The Redeeming (31 page)

“First born, but—”

“Misbegotten. I have heard it all my life—and worse—but still I am first.” He thrust to his feet and splayed his arms. “And now look what you have made of me by setting me to do your bidding and denying me my birthright. Your
son
is a fugitive sought by King Henry himself, reduced to a man with naught left to him but revenge.” His chest heaved. “Even if now you acknowledged me as heir, my end would be told such as it is.”

Aldous dragged his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth and searched the lower reaches for moisture that would allow him to form words. “I am sorry, Robert, but this is the way of things. Your mother—”

“Was a peasant.” Robert dropped his arms to his sides. “Do not waste breath on tidings far older than I.”

Wishing too many years too late that he had not given in to sin and lain with the pretty village girl who had made him feel things a man of nobility ought not to feel for one of inferior birth, Aldous said, “Pray, see me home, Robert.”

Sour laughter issued from lips that had known only to wail when this misbegotten son was born to Aldous so many years ago. “I think not. If you will not travel, you shall remain here.”

As the implications licked like fire through Aldous, the healer’s chains clanked. “Dare not, Sir Robert. Your father requires respite from the damp and dark of this place.”

Robert snapped his head around. “You are more the fool, wench, if you think mutual affection unites my father and me. Just as he never considered me a worthy heir…” He returned his gaze to Aldous, eyes so cold there was no question he would make no further effort to muffle what could not be mistaken for anything other than hatred. “…never did I consider a better end for him than this.”

His words should not have affected Aldous, but had they been capable of taking form, they would have been a blade that knew well the art of evisceration. Still, Aldous held. “If this is to be the way of it, Robert, I bid you to flee England and escape King Henry’s reach.”

“Why, I could almost believe you care,
Father.
”

Did he? He did. Some. “Do you not leave England, the king will see you dead—and most painfully if you are handed up to him with breath yet in your body.”

Robert’s lids narrowed. “This I know,
just as I know the revenge we set ourselves is worth the risk.”

Revenge on the Wulfriths. It was what Aldous had wanted. Still did. Or did he? Aye, for what they had done to Geoffrey. But now Christian was wed to one of them, and the children he would make with his wife would mix Lavonne and Wulfrith blood—

“I will not forego it now that we are so near,” Robert said.

Aldous almost laughed. They had been
so near
revenge for weeks, and all evidence to which he was privy indicated they were farther from it than they had been the night Robert had taken him from Broehne. But Aldous still had enough wit about him to not speak the truth that stared them both down.

“If I am soon to meet the Almighty, Robert,” he said, “I would not also have your death to account for. Pray, let me pass from this world comforted by the knowledge you yet live.”

His son stared down his long nose at him. “Mayhap I shall depart England, but not before I leave my mark upon the Wulfriths.”

Aldous had known he was wasting his breath. “What do you intend?”

Robert’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I have had word, and though I had not thought to act upon it, the Wulfrith knight’s escape changes everything.”

“What word have you received?”

Robert surveyed his father’s disfigured countenance. “I dare not say lest the Wulfrith knight leads Christian here and your aged tongue lets slip my plan. All you need know is that the Wulfriths will pay in blood.”

Was it Gaenor Wulfrith—Christian’s bride—he spoke of, a woman whose womb might even now carry a Lavonne, a grandson he would never see? As something reeking of regret twisted inside Aldous, he watched the smile on Robert’s face broaden.

“Aye,” rasped the misbegotten one, his gaze on Aldous’s face and yet not, as if it was the very mind of his father he peered into, “much blood.” A moment later, he blinked and returned to the disfigured surface. “Oft you told that drawing and quartering would be the best death for a Wulfrith.”

Aldous remembered, though the shiver that had shaken his devastated body whilst fomenting over Geoffrey’s death was far different from what shook him now. Then he had delighted in such imaginings but, strangely, now he was almost repulsed by them.

Robert huffed a sigh of satisfaction. “So it shall be,” he pronounced. “As for your heir, dear father, just pray he does not come between me and my prey.”

Aldous did not flinch, for he was not so fool to believe that, given the chance to inflict ill on his legitimate brother, Robert would deny himself. There had never been a question of it, and Aldous had done little dwelling on it. Now, however…

Aldous swallowed hard. “Christian is not much, I grant, but still he is your brother.”

Robert’s upper lip peeled back. “One whose every breath displaces mine. Nay, given the chance to face him, I will not turn my sword aside.”

Dear Lord,
Aldous silently beseeched,
I know I am the one who set this in motion, but if You would but give me your ear, heed my beseeching that Christian not pay the price for my sins.

“Now”—Robert peered over his shoulder—“all that is left to decide is what to do with you, Helene of Tippet.”

Aldous looked to the healer who stood beyond Robert’s shoulder and saw the fear he had known would be in her eyes. “If you intend to abandon me, Robert,” he pushed past a dry, constricted throat, “have mercy and…leave the healer that she might comfort me during my final hours.”

Robert snorted. “You think she would not also abandon you the moment my men and I ride?”

Would she? Would he die here alone? If ever he was found, would there be enough left of him to identify whom he had once been? Or would the wild things that crept into the cave ravage his remains? Carry away his bones?

A wind wound through the cave. Nay, not a wind. It was his old body whence the rushing air issued. Heart pounding fiercely, breath panted past his lips as if he ran with the devil at his heels. And perhaps he did.

He squeezed his eyes closed. He would do better to think on righting the wrong done the healer that he might have fewer marks against him when he stood before the seat of judgment.

Hoping that what he was about to suggest would not prove the woman’s undoing—that the Wulfrith knight would return with Christian—he looked up. “If you chain the healer to me, she will not be able to flee.”

As the sound of Helene’s sharply indrawn breath traveled around the cave, Robert’s lowered eyebrows rose. For a long moment, he said nothing, and then he mused, “’Twould solve the problem, especially if the Wulfrith knight is incapable of tracking his way back here.”

Meaning the healer might share Aldous’s tomb.

Robert straightened. “Mayhap I will grant you this mercy, though I admit much of its merit lies in knowing you will have the sweet taste of benevolence in your mouth when you are consigned to hell and, thus, miss it all the more.”

Aldous stared at his son who clearly believed he no longer had anything to gain from his sire. “So you do hate me.”

Robert shrugged. “Hate for Aldous Lavonne is not hard to come by. Ask anyone. Nay, the scraping and bowing and all other manner of respect where none is due…
That
is hard to come by—a hell all its own.” He raised his eyebrows. “But soon enough you will know how it feels to ask and not receive, to know no hope, to accept that yours is a discarded life.”

Though the backs of Aldous’s eyelids beckoned, he kept his son in sight—a man so embittered he wished hell upon his sire.

Is that truly my destination, Lord? I do not argue against having earned it, but…

What, Aldous Lavonne? What excuse can you possibly offer?

No excuse, just regret for what I have thought and said and done that has delivered me and so many others to this moment.

Robert sighed. “Aye, your end is near and, like me, ‘tis too late to change the outcome.” He pivoted, pushed heavily against the healer in passing, and strode from the cave.

When he and his followers broke camp an hour later, a four-foot length of chain bound Aldous and the woman ankle to ankle—one bruised and abraded, the other skeletal and scarred.

T
he day was beautiful, sprung as it was from the night that Gaenor had spent in her husband’s arms, a night that had slipped into dawn and lingered into late morning. Though she had yet to speak words of love or feel them caress her own ear, she sensed the emotion in the spaces between her and this man. And yet…

Where she lay on her side, cradled against Christian’s chest, head tucked beneath his chin, she sank her teeth into her bottom lip. She supposed they had not known each other long enough for love to grow across those spaces, but what if it never did? What if it did not deepen into something that would last to their end days? Worse, what if the love between them was hers alone?

She uncurled her hands and pressed them against his chest. His heart beat strong beneath her palms and, in moments, it beat faster. He desired her. He left her in no doubt of that—only of love.

“Wife,” he spoke into her hair.

Breathing deep in an attempt to suffocate her misgivings, she tilted her face up to his. “Husband.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Are we to lay abed all day?”

Though her cheeks warmed at what she longed to speak, she spoke it anyway. “Could we?”

A smile curved his mouth, and he fingered the tress that fell across her brow. “As I am now most awake and refreshed, what would we do?” His eyes laughed at her, but not in a cruel way.

“Though yesterday’s cramping has not yet delivered my menses, methinks I will bleed this day.”

Both eyebrows rose. “Aye?”

He knew what she suggested, but did he truly mean for her to speak it? Fighting back the temptation to roll aside and grab her garments from where he had discarded them among the rushes last eve, she pushed up on an elbow, pressed him onto his back, and settled her face over his. “I would have your arms around me.”

With his face in the shadow thrown by her curtaining hair, he reached up and touched the curve of her neck. “That is all?”

“Nay.”

His calloused fingers traveled to the base of her throat. “Then?”

“I…” She shivered. “…like being your wife.”

“Certes, you do a fine job of ordering my household.”

She gasped. “You know that is not of what I speak!”

He sighed. “Just as I know the barony does not manage itself and that already I have spent too much of the day without regard to my duties.”

Disappointment bristled through Gaenor, but as she started to pull away, Christian swept her onto her back with such ease she felt as near a feather as one of her height might feel.

“What is one more hour?” he rasped where he bent over her.

She smiled. “Truly?”

“Anything that is in my power to give, I shall.”

Love as well? But she could not bring herself to ask it—not directly. As his head descended and their breaths became one, she provided him a way out if he chose to take it, asking instead, “Why?”

At the instant she felt the brush of his lips, he hesitated, and it was some moments before he spoke. “You are my wife, and I am pleased it is so.”

Only pleased?

Stop it, Gaenor. Not so many days ago he was not pleased, believed terrible ill of you, would not touch you for the ruin of your virtue, would not stand before God. You are only at the beginning of two becoming one. Be patient.

“I hope you are as pleased to have me as your husband,” he murmured, and she realized he had seen whatever emotions she had let loose on her face.

Though tempted to pride, she determined she would let him know more of her than she knew of him. “I am beyond pleased,” she said and raised her head from the pillow. When she pressed her lips to his, she felt his hesitation again, but then he claimed her mouth. And breath. And perhaps even her heart. Hopefully, one day he would feel as deeply for her.

In the next instant, Christian was off the bed.

Gaenor gasped. “What is it?”

Lower jaw thrust forward, he swept his garments from the rushes. “Someone has come.”

“What?” No sooner did the word exit her mouth than she heard the pound of hooves, the snap of reins, and the urgency of voices beyond the windows. “Christian?”

“They would not ride into the inner bailey,” he said as he thrust his arms into the sleeves of his tunic, “nor with such urgency, if they did not bear tidings of great import.”

Dread seeped into Gaenor. “You think it has to do with Robert?”

He lashed on his sword-burdened belt. “I would do well to think so.”

Lord, let the tidings be good—that Robert is captured and will work no more ill upon the land.

Determined to be at her husband’s side, she tossed back the covers.