Knight of Seduction (13 page)

Cadel groaned and thrust himself to his feet. 

“I hate you,” he hurled.  “I hate your knights and your horses and your wretched
training
.  I hate all that you are.  I hate all that you ever will be.”

Hugh shrugged.  “What will you do about it?”

Cadel bellowed with fury and rushed Hugh again.  Hugh knocked him down again.

An excruciating dance began, with Cadel staggering up, then charging Hugh, and Hugh fending him off with barely a flick of the wrist.

It was a comical mismatch, like a farce a troupe of actors might have staged.  Hugh was bigger, older, experienced at brawls, while Cadel was reckless and stupid and in no physical condition to spar with Hugh or anyone else.  His attacks were pathetic, but Anne had to give him credit.  He was completely overpowered and had no chance with Hugh, but he kept on and on and on. 

Anne should have turned away, but the spectacle was too riveting.

“Stop them,” Rosamunde hissed.

“I can’t.”

“You could if you wanted to.”

“Lord Hugh would never listen to me.”

“Do it, Anne.  Go down and stop him.”

“Perhaps a thrashing will be good for Cadel,” Anne said.  “His temper has always gotten the best of him.  Perhaps he’ll learn a lesson from it.”

“What lesson?  That Hugh can murder him with impunity?”

“For pity’s sake, Rosamunde.  Hugh is merely shoving him to the ground.  Cadel will grow weary.  He’ll desist on his own.”

At least, Anne hoped that he would.  She couldn’t envision marching into the midst of the crowd, couldn’t envision interfering with Hugh.  If she tried, she couldn’t predict how he would respond, and she didn’t care to find out.

Cadel’s assaults were slowing, his ferocity waning.  Like a wounded bull, he dragged himself forward, wildly swinging his arms.

Instead of shoving him away again, Hugh hit him with the back of his hand.  Blood flew from Cadel’s nose.  He wailed and crumpled to the dirt.

“Are we finished, Master Cadel?” Hugh asked, his exasperation clear.

“We’ll never be finished,” Cadel spat as he hauled himself to his feet.

“Oh no,” Rosamunde breathed with dismay.

“Give quarter, Cadel,” Hugh urged.  “You’re beaten.  Accept your fate like a man and get back to work.  The seven-year-old pages are in better condition than you.”

Cadel glared, oozing malice.  “I wish my poison had killed you.”

Hugh didn’t react by so much as the twitch of a muscle, but his knights growled and stiffened with affront. 

Henry stepped forward and grabbed Cadel.

“Are you admitting that you tried to murder Lord Hugh, you little worm?”

“Yes,” Cadel bragged, “and I’ll try again and again and again.  Someday when you least expect it, I’ll succeed.”

Dozens of spectators heard his boast.  They gasped with varying degrees of outrage, shock, and alarm.

Henry punched Cadel in the face, not with the slight sort of push Hugh had used, but a vicious, fierce blow that buckled his knees and collapsed him in a defeated heap.  More blood flowed from his nose, but his mouth was bleeding, too, as well as a cut on his cheek.

“You pathetic dog,” Henry sneered, leaning over Cadel.  “You threaten my Lord Hugh?  In my presence?  You would dare such infamy?”

Cadel’s speech was garbled, but it sounded as if he said, “Bugger your Lord Hugh.”

Henry peered over at Hugh.  “Shall I kill him now, Hugh?”

“No,” Hugh said.  “Take him to the dungeon.  We’ll hang him in the morning.”

“What?” Anne called without realizing she would.  “No, no, no, you will not!”

Every person in the bailey stared up at the battlements to see who had interrupted the tense scene.

Anne whirled away, racing to the stairs and down.  The crowd split, opening a path to Hugh, and she ran to him.

He frowned, studying her as if she was a stranger.

“Go inside, Lady Anne,” he quietly stated.  “This is none of your affair.”

“Please, my lord Hugh.”  She fell to her knees, her head bowed in submission, her hands pressed together as if in prayer.  “May I speak?”

“Go inside, Anne!” he repeated more sternly.

But she couldn’t be silent.  What purpose would be served by murdering Cadel?  While her father’s execution had happened over a year earlier, in a far away land and for lawful reasons, this was so real, so imminent.  She simply couldn’t imagine Cadel dead.  Not at Hugh’s command.

She’d grown up with Cadel.  He was her brother.  Hugh couldn’t kill him!

She’d forgiven Hugh for slaying Ranulf, a man she’d scarcely known and who’d committed treason against the king, but this was…was…

She couldn’t describe the horror of it.  She couldn’t let it transpire.

“Cadel is a fool,” Anne insisted.  “He’s vain and proud and can be stupid.  He didn’t mean what he said.”

Henry tossed out, “His intent seemed quite clear to me, Lady Anne.”

“My lord Hugh, please!” she begged again.

Hugh didn’t reply, but nodded to Dorag.  She was in the horde of onlookers, watching the entire, awful display.

She came over, leaned down, and clasped Anne’s arm.  There was a warning in her gaze.

“Let me help you inside,” the older woman said.

“Not until my husband answers me,” Anne responded.  “Not until he swears that he won’t kill my brother.”

The observers shifted uncomfortably, stunned that she would openly defy Hugh, and Anne, herself, couldn’t believe she had.  When still on the battlements, she’d worried over what he might do if she intervened, and she was about to find out.

“This is men’s business,” Dorag counseled.  “Not ours.  Let’s go.”

Dorag tried to tug her to her feet, but with no success, so one of Hugh’s knights assisted her.  Between the two of them, they lifted Anne and walked her away.  Anne didn’t fight them, and she didn’t glance back.  She couldn’t bear to see Hugh’s expression, to see him or others glowering with condemnation.

By the time they’d stepped through the wide doors into the keep, she could hear the clang of metal on metal as swords clashed and the training session recommenced.

Dorag and the knight led her up the stairs to her room and ushered her in.

The knight marched off as Dorag murmured, “You’d best wait here, child.”

“What do you suppose he’ll do to me?”

“I don’t know.  Stay out of his sight, and his temper will cool.  He’ll come to you when he’s ready.”

It was sound advice, from a more sensible, experienced woman.  Anne agreed, and Dorag left her alone with her thoughts and her fury.  She felt like a chastened toddler who was about to have her bottom paddled.

She was livid and embarrassed and outraged.  Outraged at Cadel.  Outraged at Hugh.  Outraged at herself for interceding, but also for not being tougher and stronger.  If she had been, she’d have stormed into the middle of the fracas and banged their stubborn heads together.

Cadel was a fool to taunt Hugh, to threaten him.  And Hugh was a fool to let Cadel needle him.  Hugh was lord of the castle, while Cadel was barely more than a boy, and he often still acted like one.  Why spar with him?  Why give him the chance to cause so much trouble?

It was all male pride and recklessness, and Hugh had let his arrogance rule him. 

Bitter feelings boiled beneath the surface at Morven.  Most people accepted Hugh as their lord and master, but Cadel had not.  Blodwin and Rosamunde had not.  Their malice had to end, and Anne could have helped Hugh resolve the situation.  

But no.  She was a female, so her opinion was irrelevant.  A man like Hugh didn’t have to listen, didn’t
need
to listen. 

What was the point of being Hugh’s wife if her word held no sway?  Shouldn’t she have a voice?  If Hugh decided to hang her half-brother, surely it was her right to protest without being punished for saying he shouldn’t.

She paced and fumed, paced and fumed.  Every once in a while, she’d hear footsteps outside her door, and she’d peek out.  It was always a maid on an errand. 

The time dragged by.  To make it pass more quickly, she ran through a litany of her grievances, rehearsing the remarks she would offer in her own defense.   

The afternoon waned, and evening arrived.  A maid visited to light the fire, to bring Anne a tray of food.  Anne quizzed her as to what was happening down below, but the girl didn’t know where Hugh was or what he was doing.

She left, and no one else came.  Anne continued her pacing, incensed at being ignored by him.  She’d assumed he would follow her up the stairs the instant he could, that they would hash out and end their quarrel.

How could he not want to end their quarrel?

She considered stomping down to the great hall, taking her place at the high table.  She considered grabbing the next maid who walked by and sending her to fetch Hugh up to Anne’s chamber, but she refused to humiliate herself further.

Finally, when it was very late, when she was exhausted and thoroughly aggrieved , she crawled onto the bed in her clothes.  If he came to enjoy his marital privilege and found her dressed, she didn’t care.  He would just have to return when she was ready to receive him.

She sniffed with hurt, then fell asleep, but she tossed all night.  With each creak of the castle, with each gust of wind, she was startled awake, certain it was Hugh, but he never appeared.

When she rose in the morning, when she hastened down to make sure Cadel was still alive, that he hadn’t been hanged—he hadn’t been—Hugh and his men were off chasing brigands.

The ass hadn’t bothered to say good-bye or apologize to her before he’d cantered away.

*          *          *          *

“Pour water on the rocks.”

“Like this?”

“Yes.  See?  The steam warms the room.”

“Well, would you look at that?”

Hugh had learned the trick in his travels.  Knights from the northlands had shown it to him.  They’d claimed it was an ancient Norse method for bathing, for soothing a battered body when the weather was foul.

Heat rocks, then dump water on them.  It created a moist fog that went beyond the healing a bath could provide on its own.

He’d been gone for two weeks, hunting a gaggle of miscreants who’d stolen some cattle, burned some cottages, and wreaked havoc before Hugh had caught up with them.  They wouldn’t commit any mayhem in the future.

After riding in constant mud and rain, they’d arrived at Morven.  Henry had been in a fiery mood, had wanted to romp and revel.  He’d stopped in the village and invited a pair of loose tavern wenches up to the castle.  He’d insisted that he and Hugh needed tending, that they
deserved
tending after their rough journey, and Hugh agreed.  He just wasn’t certain they were the ones he should have offering him comfort. 

“Hugh likes to be warm,” Henry told them.  “He’s an absolute ogre when he’s not.”

“If your bones ached as mine do,” Hugh grouched, “you’d be an ogre, too.”

The girls tittered.  They were silly and frivolous and fortunate that the village elders hadn’t run them off years ago for their blatant immorality.

They were in the bathing room of the castle, with Henry naked in the tub, swilling ale and generally making a nuisance of himself. 

There was a second tub prepared, and Hugh should have climbed in, but he hadn’t.  He’d stripped to his breeches, and the buxom blonde had been eager to unlace them, but he hadn’t let her. 

The lewd scene was the same as hundreds he’d sat through with Henry.  They’d journeyed the world together, had fought and frolicked and gleefully debauched in shameless ways.  In the sunnier climes, sexual games were not frowned on as severely as they were in England.  Brothels and baths and bawdy houses had abounded, and he and Henry had never failed to indulge in the worst behaviors.

He shouldn’t have been aggravated by Henry’s low character—it was nothing new—and he shouldn’t have been bored to tears, but he was.

Since their quarrel, he hadn’t seen Anne.  He was still upset over her defiance that day in the yard and didn’t know what to do about it.

He was glad the raiders had slipped across the border, glad to have had an excuse to ride off so his temper would cool. 

Cadel had confessed to attempted murder, so he was lucky to be alive.  And it seemed he would stay that way.  Hugh simply couldn’t kill him now.  Whenever he considered it, he remembered Anne prostrate before him and pleading for Cadel’s life.

At the first opportunity, Hugh would send Cadel to London where he would be conscripted into a group of knights leaving for the Holy Land.  Richard was still there, his Crusade never-ending, and Cadel of Morven would grow up and fight—or he would die trying.

Would that make Anne happy?  Would she forgive Hugh and apologize for her rebellious conduct?

Hugh doubted it.  He’d explained what he required from her:  loyalty and obedience.  Yet at the earliest sign of trouble, she’d jumped into the fray on the wrong side.

He was very bothered by her betrayal, but couldn’t figure out why.  It was a small act, and he understood that she’d been anxious to save her brother, but what about Hugh?  What about what
he
wanted and needed?  Which was to have his own wife firmly back him in all matters.

He shook his head, forcefully pushing Anne out of his mind. 

Upon his return to Morven, he probably should have gone to her immediately, but he hadn’t.  Fourteen days had passed, and he couldn’t decide what to say, so he’d said nothing. 

Though he’d never admit it, Anne had hurt him when she’d intervened on Cadel’s behalf.  Her behavior was like a wound that had scabbed over, but he kept picking at it so it couldn’t heal.

It was all that red hair, he supposed.  He’d suspected a fiery temperament, and he’d been proved correct, so why was he surprised?

Henry climbed out of the tub, and the two girls rushed over to dry him, spending an exorbitant amount of time on his private parts. 

He was drunk, grinning, trying to shove the brown-haired girl to her knees, but she wouldn’t comply.

“Won’t you take me to your bed, Master Henry?” she begged.  “I’ve always hankered to see a lord’s room.”

“He’s not a lord,” Hugh grumbled.