The Maiden Bride (5 page)

How could he let her know that his callousness had been for the best in the long run? She'd have found only heartbreak in his house, would have been caught in the same retribution as all the others.

"I knew enough of your husband's reputation, my lady, and of the laws of inheritance to know that you were entitled to much more than this pile of rubble in your widow's grant."

"I don't want anything more from my husband. I'm delighted with Faulkhurst as it is, with all of its flaws. And with no help from Edward's royal treasury. I knew very well that Faulkhurst was abandoned and in terrible shape, so I let Edward and his council think me a simpleton—for the less I involve the king, the more easily I can evade his influence."

He suddenly felt vastly proud that she was so wise for a woman with so little experience in the world. He sat on the edge of the table, enchanted all over again. "Where did you learn your politics, madam?"

She smiled up at him. "At the hands of my late father and the king and my unlamented husband."

The little jabs hurt most of all. They would keep him in his place, and aching. "Ah, yes."

"My life has been ill served by the politicking of men, but only because I was innocent of its power and its vanity. I am wiser now, and use my guile to my own advantage." She drew her fingers along the rib of the quill. "As you say, why would the king be interested in a tattered old castle on the verge of tumbling into the sea?"

"But guile alone can't guard you against your enemies. How will you defend yourself? With sticks and flaming arrows?"

She laughed with a brightness that caught him round the heart. "Look around you, Master Nicholas. There's nothing to defend at the moment."

Preposterous! "There is yourself, madam." She cast him another wry and worldly glance, as though she knew great secrets and kept them proudly. "You and your little brood are as lambs staked out for a pack of hungry wolves."

"Believe me, sir, we are far more secure here than we've been for many months." She wielded a small pestle against the crumbled ink, pressing it into a finer powder.

"Safer here? What do you mean?"

"We're quite used to bedding down in the open, under a tree, a bridge, or in a cave—whenever we were lucky enough to find one."

Hell and damn, he'd left her to wander the countryside like a vagrant. Well, no longer, by
God. He would give her this damned castle, even if it killed him.

"Faulkhurst isn't a cave; it's a fortress that needs defending, constantly."

She raised a brow at him and pursed her lips. "Of course it does."

"That's another reason you need me as your steward, madam: to see that the postern door in the main gate isn't left propped open by some fool as an invitation to every thief for miles around."

She stopped grinding and met his gaze directly.
"I
am that fool. I left it open purposely."

"The postern door?"

"Aye, sir. For anyone to come through at anytime, God willing. How else can they get inside with no one to open the gate when they knock?"

He hoped to hell she was jesting. "Thieves don't bother to knock, neither do raiding Marcher lords."

She stood, looking fierce with her fists planted against her hips. "Please tell me that you left the door standing wide."

"Are you mad? Of course I didn't." He shook his head, disbelieving the course of this entire conversation. "I closed and barred it."

"Blast it all," she huffed as she left the table, frowning at him as though he had just unloaded the full weight of the world onto her shoulders. "Master Nicholas, you're
not
recommending yourself very well to the position of steward." She lifted her cloak from the back of a chair and stepped into her boots at the same time.

"Where are you going?"

She picked up the cresset lamp. "To prop open the gate, just as I left it."

"Absolutely not! You're not doing anything of the kind." But he'd bellowed his command to the hem of her shabby cloak as it swung round the corner of the kitchen doorway and out into the great hall.

Utterly, wholly mad. "Madam!"

The woman frowned a quieting finger at him as she made a detour to the guttering hearth and the two girls sleeping there, tucking a threadbare blanket around a stray foot and landing a fond kiss on a chin before she was off again, stepping around the angular boy sprawled and snoring across the entrance to the portico.

Nicholas followed her, chewing on his silence until they reached the wide stairs in the dark bailey, unable to think of a single thing to say or do—beyond tackling her—that would stop her bullheaded progress.

"I'll only close and bar it again, madam."

But she tromped on, her lamp a bobbling outrider to her bracing strides, which seemed overlong for a woman whose head barely reached his shoulder. That bespoke long legs—fine, curving legs, if this chastening God had construed his dreams correctly.

And never to be seen by you, Brother Nicholas.
He would spend his eternity in hell, burning with desire for her.

"You will
not
prop the gate open, madam." He easily met her stride, increased it by the length of a step, and took the lamp from her so that he could stare down at her. "Are you listening to me?"

"Convince me that I should do that, sir, that I should trust you as my steward—the man who will be charged with my daily accounts, with the running of my castle and fields. The one who will do my bidding without question. Why should I choose you?"

"Because, madam," he said between his teeth, "I am your only bloody choice."

Chapter 5

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E
leanor wanted to cry, to stomp her foot—though she had to keep a level head and a steady heart. The man was right, of course. He might be quick-tempered and opinionated and highly possessive of her castle, but that's exactly the kind of man she needed in a steward.

But how the devil was she going to contain his fierceness within the smallness of the title? He seemed so much more than that, larger than life. Larger than her will—which terrified her.

He needed gentling, needed to know that she was the master here, not him. Despite his prior claim, despite the fact that he knew William Bayard, however marginally, despite the very puzzling matter of his being here at all.

"How long have you been living at Faulkhurst?"

He caught her elbow and turned her as they reached the low wall of the kitchen garden, and peered down at her with a
midnight
scowl. "Long enough to know the castle better than any man living."

"How long?"

"I don't know." He circled his hand in the air as though to pluck an answer from the darkness. "Months, I suppose. Which makes me the logical choice for steward."

Good God, he was handsome; impossible to look at without her mind wandering into places it had never wandered before. That was surely a strike against him, this ability to muddle her thoughts.

"Why do you want to stay here, Nicholas? You despise Faulkhurst to its foundations."

"I—" he seemed to gather his temper before he continued "—don't despise it."

Liar. "Perhaps not, but you do believe me a silly fool—"

"Hardly that—"

"You just said as much."

"When did I, madam?" He seemed truly indignant, initially matching her pace when she started across the bailey, then increasing it until she was nearly running to keep up with him. She finally slowed to her own stride.

"Do you truly believe, Master Nicholas, that
I ought to welcome you as my steward when I know right well that you would subvert my plans? You are trying to at this very moment."

"Not if your plans are sound."

Aye, he would think that way in his vast male arrogance. She stopped by an empty wagon and swung her lamp toward him to better see how he played the truth.

"How do you plan to measure that soundness, sir? By whose standard? A tyrannical, condescending soldier's … or
mine?"

His eyes became shards of indigo, hot in the lamp's flame as he mulled her question carefully. His mouth was so perfectly crafted—even in his thwarted scowl—that she wanted to follow the curving lines of it and its dampness with her finger. He smelled cleanly of leather and smoky thyme in the cocoon of the night.

"Try me—" he leaned down and whispered, so warmly, so near to her brow that he ruffled her lashes and the hair at her temple, and made her tilt her mouth up to catch the rest of his intoxicating words, "—my lady Eleanor."

Try him.
His mouth on hers. Oh, yes; she'd like to. But oh, my, he was large. And wholly distracting. Her heart pounded so loudly she couldn't hear herself think, let alone recall the subject, though she knew it was of grave importance to her future.

"Try you, sir?"

"Aye, madam." He caught her chin with his thumb, then brushed her lips with it, watching them as though gauging her answer. "Tell me your reasons for keeping the damned gate open."

Oh, yes, that.
She stepped safely away from the man, to a place where she could regain her thoughts. Because no matter how she explained them, her reasons wouldn't satisfy him; they only made sense to her because she had risked everything already and had little left to lose.

Except hope, and she refused to allow him to steal that from her, nor to shake it in any way. No man would ever do that to her again.

"Whatever your low opinion of me, sir, I am not an unsuspecting innocent—"

"My opinion of you isn't low in the least." He took hold of her sleeve, wrapped his fingers in the loose linen, and tugged her into his delicious heat.

"I am deeply,
dreadfully
familiar with what it takes to manage a castle, in good times and in times of unthinkable evil. Like the years just past." The horrors nudged at her as they did so often, wanting airing, but she shook her head and they vanished.

"Then you know that you'll need three hundred people at the very least." He was nodding impatiently, that black mane of hair emphasizing just how tall he was and how well he favored his own opinions over hers.

"I need people of every sort if I'm to vanquish my husband's memory and redress his uncaring policies. Tenants and crafters and villeins. That's the very reason I can't afford to let a single person pass us by because they think Faulkhurst unoccupied and unwelcoming."

He snorted and sat back on the open wagongate, his arms crossed defiantly over his broad chest, those tremendously long, knee-booted legs spread out on either side of hers. "My dear lady, only thieves and highwaymen travel about in the dead of night. And they look only to take advantage—"

"Which makes them an enterprising group of people, don't you think?" Of course he wouldn't. Couldn't possibly.

He went still.
"Enterprising?
Is that what you just said?"

"Aye, enterprising. Terrifically skilled at making a profitable something out of absolutely nothing. Have you ever watched a mountebank at work at a fake?"

"Hell and damnation, I believe I am watching one right
now.
Are you mad, woman?" He was up again, pacing away from her into the blurring shadows and back again into their shallow pool of light, making her hope suddenly that he wouldn't give up on her, because that would feel too much like defeat.

"I'm not mad, sir. I've only done in my life what needed to be done. And on that course I've become acquainted with dozens of outlaws in these past few years—"

"You
have? With outlaws? How?" He took hold of her forearm and turned her, fully horrified by her confession, as though her welfare in the past meant something personal to him, a private outrage. "What the bloody hell have you been doing since your husband died? Making covenants with brigands?"

"And kings, sir. And priests, and merchants. Whoever would listen to me, whoever would talk freely. And I learned that every man and woman who managed to live through the horrors of the last few years wishes a better life for himself—and a far better one for his children."

Nicholas tried to unscramble the woman's logic, but it was impossible. No matter how many ways he twisted it, not if he tried for the next hundred years—and he hadn't nearly that much time, else he might well enjoy the task. He sat down again on the back of the cart, its creak a bitter echo of the way his bones felt just now—aged and hollow.

And utterly confused. "What the devil are you talking about?"

"
Opportunity
, Master Nicholas." She gave a sharp, satisfied nod and threw out her hands, as though that clarified everything for him.

"What?" He wondered if he'd suddenly gone stone deaf and stupid.

"I will leave the castle doors open as an opportunity for the enterprising." She took an impatient breath when he couldn't make himself respond with the bellow of outrage that seemed crammed inside his chest. "Very well, sir. I offer you Dickon and his sister as an example."

Clarity at last, God help him.
"Do you mean to tell me that the lad snoring his head off in the great hall is an outlaw?"

She stepped between his knees, a stunning temptation as she bent closer to him, as though she were keeping a great secret, or protecting the boy's feelings. "Dickon was a highwayman. He's been entirely reformed for a whole year. Nearly monkish."

Nicholas knew that state intimately, was suffering that very moment from its exacting dictates, aroused again. His wife's hair tangled itself up in his fingers and her mouth glistened too near his own as she whispered on about reforming thieves and vagabonds.

"You're a gullible innocent if you believe that the boy has changed one whit in his heart, madam." He couldn't breathe with his pulse slamming around inside his chest.

"I believe in Dickon, sir, to the end of time. I have to. His sister, Lisabet—the young woman you saw from the gallery while you were eavesdropping on us—had been a pickpocket. A very good one. Now she reads and is learning to write."

"What are you saying exactly?" He closed his hand over hers, suffered the heady shock of it as he brought the lamp closer to her face, looking for the hazy madness in her eyes. But he found only the stalwart, clear divinity of hope. The sort that would land her in Edward's dungeons if he wasn't careful with her life, or in a shallow, unmarked grave in a ditch. "Do you truly think you're going to populate Faulkhurst with outlaws?"

"Outlaws? Good heavens, no." Her eyes glistened with the misguided compassion that caused her to place her hand on his shoulder, to draw him closer. "With people like you and me, Nicholas—who yearn to be better for their tragedies, who have grown wiser in their sorrows, who are grateful for this day and for the next.
"

She was holding his hand tightly, this resurrected wife of his, searching the depths of his eyes for a sign of the hope she'd never find.

"Ah, Nicholas, we can't give up. Not even God can save the fool who stands willfully in the path of a team of runaway horses, unless that fool uses his brain and leaps out of the way in time."

Unless he has no choke in the matter of where he stands.
"You may believe that, madam—"

"I do. I'm not going to just sit here whimpering in my barren castle and pray for a baker to come trotting up to the gate on a plow horse."

The image was so absurd that it forced a smile out of him, filled the hot hollowness in his chest. She, of course, took the smile for his assent. "Good, then." She tugged him to his feet, then let go of his hand, stealing away her warmth, and continued across the bailey, trailing her scented dreams behind her. "I have a strategy."

Good Christ, woman. He followed, already
planning his own strategy against her outlaws. "Tell me," he said evenly.

"We will rebuild the village and plant all the fields this spring for a grand harvest come Michaelmas."

"This spring? It can't be done." An annoying spot between his eyes had begun to ache.

"It can, with enough labor." She strode through the barbican, past dark arrow loops on either side of the narrow passage, and beneath the perilous portcullis that he'd foolishly neglected to lower just before she and her brood had arrived.

God, had that only been this afternoon?

"How the devil are you going to attract enough labor way out here, on the last gasp of the earth?"

"They'll come, as I said."

"Do you mean to collect them one by one as they pass by on the low road, thirty miles from here? You'll be years finding yourself a village full of tenants. Every able-bodied man and woman in the kingdom fled the countryside to the nearest town or city long ago, the moment their lord's back was turned."

"Aye, just as they probably did from Faulkhurst the first chance they got. Though I can hardly blame them for fleeing from my husband and his wickedness in great, rolling multitudes." She frowned when she came abreast of the postern door. "But, thankfully, William Bayard is no longer lord here."

He is, my lady.
Or would be until he could straighten out the mess he'd left to her.

"Labor can't be bought anywhere, madam, for any amount of gold. Even if it were legal to treaty with another lord's servant."

"I'm not offering gold—I don't have any.
"
She slid the upper bar to the side, and then the middle one. Nicholas stood there, illuminating her foolishness with the lamp, resolved to sleep here in the gatehouse tonight—at least until he knew that she was safely asleep, and he could lock the damnable door.

"What are you offering then in the way of your 'opportunity'? Schooling? Great piles of broken lumber, handfuls of crumbled daub? You have that aplenty."