With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) (10 page)

Chapter Seven

“I estimate two hundred,” Kat told Geoffrey as they stood on the battlements at dusk and peered out across the river at the King’s assembled knights, armourers, archers and yeomen on the opposite shore of the Wye. On the banks, a stocky man rode a prancing horse back and forth as if to taunt those within the Chepstow curtain wall
s. John. Crafty John. Impatient and rotten to the core.

“Only one trebuchet,” Geoffrey told her, drawing her firmly against his side. “A short-armed one, at that. They will not have an easy time breaching these walls. And they cannot do that unless they cross the river.”

But they outnumber us in men.
“His archers are reputed to be well trained.”

He put his lips to her temple. “He will not win the day. Nor will he have you.”

“Geoffrey,” she said as she clutched his cloak, the wind whipping her fear to a frisson. If she lost him after this passion—this love—they shared, she would lose her mind. “If we survive this, I would like to make up to you for how I misjudged you.”

His eyes danced in merriment. “Madam, I think you already do.”

Amused, she smiled briefly and cupped his jaw with two hands. “My amends to you require more than lusty nights rolling in a bed, my lord
.” They demand that I tell you how I love you. Have always done
. But to say those words required her to be truthful with him. Telling him everything she thought and wished and planned.
And that I cannot do. Not if I am to save you.

He gazed at her, wary of her hesitancy. “Do not be alarmed.”

She panicked, realising how John’s arrival had robbed her of the years she would require to tell Geoffrey how deeply, how irrevocably she cared for him. “To be with you, hour by hour, day by day, since you took me from the nunnery has filled my days with more joy than I have ever known.”

He dropped tender kisses to her palms. “To save you from John has been my own happiness.”

To save you from him is now my own.
She had been over and over a plan, but had had little opportunity to execute it
.
She pressed her body flush to his. If her mind was too full to do her love of him justice with words, she could do it in bed with her body. “Come to bed.”

He threaded his fingers through her curls. “I will. But first, I will go to my men to do a final review.” He branded her lips with a scorching kiss, then led her to the stairs. “Warm the sheets for me.”

Laughing at his boyishness, she concealed her anxiety. His departure gave her an opportunity that might not come again. He might be gone for hours or might well plan the night away. She had to take advantage of his absence. She herself had a strategy, incomplete, instinct alone fuelling it. She must rush to complete it before he would return and forever bar her path. As he left her in her room to go down to the armoury and his men, she knew that this evening would prove a cold and bitter one for him. And for herself.

She hastened to dress more warmly, exchanging her thin slippers for the thicker velvet ones, a tunic and the heavy cloak of rough wool. Climbing into her bed, she drew the curtains, then waited for the servants to arrive with her supper. Once they came and left, no one else dared to enter the room of the lover of Lord St Claire. Kat counted that as a blessing on her newfound opportunity.

Eating with gusto, she wiped her lips with a napkin and prayed this would not be her last meal. But meeting John, she would wager odds he would try to starve her again. God curse the man.

With feline stealth, she opened her door, took the stairs down, passing the entrance to the main hall with speed, and beyond it, down to the buttery. Thank God she need not go past the armoury, for surely Geoffrey, Matthew or one of his men might have spotted her fleeing figure. But the corridor ran to the far western side of the castle and to the dark cellar where in side of the wall stood a small dark door.

Below, Geoff summoned his garrison. With only thirty-four in number inside the castle walls, he counted on their cunning to implement his plan.

“They have no other way to attack us easily but to try to cross the Wye,” he assured them. “And you can see how Earl Marshall designed the main gate in imitation of the fortifications of Acre
. Thick and strong, with double walls and curved towers to deflect weapons. They cannot climb it easily. And the castle has far too many arrow slits and murder holes for them to try to charge the front gate.”

“If John thinks he can win against us here by crossing the river, they must build strong pontoons, my lord,” Matthew said.

Geoffrey smiled at his son. “He must do it quickly, too. I would speculate he orders them assembled well back of the shore. They might carry them out tonight, so we will be on our guard to shoot them down as they approach.”

“And if we do not injure them all, how is it possible to deter those who advance?” one young knight asked.

“Simple,” said Geoff.

“We harry them as they run towards us,” injected Matthew with a grin. “For all our King’s bravado about the skill of his men, we are the better archers. And well supplied.”

Geoffrey cocked an eyebrow at him. “You found enough arrows in the town to be able to say that?”

“Aye, my lord. The fletchers are skilful but, more importantly, speedy.”

His cadre nodded and murmured, their camaraderie the point that would save them best from John, Geoffrey knew.

He told them of his other plan to come at John from another angle. “If a few of the King’s men do successfully cross the river, we will fell them with arrows from our ramparts. But if they fall back to their camp, they will find that our allies from the encampment have encircled them. Their retreat is cut. When we see they are trapped, we move from the castle to press them to a long thin line.”

“How will we know if our friends have them in a vise?” asked one.

“They donned their darkest cloaks and crept round the copse of trees as soon as night fell,” Geoffrey told him.

“Are we certain they were not discovered?” another asked.

“We are,” Geoffrey assured them, grinning towards the rear of the room. “Reginald is the messenger who brought me the news minutes ago.”

Turning, the men voiced their thanks to Geoffrey’s chief of arms.

“Come,” he said to them, satisfied that they had their defences in good order. They had had little time and few men, but he felt confident they could prevail. “Have another cup of wine. Then let us go to the battlements.”

* * * *

Hours later, Geoffrey left the main post over the walls and climbed to the top of the keep to rest for an hour or two. John’s men had built pontoons and scuttled to the river with the heavy wooden planks before midnight. Yet, with only a few in the river, they had returned to John’s camp on the hillock.

Geoffrey wondered why they would abandon their plan, quite literally, in mid-stream. But he did not over-think his good luck. If John wished to hold off on his attack, so be it. Geoffrey was not fond of spilling the blood of good men—if John was rethinking his strategy, Geoff would never argue. Nor would he attack the King’s forces first.

At the top of the stairs, he stood at the entrance to the solar and paused. The door was ajar. He pushed it wide, surveying the room in one sweep. Kat was not here.

Odd.

Was she in the kitchens? Hungry, no doubt, and he would not be surprised of it, either. If her appetite was up, that was a notable sign of recovery. Would that John had held off his advance for at least one more day.
We might have got well away without armed conflict.

He noted her supper trencher and wine cup. She had consumed all the food offered her. Another good sign of her renewed health.

Then he spun and saw the wardrobe hastily turned, the clothing there rumpled. Her velvet slippers were gone, as well they might be if she were traipsing about the cold stone castle floors. Her bed, too, was in disarray, the marten furs haphazardly tossed to one side as if she had climbed into the thing and rolled about atop the covers.

He heard footsteps trudging up the stairs and so he ducked his head out to see who came.
If it is Kat…

But no. It was Reginald, Matthew close behind him.

The grim looks on their youthful faces told him something was amiss. “What goes?”

“My lord,” Reginald said, “please come with us to the armoury.”

“What’s wrong?”

This time Matthew answered, his face in a grimace. “A maid from the kitchens has a tale to tell you.”

Dragging in air, Geoffrey hated to be diverted from his search for Kat. “Bring her to me.”

“Nay, sire, we could not.” Reginald glanced at Matthew and it was clear to Geoffrey that neither relished the chance to reveal the problem. “The bailiff of Chepstow has her tied to a chair and says he will not let her loose for man nor God.”

“Why did he do that?” Geoffrey did not like this at all. Men who mistreated women were not ones he bowed to, whether bailiff or king.

“He says this maid has betrayed us all,” said Matthew.

“Betrayed? How?”

“It concerns my mother, my lord,” Matthew told him.

Geoffrey flew down the stairs to the lower floor, his two men on his heels. How this maid had done this deed, he did care mightily. Why any servant in Earl Marshall’s household would betray anyone was a novelty, to say the very least. When he looked at the maid, however, he was reminded of Kat’s complaint the other day about a servant who acted insolent.

This one, with a huff at him and a toss of her filthy blonde hair, was certainly surly. She sat, trussed tight as a mouse in a trap, her ankles roped together, her hands before her, tied at the wrists. Was she the same one Kat had disliked?

“Bailiff Marvin,” he addressed the beefy man who stood before her, his arms crossed, his nose turned up. “What have you to tell me?”

“She were a saucy bit when I took her in from the town. No better now, I tell you, milord.”

“What has she done to merit your ropes?”

“She came in to the armoury minutes ago, looking for a fancy time with any of your men. Luck would be that the one man who was here was put off by the smell of her.”

“That is not cause to tie her like a goat to the spit, Marvin.”

“Far worse, she done. She told your archer she followed the Lady Harleigh.”

A chill spiked up Geoffrey’s spine. He reached over and lifted the woman’s chin. “Look at me. Followed Lady Harleigh, did you?”

She shifted her eyes away to the floor.

“Answer me!” he bellowed.

And she jumped, chair and all.

“She went through the ditch door,” the woman said with a sneer of glee. “She don’t love you. She left you!”

Then she laughed.

Her mirth infuriated him, yet her revelation drew his curiosity. “Marvin, where is this ditch door?”

“Out the far western wall, milord.”

Geoffrey caught the woman’s jaw again. “How long ago did my lady leave?”

The servant rolled a shoulder. “A while ago. I dunno. I was busy.”

Marvin grumbled. “Fucking anything that moves, I’d guess.”

Geoffrey was too concerned to worry about the servant’s nocturnal habits. “Did my lady have her cloak?”

“Oh, aye. Ready to go out in the cold to meet the King.”

“
What?”
Geoffrey snapped to his full height. “She would never—”

“But she did,” the maid told him with salacious delight. “Told me too.”

“The hell she did!” Why would Kat even think of it let alone tell a servant—and one whom she disliked at that?

“Oh, but she did talk to me. I asked her if she had to go because she liked the King in her cunt better than you.”

Marvin cursed and stepped forward to strike her.

Geoffrey caught his arm mid-air. Anger scalded his veins. But he had to hear the whole tale from this woman. “For those words, I am shocked my lady did not hit you herself.”

“Oh, um, aye.” The woman licked her lips. “But she fought me. Shook off my hand on her and said she had to go to John.”

Dear Christ. Why would she do that? After all we have been through together?

“She said she would save you for a woman who deserved you. Told me to tell you.”

Does she think that is all she has to do to put me off?
For that alone, Geoffrey did not believe the maid’s story of a conversation between her and Kat. The servant had probably seen Kat leave and knew where she had gone. Logic alone declared it was so. Hell.

Geoffrey stood, transfixed for a long minute. “Get me a boat, Reginald. A white flag for safe conduct. And a bag of gold. Do it! Now!”

His man nodded.

“Rouse our guest in the far north tower, too. He comes with me.”

Reginald curled an eyebrow. “Should he wear his vestments, my lord?”

“Aye. See that he does. I meet you at the gatehouse.”

Matthew moved to Geoffrey’s side. “I come with you.”

“Nay. You stay here. If I do not return, you are to sail to Ireland on the next tide.” He grasped his shoulders. “Do you hear me?” He shook him. “Promise me.”