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“I’d speak with your father, mistress. I want—”
Beatrice held up a hand to stop his speech. “We have many friends in the village, sir. If you’ll not heed my words, you might find your welcome home much less warm than you had hoped.”
Nicholas shook his head in wonderment. What kind of woman was this to come threatening the master of the estate, ordering him to stay off a portion of his own property? Or what should be his property, he amended. Perhaps it was already known throughout the territory that Baron Hawse was the new master at Hendry.
He took a long moment to consider his reply. Finally he said, “I’ve returned determined to heal old wounds, mistress, not to open them. But your father looked upon me kindly once, and I’d have him know that I had nothing to do with his daughter’s death.”
Beatrice’s shakiness had subsided, but her head was feeling muddled. She’d prepared herself for an angry confrontation with her sister’s former lover. She’d rehearsed the words she would hurl at him. But she was finding it hard to rail against his measured tones and sad countenance.
Her fingers moved restlessly at her sides in the folds of her overskirt. “I speak for my father as well as myself,” she said. “’Twould be a kindness to a grieving family if you would stay away.”
His nearly black eyes were steady and grave. There was not a hint of the playful charmer her sister had talked of with such incessant longing. “Then I’ll honor your wishes and his, Mistress Thibault. But please tell your father that I share your grief. I’ll mourn sweet Flora as I do my own father.”
It was all Beatrice could do to make her way across the big room and out the door to the courtyard. Nothing about the interview had gone as she had planned. She’d thought to feed her three-year long anger on his arrogant words. Instead, she’d found herself feeling almost sorry for the pain she’d brought to him with her news.
The crisp spring air helped. She took a great gulp of it and willed herself to slow her pace as she walked along the gravel path to the unfenced stone pillars that marked the entrance to Hendry Hall. She’d accomplished her mission. She had his promise not to come to the Boar, and that was all that counted.
The village of Hendry was small. When Owen grew old enough to run about on his own, he’d no doubt cross paths with the master of Hendry Hall. But if her luck held, Sir Nicholas would never suspect his connection to the boy.
Amazingly enough, it had not even occurred to him that Flora’s death might have been the result of giving birth to a child he had left planted inside her. Just like a man, Beatrice thought, relieved to feel her anger returning.
She reached the pillars and looked to the left at the sound of a horse approaching. Even from a distance, she knew the rider. Baron Hawse was a familiar sight in the neighborhood. His lands surrounded the Hendry estate and he’d never been shy about venturing onto Hendry lands as if he and not the Hendry family were the overlord.
She stopped and waited. She’d not bow her head to him, but neither did she want to be so rude as to turn her back and walk away.
“Mistress Thibault, is it not?” the baron called as he approached. “Did you have some business with the lady Constance?”
Beatrice gave an inconclusive murmur. She couldn’t see how her business was any of the baron’s affair, no matter if he was the most important man in the shire.
“Meself, I’ve come to see the returning prodigal—young Nicholas, home from the wars, hale and hearty, in spite of all the accounts to the contrary. ’Tis somewhat of a miracle, hey?”
“Aye,” she answered simply.
The baron pulled his horse up and peered down at her, squinting. “Mayhap ’twas Nicholas you came to see. He always was a one for the ladies.”
The baron was a big man, overspilling his small saddle, but his size was solid bulk, not fat, and his proportions were manly. The only signs of his age were the fine veins that crisscrossed his somewhat bulbous nose, giving his face a florid appearance against the contrast of his snow-white hair. Though he had never said anything improper to her, his glances always made Beatrice feel as if something cold was creeping over her skin.
“Good day to you, milord,” she said, continuing to ignore his questions.
She turned to head in the opposite direction from which the baron had come, but he danced his horse forward a couple of steps, blocking her path.
“So it was Nicholas you came to see,” he said. “I’d thought the boy preferred lasses with soft curves and empty heads. I’d evidently not given him enough credit.”
His eyes watched her, bright with speculation.
“Excuse me, Baron Hawse. I’m just on my way back to the inn, where I warrant my father will be missing me.”
“As I recall, you’ve not lived here long, mistress. You were raised by an aunt in York, I believe? You came only shortly before your sister’s death. Was it on a prior visit that you made Nicholas Hendry’s acquaintance?”
Beatrice was astounded at the extent of his knowledge of her family’s affairs. She’d often heard that the baron knew in intimate detail the comings and goings of all the neighborhood inhabitants, no matter how lowly. But she hadn’t realized the truth of the statement until now.
“I have nothing to do with Nicholas Hendry,” she said bluntly. “Nor do I expect that I ever shall. Now, forgive me, Baron, but I really must be on my way.”
This time Hawse did not prevent her from turning down the road toward the village. The baron sat still on his horse for several moments, watching her leave. Beatrice Thibault was a rare woman, as spirited as she was beautiful. How convenient that with his acquisition of the Hendry lands, she was now one of his very tenants.
It was not widely known in Hendry that he was to be their new master. He’d refrained from taking active control of the lands in deference to Constance. But her year of mourning would soon be past and she would be his wife at last, after all these long years.
Then he’d have no compunction about exerting his lordly rights over the people of Hendry. And he might just start with the haughty Mistress Thibault. The notion turned up his lips in a sly smile of anticipation.
The great hall of the manor occupied the entire rear half of the bottom floor. It had fireplaces at each end, another of Arthur Hendry’s improvements, and a raised dais along the west wall so that the members of the family and their guests could eat at a table raised from the trestles set out for the servants and lesser visitors.
Nicholas had just helped his mother mount the single step to the long table when there was a commotion at the huge double doors leading into the big room. He turned to see the larger-than-life form of their neighbor, lumbering across the room toward him, arms outstretched.
“I found I could not wait another day to see you, Nicholas,” Baron Hawse said, engulfing the younger man in a hearty embrace.
Nicholas tried not to wince. He’d never liked the baron, even as a boy, but for his mother’s sake, he was determined to be civil. He allowed the embrace, then stepped back. “’Tis kind of you to trouble yourself, Baron.”
“Not at all, boy. With your father gone, I feel it’s my place to be here to welcome you. Back from the dead, hey? Not often a man has a chance to welcome someone back from those nether regions.”
The motley assortment of household retainers who had been milling about finding their places at the lower benches stood uncertainly, not wanting to be seated while their new master remained standing.
“I never counted myself dead, Baron,” Nicholas answered dryly. “Though I felt the spectre’s breath a time or two. You’ll join us for supper?”
“Of course, lad,” the baron boomed. “I should have been here last night for your welcome home meal.” He turned a reproving glance on Constance, who also remained standing by her chair. “You should have sent word, my dear.”
Nicholas frowned as his mother bit her lip in embarrassment.
“As you can imagine, Baron,” he said stiffly, “the tidings that greeted me upon my arrival did not exactly put us in the mood for company.”
The baron gave Nicholas a hearty clap on the shoulder and stepped past him up on the dais. “Precisely, lad. I should have been here to deliver the news of your father’s death. Women are over-maudlin about these affairs. No doubt you had all manner of tears and carrying on to contend with.” Once again he looked at Constance, who dropped her gaze to the floor.
Nicholas struggled to keep his temper, reminding himself that the baron had cared for his mother in her bereavement. “My mother’s heart is too tender not to mourn her husband’s passing, Baron Hawse. I do not count that as a fault.”
He followed the baron up on the dais and began to motion him to the bench on the other side of his mother, but the older man stopped at the center of the table, pulled out the lord’s chair and sat. Nicholas’s mouth fell open in astonishment. The previous evening when his mother had urged him to be seated in the master’s place, it had felt sad and odd, but to have his father’s old chair occupied by a stranger seemed nearly intolerable.
He looked at his mother. Her soft brown eyes pleaded with him not to create a scene. Baron Hawse had occupied this chair before, Nicholas realized. As the baron pulled a trencher forward to share with Constance, Nicholas wondered exactly how much of Arthur Hendry’s former life had already been taken over by his neighbor.
Giving his mother a smile of reassurance, he took a seat on the bench to the baron’s left and pulled his own trencher forward. He’d not share a board with this man.
Once the head table was seated, there was a sudden bustle in the room as the other diners sat and the serving girls began to move among the tables with dishes of stew and plates of roasted rabbit with wild berries.
Nicholas ate in silence, speaking only when the baron asked him a direct question. He scarcely noticed the carefully prepared dinner, which his mother had been supervising in the kitchen much of the afternoon. Watching the baron carve off succulent bits of rabbit and offer them on his knife to Constance’s mouth was making Nicholas lose his appetite.
“I’m sure he’ll be pleased to, won’t you, son?” His mother’s soft voice broke through his gloomy thoughts.
He looked from Constance to the baron, who both appeared to be waiting for him to speak. “I beg your pardon,” he mumbled. “I would be pleased to what?”
“To visit us at Hawse Castle two days hence,” the baron supplied. “If you’ve fully recovered from your journey.”
“I’d thought to begin seeing to the estate here. I’ve a meeting with the steward on the morrow to go over the accounts and—”
“Well, then, that’s perfect,” the baron interrupted. “You can join us at Hawse the next day and we’ll see where we stand on this matter of the estates. I have all the papers your father signed before his death, of course.”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. “Papers that he signed thinking me dead.”
The baron’s hearty voice did not waver. “Of course. Which is why we have much to discuss, you and I. We’ll discuss your father’s plans for this place.”
Nicholas pushed away his board, leaving the rabbit mostly untouched. “My father’s plans for Hendry were to pass it on to his only son. No amount of discussion will alter that.”
Hawse smiled. “Indeed.” He reached out a big hand and gave a painful squeeze to Nicholas’s forearm. “I have some plans of my own to discuss with you, lad. I believe we can work our way out of this unfortunate tangle. Come see me the day after tomorrow.”
“We’ll both go,” Constance said quickly. “It would be churlish to refuse my lord’s hospitality after all you’ve done for me.”
Hawse turned toward Constance and gave her a smile that even to Nicholas looked almost tender.
“’Tis not within your power to be churlish, Lady Constance,” he told her, his voice softening.
Nicholas pushed back his bench and stood. “In two days hence, then. We’ll attend you at Hawse Castle. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am still, as you say, fatigued from my journey.”
Without taking further leave of them, he turned and made his way out of the room.
He sat in the dark looking out the deep window of his bedchamber into the moonlit yard below. It was early for sleep, but he didn’t feel like talking to anyone, not even the servants, so he had retired to his room and had not lit the wall torch near his bed.
The knock on his door was so soft, he almost didn’t hear it. For several moments, he resolved to let the caller go unanswered, but then he thought that perhaps his mother needed him, so he reluctantly got to his feet and crossed over to open the door. The visitor was a woman, but definitely not his mother.
Mollie had changed little in the four years since he’d last seen her. If anything, her breasts spilled even more voluptuously from the scanty, thin blouse. Her sparkling green eyes glinted even more wickedly with invitation.
“So, ye’ve come back, ye naughty boy,” she laughed, twining her arms around his neck with such energy that it pushed him back into the room.
In spite of himself, Nicholas felt a flare of desire course through him as the serving maid’s soft contours wriggled against him. He dropped a light kiss on her lips and gently pried her hands loose. “Hallo, sweetheart,” he said.
She took a step back and thudded her small fist into his chest. “For shame, Nicky. I’ll not listen to yer ‘sweethearts’ after ye ran away like that without so much as a farewell buss.”
Mollie had been one of the most good-natured of his lovemaking partners. A full five years older than Nicholas, she’d had a string of lovers herself and understood that their friendship was nothing more than the mutual satisfaction of shared passions.
Nicholas grinned at her and captured the hand that continued pounding him with little effect. “You’ll always be my sweetheart, Mollie. You know that.”
She pulled her hand out of his and laid it tenderly along his cheek. “Aye, Nicky. We were fair eager for it in those days, weren’t we?”
Unexpectedly, Nicholas was suddenly eager once again. He put a hand at Mollie’s waist and pulled her toward him, but she pushed away. “Aye, we were,” he murmured.
“Ah, Nicky. I’ve not come for that.” She pushed him away. “I’m a proper goodwife now.”
Nicholas dropped his hands from her as if he’d been burned. “Wife?”
“Aye, these three years past. Got meself two young’uns.”
He blinked in astonishment. “Babies?”
Mollie laughed and gave him a friendly pat on his chest. “What did ye think comes of all that gallivanting in the corn, Master Hendry? Ye were always a careful one, but not all are like that.” A brief shadow crossed her face, but then she giggled and added, “I knew I’d end up round as a herring barrel some day.”
Her words added to his gloom. Merry, passionate, carefree Mollie. A wife and mother. It was hard to believe. “Are you happy, Mollie?” he asked finally. “Is your husband a good man?”
She smiled and nodded. “Aye, Nicky, he is. Ye do know him. ’Tis Clarence, the baker.”
Nicholas had a vague memory of a big, quiet man, perhaps twenty years his senior, who ran the bake shop at the edge of the village and sent fresh bread to the manor each day. A pleasant yeasty odor always seemed to cling to the man.
“Then I’m happy for you, Mollie. You deserve a good man and a good life.”
“As do we all, Nicky,” she agreed softly. “Well, I’d best be getting back before the wee ones start howling for their mum.”
Nicholas shook his head, still trying to reconcile the picture of Mollie caring for two youngsters. “I’m glad for you, Mollie,” he told her.
“And I to see ye back here and not a ghost, ye great lug.” She grinned. “I said a mass for ye, now there’s a tale’ll spin yer head.”
“A mass?”
“When they said ye was dead. I went into the church, proper like. That and me wedding are the only two times I’ve ever gone inside.”
Nicholas smiled. “I’m obliged to you, Mollie.”
“Take care, Nicky,” she said quickly. She stretched up on tiptoes to kiss him full on the mouth, and she was gone.
It was late. All activity in the yard below had long since ceased. But Nicholas was still not ready to stretch out on his pallet and sleep. Mollie’s visit had left him even more restless than before. Jovial, generous Mollie. Married and a mother. At least she was happy, and to all appearances her dalliance with Nicholas had not done any damage to her life. Some of the other women he’d loved and left might not be so forgiving.
How would Flora have greeted him, he wondered, if she were alive? He could not imagine that her reception would have been anything like the one given to him by her sister. Flora had been the soul of sweetness.
He sighed and paced the length of his room. When he’d thought all was lost on the Crusades, he’d sworn that if he ever got back to England, he’d lead a better life. He would make it up to the women he’d wronged. He would show his father that he was the kind of son Arthur Hendry had always wanted. Now his father was dead. At least one of his lovers was happily married and had all but forgotten about him.
But there were still amends to make. And he intended to begin the process immediately. He’d start on the morrow. With Flora.
Chapter Three
No one knew the origins of the little village formerly called Hendry’s Lea and now simply Hendry. The old ones told tales of ancient times when spirits walked about and the druids held ceremonies out on the wide meadow to the north. The name predated the current Hendry family, they claimed, and certainly was around long before Hendry Hall. But since there had now been several generations of Hendrys connected to the place, ending with the returned-from-the-dead heir, most of the villagers took it as natural that it was to Nicholas that they owed allegiance.
There was little resentment over the system. The Hendrys had always been magnanimous landlords. If a family found itself a bit hard-pressed when it came time to collect the twice yearly rents, it never occurred to them that they would be turned off their lands for nonpayment. Indeed, it was not unusual for the Hendrys themselves to see that a few extra coins appeared at the needy household.
After Arthur’s death, there had been some consternation in the village as the rumors spread that some new land baron from the court would appear and undo several generations of Hendry generosity. However, as the months went on with no apparent change, the rumors subsided.
Nevertheless, the sudden appearance of Nicholas was a cause for rejoicing in the village, at least in the households where there was no irate father waiting to nail Nicholas’s hide to the door for having enticed his willing daughter.
Nicholas had awakened before dawn with his head throbbing from the ale with which he’d finally drunk himself to sleep the previous evening after Mollie’s visit. But the bright spring day and the villagers’ hearty greetings as he rode through town lifted his spirits. He was pleased that he remembered many of their names. Little by little the life he had left four years ago was returning to him. Only this time, he would live it more honorably than he had in his thoughtless youth.
The stone church at the far end of the village had not changed. No doubt more graves had been added, but the mossy ground of the churchyard covered the new as well as the old, camouflaging any recent arrival.
He tied his horse to a newel on the sunny side of the church and walked the worn path around the building to the graves. The stone column in the center of the yard said Hendry, but Nicholas gave it only a passing glance. The monument was old. Recent generations of the family, including his father, were buried in a small crypt at the back of Hendry Hall itself.
The morning sun didn’t reach this place, and Nicholas shivered as he walked among the headstones, scanning the names. He knew Phillip Thibault would not have seen his daughter laid to rest without proper marking.
