By Design (17 page)

A vise of yearning squeezed her heart. It felt so good to be in his arms. So good to pretend for a while.

She touched his face. Something in her grieved, threatening her composure.

“Ah, Rhys, it would not be as you think. It would only bring us both unhappiness.”

She forced herself to step back, and away, and through the threshold. She grabbed onto the clarity of her brother's voice as it wafted on the evening breeze. She let it pull her through the solar.

She paused on the stairs, breathing deeply to swallow the tight knot inside her throat. Then she continued, lest Rhys hear her hesitation and guess her confusion. She trod down, heavyhearted, as soulfully disappointed as she had known she would be.

Not just in him, and what she might learn that he was.

He spoke of what this might be as if glory awaited them, but she knew differently. If this continued, she could not look in his eyes and only see warmth. Eventually she would face the full reflection of herself too, and there were crippled places in her heart that she dared not scrutinize.

He might give her pleasure, but eventually it would shatter, no matter what kind of man he was. He dreamed of them together, but she never did. And if it ever happened, if she imagined in her sleep that Rhys or any man was taking her, she did not doubt that the sensation of being trapped and drowned would wake her immediately.

C
HAPTER
11

R
HYS BEGAN WORK ON
the new wall in the royal chambers. His presence created an intrusion for the first few hours of the first day, no more. Many servants came and went. He simply became the one who stayed.

Invisible. Insignificant. An obstacle to walk around, much like a chair or bench.

He let the work absorb him. He decided to face the new stone exactly like the old, so the new wall would appear part of the original fabric.

It almost distracted him from thoughts of Joan. Fevered thoughts, full of the sounds of her pleasure and the taste of her skin. Curious ones, too, that wondered about the way she denied something so right. He contemplated the barriers that she kept shoring up between them. Barriers not just to passion, but to a luring peace and unity that he sensed possible with her, waiting just out of reach.

He avoided beginning the new door. No one had suggested he be hasty with it. He wanted to believe it led only
to an empty chamber that Edward planned to use as a wardrobe, and began convincing himself of that.

He heard nothing for days. No tidbits worth offering anyone. He began to feel a little smug. Mortimer's eternal worrying might have merely brought Rhys Mason into the King's favor, with no cost or danger. Well, let the Earl of March worry. Maybe it would be bad for his health.

And then, a word. Just one. Muttered by a young knight entering the Queen's bedchamber with the King. Part of a conversation mostly over when the young man came to take his leave of Philippa. A single clear word amidst a flow of almost silent ones.

Addis
.

It was not a word he wanted to hear. Especially since no barons had passed those royal guards to enter these chambers, but only knights new to their spurs. Friends, with whom a young king would drink and whore. Not the kind of men who could lead conspiracies.

Nor the kind of men one would expect to find in the circle of Addis de Valence, the Lord of Barrowburgh, and casually speaking his name.

His hammer fell a little harder after he heard that name. He tried to pound its sound out of his head, and convince himself he had heard wrong.

He tried to tell himself that he could ignore it. But Mortimer also had spoken that name, and had voiced suspicions.

He broke off his work a little early and rode back into the city. Mortimer was expecting him to visit the home of Addis de Valence. It shouldn't be put off any longer.

Rhys stuck his head through the doorway to the inn's hall. A woman sat near the far window with a babe at her breast. “Are you alone, Moira?”

“Addis is in the solar, if that is what you mean.”

“Aye, that is what I mean.” He strolled over and peered down at the tiny infant. “He looks to be a healthy boy. Two sons in three years. Your husband must be pleased.”

“Pleased enough that he plays with one while I feed the other. Let me call for him, so that he can greet you.”

“Nay, leave him to his son. It is you that I come to see, and he knows it.” He pulled a bench against the wall and sat where he could watch her in the twilight leaking in the window.

Abundant chestnut hair tumbled around her body. The babe suckled with sleepy contentment, as though he knew his mother's goodness. Moira had a heart that would nurture the world if permitted. If he ever carved an image of Charity, he would use the memory of her as she sat thus, giving succor.

He had almost loved her once. Not the way he did now, as an old friend. She had been the only woman before Joan about whom he had wondered what might be. She had been Addis's serf then, and her lord desired her. Rhys thought it was the same story he had witnessed as a boy, and probably wooed her more quickly because of that. What he had not known was that Addis owned her heart more securely than her freedom. She had loved the son of Barrowburgh most of her life.

Her lord loved her, too. He ultimately married her despite her low birth, and let his sons have her blood. Rhys did not like Addis much, and the tension over Moira still hung between them. His respect for the man increased tenfold, however, when that marriage had occurred.

“It has been over two weeks since you came last, Rhys. You were very busy?”

“Aye. A window at the abbey. The donation came from the Queen, and the abbot wanted it done fast, lest the
funds get diverted to some extravagance. There were ten of us there.”

“Then you were not in the city at all these days.”

“I only returned at night.”

The fading light caught an impish glint in her clear blue eyes. “To be with your tiler?”

Hell. “Moira …”

“Nay, nay. You do not need to explain to me. I can not help but be curious, though. You have had women before, but this is the first time that you have taken one into your home.” The baby had fallen asleep. She shifted him, and covered herself. “It is said that she is your housekeeper now.”

“How do you hear such things? You are still lying in. You have not even been to the church yet.”

“I have servants. I have visitors. They are sworn to bring me any gossip worth hearing. Imagine my surprise to learn that the best tidbits were about you.” She lifted the infant to her shoulder and patted. “Some say that you bought her, but I have let it be known that you are the last man to do that.”

She smiled expectantly, waiting for his gratitude. He stared blandly through the window. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her face fall.

“Rhys, you
didn't
.”

“It is not—”

“You? The man who stood up to Addis about his claims on me? The man who has taken no apprentices because he does not believe in bonds lasting even ten years?”

“I have taken none because the responsibility for them restricts my movements, not because—”

“The man who helped depose a king, because he said the abuse of power had infringed the people's rights?
You
have bought a woman's freedom and made her your leman?”

“It is true that I bought her indenture, but I do not hold her to it. And she is not my leman.”

She frowned at him skeptically. “Truly? She does not share your bed?”

“Truly.” And then, because it was Moira, he smiled. “Not that I haven't offered.”

She gave him a very motherly look. Sympathetic, but far too knowing. “It sounds like you are tempting the devil.”

“Aye, I am certainly doing that.” And he was. The devil inside him. The voice that, late at night, calculated the odds of success if he pursued Joan more aggressively, and that weighed the strength of passion against that of her resolve. And of her fears. Only his suspicions about the latter checked him now, not his much-vaunted principles.

“Perhaps you should send her away,” Moira said. “I will give her work here, and take the brother, too.”

“Nay.”

He said it sharply enough that she frowned with disapproval. “So you do not hold her with the indenture, but with her need for food and shelter.”

I am inclined to keep her with me any way I can
. So there it was, admitted bluntly. He had never thought to see the day when he understood why Addis had forced Moira to remain his bondwoman, but he did now.

“Do you care for this Joan? It is not just temporary lust, I hope.”

He laughed. “There is plenty of lust, Moira. Enough that I am not sure what I think about the rest.”

“You must bring her to the baptismal feast next week. I must meet her and look her over.”

“Look who over?” a voice asked from the shadows.

Rhys twisted to see Addis de Valence walking toward them. He had known Addis would come. He had been waiting for him.

“So it is you, mason. One of the women said that a man had snuck in the gate. Sly and silent, she described him.”

“Greetings, Addis. I came to admire your new son.”

“And my wife, I'll wager.”

“A fool's bet for me, and easy winnings for you.” They treated it like a little joke, but a low note in Addis's voice said that he still had suspicions about Rhys's interest in Moira. Which was why he had come down from the solar.

“Look who over?” he repeated.

“A woman,” Moira said.

“Your woman? The pretty one you have taken into your home?”

The Lord of Barrowburgh normally did not partake of town gossip. Moira must have told him.

Moira rose with the baby cradled against her bosom. “I must put this little one to bed. Do not leave, Rhys. I have a rose gown and veil to send back to Joan.” She carried the infant away, leaving him alone with her husband.

“Your woman sounds proud,” Addis said, sitting in the chair Moira had used. The last of the light hit the left side of his face, revealing a deep, long scar slicing from his dark hairline to his jaw. “That is good. Some men prefer timid women, but I have always thought that was because such men are too weak to handle anything else.”

“She is proud enough.”
And she is not my woman
. He would not get into that with Addis, however. Unfortunately, Moira would probably tell him all about it.

“How do you fare, Rhys? Has your work been taking you to the palace of late?” Addis asked casually, like an old friend catching up. Except that they were not old friends.

“Aye. I just finished a window. One of the Queen's donations. Now I am honored to do some work in the King's chambers. Did you recommend me to Edward, Addis? He said that men he trusts spoke for me.”

“I may have done so.”

“Did he mention that his mother had first put my name forward?”

“He may have done so.”

“I do not think that I should thank you for this. You have put me into an impossible situation, and one that I did not seek on my own at all. I am treading on the edge of a precipice as it is. This only makes my path narrower.”

“You speak as though you do not know where to put your feet, or your loyalties.”

“When I risk my life on my loyalties, I like it to be my own choice, and for a worthwhile reason.”

“You speak as though someone expects something of you. That would be Mortimer, I guess. What does he want?”

Addis spoke as if he assumed the expectation had not yet been met. And so Rhys answered more honestly than he might have. “Information. He smells something, so he says.”

“Indeed? To where has he turned his nose?”

“Well, Addis, at the moment, in the direction of you.”

A silence pulsed while he absorbed that. “He was specific about this?”

“Most specific.”

“He must be too idle these days if he sniffs in my direction. I am the least of his concerns.”

“You are not in his pocket. He will be suspicious of any baron who is not.”

It had grown dark, but Addis looked as if he could see Rhys very well. Gold lights flickered in his dark eyes. “Did you come here today to learn if his suspicions are correct?”

“I came to visit Moira, and to greet your new son.”

“But if your visit were known, Mortimer would assume that you had at least tried.”

“Aye, he would assume that.”

“I think that you are practiced enough in walking that precipice. You will not fall. Visit as often as you need to keep Mortimer satisfied.”

It was the offer of a comrade, if not a friend. It was not the rebellion that had forged this bond of trust between them. It was Moira. “You should probably visit the Queen.”

“Then he would suspect that you had warned me, and start sniffing at you. I am safe from the man in ways a mason can never be. I have no business with the Queen, and will not inconvenience myself to feed her vanity.”

A woman entered with two candles to give them some light. Addis waited for her to go before speaking again. “You have no loyalty to me, but you would never allow Moira or her children to be hurt. I think that you came this evening not just to visit my wife, but to alert me to Mortimer's interest in me.”