A Knight's Vengeance (30 page)

"This is madness," the matron sputtered.

Elizabeth stared at the implements, and her fury flared. He expected her to dig up weeds and dirty her hands and clothes like a commoner? She glared at him.

An answering gleam heated his gaze. He expected the refusal on the tip of her tongue.

As she stared at him, standing cross-armed with one eyebrow raised, she forced down an indignant scream. The knave wanted her to protest. He hoped she would throw a tantrum and refuse to cooperate, so he could belittle her in front of his men and have the satisfaction of forcing her to his will.

Elizabeth bit back a smug laugh. If he anticipated an easy victory, he was mistaken.

She accepted the billhook, and her graceful fingers curled around the spade's wooden handle.
"Of course, milord."

Geoffrey's face pinched as though he chewed a mouthful of pig slop. "What?"

Mildred gasped.

"Sunshine and gentle exercise do wonders for a lady's figure and complexion. Will there be aught else, Lord de Lanceau?" Elizabeth tilted her face in a gesture of eager compliance.

The rogue looked baffled. His mouth opened, and then snapped shut. "That is all. For now," he added with a snarl.

She beamed. "Lead the way."

He stalked past her, his brow creased into a forbidding frown, and Elizabeth smothered a gleeful whoop. She flipped her braid over her shoulder and strolled off across the bailey after him, carrying the spade like a foot soldier's pike.

"Saints preserve us," Mildred groaned.

Elizabeth followed Geoffrey past the well, the maidservants airing blankets, the blacksmith's shop and roaring fire, to an area surrounded by a wooden palisade. He yanked open the gate, and the iron hinges creaked with disuse.
"The garden."

She brushed past him. It must have been beautiful once. Now the vegetation grew in such tangled profusion she could not tell bush from vine, or weed from herb. Insects buzzed. A straggling rose bush with spent blooms grew across the stone path that started at the gate and vanished into the undergrowth.

Mildred shuffled to Elizabeth's side. "By the blessed Virgin," the matron whispered, mopping her face with her sleeve.

"Which . . . ah . . . patch do you wish us to weed, milord?" Elizabeth asked. A wasp hurtled out of the bushes and, shrieking, she flicked it away.

He chuckled. "You misunderstand. I wish you to restore this garden to its original grandeur."

"All
of it?"

"Aye."
He kicked aside a stone with the toe of his boot. "When you are finished, you will tell me what plants and herbs are here and what I need to purchase."

Mildred's eyes brightened with interest.
"Herbs?"

"A former lord of Branton Keep hired a monk from a local monastery to lay out the garden and stock it with herbs. Some were used for medicines. Others were dried or went straight into the cooking." Geoffrey's smile turned wry. "As Lady Elizabeth pointed out at one meal, adding flavor to our food will be an improvement."

"'Tis a monumental task you give us." Elizabeth dropped the spade with a
clank.
"We cannot complete it in one afternoon."

"I give you two."

"Two days?" Mildred snorted.

Geoffrey's eyes glinted like polished silver as he looked Elizabeth. "Two days." He turned, walked out into the bailey, and slammed the gate closed behind him.

The matron plopped down on the edge of ai crumbling rockery. "Harrumph!"

After retrieving the spade, Elizabeth uprooted a dandelion by her feet. "The sooner we start, the sooner we finish."

"I am a lady-in-waiting and a healer, not a brawny gardening wench," Mildred grumbled. "This garden is so overgrown it no doubt harbors all kinds of nasty creatures— spiders, snakes, and red-eyed rodents, to name a few. If you ask me, you are better off apologizing to that rogue for whatever he is annoyed about and saving your strength for our escape." She frowned and scratched her head. "What
is
he annoyed about?"

Her cheeks burning, Elizabeth attacked the grass growing between the path stones. Her bruised arm was healing well, and did not twinge with the effort.

She would not fail to meet the rogue's challenge.

Nor did she wish to explain last eve to Mildred.

"Milady?"

Elizabeth cringed at the matron's suspicious tone.

"Since we will be working together all day, milady, I see no better time for you to divulge all the details. Do you?"

*
    
*
    
*

Geoffrey halted outside the garden and motioned to the armed sentries who had escorted Elizabeth to the bailey. "Stand guard at the gate. The women are not to escape."

The nodded and trudged over to their posts.

Exhaling a harsh breath, Geoffrey tipped his face up to the sky, and willed himself not to plow his fist into the palisade.

He would not let the damsel win.

He had meant to bend Elizabeth to his will, to teach her that although she tempted him, she would never control him or his deeds. He had expected her to toss her hair and stamp her foot like a spoiled child, or burst into tears. Instead, she walked to the gardens like a woman anticipating a delightful day of picnicking and hawking, even with the spade slapping against her skirt. The lady astounded him.

Admiration and desire battled in his thoughts. He shook his head and strode back toward the keep. Right now, he wanted her out of his sight, rather than sitting within easy glance. He needed a quiet spate in the hall to finalize some important matters, without a black-haired, blue-eyed distraction.

As he neared the forebuilding, Dominic's laughter greeted him. "Well done, milord."

"Well done?" Geoffrey crossed to his friend, who helped a boy draw water up from the well. "The lady made a fool of me."

"Did she?" Dominic's grin was innocent enough, though
the warmth in his eyes proved he knew quite well.

"She will not last. Before the midday meal, she shall be begging to return to her chamber."

As the lad heaved the filled bucket from the well's edge and stomped toward the pig's trough, water splashed onto the ground. The boy could not be more than ten, Geoffrey's own age when his father died.
When his life changed forever.

Quelling another surge of fury, Geoffrey looked at Dominic. "My friend, find me a suitable messenger
. '
Tis time to send the ransom demand."

*
    
*
    
*

"If I do not stretch my aching joints, I shall be kneeling for the rest of my living days." With a pained grunt, Mildred pushed up from her place beside a pile of pulled weeds. "I will see what awaits us farther down the path, milady." Without waiting for a reply, she raised her bliaut's hem and trudged into the undergrowth.

Elizabeth set down the spade. The earlier breeze had vanished, and now the sun beat upon her back. Her bliaut and chemise stuck to her body like a second skin that chafed. Why, oh why, had she goaded the rogue?

The garden did not offer any hope of escape. As she had discovered during a quick perusal, the only way in and out was through the gate. The palisade was too high to scale or jump. Moreover, the gnarled plum tree did not grow close

enough
to the fence to use its boughs to climb over.

"Will you come too?" the matron called. "Spare me from the ticks, snakes, and red-eyed rodents. I recall you once questioned my sense of adventure."

Elizabeth chuckled and started down the path.

As she batted away a bumblebee disturbed by the movement of snarled vines and leaves, Mildred clucked her tongue. "Weeding is not a task for a noblewoman. De Lanceau must be very angry with you for what happened last eve."

"He is a fool."

Mildred's chuckle sounded as dry as the browned rose petals that disintegrated in Elizabeth's fingers. "You told me yourself he thought you tried to seduce him."

"I know naught about seducing a man."

A crow cawed from its perch atop the palisade fence. Elizabeth glanced at it, and did not notice Mildred had come to a halt until she almost walked right into the old woman.

Brushing a cobweb from her sleeve, Mildred glanced over her shoulder. "You need but look at a man with your blue eyes, and I vow he is lost."

Elizabeth felt a strange pang of discomfort, for Aldwin once teased her with a similar remark. At the time, she had dismissed it as a jest.

"You must know how smitten Sedgewick is." Mildred sidestepped the anthill in the middle of the path and resumed her steady plod. "I expect Aldwin is too, and there must be countless others of whom you do not even know."

Loosing a silent groan, Elizabeth wished she had not told Mildred of last night's events. "De Lanceau is not smitten. The last thing I want is more of his attentions." She had only to think of his smoldering, heavy-lidded gaze and her belly flip-flopped in an alarming way.