The Elusive Bride Page 21

  His wounded pride bristled that he could not go on his knees to her. She had seen him at his most vulnerable—running in terror from ghosts like some puling infant. Besides, he had conceded too much already in his dealings with her.

  Let her think the fault lay with her. Let her believe she had mortally offended him. Let her suppose he found her wanting as a wife and bedmate.

  Anyone who risked drawing close enough to him would have heard a moan escape Rowan DeCourtenay’s lips. He could not sacrifice Cecily’s self-worth on the heathen altar of his vanity.

  Abandoning his men to their sullen preparations, he entered Ravensridge keep and climbed the tower stairs to his bedchamber with genuine penitence in his heart.

  He found the door latched against him.

  “Cecily?” He tapped lightly on the stout timbers.

  No reply came but a muted whimper. It skewered Rowan like a well-aimed lance.

  Had his rampage struck terror into so dauntless a heart? Had he given her cause to doubt her unwavering conviction that he was innocent of Jacquetta’s death?

  Leaning against the door frame, he slid to the floor, like a man delivered of his death blow.

  “I won’t try to enter,” he assured her. “Only, please…please hear me.”

  No reply. At least she hadn’t bidden him to go away. With that pitiful crumb of encouragement, Rowan pressed on.

  “I did not mean a word of what I said before—about not caring.”

  Perhaps it was well he had found the door closed against him. Rowan was not certain he could have looked into Cecily’s eyes and spoken the words he needed to speak. The deserted tower landing, with walls and door between them, had the liberating privacy of the confessional.

  “The truth is, I care far too much. You have stolen my heart, Cecily. You are the most challenging, courageous, clever, beautiful, desirable woman I have ever met. I do not deserve a wife of half your measure, and I have erred in taking advantage of your situation to claim you as my own.”

  Still his words met with silence. He could only pray she heard them and believed.

  “I will free Brantham for you, if I must pay for it with my own life. And somehow I will find a way to redress the wrongs I’ve done you.”

  One thing he left unsaid, for he could not bring himself to form the words. Still, the intent of it hung in the air, battered and bleeding.

  Forgive me?

  In reply to his mute plea came only a breathless hush.

  With her silence, Cecily had damned him. Again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Damn!

  As Rowan passed within a few feet of her on his way into the keep, Cecily pulled her hood lower to shadow her beardless face, and trained her eyes on the ground. She prayed that in the flickering torchlight of the bailey, he would not recognize his own clothes upon her back.

  Was he returning to his bedchamber? Glancing up at the tower window, Cecily willed the young serving girl she’d left behind to keep the door barred, no matter how Baron DeCourtenay stormed or threatened. Hopefully, if he got no answer, he would assume she was sulking over his outlandish behavior and his refusal to take her on the expedition to Brantham.

  Trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, she threaded her way through the barely controlled chaos of the bailey. Horses whinnied, vocally protesting the interruption of their night’s rest in a way their masters dared not. The blacksmith’s hammer rang out, making last-minute repairs to weapons or harness. Beneath it all droned a mutinous murmur of men with aching heads and sour bellies, facing a day’s forced march. Fortunately, they were all so occupied with their own troubles that they failed to pay her any mind.

  It took her several minutes to track down Conwy ap Ifan. She found him intervening in a fight between two of Rowan’s foot soldiers.

  “Now, lads.” He stood between them, a hand on each broad chest, as they glared murder at one another. “I know his lordship’s plans have put you out of temper. But there’s no call to take it out on each other, is there? Nursing a cracked lip or a broken nose will not make our march to Berkshire one whit the pleasanter for you.”

  Cecily smiled to herself from the safety of the shadows. The Welshman was a good fellow. That Rowan had won his friendship spoke well of her new husband. Better than his own recent behavior. If only she knew what she had said or done last night to enrage him so. She was not apt to find it out languishing behind at Ravensridge while he led his fighting force across two counties.

  “Take your choice.” Con shrugged cheerfully at the combatants. “Either extend one another the hand of friendship, or I will place you at the head of the column led by Baron DeCourtenay himself.”

  The threat worked. Grudgingly, the two men touched hands and turned back to their respective tasks. Cecily darted forward and pulled Con back into the shadows, out of easy earshot.

  “Go to, lad! What’s the trouble?” Under his breath, the Welshman grumbled, “As if I haven’t enough to keep me on the hop just now.”

  Cecily cupped her hands around his ear, whispering, “Be still, Con. It’s only me.”

  For an instant she thought it might be necessary to clap a hand over his mouth, in case he might cry out in surprise. But only his widened eyes betrayed Con’s astonishment. Glancing around to make sure they were not watched, he cocked his head toward the door at the base of the west tower.

  As he strode toward it, Cecily scurried after, hoping she looked passably like a squire attending his master. When someone called out a question to Con, she tried to disappear into his insubstantial shadow.

  At last they gained the tower, pulling the door shut behind them. Somewhere farther up, a torch burned. Little of its light penetrated to the foot of the winding stairway.

  “My lady, what are you up to now? Do you know why your husband is despatching us to fight at this daft hour? What has possessed him?”

  Cecily shook her head. “You’ve known him longer than I have. I was hoping you might enlighten me.”

  “I am flummoxed.” Con plowed a hand through his dark hair. “When I watched him at the feast last night and then at the bedding, I thought I’d never seen him so merry and contented. Did he by any chance take too much wine and have trouble…that is…” Embarrassment rendered him dumb.

  “He seemed to want me.” Despite her best effort at bravado, Cecily’s throat tightened. “Then, without any warning, he bolted from the bed, saying he and his men would march for Brantham at dawn.”

  “Is that all he said?”

  Cecily shook her head, but it took her a moment to frame the shameful truth. “He told me he didn’t care if I went back to the convent…or took…a dozen lovers.”

  She winced at the plaintive note in her own voice. She didn’t want Con’s pity. She needed his help. “You must find a way to smuggle me along to Brantham. I will never find out what ails Lord Rowan if he is a hundred miles away.”

  Sensing Con’s reluctance, she changed her tack. “No one knows Brantham like I do. If I am with you, perhaps I can help find a way in that will not exact too high a price in blood.”

  “He’s bound to find out, and when he does…”

  “When he does, the blame will land on my head. He cannot…hate me more than he does already. I would not put a greater strain upon your friendship.”

  “Well…” He wavered.

  “Please, Con. Even if he does not know it, Rowan needs me.”

  “I’ll not dispute that, my lady.” Con heaved a deep sigh. “Very well. Follow me to the provision wagons. The cook is about to get a new helper.”

  To the vast astonishment of all concerned, Baron DeCourtenay’s fighting force marched, rode and trundled out of Ravensridge a short while after sunrise, in surprisingly good order. Archers, infantry and mounted knights. Sappers and those who manned the siege engines. Blacksmiths, armorers, cooks and leeches to tend the wounded.

  If they were weary, bilious and headsore, those ills were temporarily forgotten in the excite
ment of leave-taking. Pennants snapped in the brisk autumn breeze, bearing the DeCourtenay crest and colors. A small company of wedding guests and Ravensridge’s garrison saw them off.

  From atop his lean, gray gelding, the one that had eaten carrots from the garden at Wenwith Priory, Rowan looked in vain for Cecily’s face among the onlookers. Failing to find it, he glanced yet again at the east tower window. All was still.

  He tried to keep Aenor’s words of leave-taking from returning to plague his thoughts. But to no avail.

  “Fie, what has got into you now, Brother?” She’d fussed at him, straightening his cloak as if he was a lowly page boy and not the master of Ravensridge. “First you have me jump through hoops to arrange a wedding on the spur of the moment, then you scarcely warm your marriage bed before you are off to do battle.”

  “Both by command of the Empress, Aenor.” Rowan clenched his jaw, keeping a tight rein on his temper. “She bade me wed and bade me hold Brantham Keep for her. I have done the one, now I go to do the other.”

  Aenor planted hands on her substantial hips. “That’s blather and well you know it! If you’d been well satisfied with your bride and she with you, there’d have been no scuttling off at dawn, Empress or no Empress. I tried to warn you about her, Rowan, by Our Lady, I did. Cecily is not a bad-hearted creature, but too wild and wanton to make you a good wife. I can’t believe you were so taken aback to find she’d had other men before you.”

  It was all he could do not to wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze. She read it in his eyes, too, for she stepped back, blinking in terror.

  “Breathe a word of that foul slur to anyone else, Aenor, and I swear I will pack young William off to fosterage and you back to your brother before you can say a rosary.”

  For once he had succeeded in robbing her of speech. Eyes bulging like hard-boiled eggs, his sister-in-law shook her head with such vigor it sent her veil flying askew.

  It was too good to last, however, this temporary dumbness in so naturally voluble a dame. Once Rowan had unpinned her from his glare and turned away, she loosed a final tainted shaft from her arsenal.

  “It is no slur that she was in close talk with the Welshman scarcely more than an hour ago. I heard it with my own ears, though I could not follow the thread of what they were saying.”

  When he rounded on her, Aenor had drawn back again. “I will do my best to keep her chaste while you are gone,” she’d squeaked, as if that would placate him.

  As Rowan cleared the gates of Ravensridge, it seemed the whole world tilted and shifted around him. In his breast roiled every caustic, poisonous emotion known to the human heart. Had his bride betrayed him? And if so, had he driven her to it?

  Only one thing Rowan knew for certain. When his small army stopped to make camp for the night, he would have words with Conwy ap Ifan.

  And maybe more than words.

  Cecily was grateful beyond words when Rowan gave the order for his men to leave the road and make camp for the night. Through the long day, she had ridden near the head of the line in one of the supply wagons. She’d been so overcome with weariness that she’d managed to sleep in brief snatches, each time woken by some jolt of the wagon or squawk from one of the caged hens. Her bones and backside ached from the jarring ride.

  Her head ached, too, from noise and fatigue…and worry.

  After the way Rowan had stormed off from their bridal bed, she could imagine his rage upon finding she’d stowed away with his army—against his express orders. If he discovered her now, Cecily had no doubt he’d clap her on a horse and dispatch her back to Ravensridge with an armed escort. The closer they drew to Brantham, the better her chance of staying, no matter how her husband resented the situation.

  As the supply wagon lurched off the road, Cecily heard Rowan issue orders for some of his men to establish lookout posts beyond the camp.

  “If DeBoissard still has search parties scouring the countryside, I want to know about them before they find out about us.”

  From within the wagon, Cecily mouthed a mute “Amen” to that. Their best hope for taking Brantham, without catastrophic losses to both Rowan’s people and hers, lay in surprise.

  What else was Rowan saying?

  “I don’t want you on patrol, ap Ifan,” he barked. “Make camp with the rest of us. We have things to discuss, you and I.” She couldn’t make out Con’s reply, if he gave more than a nod. Whatever Rowan wanted to say to his friend, Cecily hoped their conversation would not turn to her. She trusted the Welshman, but he was Rowan’s comrade first and foremost. He might decide to unburden his conscience by betraying her presence.

  Before she had any more time to worry, the wagon rolled to a halt in the midst of a clearing. Two others followed.

  “The rest’ll soon catch up with us,” said the driver of her wagon, whom Cecily took to be the cook. “They’ll have marched themselves into sharp appetites, too, I should think. We must make haste and ready something to stay their empty bellies or it could go ill with us.”

  “You two—” he waved a four-fingered hand at a pair of boys about Cecily’s size “—go off into that copse yonder and gather wood and kindling.”

  The boys loped off.

  “You, go fetch water.” The cook thrust a pair of stout wooden buckets into Cecily’s hands.

  She tilted her right one away so he would not mark the ring on her middle finger. By rights she should remove it, Cecily knew, for it might betray her identity. Somehow, she could not bring herself to take it off. It was the only tangible token of her marriage to Rowan DeCourtenay.

  A marriage now sorely imperiled.

  What matter? she asked herself, lurching toward the stand of trees and the sound of flowing water. As long as DeCourtenay made good on his promise to retake Brantham, what did it matter if he repudiated her?

  True, masquerading as John FitzCourtenay, he had caught her fancy. Since then, however, he had gone out of his way to prove, again and again, that he was the worst possible match for her. Hot-tempered, capricious, secretive, inclined to dominate. And too fascinating by half!

  Lost in her musings, Cecily threaded her way between the tall trunks of hardwood whose leaves had begun to turn color and fall. Only when she reached the stream did she stop and take a good look around her.

  Was it her imagination, or was this the copse where she and Rowan had stopped on their headlong flight from Lambourn?

  The distance seemed right.

  Memories flooded her thoughts like the cold brook water gushing into her buckets. Here, she had dropped her guard with Rowan, weeping in his arms. Never before had she suffered a man to see her so vulnerable. She’d sensed a deep strength in him that did not despise weakness, but lent her from its bounty to restore her own. For the first time, on the bank of this stream, Rowan had acknowledged the mounting attraction between them—urged her to explore it with him.

  If only they could recapture that sense of mutual trust, that first unshadowed attachment.

  With a sigh, Cecily hoisted the two heavy buckets. Their rough rope handles bit into her palms as she staggered back toward camp with them.

  “You’ve been long enough about it, lackwit,” fumed the cook, seizing one of the pails and emptying it into a large cauldron. Beneath the pot, a fire sputtered to life.

  Taking the second bucket, he jerked his grizzled head toward a mound of carrots, turnips and leeks. “Cut up those potherbs and toss ’em in the kettle, lad. And look sharp about it.”

  Bobbing her hooded head, Cecily fetched a knife from one of the supply wagons and set to work. As more and more of Rowan’s men arrived and began to pitch camp, she stole veiled glances at them. What she saw made her wish she could unsay or undo whatever she’d said or done to propel Rowan into the folly of this premature attack on Brantham.

  Most of the men had obviously gone without sleep since the night before the wedding. And unless Cecily missed her guess, quite a few had drunk themselves almost blind at the bridal feast. Wear
y, resentful, dull-witted—how could such men hope to prevail against the wily vigilance of Fulke DeBoissard and the stout stone walls of Brantham?

  “How are you getting on…lad?”

  The unexpected sound of Con’s voice from behind her made Cecily jump.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s unwise to steal up on someone who’s wielding a knife?” To emphasize her point, she cleaved a large turnip in two with one fierce slash. Good fellow that Con was, the pair of them would have made a bad match. Both were too apt to leap before they looked.

  Con jumped back a step. “As a matter of fact—” he gave a wary chuckle “—your husband dunned that bit of sense into my head years ago.”

  Clearly it would take more than the strains of this day to quench the Welshman’s impudent humor.

  Cecily could not help grinning in reply. “You’d do well to remember it. Unless you fancy a few of your toes flavoring the stew.”

  Con turned suddenly grave. “When DeCourtenay finds out I’ve smuggled you along on this march, my liver and bowels will likely go in the pot.” He hunched down beside her. “Think better of it, my lady. Go back to Ravensridge like a biddable wife and wait on his pleasure there. I can find a swift mount and a trustworthy escort to whisk you back, with no one a whit the wiser. What say you?”

  Knife poised over a brace of leeks, Cecily hesitated. Had she made a mistake in coming, against Rowan’s wishes? Was it proud folly to think he could not take Brantham without her help? Perhaps if she took Con’s advice and disported herself modestly and obediently for a change, Rowan might send for her once he’d secured the castle in her name.

  Before she could puzzle further, Rowan’s voice thundered abruptly from behind her.

  “Ifan! I’d have words with you.”