Unbidden (The Evolution Series) (22 page)

Chapter Eighteen

She perched on the chair in her room again, a bag of money she’d dug from the bottom of her clothing chest clutched in her lap
. She waited. Her room was dark, but she’d left her door open a slit so she could watch for the light to fade and hear the muffled sounds of David and Theo’s conversation end. Doubt occasionally flared in her mind. Each time she tamped it down by recalling David’s calculating words that ripped at her heart. She clung to them like a log in a raging river.

When all had been dark and silent for a half hour
, she tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen, stopping at Gilbert’s tiny sleeping alcove. He always moved here from the men’s sleeping room when they had guests because he liked his privacy and could not bear the uncouth bodily functions of visitors.

She watched him sleep for a moment, hesitating
. If she chose this path, there would be no turning from it. He looked old laying there, his hair thin on his pillow, and his body nearly skeletal under the blankets. His mouth hung open, with light wheezing breaths passing through it.

Perhaps he was too old to withstand the trip.

But if he couldn’t do it, she had no one else to ask.

She knelt down by his pallet and reached out a tentative hand, pulled it back, then reached again, finally shaking his shoulder
.

His rheumy eyes opened, darting about, the only part of him that moved
. They fixed on Rochelle, then widened with alarm. “What is it, my lady?  Is something on fire?  Did someone die?”

“No, Gilbert
. I have a task for you.”

He struggled to sit up in bed.

“This must be our secret, Gilbert.”

His expression became immediately guarded
. “You have never given me a secret task in the middle of the night, my lady.”

“No, I have not, but time is of the essence
. I will need you to leave first thing in the morning.”

“To go where
?”

Rochelle took a deep breath, wondering how to explain
. Once she told him her plan, there would be no turning back.

“My lady?” Gilbert asked again.

“You have no doubt heard about the tournament.”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“You know I do not wish to give up control of Alda.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to find a warrior who can beat David.”

Gilbert’s white eyebrows sailed high
. “My lady!”

She rushed on, wanting to get it all out now that she’d started
. “Give him this money,” she said as she let the bag chink down beside him. “If the warrior you find wins, I will marry him but he will not have any of the rights of a husband. None. His job will be to protect Alda and Alamannia as the emperor wishes. My job will be to manage Alda. I will not interfere with him and he will not interfere with me. And I will pay him well.”

Gilbert stared at her as if she’d gone mad.

“You must leave in the morning. The tournament is in just three weeks.”

“But
, my lady!” he protested. “No man will agree to those conditions.”

Rochelle scoffed, sounding more confident than she was
. “Oh, I am sure there is some lazy soldier around who would love to lay about while I do all the work.”

“Maybe so, but he is not likely to beat David then, is he?” Gilbert said sagely.

Rochelle closed her eyes for a moment, trying to hold her temper and her resolve. “My father knew people, Gilbert, and so did you. A few questions asked of the right person will lead you to a good man who will fulfill Louis’s requirements but leave me alone!” 

“I do not know, my lady.”  Gilbert said, shaking his head in doubt
. “Have you talked to your mother about this?”

“Of cou
rse not!  She thinks David is wonderful.”

“He does not seem like such a monster to me either.”

“He has tricked all of us, Gilbert. I will
not
be someone’s property. I will
not
give up my role at Alda, for anyone!”

“I do not
think he would expect you to –”

Rochelle’s temper snapped
. “Stop defending him, Gilbert!  I know what I know!  You work for me and I am telling you this is what I want you to do!  Do you understand?”  Rochelle had never spoken to the clerk in such a tone. She hated the anger and desperation in her voice.

He looked surprised, then his face closed down
. “I understand, my lady.”

“You will find a man who will agree to my conditions
. He will be well paid, but he must never breath a word of this to anyone and he will never act in any way as my husband or owner of Alda.”

Rochelle crept out of her bedroom early the next morning. Her sleep had been practically nonexistent. She was already consumed with guilt for sending Gilbert on such a mission at his age. In her heart, she doubted her own judgment. All night she closed her ears to the voice of her conscience. Or had tried. She had not been very effective. Even now her stomach ached.

As she descended the steps, she was surprised to again hear voices in the office
. Determined to avoid David, she aimed straight for the kitchen, but her mother called to her from the doorway.

“Rochelle, we are needing to speak to ye.”

Rochelle’s heart hammered in her chest. Her mother was not an early riser. Was it possible they’d gotten wind of her plan?  Could Gilbert be so opposed to it he’d gone to Marian?  She reluctantly changed her course to go to the office.

The two tall oil lamps were lit against the early morning darkness
. David leaned casually on the wall opposite the door, his arms crossed over his chest. The flame of the lamps flickered in his dark eyes. Lord, but he was handsome. Yet, outward beauty hid his ugly cunning, just like his noxious brother. She hardened her heart against him. Here was a man who thought she was full of nonsense. Here was a man who wished he had bedded her in a stable so she would be forced to marry him. If he knew of her plan, then he would know the full power of her disdain for him and she would be glad of it.

Theo sat behind her father’s desk, wearing a sappy
, hopeful expression. Marian wrung her hands again. They all stood in uncomfortable silence.

“Well?”  Rochelle finally asked.

“Oh, yes,” Marian said with a start. “Ye see, girlie, Theo had an idea about preventing the tournament. It seems he and David were talking about the problem last night.”

“Yes, I imagine they were talking quite a bit,” Rochelle interrupted, looking at David with slightly raised brows.

He frowned.

Marian continued
. “I could not sleep even the tiniest wink so I came down awhile ago. Theo asked me what I thought and I think they have a fair plan.”

The room filled with silence again as Marian continued to wring her hands, obviously trying to conjure the best words
. “It occurred to Theo that if ye and David were already married there could be no tournament.”

“But we are not,” Rochelle answered calmly
.
And I have my own plan for seeing we never are.

“Yes, we know ye have not been to the priest yet,” Marian said with a nervous laugh, “but Louis does not.”

“The priest does,” Rochelle countered. “Are you expecting him to lie?”

Marian sputtered
. “A priest would not lie.”

“W
hat, then, is this great scheme the three of you have devised?”

Marian’s face reddened to nearly match the hair escaping her soft green veil
. “Well, dear, nature does have a way of taking its course with many betrothed couples.”

Rochelle felt anger rising to match last night’s
. “Ah,” she said calmly as her fingernails dug into her palms. She turned the heat of her gaze on David. He watched her, his face blank. “So your plan is to send a message back to Louis that he is just a little too late because the intended bride has already been violated?”

Theo cleared his throat,  “Violated is a strong word
. We would find a better way to phrase it than that!”

Rochelle continued to stare at David
. “I am quite sure you would. I am certain you would find a beautiful and persuasive way to tell your lie.”

David’s brow furrowed at her sarcasm.

Marian squeaked. “It is just a wee lie.”

“A matter of tim
ing,” Theo added.

“Well, then, by all means,” Rochelle said, no longer able to keep the shaking anger from her voice
. She addressed David hotly. “Let us go upstairs and be done with it. In a few minutes this whole situation can be rectified. You can even wave the sheet about as evidence of your new ownership of my body and this estate. And at almost no effort on your part. The convenience to everyone except me is most convincing, indeed.”

David pushed off the wall, stunned by the venom in her voice
.

“Rochelle!” Marian cried
. “What has gotten into ye?”

“Disillusionment, Mother
. All three of you have at various times preached to me about my duty to the emperor. Now all three of you want me to agree to an outright lie to him. Why should I?  If what really matters is protecting Louis’s interests, if my happiness in life has no bearing on my marriage from anyone’s point of view — which it obviously does not — then maybe there
should
be a brawl to decide to whom I will be shackled. If the most important thing is that Alda has the best warrior, then let him fight,” she said, indicating David with a dismissive wave of her hand. She blinked hard against tears that threatened again. “Let him fight,” she repeated on a whisper.

The three of them stared at her, mouths gaping, as she whirled and ran from the room
. She realized that David had never spoken a word.

The day had begun in an uproar and hadn’t improved. Rochelle had strode around in an internal turmoil, refusing to answer her mother’s unusually insistent queries about why Gilbert was leaving, barely acknowledging Theo and Doeg as they departed in different directions, and trying vainly to ignore David who stood back and watched her stalk about in a sullen temper. She did not ride that day because she could not bear to spend a moment alone with him. She took her meals in the office and went to bed early.

The next morning she tried to escape without David, but he followed her to the stables. They rode silently in a bone-chilling wind as Rochelle attended to a variety of tasks
, then stopped for lunch in the middle of the afternoon. She hadn’t had the heart to go to the river, so they were in a tiny copse of trees south of the vineyards. A few dead leaves rattled overhead, forlorn and alone, while their brothers and sisters rested in a communal blanket far below.

“You are angry that your fate is again out of your hands,” David observed.

Rochelle scoffed, “My fate was only in my hands twice recently. First, when I resisted your very seductive attempts to have sex with me. And second, when I refused to lie for you.”

David registered no shock at her bald language
. “At least you thought I was seductive. That is something.”

“You are also a hypocrite and an ass.”

He refused to be baited, keeping the same carefully blank expression on his face. “Rochelle, what is this really about?  Are you afraid I will lose the tournament, because you need not be."

“Afraid?  Have you ever considered I might hope that you do?”

She’d finally broken through. He stepped back from her as if she had struck him. “No,” he said quietly. “I had not. Tell me what has happened. What has changed between us?  I thought we were getting along well. I thought you wanted me.”

The genuine hurt in his voice flashed her thoughts to the tender man she’d believed him to be, the lonely man who everyone admired but almost no one really knew or cared about
. It made her immensely sad to think he never had existed. She missed the David she’d known.

She looked through the trees to the meadow beyond
. “I did want you. But now I know you were pretending. I
heard
you the night before last, David. I heard you tell Theo how you had almost gotten me, how, if you had ignored all my nonsense, you could have taken my virginity in the hay like some housemaid and all of this could have been yours.”

“You were eavesdropping?”

“I was coming downstairs to be with you, but there were those words, hanging in the air like poison.”

“And then what did I say?”

“I did not listen any more. I was so heartsick I went back in my room.”

He strode to her and gripped her arms in his hands
. “Then you did not hear me go on to say that I could not imagine losing you. That even though I have only been here a few days I feel like I belong here, that my future is here.”