The Longing (7 page)

“More than one of
your
kisses.
That
is what I said.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” he repeated, then bent his head and set his mouth upon hers.

As always when granting such favors, Susanna squeezed her eyes closed so she would not be made to suffer the memory any more vividly than was necessary and clenched her teeth lest the one who collected on their bargain sought to further violate her mouth.

However, when Sir Elias’s kiss deepened, she did not protest. She was too grateful and too surprised that she did not taste bile—more, that the kiss was almost enjoyable. And she might have allowed herself to experience it a bit longer if not that she heard the sound of feet upon the stairs.

Judas? She tried to pull her head back, but it was against the door, and so she turned her face in the direction of the stairs and said, “Cease, Sir Elias.”

“One of
my
kisses,” he breathed and pressed his lips to a spot beneath her ear.

The footfalls sounded louder, foretelling it was only a matter of moments before whomever they belonged to appeared. She slid her hands to the man’s shoulders and pushed. “Pray, Sir Elias, cease!”

He pulled back, but not before Everard Wulfrith bounded onto the landing.

The scene was surely one never before played out at Wulfen Castle, but even more than it offended for the stain cast upon its walls, it offended for the heinous act perpetrated against the lady who pleaded for an end to it.

Everard did not remember the last time he’d had occasion to put all of his body behind an assault, but there was something satisfying about smiting the one who had retreated only upon realizing the lady was no longer at his mercy. Through the unfamiliar haze of rage, Everard savored the feel of fist meeting bone, the shout of pain, the strain of throat muscles beneath his forearm—

“Nay!” Hands dragged at him, sank nails into his arm. “Release him!”

—the wheeze of breath denied, the blood that ran from nose and split lip, the bulging, alarmed eyes—

“Everard, do not!”

The use of his Christian name by the one who smelled of roses pierced the haze, and he snapped his chin around and narrowed his eyes on the woman who pressed near his side, trying to pull him from Sir Elias. “He sought to ravish you!” he growled.

“He did not!” Amber eyes wide, she shook her head. “I vow, he took no more than I willingly gave.”

Revolted that she made such an unseemly claim and bothered that she should need the man so much, he said, “You speak false. I heard you plead with him—”

“Because
I
heard you upon the stairs!”

Everard’s breath ground to a halt, and he looked closer upon her, noting her mussed braid, swollen mouth, and the flush of color across her cheeks that imparted a youthful, appealing glow to her otherwise gaunt features. Did she speak true? For this she had entreated the knight to cease?

Whether or not it was so, in that moment he recognized that he who did not lose control had done so—and not because he faced life-threatening circumstances that were as close as one could come to justifying such behavior.

He wrenched his forearm from the man’s throat and stepped back, breaking Lady Susanna’s hold on him.

As Sir Elias bent forward, braced his hands on his thighs, and drew loud, strained breaths, the lady laid a hand to the knight’s back. “You are well, Sir Elias?”

He nodded, but it was some moments before he straightened. Putting his back to the wall, he met Everard’s gaze and raised a staying hand. “The lady speaks true,” he croaked, then drew the back of that same hand across his nose and mouth. “I meant her no harm.”

Of course she spoke true, even if she did not, for the man was surely not so foolish as to reject the lifeline thrown him.

Sir Elias glanced at his crimson-smeared hand. “God in Heaven, I heard you Wulfriths were a fierce lot, but—”

“I assure you, that was naught,” Everard growled. “And you would do best to take yourself far from my sight.”

The man considered Everard, then looked across his shoulder at Lady Susanna.

She inclined her head. “Go.”

“You are sure?”

“Aye.”

Wiping at his bloodied face, the knight pushed off the wall. “I will not be far,” he said, and Everard heard the challenge in those words that were in direct opposition to the warning just given. Sir Elias was fortunate it was not the youngest of the Wulfrith sons he faced, for Abel would have found it more difficult than Everard to suppress the impulse to see how much more intimate the knight would like to become with a fist.

Everard watched the man stride the corridor, listened to the sound of his footfalls upon the stone steps until they were swallowed by the din of those in the hall, then he set his gaze upon Lady Susanna where she stood before the wall against which he had slammed Sir Elias.

Lashes shadowing the tops of her cheeks, she stared at the floor and gripped one hand over the other at her waist—so still, it was as if she did not breathe. Then her gold-touched brown eyes were upon him.

“I beseech you to accept my apology, Lord Wulfrith.” She took a step forward. “Now, might we speak of—”

With a single stride, he set himself over her. “Scarcely clothed, you come into a hall brimming with young men whose minds should be upon a hundred different things before thinking near upon a woman. But that is not enough. Barely out of sight, you further insult my hospitality by engaging in a tryst hardly befitting a lady and upon which anyone could have happened—if, indeed, it was a tryst.”

He caught the flicker of feeling in her eyes, next a tightening about her mouth as if she were determined to keep her lips closed against the truth of what he had heard and seen.

Everard felt a tightening about his own mouth. “For this,” he said, “women are not welcome—or allowed—at Wulfen. I should never have let you in.”

She swept her tongue across her lips. “Aye, you should have, even if only for Judith’s sake, she who would be grateful for what you have done for the son she—”

“I will
not
discuss her with you.”

“I do not ask that you do. There are matters more pressing, namely Judas’s safety. To grant me the audience I begged is the reason you came to me, is it not?”

“Certes, I did not come for the same reason Sir Elias did.”

The catch of her breath was slight, but then she glanced toward the stairs. “Is this where you would have us speak?”

For propriety’s sake, Everard was tempted, but those knights who held chambers on this floor would soon make for their beds. Unfortunately, though his solar where he conducted private business would not place them in such close quarters, Susanna de Balliol would have to pass through the hall to reach it since he had no intention of revealing the hidden passageways. And, having already determined it best not to further expose those of Wulfen Castle to this woman, much of the whispered talk over supper having been of the lady who should not be here, it would have to be her chamber.

He pivoted, thrust open the door, and stood aside.

As she stepped past, she paused and lightly touched his sleeve that was flecked with Sir Elias’s blood. “If you do not see to that, ’twill stain.”

He looked to her hand upon him, and she immediately removed it and crossed to where a washbasin was set near the supper viands Squire Joseph had delivered to her. The latter appeared untouched, and he guessed here was the reason she was so gaunt. Remembering the plump girl from years past, he wondered if she intentionally starved herself to attain a more pleasing figure or if a lack of appetite made her eschew sustenance. Regardless, he did not think it recent behavior, for not only was the skin of her face firm, but the hollow look about her told that it was years in the making.

Susanna kept her back to Everard Wulfrith for as long as possible, wetting and wringing the hand towel the better to compose herself out from under his painfully observant gaze. Everything depended on what she would tell. Thus, her words must be carefully chosen to rouse compassion and a sense of responsibility—even if Judas was not of his loins. After all, the boy’s lot had been cast as a result of what this man had sought to take from her brother.

She turned and crossed the chamber to where Everard Wulfrith had positioned himself just inside the doorway, extended the dampened towel.

He gave it a dismissive glance. “You have your audience, Lady Susanna. Tell what you would that I might attend to more pressing matters.”

Suppressing the impulse to rebuke him, a not so difficult undertaking considering the practice she’d had with her brother, she said, “There is naught more pressing than Judas, Lord Wulfrith.”

He raised his eyebrows.

As she regarded him, she acknowledged he was more changed beyond the absence of hair that the abundance of stubble told was by choice. The Everard Wulfrith she remembered had been pensive, at times overly solemn, but still there had been lightness about the young man with whom she had been…

Besotted.
That was what the beautiful Judith had said, though it had not been said unkindly.

Before memories of that day could unfold, Susanna focused more intently on Everard Wulfrith whose impatience she sensed as tangibly as she had felt his distaste when she had declared Sir Elias had taken no more than she had willingly given—a pronouncement she had determined to let stand, for it was not only true in this instance, but she was certain it would serve Sir Elias and her no better were she to reveal the starting place of their kiss. Whether she engaged in trysts or bargained with her body, neither reflected well upon her.

“Speak,” Everard Wulfrith said so sharply she nearly jumped.

“Life has been difficult for my nephew. His name ought to tell you that.”

No response.

“The day after Judith birthed him, she died.”

There—some swift-footed emotion in his eyes.

“My brother was distraught over her death, then angry. The more he looked upon his son who was born a very good size from a man not of great stature, the more he questioned if the babe was, indeed, his—and began to believe Judith’s death was God’s punishment for her terrible sin.” She replenished her breath. “Though the morning-after sheets had been hung out following their wedding night”—

Emotion again, but just as quickly gone.

—“he determined she had tricked him, that she had not come to him a maiden. Thus, he concluded that the babe delivered barely nine months after the nuptials was more likely yours than his.”

She thought Everard Wulfrith might reaffirm that he could not be the father, but he remained silent. “However, he never denied Judas, at least not by way of ink and parchment, for of his three marriages, Judith was the only wife to produce a child.”

She pondered if there was any benefit to elaborating on Judas’s suffering, not only of how poorly he had been treated but of the breathing attacks that had caused her brother to further scorn the boy. But as tempted as she was to try to arouse sympathy in that direction, she more feared that if Judas was this man’s son, he would be less inclined to claim him, perhaps as repulsed as Alan.

“And so, until my brother had another heir…”

She crossed to the bedside table where yet another platter of viands had grown cold and dropped the towel beside it. She considered the bread, pinched off a crust and, rubbing it between her fingers, watched the crumbs fall into the congealed stew that had earlier smelled fragrant.

“Therein lies the dilemma,” she said. “A month following Alan’s death—”

“How did your brother die?”

She turned and the remainder of crumbs dropped from her fingers to the rush-covered floor. “He was hunting and took down a boar. However, it was not dead as thought and caught him unawares. He finished it, but not before receiving mortal wounds.” Only now, when it was known the lengths to which Lady Richenda would go to see her grandson made heir did Susanna count it a blessing that her brother had met such a horrible end. Had there been any possibility of foul play, Lady Blanche’s mother might have tried to place the blame for Alan’s death upon those she wished to be rid of—Judas and Susanna.

“Continue,” Everard Wulfrith said.

It was a moment before she found her place again. “The dilemma we face is that, a month following Alan’s death, his fourth wife delivered a son, and now she and her mother seek an audience with the queen that Judas might be declared illegitimate and set aside in favor of her child.”

“Then ’tis an audience with Queen Eleanor you ought to seek, Lady Susanna, not me.”

 “There are two problems with that which sounds so simple to you. The first is that Judas overheard the mother of Alan’s widow suggest his death would be the easiest way to see her grandson made heir.” She could not tell him it had played out upon the training field, for he would want to know the means by which her nephew’s life was to have been forfeited. “The second problem is you.”

His lids narrowed. “Me?”

“Though I do not believe Alan revealed your name to his wife or men, you are the reason there is a question of whether or not Judas is a de Balliol.”

“The
only
reason?” he said low and deep.

She knew he believed it was she who had carried the tale to her brother, just as Judith had first believed, but she would not waste her breath in self defense when the air was better spent on Judas.

“If you know for certain you cannot have sired Judas, then we shall seek an audience with Queen Eleanor to defend his claim to the barony, but we cannot do it alone.”

He said nothing for a long moment, and when he did, he once more stood over her. “What do you suggest?”

She had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. “Exactly what you think. Far too many of my brother’s retainers are under the control of Alan’s widow’s mother and would surely stand witness to his disparagement of Judas, and especially his fondness, while full up in his cups, for proclaiming he had been cuckolded.”

Anger darkened Everard Wulfrith’s eyes, banishing the color to the farthest reaches, but she was not fearful, for she knew it was not directed at her. He saw the cruelty and injustice of what she told, and whether it so deeply affected him because it had been done to a child of his own making or a child innocent of what his father had believed of him, it mattered not. She had him.