The Elusive Bride Page 3

  “And you?” Rowan flexed a shoulder, uncomfortable in borrowed robes. Truth be told, he felt uneasy and vulnerable without the reassuring weight of his armor. “How does this marriage benefit you?”

  Before the Empress had time to reply, he demanded, “Who is this woman, anyway? Twenty-three and never married. Tell me, is she a hunchback or a half-wit?” Rowan grimaced. There were men in England, one or two in this very room, who would not scruple to wed any monstrosity if it promised to enlarge their holdings. He did not count himself among that unprincipled number.

  Yet there was something to be said for the notion of wedding a plain or simpleminded woman. She’d be less apt to engage a heart he dared not risk again. And she wouldn’t draw every man within miles, the way Jacquetta had.

  Other conversation in the hall had fallen silent. The Empress deliberately turned her back on their audience, pitching her voice for his ears alone.

  The drop in volume did not detract from the force of her words. “The girl is well-made—quite pretty, in fact. And you would underestimate her wits to your peril.”

  “A shrew, then.” Rowan could not quite bring himself to voice what he truly suspected. Was the creature a wanton, perhaps with the disgrace of an illegitimate child?

  “Hold your tongue and listen!” flared the Empress.

  Rowan clenched his mouth shut with rather ill grace. It would take a greater fool than him to ignore the dangerous flicker that leapt in Maud’s ice-blue eyes.

  “Cecily Tyrell was but a child when my cousin usurped my crown. Since then, Brantham Keep has been in the eye of the maelstrom. Most of Tyrell’s near neighbors declared for Stephen.” Her measured words took on an edge of cold wrath. Woe betide those neighbors if Maud should ever win the throne.

  “Few from our side dared venture that far east to go a-courting.” She cast a withering glance around the hall. Fevered pretense of conversation broke out among the clusters of noblemen, feigning to have missed both the Empress’s scornful remark and the implication of her contemptuous look.

  “Besides,” continued Maud, “the girl had four brothers in line ahead of her for the Tyrell honor. No one expected her to inherit. I gather she once entertained an inclination to take the veil….”

  Rowan almost groaned aloud. Just what he needed—a nun for a wife! Jacquetta’s pained reluctance on their wedding night would seem like wanton passion by comparison. All the same, a nun might recognize the importance of keeping vows.

  “Impossible.”

  The Empress heaved an exasperated sigh. “You are not some villein and the miller’s daughter, who can wed to suit their fancy. The higher the station one is born to, the more that hangs on a bride choice—you know that as well as I.”

  Rowan heard a wistful note in her voice, and it shamed him. Barely out of the nursery, Maud had been wed to a man old enough to be her grandfather. Widowed at the age of twenty-four, she’d been made to marry Geoffrey of Anjou—a swaggering cub ten years her junior. Whether she’d felt any affection for her first husband, Rowan did not know. But he had ridden with her to Rouen for her second nuptials. He’d seen her face on her wedding day.

  Perhaps Maud also recalled their progress to Rouen, when she had set out to charm her escorts: Gloucester, FitzCount and DeCourtenay. Her voice softened. “If you cannot be devoted to one another, then be bound by your common devotion to my cause. Who knows but it may prove the stronger bond in the long run. I need Brantham to hold the way open to Reading and Wallingford. You are just the man for the task.”

  Perhaps affronted by his look, or tired of cajoling where she was used to commanding, Maud stiffened. “Do you despair of my cause, DeCourtenay? Do you think Stephen’s chit of a wife has me on the run? Is that why you refuse to declare for me publicly by marrying Cecily Tyrell?”

  “Of course not!” Rowan drew himself up to his full height. “How can you doubt my allegiance? I returned to England from my cousin’s court in Edessa to pledge you my sword.”

  The Empress eyed him coldly. “Then put some muscle behind your hollow promises of support, sirrah. Your bride awaits you at Brantham. Mount and ride out to claim her by sundown. Or mark me, I will take it as a sign you have thrown in your lot with Stephen.”

  By an act of will, Rowan bent his head and his stubborn knees. Sweeping a low bow, he pressed his lips to Maud’s ring. “As you command, my liege.”

  Wielding a glare that dared any of the assembled nobles to gloat, Rowan DeCourtenay quit the hall. He admired Maud and knew her cause was just. That didn’t mean he had to like the imperious shrew. At that moment, the notion of a meek, biddable nun for a wife seemed almost appealing.

  “Cecily!”

  The word reached her faintly, as though from a great distance or through a thick fog. She had dreamed herself back in the glade at Wenwith again, reliving her encounter with that compelling fugitive. As she had almost every night since their meeting.

  Savoring the feel of his arms around her, Cecily ignored the call—it must be Sister Goliath.

  “Do wake up, Mistress Cecily! There are armed men at the gates. Sire Paston says Brantham is surrounded!”

  The threat to Brantham rent her dream, like a broadsword cleaving a heavy tapestry. Cecily wrenched her eyes open.

  “Armed men?” she croaked in a voice hoarse from sleep. “Has Stephen’s queen brought her Flemings to besiege us?” She rolled out of bed, groping for her gown.

  The serving wench was in such a state of alarm that she proved no help at all in dressing her mistress. “Near as bad.” She wrung her hands. “’Tis my lord DeBoissard and his men.”

  “Fulke!” Cecily spat the name as though it were the vilest oath in Christendom. “What’s brought that stoat sniffing about?”

  Descending the winding stairs of the tower two at a time, she burst out of the keep, crossing the ward at a dead run. Servants, children and chickens scrambled out of her path.

  She reached the gatehouse with scarcely enough breath to gasp, “How now?”

  Brantham’s castellan and marshal turned on her with faces grave and drawn.

  “DeBoissard’s men rode up, bold as you please, and surrounded the castle, milady,” explained the marshal, as if she could not see for herself. “They’ve made no hostile moves otherwise, so I’ve bid the archers hold their fire. I’ve asked my lord Tyrell his will, but he says nothing. What are we to do, my lady?”

  Cecily glanced toward the narrow window. She could see DeBoissard and a small mounted retinue waiting before the main gate. Even from this distance, she sensed the aura of arrogance that hung around him.

  “I suppose we must ask him what he wants with us.” Her tone left no doubt that she considered it an odious chore.

  “We’ve asked, my lady,” replied the marshal. “He says he wishes to speak with you.”

  “Oh, he’ll get his wish,” Cecily muttered as she strode to the window. “What brings you to Brantham, DeBoissard?” she called down. Some unholy urge made her add, “Have you switched your allegiance back to the Empress?”

  Fulke doffed his elaborate capuchon with an oily flourish. “Lady Cecily, welcome home. I see your sojourn at the nunnery has not dulled your wit. I’ll own, I toyed with the notion of joining the Countess of Anjou. Somehow I knew she’d wrest defeat from the lap of victory. I am Stephen’s man yet. And you?”

  The note of polite mockery in his voice goaded her. “At Brantham we hold to our sworn fealty. The Tyrells are no oath breakers.”

  If he minded the insult, DeBoissard gave no sign. “A noble ideal, to be sure. I fear I am of a more practical bent.”

  “A more treacherous bent, you mean!” Cecily tried to bite back the words. She must not give Fulke any greater excuse to attack Brantham.

  The knave merely laughed indulgently—a sound that piqued Cecily’s rage to an even keener pitch. “It does my wit good to spar with you again, dear lady.”

  Under her breath, Cecily muttered, “I’d sooner spar with you over drawn daggers
, foul viper.” In a louder voice she called down, “Is that your answer to my question? Have you ridden here with an armed force only to trade quibbles with me?”

  “I have come to trade words with you, mistress,” he replied. “Though fonder exchanges than this, I hope.”

  “Be plain for once in your life, sir. I have no patience for your riddles.”

  “You are tetchy, Lady Cecily. But no matter. I fear the strain of your new status has overset your usual gentle nature.”

  “What do you know of my status?” Leaden fear weighted Cecily’s stomach.

  “Only that you are now heiress to Brantham, my dear. Pray accept my most tender condolence upon the death of your brother. Has the House of Tyrell not lost enough in its misplaced fealty to Maud?”

  The mannerly insolence of his question undid her. Scooping a handful of loose pebbles and dirt from the gatehouse floor, she flung them through the narrow aperture at her tormentor.

  “Whoreson! Pox-ridden spawn of a bawdmaster! I’ll show you what I’d lose for the Empress.”

  One stone found its mark, smiting the nose of Fulke’s mount. When the big beast reared, he was hard put to master it. Cecily watched his contortions with vicious glee.

  By the time he got his animal back under control, Fulke was panting slightly from the effort. Though he continued to bait Cecily with pretended courtesy, his strident tone betrayed an effort to curb his temper.

  “What pious language girls pick up in convents nowadays. Perhaps your exile to a religious house explains why you’ve never learned the proper way to welcome a suitor.”

  “Suitor?” Cecily sneered. “I wouldn’t have you for a suitor even before you betrayed your oath to the Empress. There is nothing on God’s earth that would make me accept you now. If that is the only reason you are here, you might as well leave.”

  “And let some other ambitious baron pluck the fair heiress of Brantham?” Fulke shook his head. “I think not. You will open your gates to me. We will wed and I will gain Stephen’s favor by offering him the jewel of Berkshire to fortify his hold on England.”

  Cecily opened her mouth to scoff that it would do little good to curry favor with an imprisoned king. Then she recalled the rapidly changing fortunes of war. With Maud’s ablest general, the Earl of Gloucester, captured at Winchester, the Empress would have no choice but to ransom Stephen for him.

  With so much else in doubt, Cecily clung to a pair of constant certainties. “I will never open Brantham to you. And I will never take you for a husband, DeBoissard. Now be gone!”

  “You may hesitate to take me for a husband, Lady Cecily, but I’ll take you to wive—willing or no. Consider carefully before you resist. It holds a certain piquant appeal for me.”

  The blatant threat made Cecily’s knees go vexingly weak. She reached for the solid stone of the window casement to steady herself. The Holy Church had tried for centuries to impose Christian principles on the sacrament of marriage. For all that, marriage by rape remained distressingly commonplace.

  “You have an hour to decide,” Fulke declared in a smugly triumphant tone. “After which Brantham will be under siege until you experience a change of heart. Be warned, though, I am not a patient man. Once I take Brantham, I will put one of your people to the sword for every day you have held out against me.”

  With that, Fulke and his attendants wheeled their mounts and rode out of arrow range.

  The sour taste of fear clung to Cecily’s tongue. She was no coward. The thought of physical pain scarcely troubled her. Yet she shrank from imagining what Fulke would do with her and the perverse pleasure it would give him to subdue her struggles.

  Drawing a slow, calming breath that didn’t work, she turned from the window. With her father lost in the dark pit of his grief, responsibility for Brantham and all within its walls had fallen on her shoulders. It weighed heavier than she had expected. For herself, she could face almost anything, but leave it to Fulke to exploit the one chink in her armor—her urge to protect those she loved.

  Looking from the castellan to the marshal and back, she posed a question as difficult to ask as it must be to answer. “Can we hold out against them until help arrives?”

  Both men had known and doted on her since her earliest childhood. Now they shuffled their feet and cleared their throats. Stubbornly, they avoided her searching gaze.

  “Our walls are as stout as any in five counties.” The marshal’s tone belied the hopeful nature of his words. “I doubt DeBoissard has the means at hand to breach them.”

  Fleetingly, Cecily thanked God that her grandfather had squandered the old king’s bounty erecting the thick stone shell that housed Brantham Keep. This was no time for blind optimism.

  “But?” She uttered the word she knew both men were thinking.

  Before either could reply, she intercepted a furtive, hopeless look that passed between them. In it she read her doom.

  “We’ve brought in less than a tithe of the harvest,” admitted the castellan. “With all the extra mouths to feed…”

  He left her to draw the obvious conclusion.

  “As for our crops in the fields—” the marshal shook his head dolefully “—DeBoissard will put ’em to the torch by sundown if we say him nay. Then…”

  Cecily needed no help to reckon that sum. “Then, even if we withstand the siege or drive Fulke off, Brantham will starve this winter.”

  The men confirmed her dire prediction with grudging nods.

  “Then there’s no help for it.” Cecily tried in vain to quell her roiling innards. “I must make ready to wed.”

  “No!” gasped Piers Paston. “There has to be another way.”

  In fact, one had occurred to her. A desperate measure to be sure, but this was a desperate situation. She dared not take a soul at Brantham into her confidence. Their only safety lay in innocent ignorance.

  “My hand is not worth the lives of all my people.” She strove to look apprehensive but resigned. “I must go to my chamber and pray for strength to bear God’s will.”

  “This is no will of God,” muttered the castellan bitterly.

  “In that case,” replied Cecily, “I must pray for Our Father to show me his will in this. On no account disturb me until preparations are complete for the wedding. One concession I would have you beg of DeBoissard—that he let the refugees depart in peace, immediately. This is not their fight. They have suffered too much already.”

  “Very well, ma’am. Surely even a churl like DeBoissard can show that crumb of compassion.” His jaw clenched tight, the castellan looked at Cecily with eyes glowing in admiration.

  She cracked a wry grin in reply. “Where Fulke’s concerned, you’d do better to count on his self-interest. I doubt he’ll want a ward full of refugees and lepers underfoot.”

  Laying a hand on the castellan’s stout arm, she wordlessly charged him to tend Brantham and her father faithfully until she could return.

  As she slipped out of the gatehouse, Cecily heard the marshal calling for a messenger to deliver Brantham’s terms for surrender. Fighting to curb her eager stride, she recrossed the bailey and entered the keep. Any castle folk who saw their lady gain the stairs might have been forgiven the assumption that she was bound for her private chamber above.

  Instead, after checking to make sure she was not observed, Cecily descended the spiral staircase, moving deeper and deeper into the cool, deserted cellars. Pulling a burning brand from one of the wall sconces, she squeezed past barrels of wine and piles of timber. At last she came to a small door, which she quickly opened and entered.

  On the packed earth floor of the dungeon cell lay the stiff corpses of two lepers who had died on the previous day. To preserve the bodies until graves could be dug, Cecily had ordered them to be stored here. Finding a resting place for her torch, she knelt by the taller of the two corpses. Her gorge rose at the thought of what she must do now.

  “Which would you rather, Cis?” she scolded herself. “Peel the clothes off a d
ead leper, or suffer Fulke DeBoissard to peel the clothes off you?”

  With that, she began to divest the body of its coarse, pungent garments. As she saw what sore mutilations the disease had wrought upon the dead man, her distaste soon muted to pity.

  “Forgive me for this last indignity, Old Father,” she whispered to the corpse as she eased the clothes from his waxy, withered limbs. “I pray your soul now dines at Our Lord’s table, clad in ermine and samite.”

  When she had changed into the leper’s garb, Cecily took her own mantle and folded it carefully around him—like a mother tucking her child into its cradle.

  Stealing through the cellars once more, she climbed a ladder and slipped through a trapdoor into the stables. In the distance she could hear the faint commotion of refugees being ejected from Brantham. As casually as possible, she limped into the ranks of the lepers, blessing the rough cloth mask that hid her supposedly grotesque features.

  The ruse would never have occurred to her but for Empress Maud. Besieged at Winchester, she’d allowed herself to be wrapped in a winding sheet and laid in a coffin. Smuggled out of the city for burial, Maud had escaped the tightening circle of her enemies to pursue the fight another day.

  Cecily had every intention of doing the same.

  But where to go once she got clear of Brantham? Grudgingly, Cecily admitted she hadn’t thought that far in advance. Most of their neighbors were the King’s men—though none so contemptibly as Fulke DeBoissard. All the same, if she showed up at their gates, few would scruple to take her hostage and marry her off to some he-creature of the family in hopes of enlarging their holdings. As an unwed heiress, she was now a tempting prize for an ambitious man. Clearly, she had only one way open to her.

  “You there!”

  At the shout from behind her, Cecily turned, silently berating herself for a dangerous lapse in concentration. When and if she got safely away from Brantham there would be time enough to mull over the problem of where to run for sanctuary.

  One of Fulke’s men-at-arms strode toward her. What could he want? Did her disguise not fool him? Through her mask of loose-woven sacking, Cecily cast a futile glance at Brantham’s gate. The last of the genuine lepers were making their halting way through. Did she dare make a bolt for it?