My True Love (24 page)

She was not, however, a parcel to be carefully tied and wrapped and bundled together in order to send it off to its destination.

She sat back in the chair, faced ahead, her hands curved over the absurd lions’ heads.

“I will marry,” she said calmly. “Someone who adores me. I will have children and grow old and wise.” The words came sweetly, with no touch of the hurt she felt.

He said nothing, simply moved away.

She felt a twinge of shame. Not enough to recant her words. In the next moment she was glad she had not.

“Select your husband well,” he said, his voice soft. “Make sure he’s of genial temperament.”

“Like you, you mean?”

He turned and glanced at her. His smile had an edge to it. “I find I am not excessively genial when it comes to you, Anne Sinclair.”

She leaned back in the chair and watched him. “You do not show it. I must commend you on your manners.”

“I have been reared to be polite.”

“It is a good thing I have not been,” she said. “One of us can be honest at least.”

“There is a time to be honest and a time to remain silent,” he said, his attention focused on the figurine in his hand.

Since she had used the same rationalization for her inability to tell him of her visions, she remained silent.

“Yet I find that I am almost painfully honest with you. I wonder why that is?” He glanced at her.

“Perhaps because I am simply a traveler through your life,” she said.

He raised one eyebrow. “Is it the siege that brings out your irritation or my presence?”

“No…just your absence,” she said, staring straight at him. “Something you’ve refrained from mentioning for all your claim to honesty.” She knew it even as she watched him. An uncanny sense gifted her with the knowledge of what he planned to do. Or perhaps it was only there in his eyes.

He placed the figurine back on the shelf and stood in front of the desk.

“You’re going to surrender, aren’t you?”

He extended his hand to her. She slapped it away. The gesture seemed to surprise him.

She stood, the desk still between them, her eyes sparking.

“Is it your aim to make me angry so that our parting is easier?” she asked.

“Will it work?”

“No,” she said. “I’m already irritated at you; a bit more anger will do nothing but keep the flame bright.”

He smiled then, his look genuinely amused. “Then will charm accomplish my aim?”

“There is nothing humorous about this.”

“Perhaps not, nor as tragic as you perceive.”

“They will kill you, Stephen.”

He said nothing.

“Am I to congratulate you on your sacrifice, kiss your cheek, and send you on your way?”

Still there was no response from him.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“When?” She wanted the hour, the minute, the second it would happen. But he would not give it to her.

Instead, he suddenly gripped her hand and pulled her around the desk.

She went, resisting, into his arms. She didn’t put her arms around him and return the embrace. She was afraid if she did, that she would not be able to let him go.

A Sinclair is always brave
. No, not always. She wanted, with a child’s desire to beg him to stay. To not do this thing. To not give himself up for her sake—for anyone’s sake. There was no one worth the sacrifice. But she said nothing.

“I will be safe,” he said. The words were soft, meant to be reassuring, she was certain. They failed in their mission. “They will not harm me. I’m worth too much to them as a figurehead. An object lesson, if you will.”

“Other men have thought the same,” she said. “But they have been hanged.”

He pulled back and smiled at her. “You must have faith in me, Anne. I would not willingly walk into danger with my eyes wide open.”

Yes, you would. In order to save someone else. You have a surfeit of honor, Stephen
.

If she had no courage, at least she had pride. But even that she would have given up at this moment if it would have convinced him. She knew, with a sense of honesty at least as great as his, that he would still leave her.

Chapter 21

S
tephen stood at one of the dormer windows on the third floor. From here he could see the array of men. Hundreds if not thousands of tents spread out for as far as he could see.

He had known for days that they weren’t going to be rescued. In addition to the message to Blagge, he’d sent the royal messenger back to Oxford with a request for troops. Whether or not he’d gotten to Oxford was unknown. If he had, the king might not have had the troops to send. Or perhaps he would not have sent them as punishment. A lesson for the Earl of Langlinais that it was not wise to disobey a royal command.

Stephen had faced General Penroth on the battlefield numerous times before; each knew the other’s strengths and weaknesses.

He glanced down at the letter in his hand. The paper was wrinkled, the penmanship perfect. The wording was a masterpiece of understatement, enumerating the terms under which he was to surrender. Left unsaid was what would happen if he did not. But then, he didn’t need Penroth’s words. His mind had furnished images only too easily.

You have five days in which to consider these terms of surrender. If I have not heard from you at the end of that time, I will have no choice but to view your silence as hostile
.

For those whom you shelter, I offer safe passage to the nearest town
.

For those men who have served under your command, pardons as long as they do not take up arms again
.

For yourself, imprisonment in London, there to be tried for your crimes against Parliament
.

Six thousand men against sixty were hardly favorable odds. All Penroth needed to do was roll up his cannon and bombard Harrington Court until there was nothing left but dust and splinters. Even easier was to simply starve them out. Parliament would thereby acquire a rich estate with little or no effort.

He’d returned to Harrington Court not prepared for a long stay. He’d remained in winter quarters with his regiment. Spring was the time for planting, but war had taken its toll of schedules, even those of the land. What foodstuffs had remained after the long winter were barely enough to feed the thirty-odd servants, let alone the men of his regiment of horse.

He was responsible for the safety of over a hundred people at Harrington Court and even more at Lange on Terne. Women and children and old men with nothing to do but to sit and pontificate on the state of the world and anticipate the next day.

If its inhabitants were guilty of any sin, it was pride of place. If there was something needed, it was to be found at Lange on Terne. No reason to journey all the way to London for it, especially in these troubled times. There were merchants and shops, wares and bakeries. All manner of produce might be found on market day, as well as the plumpest guinea hens and the fattest pigs. And Lange on Terne, the natives said, had naught of the stench of London about it. Here a goodwife could hang out her linens without fear of them turning yellow from the foul air.

He knew most of its inhabitants by name, had played with the children of the village when he was a boy. For hundreds of years Lange on Terne had depended upon the castle of Langlinais for its sustenance and protection. Today the responsibility was the same.

He returned to his suite. There was nothing more to be done. Nothing that could be done.

The words of Juliana’s chronicles were too pointed. The siege of Montvichet had ended in tragedy. If he did not do something, the same fate would befall those at Harrington Court.

Two mullioned windows flanked the fireplace at the north end of his suite of rooms. He walked to the left window, stood looking down at the expanse of countryside below him. Harrington Court was built facing away from Langlinais, as if shunning the medieval fortress. Why had he always felt an affinity for it? Because it was his heritage? Because men who lived there had been his ancestors? Perhaps. Or perhaps his imagination had been caught by the idea of codes of knighthood and honor.

The castle seemed to glow in the moonlight like a place alight with ghosts. Perhaps it was haunted by all the men he’d admired, whose shades rose up to chastise and question and condemn.

Even the soil gave witness to their walk upon the world. The path down the hill, across the bridge, and through the baileys had all been worn into the earth over time, hollowed out for him by those who had gone long before. Perhaps his dreams were nothing more than echoes of their lives.

Did spirits stand vigil on him at each tower of Langlinais? In each room of Harrington Court? Did they line the roads and watch in silence as he passed? Were they bitter because he breathed and they did not? Or were they kind in their pity, knowing that the ending that had come to them would come to him soon enough?

He was the seventeenth Earl of Langlinais, and throughout his life the responsibility of being so had always been there. First as a goal. He must measure up to the previous earls, be as wise, as intelligent. He must study as hard, learn as well as all the men who’d come before him. He had been concerned that he might not be able to continue the dynasty that stretched so far behind him. Or that he would be unable to protect the village and the people who’d always depended upon the earls of Langlinais.

He stood at the window and watched the moonlit landscape. From time to time a campfire blazed or was extinguished. Tiny pinpricks of light not unlike stars.

Angels winking at him. A saying he’d been told in childhood. One given to ease his fears. He’d been awed by the majesty of the sky above him, and by the great gulf that existed between the earth upon which he stood and the heavens. He’d felt small and insignificant and terrified.

He was the Earl of Langlinais, he’d been told, and could never be less than that. Until his life and experience had expanded to include more than this place and this heritage, he had believed it. True, he was ennobled by a title, but in the greater scheme of things, it truly didn’t matter.

The boy who had been afraid of a night sky made himself known again. That same child had sat and promised God that he would be good if He did not take his mother from him. Loss, then, that was part of what he felt. As a boy, he’d pounded his pillow in the darkness and refused to speak his mother’s name for one whole month. He’d even dared God to take him, too. Anger. Grief.

He mourned for what was his and could never be again. Not simply a house or a home. But an era, a time. A legacy that would be no more.

He’d fought with his mind, his heart, and his body to protect what was his. To credit all the men who’d gone before him and would come after. The blood of warriors flowed through his veins in addition to men of words and stately deeds.

He asked forgiveness of the ghosts of his heritage. They seemed to answer him. The earl who’d been rumored to have been in love with the queen, who had been Elizabeth’s advisor on affairs with Spain, would have counseled a parlay with Penroth. But then, it had been said of him that he would bargain with the devil. The man who’d started it all, who’d fought at William’s side six hundred years ago and been awarded Langlinais as a prize for both his loyalty and his fierceness in battle, might have wished to fight. Never mind the cost for those he held dear. And the earl who had built Harrington Court after that terrible year when the Terne had flooded the old castle so badly it was no longer habitable, what would he have said? He would have been the most practical of the group, advising that Stephen look upon the situation with logic and sense, devoid of emotion.

It was nearly impossible to do so.

Had Penroth waited until now before he’d offered terms? He possessed a devilish instinct for coincidence or perhaps he simply knew the desperation of their circumstances as well as Stephen did.

He stared out at his world. “Surrender.” He spoke the word aloud, but it made the decision no easier. It clawed at him.

He was suffused with a curious kind of resignation. As if all that he had done from the beginning of his life until this point in time was for this one deed.

He, like most of his men, had been untrained in war. But he’d learned the brutality of it soon enough. He had not wanted to kill, but neither had he wished to die. He had become a soldier because his country had split apart in thought and ideal and he’d been forced to choose. His courage had been tested as he lived through each day.

Around him slept more than a hundred people. Or remained awake as slumber was chased away by fear. Their fate was his. Their futures placed lovingly and with great faith into his hands. They trusted him to do what was necessary, just as they believed in him to save them.

It was oddly fitting that he should recall one of the Psalms the Parliamentarians were fond of quoting as they marched into battle.

O lord how are my foes increased
,

Against me many rise

There was only one thing he could do. He’d known it for days. However much his mind circled around it, it always came back to surrender.

He glanced down at the coffer on the table beside him. Another regret. Perhaps he would give the coffer to Anne, have her take the codex somewhere safe. Protect it, that it might be read a hundred or more years from now.

He wanted to tell her what he’d discovered. Words that had startled him and confused him and then amazed him. He would go to her chamber and tell her. Only that.

His smile was a silent rebuke, an effortless ridicule of his intent. If he went to her chamber, it would not be to tell her of the Langlinais miracle but to leach some comfort in her arms.

Would she know how much he needed her tonight? He would not say the words, but perhaps she would know and extend her arms around him. Lover and friend.

He left the room before he could convince himself that it was not wise. That honor decreed he treat her with discretion, with gentleness. But she answered his soft knock within moments, as if she’d waited for him. One sign, then. A few more, and he would stay.