her small son, the lords could be persuaded to approve a marriage.
And the “winner” of the power struggle could then control the king through the boy’s stepfather.
“It is of no matter, my lords,” Catherine said with a sigh. “Mon petit Henri and I are not in London. We are beyond the sway of any of his uncles.”
“For now, at least,” Hugh muttered under his breath as he wandered to a far window seat while Nick and Catherine continued to speak quietly together. A little boy, dressed in rich clothing, toddled about the solar, throwing a leather ball at some standing pins, then running to retrieve it and replace the pins, only to throw it again. Before he knew it, Hugh was caught up in watching little King Henry, reluctantly admiring the two-year-old’s patience and ability.
It was unfortunate that his father hadn’t lived to see the boy grow up, hadn’t lived to give him brothers, and to keep the predatory powermongers at bay.
But that was the way of things, Hugh thought. Death claimed them all. And sometimes it was better if death came sooner rather than later.
Outside the window, the sky was blue and a flock of common brown sparrows swooped together, enjoying the play. Mirthful noises drew Hugh’s attention down to the bailey, where a game of camp-ball was in progress. Goals were set up on either end of the lawn, perhaps sixty yards apart. Several young boys with sticks were riding squealing pigs, and trying to hit a large ball into the opposing goal. This was a variation on the game that Hugh had never seen and he gazed down with curiosity. Crowds of people had gathered ’round to watch the play and were laughing at the antics of the players.
And in the midst of it all was Siân Tudor.
She had changed clothes since he’d last seen her, and was now wearing a gown of vibrant blue…the same shade as her eyes. Hugh willed himself to look away, but the sunlight caught the golden strands in her russet hair and he was struck by the radiance of her person. Had he seen any such brightness of color these last few years?
Hugh doubted it. He’d seen only the colors of war in France, then the dismal darkness of Windermere’s torture chamber.
Shaking off the thought, he watched Siân Tudor as she moved among the players, her lucent voice occasionally floating to his open window, her lithe movements drawing his eye, her joyful enthusiasm bewildering him. What reason, he wondered, had she to be so jubilant?
Likely no reason at all. She was obviously an empty-headed, frivolous child.
Siân clapped her hands and stopped the play, unaware of her audience up high in the tower above her. “Not legal!” she cried, trying to contain her laughter at the silliness of the game. It was unlike any form of camp-ball she’d ever played, but the pigs had been herded into the bailey, and the thought of riding them had been just too comical to resist. “You must guide your sows back to the line of pumpkins and begin again!”
“Aw, m’lady,” one boy cried as his teammates clamored with him, “you are ever changing the rules! We were so close—”
“Nay, Jacob Johnson!” Siân yelled, laughing out loud now, “you may not argue with the judge, or you’ll be further penalized!”
“But—”
“No exceptions,” Siân interrupted his plea. “Now! Go on!”
The game resumed as Siân ran alongside the field of play, turning one wayward pig back into the fray and helping another boy back onto his “mount.” She enjoyed sporting with the children, organizing games and outings. It was what she had done at Westminster to while away the dull days as her brother worked out plans for her future. Never had it occurred to her that he would buy her into a nunnery.
She was trapped. Without a proper dowry, with no property to speak of at all, and a somewhat tarnished family reputation, marriage into a reputable English family was highly unlikely, not that it was especially desirable to Siân. Though Owen had managed to insinuate himself into the king’s house, and had even engendered a high degree of trust among the English elite, Siân knew that she, herself, was a lost cause. Because she got into trouble more often than not, there wasn’t a man in the kingdom who was willing to take her to wife.
Even in Wales, she’d been something of a pariah. Living at the house of one uncle or the other, Siân never felt she really belonged anywhere. Even in Pwll.
That was all she ever really cared about—belonging somewhere. For years she’d dreamed of Owen coming to take her away from Pwll. But it was not to be, not now, not ever. She could only hope that at St. Ann’s she would finally find her place. In the environment of the cloister, mayhap she would be alone no longer.
“Siân!”
She turned to look, only to see her brother’s stormy face as he approached the playing field. She hardly knew him, but she was quite familiar with this face. Owen had left Wales years before, leaving Siân to be raised by their mother’s brothers while he went to live with a noble family near London. How different things would have been, Siân thought, had he grown up with her in Wales. Perhaps he would not be the tiresome, humorless gentleman she now saw before her.
Owen grabbed her by the arm and hauled her off to a small enclosure near the kitchen. Then, in angry hushed tones, he lambasted her again for her indecorous behavior.
“Is it not possible for you to join the other ladies in their work?” Owen asked, frustrated with his sister’s lack of womanly accomplishments.
So tall and handsome, Owen kept himself impeccably attired. He was very determined to overcome the sins of their father, who had taken a prominent part in a Welsh uprising against King Henry IV. Siân, with her unsophisticated ways and lack of feminine charms, could never further Owen’s cause, as well they both knew it.
The ladies of court shunned her, not wishing to associate themselves with one so common, so unschooled in courtly ways. To make matters worse, various young courtiers had attempted to seduce Siân soon after her arrival at Westminster, thinking that because of her naive, ingenuous manner, she would willingly provide a convenient outlet for their lust. Her repeated refusals had not won her their admiration.
“I am sorry, Owen,” Siân said contritely, her gaze flitting back toward the game. “I am a poor weaver, as you know, and my stitchery is cursed by the very—”
“Do not say it, Siân!” Owen admonished, slapping his thigh in fury, his fair complexion darkening. “Your language is appalling, as is your dress…Look at your hair…where is your veil? By the Holy Cross, sister, do not disgrace me here!”
“I shall try not to, Owen,” Siân said, truly sorry to have caused him such distress. She would try harder. She surely would. If only he would care for her half as much as he cared for his position in the queen’s court. Siân cast her eyes downward and noticed a smattering of dirt and dust across the hem of her bright blue silk kirtle.
And wondered how she would get it clean by mealtime.
“Nervous?” Nicholas asked. They were to meet Lady Marguerite in the castle garden just before the noon meal.
Hugh snorted with disdain.
“I merely asked,” Nicholas said. “Were I meeting my intended bride, I’m certain I’d be…”
Seated on a wooden bench near some stone statuary, was the lady in question, along with an infant in her arms.
“…dumbfounded.” Nicholas concluded his sentence as the two men laid eyes on Marguerite Bradley. She was a beautiful woman, with shining black hair arranged intricately and becomingly around her head. Her violet eyes were sparkling and lovely, framed by thick, black lashes. The lady’s demeanor was gracious and serene, her movements elegant and graceful as she received Hugh and Nicholas.
“Welcome to Castle Clairmont,” she said, her voice a pleasing melody to the ear, laced with undertones of her native French. “I am Marguerite Bradley, and this is my son, John.”
Servants brought chairs for the gentlemen, and a nurse took the infant from his mother. When they had completed their greetings and were seated, an awkward silence ensued. Even Nicholas, who seemed always to have something to say, was rendered speechless by the lady’s poise and exceptional beauty.
“I trust your journey was a pleasant one?” Marguerite asked. Her gaze flitted uncomfortably from Hugh’s scarred appearance to Nicholas’s more comely one.
“Yes, quite,” Nicholas said, and they spent a goodly portion of time discussing the best kind of weather for travel and the incident in the wood that morning with Lady Siân and the boar.
Hugh was quiet, his usual state, leaving most of the conversation to Nick. He’d become accustomed to ladies’ reactions to his eye patch, and the scars that emanated from beneath it, and it had no effect on him anymore. Oddly enough, Lady Marguerite also had little effect on him.
