shadow and lace (2 page)

The door swung open. His stepmother swept in, her eyes darkening unaccountably at the sight of the golden head next to the dark one.

She snatched the child from his arms. "Is the silly babe troubling you? Forgive me. I don't know how she manages to wiggle out of her swaddling."

He watched, his arms empty, as she stuffed the plump limbs back into the binding linen. The child's lips trembled, but she did not cry. Her eyes were not on her mother. They were on him. "Is she not old enough to toddle about?" he said faintly.

"Toddle into mischief! What do lads know of babes? The swaddling will help her limbs grow straight and strong." His stepmother flashed a vivacious dimple. "And contribute to the sweet demeanor that every man prizes in a wife." She took his hand, her soft, ivory-colored fingers playing over his knuckles. "Come. Forget the bratling. You've much to learn before your father returns. I've yet to see you make a proper kneel."

She drew him away from the cradle. "Now, pretend I am your queen."

He was not pretending as he cleared his throat awkwardly and dropped to one knee. He reached for her outstretched hand. Her middle finger bore the rubies and emeralds of his father's betrothal ring. His head dropped. He could not touch her. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. He hardly dared breathe as she touched him, her fingernails gently tracing the shapes of his ears beneath his thick, dark hair.

"My man," she crooned. "My sweet, young man. I've so much to teach you."

He closed his eyes as she drew his face into the rosemary-scented velvet of her bosom. But as he buried his face in her softness, 'twas not darkness he saw but the reproach in round, blue eyes the color of the spring sky.

Take thou this rose, O rose

Since love's own flower it is

And by that rose

Thy lover captive is

—
Anonymous

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1298 England

The hare's nostrils quivered an inch from hers. If anyone had been as near to Rowena as the hare was at that moment, they would have sworn her lightly freckled nose also quivered. She lay in the sweet-smelling grass of the moor, her chin nuzzled in the crook of her arm. Her cap slipped over her blue eyes, and the slight movement startled the hare into flight. Rowena swore softly and climbed to her knees, adjusting the cap with a jerk. With stinging fingers she plucked thistles from her overtunic. She had lain motionless in the tall grass for hours to gain the trust of the hare bouncing cheerfully toward the rosy pocket of the western sky.

She shook her fist at the animal, then laughed ruefully. Sheathing the long knife that hung forgotten in her hand, she trudged toward Revelwood where eight hungry boys were doomed to be hungrier.

As the only girl in a family of seven brothers, one male cousin, and a father given to long disappearances,it had taken Rowena both time and ingenuity to convince the family she was indifferent to the cobwebs festooning the grim remnants of Revelwood. She had learned at a tender age that her only escape from a life of perpetual drudgery lay in becoming a terrible cook and a clever huntress. She tackled both tasks with enthusiasm, leaving her brothers to till the stony ground and freeing herself to roam the wild moor.

Rowena spread her arms, emphasizing their emptiness as she leaped from stone to stone across a sparkling stream. Little Freddie would even now be preparing the spit for the game she did not bear. Her youngest brother had rescued the doomed family from a life of raw cabbage when his first tottering steps had led him to the dusty kettle on the hearth where he promptly fell in. His hollow cries had echoed through the castle until Rowena's oldest brother, Big Freddie, fished him out.

Dead drunk on the occasion that marked the birth of his youngest son and the death of Rowena's mother, Althea, Papa had promptly christened the red, squalling infant Frederick, just as he had christened his firstborn Frederick. In the years to come, Papa would fondly brag that he had named the babe Roderick in honor of his oldest son—the first fruit of his loins whom he cherished beyond all measure. With a gentle poke, Rowena would whisper in his ear that the name was Frederick. Papa would shrug and smile and turn up his goblet again.

The dry grass crackled beneath Rowena's heels. The late summer twilight descended around her in a lavender haze—a gentle reproof for the long hours she had spent running through the meadows, whistling at the larks and tracking a wide-eyed doe at the edge of the forest. To come home empty-handed would be to admit the folly of her day and succumb to a supper of boiled turnips for the third time in a week.

Setting her jaw in determination, she unsheathed the knife and turned to the forest. The sour, cracked note of a badly blown trumpet shattered the quiet like a golden fanfare.

Papa
! Papa was home! Rowena sprinted toward the decrepit castle she called home and the charming braggart she called Papa.

Eight months had passed since he had left without a word to pursue his fortune. In the past those same pursuits had brought him home with a leather pouch of golden coins which he had scattered among his children like a jolly harbinger of happier times. Rowena would laughingly scramble for the coins, knowing all the while that the gold would be regathered in time for Papa's next expedition. She dreaded the times he returned with nothing but a massive headache and a kick for the cur that skulked around the hearth. He never dared raise a hand to any of his children; even Rowena outmeasured him by two inches.

However hapless his journey, he never returned without some scrap of a present for his only daughter. The tattings of lace and velvet bows had been tucked away, forgotten, to be replaced by soft-beaten leather and a curved dagger. Rowena expressed her needs with a candor not inherited from her father.

With a hint of the ingenuity they did share, she thought with glee that Papa's return would draw attention from her empty hands, especially if he packed the carcass of a deer on his aged gelding as he was wont to do when his wagers had been successful.

The weatherbeaten stones of Revelwood came into view as she topped the hill. She paused to grasp her side and rub away the stitch that had stolen her breath away. Her mother's ancestral home crouched on the edge of the moor, the battered walls no longer a defense against the wind that roared through the widening cracks in the mortar. But in the rapidly dying light of the summer sun, the ancient castle gleamed in a poignant reflection of its former glory.

Rowena's joy overflowed in a whoop as she skipped down the hill. But her throat went dry when she saw Papa's slopebacked gelding tethered to a post, an empty pouch draped over its heaving flanks. She ran her hand over the horse's withers, then wiped the slimy film of sweat on her braies with a grimace. The horse gave a gurgling snort, its head buried in a wooden bucket. Shaking off a shiver of foreboding, Rowena bounded up the splintered planks that served as a bridge over the dank moat.

Arrow slits set deep in the masonry held the twilight at bay. Rowena blinked away blindness as her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the cavernous hall. A fire dwarfed by the immense hearth strove to add cheer to the vaulted room but succeeded in casting more shadows than light. The corners of her mouth tilted upward at the sight of Little Freddie stirring the contents of an iron kettle. The pungent odor of turnips floated to her nose.

She leaped out of the doorway, warned by the clatter of large feet on the planks. Her brothers burst into the hall bearing an array of hoes and rakes.

"Where is Papa?" bellowed Big Freddie.

He led five men who could have been smaller, paler twins of himself with their lank hair and hunched shoulders. He tossed his scythe to the flagstones. The others exchanged doubtful glances, then dumped their tools with equal carelessness.

Rowena's cousin Irwin stepped out from the stairs. His plump face held an oddly glum look; he twirled a rusty trumpet between his fingers.

"Your father is abovestairs," he announced. "He wanted you gathered. Said there wasn't much time."

Even as he spoke, a deafening crash sounded from the upper reaches of the castle followed by a bellow and a flurry of imaginative curses. They all stared upward as if an explanation for Irwin's cryptic speech would float down with the dust motes loosened from the beams.

Big Freddie knuckled his eyes. "Is Papa in foul spirits, Irwin?"

Irwin scratched his head with the trumpet. "I don't believe he is in spirits at all. I believe he is sober."

Rowena's brothers nodded to each other, accepting the news with puzzled solemnity.

Rowena snorted. "Nonsense. Have you ever seen him sober, Irwin?"

Her cousin turned to her, unable to stop blind adoration from conquering his calflike eyes. "Nay. But I've never seen him like this before, either."

Rowena tweaked Irwin's nose with fond contempt. "If you say he is sober, then I say you've been dipping into the ale with your own greedy paw."

Irwin choked out a meager chuckle. The others laughed aloud at the thought of their pasty-faced cousin swilling a goblet of brew.

"Papa is probably just hungry," Rowena pronounced with conviction.

The look Little Freddie gave her was so devoid of reproach that she ducked her head in shame, regretting her thoughtless fling with the summer day. The mention of food started all their stomachs rumbling. The black bread crusts dipped in lard they had broken their fast with that morn were a fond but distant memory. Rowena started for the wall that housed the old bow and arrow. Little Freddie's words stopped her.

"Apples, Ro. We can spare a few. I can cook them on the coals the way Papa fancies them."

With a grateful smile she took the sack he held out. Little Freddie seemed to have inherited intelligence equal to all that was divided so sparingly between her older brothers. Pulling her cap over her ears, she ducked into the deepening night.

The door had hardly closed behind her when Papa came stumbling down the stairs.

My God, thought Little Freddie. Irwin was right. Papa never stumbles when he's drunk.

Gone was the strutting gait, the bleary, sated gaze. In their place were feet that took each step as if mired in molten lead and eyes that shone with the weight of unshed tears. Lindsey Fordyce, Baron of Revelwood, stood at the foot of the stairs and surveyed his sullen sons as if seeing them for the first time.