The Longing (44 page)

“Even though you may not love or be loved?”

“Even though.”

He frowned. “I know Sir Morris lied when he called you a…” He growled, shook his head as if to empty out the terrible word. “Do you think Lord Wulfrith—?”

“He has been very good to us, has he not?”

His frown deepened. “He has done right by me.”

“So he has.” She glanced at Everard whose brother had joined him and Sir Elias. “He has made everything right.”

“I must needs thank him.” Judas released her, pivoted, and hastened toward the men.

Having promised Lady Annyn and Lady Isobel she would deliver tidings of the queen’s determination where they waited in the chamber abovestairs, Susanna turned away. As she ascended the stairs, she was stabbed with sorrow that the steps would not be further worn down by years of her passage upon them. Soon she would leave Stern and once more make Cheverel her home. And there she would marry a man not of her choosing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Still he had come.

Unable to move her eyes from Everard where he filled the doorway, Susanna rose from the chair she had been ushered into a quarter hour past.

“Lady Susanna has shared the good tidings,” Lady Annyn said where she held the door she had opened to her brother-in-law. “We are heartened to know justice is done.”

He inclined his head and looked to his mother who had also arisen from her chair. “Forgive me, but I would speak with Lady Susanna alone.”

Though Susanna felt Lady Isobel’s sidelong glance, she held her gaze to Everard.

Shortly, he closed the door behind the two women. “How do you feel, Susanna?”

“Blessed. Relieved. Joyful.” She sighed. “And yet, as if I am days without sleep.”

His brow furrowed. “Perhaps we should speak later.”

She took a step toward him. “Pray, let us do this now, for I do not think I will rest until I have heard you. And you have heard me.” That last was the hardest to say, but it would be harder to do.

His brow cleared. “Very well. But let us begin with what you wish to give me.”

She stepped to where her pack lay on a nearby table. “This.” She drew out the linen packet and opened it to reveal the ruby.

His eyebrows drew close. “That?”

“I found it on the roof and knew you would wish to—”

“I should not have left it there,” he said brusquely, “but it was no oversight.”

She blinked. “Was it not?”

He strode forward and halted before her. “That night when I held and kissed you, Susanna, I put Judith behind me. How far behind, I was not certain, just as you were not. But I am certain now, and I was made even more so on the day past when Sir Elias and I were granted an audience with the queen and she told that if she found in Judas’s favor she intended for you to wed.”

He had known?

“And I do not think I have ever been so jealous.”

Then…? Was he saying he loved her?

“I know what I want,” he said, “and, I vow, it is not out of a need to atone.”

Susanna forgot her circumstances long enough to savor joy. Then she remembered she was to wed another and hoped Everard did not, in fact, feel strongly for her.

“’Tis good this is recovered”—he turned the linen over the ruby and set it on the table—“but I had hoped you meant to give me the poem.”

And how I wish you had not.

“I do not believe they are Judith’s words,” he continued. “I believe they are yours. I believe they are what you feel for me. And I would have you know I welcome them, for they are a match for what I would speak were I capable of composing such myself.”

Feeling tears gather, she held her breath for fear its release would cause her emotions to scatter.

“Tell me they are your words, Susanna.”

She was tempted to let the lie stand in hopes it made it easier for them both, but she could not. Slowly exhaling, she drew the parchment from her pack and held it out. “For the giving, not the taking,” she repeated what he had spoken over a sennight past, “bestowed by the one who felt deeply enough to compose these words.”

Without moving his gaze from hers, he closed a hand around it.

“I am sorry I lied to you,” she said. “When I wrote it, I told myself it was surely what Judith felt, for she did love you, but they are my words, Everard. My feelings. My…” She looked down. “…ache.”

He hooked a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face toward his. “Ours has a different ending. There will be no days and nights of longing.”

The last verse…

“I love you, Susanna de Balliol. Will you have me?”

Tears causing his features to waver, she shook her head. “You know that is not possible. The queen says I am to wed a man of her choosing—”

“So you will. We must only persuade her I am that man and would make a worthy husband capable of administering Cheverel for Judas until he is grown.”

“But surely she will not allow it since ’twas thought you might have fathered Judas. It would not look right.”

“All that matters is that it look right to the queen, and after Sir Morris’s revelations, I believe it will.”

He sounded so certain. But, then, he was a Wulfrith.

“Will you have me, Susanna de Balliol?”

Daring to believe it was possible, she laid a hand on either side of his face. “I will have you, for you I have loved, Everard Wulfrith. You, I shall ever love.” She drew his face down to hers, his mouth onto her mouth, and watched for his lids to lower. They did not. Amid the sweetness of their kiss, he looked into her as she looked into him.

Then he drew back, so slightly that when he spoke, his lips brushed hers. “You watch me again.”

“Because you are the one I wish to kiss.” She frowned. “Do you not want me to see you?”

“More than anything. ’Tis simply natural to close one’s eyes when so near another, when one is feeling.”

Was it natural? For this had he closed his eyes before? For this did her lids grow heavy each time they kissed?

Embarrassment crawling through her, she drew her head back. “I did not know. Always I…”

“Tell me.”

Naught of which to be ashamed. Naught of which he would have you be ashamed.

“Always I closed my eyes tight so I would have fewer memories of those with whom I bargained.” She dragged her teeth across her bottom lip. “But I want memories of you, Everard. I want to see you, to have no doubt it is you who kisses me.”

His smile was gentle. “It will only ever be me, as it will only ever be you.”

Only ever… She glanced at his fair hair. “What of Judith?”

“I loved her and shall not forget her. But though she was the love of my youth, you, Susanna…”

“Aye?”

“You are the love of my life.”

In that moment, had she words to express the depth of her own love, she did not think she could have spoken them.

“Now,” he said, drawing her near again, “close your eyes.”

She lowered her lids and felt his splayed hand move from her waist to the middle of her back.

“Who holds you, Susanna?”

“Everard.”

His hand slid higher, caressed her neck. “Who touches you?”

She smiled. “Everard.”

His fingers skimmed her jaw. “Who gazes upon your lovely face?”

A breath of laughter escaped her. “Everard.”

His lips touched hers. “Who kisses you?”

She sighed. “Everard.”

He lifted his head and pressed kisses to her closed eyes. “Who do you see there in the dark?”

“The one I see in the light.” She raised her lids, and there was her reflection in his grey-green eyes. “Everard Wulfrith, the man I love.”

“Just as I see you, Susanna. Only you.”

EPILOGUE

Stern Castle, England

July, 1160

His name was Judas. Not Judas of the Bible, but Judas de Balliol. And he was his father’s heir.

As Susanna watched him where he stood across the great hall amid the revelers and alongside his friend, Charles, her full heart made room for more. Had ever a journey so dire and distant ended so well? Judas was safe and would be baron, she was loved and the wife of Everard Wulfrith whose hand rested upon the curve of her waist, whose ring upon her finger he had placed there scant hours earlier.

He chuckled over something Abel said, and she lowered her chin to consider the amber gem upon her hand that winked gold each time it caught the light—the same as her eyes, Everard said. For that, he had chosen it from amongst the gems his mother offered to mark the occasion of their marriage. Its twin, also removed from the necklace that had been given to Lady Isobel when she was young, shone from its place upon his hip. Where once a ruby had been set, pried free, and gifted to a woman he had loved, there was amber for the woman he now loved.

Susanna shifted her gaze to Garr’s and Abel’s daggers. Above each scabbard, the hilts into which gems were set were identical, a ruby at the intersection of cross guard and grip. As for Judith’s ruby, Everard had ordered that it be set in the Wulfrith dagger forged for Elias who would soon depart England to be reunited with his family in France. And to further ensure Susanna’s friend was well received by his father, Everard had spent countless hours personally training him in the weeks since Queen Eleanor’s visit to Stern Castle. Though it had meant she and Everard had little time together, the hours had passed quickly, filled with becoming acquainted with the family Susanna would marry into.

It had been a gradual introduction, the first ten days mostly spent with Annyn and her children and Lady Isobel. Then the others had begun to arrive in anticipation of the marriage of the last Wulfrith sibling.

First had come Everard’s sister, Lady Beatrix, and her husband Lord Michael D’Arci. Susanna had liked the petite woman almost immediately, for there was so much joy about her despite a head injury that sometimes caused her to struggle over words. Five months pregnant with their first child—
finally,
she said—she frequently stopped mid-sentence to grab the nearest hand and lay it upon her belly to share the stirring of her babe. As testament to the bond the sisters-in-law were forming, Susanna’s hand was often the nearest, and she exclaimed with Beatrix on the occasions she was able to feel the flutters and light taps of the very tiny babe within.

Now Susanna turned her face away from the men who made up half the gathering of kin and looked to her right where the beautiful, golden-haired woman stood beside her.

Beatrix greeted her with a bounce of delicately arched eyebrows. “Soon,” she whispered. “I am c-certain of it.” She patted the small bulge beneath her hand, then looked to her sister on her other side. “Be ready, or you shall miss it again.”

Lady Gaenor smiled, and the turn of her lips and show of teeth was so striking it was as though an unusually pretty woman had traded places with a relatively plain one.

A taller woman Susanna had not seen. Indeed, the lady was close to the height of her eldest brother, Garr, and not much shorter than her husband, the even more imposing Baron Christian Lavonne.

Susanna glanced at the man where he stood alongside Abel and once more entertained the thought that the Wulfriths must have searched far and wide to find a man who would not be looked down upon by their sister. Blessedly, husband and wife seemed devoted to one another, the sweet, brief meeting of their eyes and hands speaking well of their hearts.

“I am ready,” Gaenor said. “See, here is my hand.”

Beatrix grasped it and set it upon her belly. “Just to be sure.” She laughed, as did Gaenor.

In personality, the older Wulfrith sister was also different from the younger and, at first, Susanna had been wary of her, for Lady Gaenor had seemed unapproachable. However, though harder to know than Beatrix, being of a quiet and reserved disposition, she proved every bit as kind.

“Do you think my sister is just a little excited, Lady Susanna?” This time, it was Susanna at whom Gaenor directed her smile, and the distance between the two women seemed to diminish further.

“Quite excited,” Susanna agreed. “Beyond happy.”

“Are we not all?” Beatrix exclaimed. Then she gasped, snatched up Susanna’s hand, and pressed it alongside her sister’s. “There is my babe.”

The movement was slight but more strongly felt than before.

“Ah,” Gaenor murmured, “there your babe is, indeed.”

“A lovely sight,” Lady Isobel called in her soft Scottish accent.

All three looked up as the mother of the indomitable Wulfriths returned to the gathering, and behind her came Annyn and Helene. Though the latter, Abel’s wife, was too soon into her own pregnancy to yet show that the Wulfriths would continue to grow in strength and number, Susanna noted the hand she lightly laid upon her abdomen.

I wish that, too. Pray, Heavenly Father, bless Everard and me.

Lady Isobel halted alongside Gaenor. “From the smile you wear, Daughter, you have, at last, been formally introduced to your new niece—or nephew.”

“I have. But, alas, the babe has once more settled.” She lifted her hand from Beatrix’s belly, looked to Helene. “I hope my Lyulf gave you no trouble in seeking his rest.”

The lovely, auburn-haired woman with whom Gaenor was obviously close, shook her head. “He hardly stirred, even when I laid him to bed.”

“The same cannot be said of that rascal, Jonas,” Lady Isobel said, “but methinks he has met his match in Sir Rowan.”

Susanna looked about, but she did not see the aged knight who had come from Wulfen Castle to give her in marriage to Everard. It was he who, a half hour earlier, had scooped up Annyn’s disgruntled son while the boy’s mother carried little Artur away from the joyous din.

“Is Sir Rowan yet abovestairs?” Susanna asked.

Annyn blew a breath up her brow. “Aye. Issie has convinced him she is much too old to rest her eyes while the sun yet shines. Thus, she has claimed a perch upon his knee and a tale for her ears.”