So Great A Love (27 page)

“You and I have a few things to say to each
other,” Royce said to his daughter in a tone very different from
the one he had used with Arden.

“I know it,” Catherine responded, unafraid of
him, “and I accept responsibility for my actions. I am not ashamed
of anything I have done.”

“Child, have you been ill?” Royce asked, his
gaze sharpening. “Has she?” He glanced quickly at Arden as if
seeking an answer to his question there, then looked back to his
daughter.

“I was sick for a while,” Catherine said. “My
health is greatly improved, thanks to Aldis' nursing skill and the
medicines that Margaret made for me.”

“Then you must introduce me to your friend,
so I can thank her,” Royce said, looking away from his daughter and
into Margaret's eyes.

Watching the three of them as Catherine
performed the introduction, Arden was convinced by Royce's gentle
manner with Margaret that his father understood and sympathized
with her plight. Still, there was little any outsider could do for
her. Margaret's blatant disregard of the marriage plans her father
had made for her was strictly a family matter, to be resolved by
her legal guardian, who, unlike Royce, appeared to harbor no
sympathy at all for his errant daughter.

“Are we going to stand out here in the cold
all day?” Lord Phelan demanded, pushing his way up the narrow
steps, past Arden, and thence into the entry hall. “Royce, stop
sheltering my wicked daughter. I see how you are deliberately
standing between us. Don't think you can prevent the punishment she
so strongly deserves. I'll see her black and blue before this day
is over.”

“How do you do, Lord Phelan?” Arden said,
moving through the manor house doorway to stand shoulder to
shoulder with his father, the two of them forming a protective
barrier between Margaret and Phelan. Arden could not bring himself
to offer the usual words of welcome and so he contented himself
with the obvious. “We have not met before.”

“My business is not with you,” Phelan said
rudely. “It's with the obstinate, ungrateful creature who hides
behind you. Step aside, my lords. Margaret belongs to me. Eustace,
come and help me.”

Phelan did not wait for either Arden or Royce
to move. He simply ploughed his way between them, with the brawny
Eustace at his back. Phelan grabbed one of Margaret's arms. Eustace
took the other. Ignoring the shocked stares of the servants and
men-at-arms they passed along the way, Margaret's relatives dragged
her from the entry into the great hall. Those left at the entryway
followed the little group into the hall, all of them still
uncertain what her father intended to do to Margaret.

“Lord Phelan,” Royce cautioned him, “remember
your dignity and your station in life. This is too public a place.
Do not humiliate your daughter like this.”

“Why should I not, when she has humiliated
me?” Phelan demanded in a belligerent tone. “Margaret has cost me a
profitable bridegroom who was also an important political ally. And
if you don't punish your daughter in the same way I punish mine,
then you deserve to be saddled with a disrespectful, irresponsible
wench, who thinks nothing of ruining the plans made by decent men.
That goes for your niece, too.” He shook Margaret, who was trying
valiantly to stand with some dignity of her own, despite the fact
that she was being pulled from one side to the other as first her
brother and then her father tugged on her arms, which they
continued to hold in a brutal grip.

“Lord Royce,” Margaret said, “the fault in
this affair is entirely mine. I coerced Catherine into helping me.
She tried to refuse, but I insisted until she agreed. The same is
true of Aldis. Please, I beg you, do not punish them.”

“My lady, I know who is at fault here,” Royce
said, his voice quiet.

“Aye,” said Phelan, grinning wickedly,
“there's no doubt of it. Even she admits as much. It's all
Margaret's doing. Ungrateful, selfish, inconsiderate bitch that she
is!”

“Did you guess Lord Adhemar would break his
agreement to marry you if you ran away?” Eustace demanded of his
sister. “He doesn't want you any more. I wish to God that Father
and I were rid of you, for you have cost our father a valuable
connection, and me a wife.”

“What do you mean?” Margaret cried. “I have
done nothing to your wife.”

“Have you not?” Eustace, still holding tight
to Margaret's upper arm, pushed his face near to hers and spoke in
barely controlled fury. “It did not take me long to convince
Gertrude to confess what little she knew about how you escaped from
Sutton during the Twelfth Night celebrations. Did you really think
she would remain silent?”

“You beat her,” Margaret accused him. Her
eyes welled with tears for her sister-in-law. “Did you hurt her
badly? Oh, I am sorry for poor Gertrude.”

“Sorry for her?” Eustace yelled. “Rather,
feel sorry for yourself, Margaret. You'll pay for what you've done,
encouraging my wife to run away as you did.”

“Are you saying that Gertrude has escaped,
too?” Catherine cried. “Oh, I am glad to hear it.”

“Catherine,” her father cautioned in a stern
voice, “be quiet. This is not your affair.”

“Indeed, it is,” Phelan told him, in tones
scarcely calmer than his agitated son's. “Your daughter and mine
put the notion of flight into Gertrude's feeble mind. As a result,
Eustace and I returned to Sutton after our first day of searching
for Margaret, only to discover that Gertrude had also departed. She
told my seneschal she was going home to her parents for a
visit.

“Two days later,” Phelan continued with
rising anger, “I received a message from Gertrude's father, telling
me he intends to keep her with him and will not allow her to return
to Eustace. Gertrude has fed him some story about the appalling way
she claims Eustace has mistreated her. The witless girl's father
says if we try to get her back, he'll go to war against us and
declares he is planning to apply to the Church to have the marriage
dissolved and Gertrude's dowry returned to him. It's bad enough to
lose the connection with Adhemar. Thanks to Margaret and Catherine,
my son and I also have a serious feud on our hands.”

“Were it not for your example,” Eustace said
to Margaret, “my weak-willed wife would never have found the
courage to defy me in so public a manner, and her dowry would still
be securely in my hands. So you see, dear sister, I hold a mighty
grudge against you.”

“Hasn't it occurred to you,” Margaret said,
meeting her brother's eyes with bold disregard for her own safety,
“that if you had treated Gertrude with more kindness, she would not
have left you?”

“No,” Eustace said. “It hasn't occurred to
me. Gertrude was properly cowed, until you returned to Sutton and
began to instill your treacherous notions in her foolish head.”

“The fault is partly yours,” Margaret
insisted. “I refuse to accept all the blame for the end of your
miserable marriage.”

“You ungrateful, rebellious creature!” Phelan
shouted. He released his hold on Margaret's arm, lifted his right
hand, and dealt her so hard a blow across her cheek that she
staggered backward. Eustace let her go, too, at exactly the moment
when his father hit her. Without her brother to keep her upright
Margaret fell to the floor. Phelan raised his hand again and
Eustace, grinning in expectation, stood waiting his turn.

Catherine screamed to see such violence
directed at her friend and an instant later Aldis, too, cried out
in shock. Isabel shrank back against Tristan, who held her close as
if to keep her secure from Lord Phelan's anger. Royce exclaimed in
outrage and, in complete disregard of Phelan's parental rights,
started forward to pull him away from Margaret.

But it was Arden who reached Margaret before
anyone else in the great hall, stunned as they all were, could act
in her behalf. Arden raised Margaret in his arms, holding her
tenderly while he turned so his back was toward Phelan. For just a
moment she wound her arms around his neck, clinging to the kindness
and the safety he represented. She knew the illusion of safety
couldn't last. For Arden's sake, she had to leave the embrace she
longed to continue.

“Thank you, Arden,” Margaret said on a sob
she was unable to prevent, “but I must accept the punishment my
father decides is warranted for my disobedience, and the law says
you may not interfere between parent and child. Please put me
down.”

“I shall interfere!” Arden exclaimed. He set
Margaret on her feet, keeping his arm around her waist to support
her. “No one may strike a defenseless woman while on my domain. I
will not allow it. Furthermore, all the rules of chivalry forbid
brutality against a noblewoman.”

“The laws of chivalry be damned,” Lord Phelan
said on a snarl. “I'll take Margaret home and punish her there, on
my own lands.”

“No,” Arden said, holding on yet more tightly
to Margaret when she tried to wriggle free of him. “Margaret has
done nothing to deserve such harshness from you.”

“Because of her intransigence, I've lost a
nice piece of land and an improved position at court,” Phelan said,
“and Eustace has lost his wife and her dowry. All of that is worth
a beating, and more.”

“Unless,” said Eustace, with the sudden
shrewdness of a truly stupid and dirty-minded individual, “unless
she's carrying Arden's brat in her belly and that's why he's so
tender with her.”

“
What?”
exclaimed Phelan. For a long
moment he appeared to be unable to speak for rage at Eustace's
suggestion. Then, slowly, his red face assumed a shrewd look
remarkably similar to the one worn by his son. “Aye, Eustace,
you've a point there. These two young people have been holed up in
this place, kept indoors by the heavy snows, with no chaperone
except the two unmarried girls who brought Margaret here to meet
Arden. Ah, Eustace, my boy, you are a good son to me, and almost as
clever as I am. I see it all now.”

“See what?” Arden said, made wary by Phelan's
abrupt switch from anger to serious consideration of some other
option. Somewhat belatedly, Arden removed his arm from Margaret's
waist. To his relief she stayed where she was, next to him and well
out of Phelan's reach.

“Well, it's clear as the finest glass,”
Phelan said. Assuming an injured expression that was patently false
to everyone who observed him, he continued, “Whether Margaret ran
away just to get free of Adhemar, or whether she came here knowing
you'd be at Bowen or not, doesn't matter, my lord Arden. The fact
is, the two of you have been here, together, night after cold
winter night. Eustace is right; you've been swiving my daughter,
and it's possible that Margaret is carrying your child as a
result.”

“That is a damned lie!” Arden shouted,
recalling all too well that swiving was exactly what he had wanted
to do with Margaret. But he had not done what he wanted. Knowing
what would undoubtedly happen if he tried to obey the command of a
desire he must not permit himself to feel, he had controlled his
base urges in order to save Margaret from just such a scene as she
was now being subjected to by her own father.

Another of Arden's baser urges surfaced,
making him long to kill Lord Phelan, and Eustace, too, for their
violent treatment of Margaret. The fact that his murderous impulse
arose out of his concern for Margaret's welfare only made him more
miserably unhappy than he already was. And Royce's immediate
statement of confidence in his son further increased Arden's aching
sense of guilt for all the things he had done with Margaret.

“If you say Lord Phelan's accusations are not
true, then I believe you,” Royce said to Arden. “Nevertheless, the
disgraceful slur Phelan speaks against his daughter's virtue is
what the world will believe, if he declares his vile suspicions
outside these manor walls.”

“My lord,” Margaret said, turning to face
Royce, “when I left Sutton Castle, my intention was to enter a
convent as quickly as possible and to remain there for the rest of
my life.”

“Is that, in fact, what you want to do, Lady
Margaret?” Royce asked her.

“Under the circumstances, it is the only
honorable thing I can do,” Margaret replied. “If I am readily
accepted by a convent, then my leaving Bowen will free Arden of any
stain upon his honor, and that same conventual acceptance will also
clear my name.”

“Oh, no!” Phelan yelled at her. “I'll not pay
any dowry to a damned convent, not while I can still make a good
bargain with some nobleman and marry you off for my benefit. And
every father in the land will agree with me.”

“Do not be certain of that,” said Royce,
sparing a glance for his own daughter.

“Who would have me after what you've just
said of me?” Margaret asked Phelan.

“Why, you stupid wench, the man who wronged
you, that's who,” Eustace answered her, still grinning in pleasure
at his own cleverness.

“Arden never wronged me.” Margaret spoke
slowly and clearly, with her head held high as if to challenge
anyone who dared to contradict her claim.

“You have heard your future father-in-law
declare that the world will believe what I say of this matter,”
Phelan told her.

“You'd do that to your own daughter?” Tristan
cried in undisguised horror. “Have you no shame?”

“There's no sense of shame where a good
marriage contract is concerned,” Phelan responded.

“No one who knows Margaret will believe your
accusations, Lord Phelan,” Isabel said. Leaving the shelter of
Tristan's arms, she went to take Margaret's hand and stand with
her. Catherine was already at Margaret's side, holding her other
hand, and Aldis stood with her fingers on Margaret's shoulder.

“Look at them, how they cling together,”
Phelan said, his voice filled with contempt. “Mark my words,
gentlemen; women are not to be trusted.