The Kindling (22 page)

All the more because you waited. Tell him, for even if what he feels for you should turn to hate, it will be far easier to bear this day than another day when you have grown accustomed to his love.

She sent up a prayer, drew a shuddering breath, and said, “There is something I must needs tell you.”

Chapter Seventeen

Abel frowned. “What is it?”

“But first”—

Tell him!

—“I must ask if ever you will be free of this place, of what happened here—more, of those who caused it to happen.”

His hands on her tightened. “You fear I will be bitter to my end days.”

Worse. “Though you say you will not allow this place to haunt you, what of Aldous and Robert Lavonne? Can you let them go—not see them when…” She swallowed. “…when your sister’s husband, Christian Lavonne, stands before you?”

Ah, Helene
,
you who ever seeks to be honest and open as Sister Clare trained you up to be, how you twist and wriggle out from under the truth.

“Whatever comes before hate is what I felt when I first met Baron Lavonne,” Abel said, “certain as I was he would be no different from his father or brothers and would make Gaenor’s life a misery. But in spite of the blood in his veins, I have come to see him as separate from the other Lavonnes—even respect him.”

Then there was hope.

“Of course,” he added, “he was mostly reared by the Church.”

As she had been.

“Though I can make no promises, Helene, I vow I shall strive to put away the past.”

She tried to smile, but when the expression threatened to tremble off her mouth, she let it go. “I thank you, but do you…?”

“What?”

“Aldous and Robert are dead. They can hurt no one ever again. Do you think you will be able to forgive them after some time has passed?”

Silence stacked up between them, on the other side of which she felt his struggle and what she feared was anger.

“Forgive them?” he harshly repeated.

“Aye, even if only for your sake.”

He dropped his hands from her and thrust one back through his hair. “’Tis too soon to think there. Though I know my faith asks it of me, I do not know when I will be ready—if ever—to forgive them.”

She took a step toward him. “You have to let it go, Abel.”

He turned his face sharply to her. “Just because you wish it does not mean I can forget the lives laid down by Robert Lavonne, that…misbegotten son of a wretched old man and whatever whore birthed him.”

Helene jerked back. Though she had not known her mother beyond a vague memory of sad eyes and a halo of red hair, from what she had gleaned these past years in the village, her only fault was loving Aldous Lavonne and bearing him children out of wedlock.

“How can you name Sir Robert’s mother something so hateful?” she demanded.

Confusion flickering amid anger, Abel said, “The old baron may have acknowledged his whelp and trained him up to be a knight, but all know Robert was conceived upon a woman who welcomed him into her bed without speaking vows.”

“Aye.” Helene nodded. “She was a commoner like me, a woman who loved a man who did not love her enough to wed one who was not of noble birth. In the eyes of the Church—even my own—she should not have followed her heart, but she did and, when her belly swelled beneath the hand that did not bear the ring of her children’s father, she surely endured the casting of the same vile name you have called her though you did not know her or her circumstances.”

As Abel stared her, she felt some of his anger ebb and guessed her own anger was responsible.

When finally he spoke again, his words were measured as if he yet pieced together what she had cast at his feet. “Neither did you know her, Helene. You could not have, for I was told she died before her son was even a squire—likely ere you were much more than a babe in arms.”

Refusing to flinch though the suspicion in his eyes was not far from what she had last seen in Baron Lavonne’s eyes, she said, “Regardless, you have no right to judge her merely because she was Sir Robert’s mother.”

The color that had begun to recede from Abel’s face returned. “Merely? Did that woman not raise the boy that grew into the man who stole you from your child and home, who beat you and left you to die? The same who led those who murdered a dozen of Lord D’Arci’s and the king’s men and sought to murder my sister and me?” He shook his head. “Deny it though you may and tell me ‘tis my Christian duty to forgive the unforgivable, I have good cause to disavow those who begat Robert Lavonne.”

Numbness spread through Helene. Knowing it was time and that the end would not be good, she raised her chin. “Then as you disavow my mother, you disavow me.”

A muscle in his jaw spasming, he stared at her. Then he closed his eyes as if to shut her out. “Her
children’s
father,” he gruffly repeated what she had unwittingly revealed a short while ago, then looked at her in a way he had never looked at her, not even when he had believed she had abandoned her son. “Robert was not the only one. That is what you wished to tell me.”

She held his gaze until his eyes drifted to her hair. “’Tis a different red.”

A dark shade of that color rather than the orange-red that had crowned her brother’s head.

Once again, he moved his jaw with great effort. “You look nothing like him.”

She loosened her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “I was too young to remember much about my mother when my father sent me away following her death, but ‘tis likely I bear a closer resemblance to her than Robert did.”

He turned his back on her, took two strides opposite, turned, and took two larger strides that set him over her. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”

She winced at the accusation. “I feared you would send me away and I would not be able to help you regain what you lost that night.”

“You were right to fear it,” he put between his teeth.

She clenched her feet in her slippers to keep them from carrying her away. “Then you also hold me responsible for the attack on Soaring—because I am a Lavonne? For that alone?”

Something shifted in his eyes and, for a moment, she thought he might realize how wrong it was to blame her for the sins of others, but he said, “More than any woman, I have held you in high regard—believed in your honesty and who you appear to be. But only now, after I have laid myself open to you, do you reveal what you knew I would want to know.”

“I am sorry. Though I wanted to tell you, I could not.”

“Why?”

Say it. It can hurt no more than it already does.

She grabbed up fistfuls of her skirts to keep her hands from reaching to him. “Because I do love you, Abel Wulfrith. And I feared you would look at me differently…that you would not rest until you had sent me away.”

Again, something moved across his eyes, and again it disappeared. “Why did Aldous Lavonne not openly acknowledge you as he acknowledged Sir Robert?”

Longing for air that seemed in scarce supply with him so near, she dropped back a step. “He was not given the opportunity to do so.”

“He did not know you were his daughter?”

“Upon his deathbed, he knew, but at what moment he came to the realization, I cannot say.”

“What of Sir Robert?”

She shook her head.

“Baron Lavonne?”

Beneath his barrage of questions, she tensed further. “I do not know what was said between him and our father ere Aldous’s passing, but I believe the baron was given reason to suspect the truth of my birth.”

“You have not discussed it with him.”

“I have not.”

“Then how did you learn you were the old baron’s daughter?”

“Ere I left the convent, Sister Clare, who was present when I was brought there to live, told me her sister had been betrothed to a young Aldous Lavonne ere she died of the pox. Thus, she had recognized him when he delivered me to the convent.”

“Mayhap she lied.”

Helene struggled not to take offense at the suggestion. After all, he did not know that most excellent woman. “Though you may wish it so,” she said tightly, “Sister Clare would never have lied.”

He stared at her, his breath sounding loud between them. “So ’twas for the Lavonnes you came to Tippet—and wed that you might remain.”

“As well as the other reasons of which we spoke.”

“Why did you never reveal yourself to your family?”

Exhausted by the stress of remaining focused on him so he would not think she was ashamed or—worse—lying, she looked down. “’Twas not my intention to hide my parentage. I but wanted to do so at the right time. However, I was not long in Tippet ere I realized it would be best if I but knew them from afar, especially once…”

He did not need to know that Christian’s older brother, Geoffrey—also her half brother—had sought to ravish her and would have had Willem not appeared. After all, Geoffrey was long dead.
 

“Once you knew the truth of Aldous and Robert Lavonne,” Abel answered for her.

That too. “I have forgiven them for who they allowed themselves to become.”

Abel’s laughter had a rusted edge to it. “You should have donned a habit and taken vows, Helene of Tippet.”

Once more named alongside her village…

“This is the world I live in,” she said, “and I will not allow it to be soiled by hatred or anger because someone ill treated me—”

“Ill treated! Your sire allowed you to be chained like an animal to keep his sorry bones from turning to dust. And your brother…” He sneered. “He left you to die.”

She opened her cramped hands in a pitifully pleading gesture. “I did not die, Abel.
They
are dead, and God is their judge. Not me. Not you.
God.
”

As Abel stood over Helene, wishing he had not come to the wood with her and spoken as he had, he resentfully acknowledged that she was right. And therein lay the problem—knowing it but being unable to accept it. Then there was her betrayal, though he could yet reason well enough to understand why she had withheld the truth.

He felt as if caught in the same trap of lies and hidden truths that had seen him wed to a woman who had sought his death, whose family’s treachery had made him vow never again to be so vulnerable to any woman.

He nearly laughed. Helene was not the only one who had betrayed him. That honor was more his own.

“Abel?” When she touched his sleeve, the feel of her fingers disturbed him such that the sting of having betrayed himself deepened—as did the longing to remove the worry from her brow, the uncertainty from her eyes, and the sorrow from her mouth.

Where was the Wulfrith warrior his father had raised? Where was the man who had spent nearly every waking hour honing his body and skills in the art of war? He was not entirely gone, for some of him had been reclaimed this past fortnight with Durand, but there was yet much to be reclaimed if ever he was to regain enough of what he had lost that he might once again be worthy of his family’s name. And he could not do that if he continued to lay himself open to this woman whom he had thought he knew.

“Abel?” she said with more urgency.

The words that rose to his lips were cruel, but they were needed as much for her sake as his own. “You would do well to call me
Sir
Abel.” He pulled his arm from her hold.

A sharply drawn breath parted lips that had been soft and sweet beneath his not so long ago. “Then you will not let it go?” she said.

“How can I? My injuries are too recent and your deception too fresh to pretend this did not happen, just as I cannot pretend Rosamund never happened.”

She startled, and he immediately regretted equating her with the woman who had nearly eviscerated him. But then, in a way, so had Helene. The wound she had dealt did not leave a crimson stain nor place him at death’s door, but it pained him as deeply. Perhaps more.

“Nay, Helene of Tippet,” he pressed onward, “I cannot and will not let it go.”

Her eyes flashed, and whatever regret and sorrow had gripped her moments earlier was supplanted by tearful anger. “Then you would do as well to call me Helene Lavonne.” Her voice was so tight he could feel the ache in her throat. “For if I am to bear my family’s sins, surely I am as entitled to my father’s name as Robert was.” She grabbed the basket from the ground only to drop it in the next instant and hitch up her skirts.

“Keep it!” Abel growled as she reached for the Wulfrith dagger.

Hand hovering over the hilt, she looked up.

“Think of it as payment for your aid,” he said, “for it was certainly earned.”

He steeled himself for her stubborn refusal, but she dropped her skirts, retrieved the basket, and swung away. However, at the edge of the clearing, she looked around. “I will not easily forget what passed between us this day, but I shall forget it—or, at least, set it aside as you have done. Until then, I will pray that what happened to you in this place will fade that you might find peace, that you learn to believe in something above and beyond the swing of your sword, that you believe in Him.” She drew a deep breath. “Be assured that, as quickly as can be arranged, I will leave Soaring.”

Gone. If only she had never been…

He inclined his head. “I believe that is best for all.”

Her lids flickered, then she turned and started back the way they had come.

When she was far enough ahead that he did not think he would hear any sounds of misery that might escape her, he followed. But try as he did to turn his thoughts to a place beyond Helene, he was pressed on all sides by regret that he would never again know her.

Unfortunately, there was more regret to come, for what surely awaited Helene in the hall would only make this day worse. For both of them.

Chapter Eighteen

She was prepared to face Baron Lavonne when she entered—at least, as prepared as she could be considering Abel. What she was not prepared for was Lady Gaenor. And less so, John.

“Mama!” her son shouted from where he sat beside Baron Lavonne’s wife at the high table, causing others seated for the nooning meal to look up from their trenchers and conversations.

Dealt yet another a blow, Helene struggled for composure as her son determined that the fastest way to reach her was by ducking beneath the table and scrambling across the dais. Then his little legs were stretching as long as they could, his wooden sword bouncing at his side, his wide-flung arms giving notice that this was to be a flying hug.