The Longing (28 page)

A chill swept Susanna. “I am sorry to hear it.”

After a long moment, he said, “You worry too much about me, Aunt Sanna.”

She smiled wryly. “’Tis called love.”

He looked disconcerted, as if she had shouted the words in the presence of his peers, but then he grinned and said, “I know it well.” Then, as if eager to turn the conversation lest she pulled him to her, he said, “I am glad Lord Wulfrith is taking you riding.”

“As am I.”

“’Tis time, Judas,” Everard said.

Susanna felt a spurt of annoyance. However, gratitude quickly doused the emotion, for he had made it possible for her to talk with Judas in the light of day.

“I must return to practice,” her nephew said.

“Of course.”

Though she hoped he would give her a parting hug as he would have done a year ago, he hurried past her and she peered over her shoulder to watch him exit the stables. Then he was gone, followed by Sir Rowan.

Susanna looked to Everard and, once more discomfited by her state of dress, crossed to where he stood alongside the mare. “Beyond words, I thank you.”

His eyes held hers. “I am pleased to have made you happy.”

Was
she happy? Was this lightness—this sense of well-being—happiness? It had to be.

“Methinks Wulfen has been as good for you as it has been for Judas,” Everard observed.

Realizing she had not guarded her expression, she eased the smile from her mouth and said, “For that, I also thank you.”

He inclined his head. “You are ready to ride?”

She looked down her front. “As you can see, I am dressed as a man.”

“I hoped you would not mind. Though I do not doubt most will know ’tis a lady who passes by, I thought it best to be discreet so our young men are not too long distracted.”

“It seems a most effective means.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Not as effective as I had hoped, but it will have to do.”

Knowing he must have sensed her disquiet over her appearance, Susanna did not take to heart the unspoken compliment. Stepping near the mare, she said, “I shall require your aid.”

Everard set his hands to her waist, and though she tried to turn away memories of the night past when she had more intimately known his touch, she felt her pulse race as he lifted her into the saddle. His hands did not linger, and yet their warm imprint remained as he took up the reins and passed them to her.

“Your hood,” he reminded her.

While she settled it over her head, he strode to his own horse and swung into the saddle.

Shortly, she urged her mount behind his into the outer bailey where she more deeply felt the regard of those present now that she was in the company of their lord.

Peering out from beneath the hood, she picked her gaze over the young men who practiced at swords, daggers, and spears upon the inner training field and marveled at the sight of so many who would one day stand before Everard Wulfrith to be knighted. But Judas was not to be found there. However, when they rode onto the drawbridge, she saw the training fields outside the walls were more crowded and guessed that here, among the scores who grunted and shouted as their weapons clashed and clanged, she would find her nephew.

She was still searching for him when her horse stepped off the drawbridge and she came alongside Everard.

“To the far left,” he said with a jut of his chin.

Squinting against the sun that slowly rose toward the nooning hour, she located Judas and smiled. Then frowned.

Advancing on one who appeared to be of an age that would see him don spurs before long, Judas wielded a sword, something she had regularly witnessed during his training at Cheverel. What was not familiar was his stance.

“Why does he hold an arm behind him with his hand tucked beneath his belt?” she asked.

“Notice ’tis his left hand that swings the sword.”

So it was. “Has he injured the right?”

“Nay. Though knights in training are taught to wield a sword with the favored hand, a dagger with the lesser hand, it is of good benefit to ensure the latter is also skilled in the balance and coordination required to swing a longer, weightier blade.”

She looked sidelong at him. “Lest the favored hand be injured.”

“You are perceptive, my lady. We implemented the training nearly three years past after my younger brother, Abel, suffered grievous injuries during a battle and his favored hand was permanently damaged. It took over six months of rigorous training to make his left hand as strong and deft at wielding a sword as his right had been. Thus, that same facility is now required of our charges.”

Susanna watched as Judas awkwardly parried his opponent’s blow. “It looks difficult.”

“It is, but he makes good progress.”

She continued to stare at her nephew who appeared capable of defending himself despite movements that lacked finesse and self assurance. Only when she felt the intense gaze of another did she look away and search out the source. She found it in the person of Sir Elias who stood well back from Judas. Knowing he would not be able to see her smile of acknowledgment amid the shadow of the hood, she discreetly raised a hand.

He inclined his head.

“We should ride,” Everard said.

She glanced at him. Had he seen—and disapproved of—the exchange between her and the knight?

“I expect my brother, Abel, this afternoon,” he said. “Thus, I would like to return well in advance of his arrival.”

Unsettled by the tidings, she wondered how Abel Wulfrith would react when he learned his brother had let a woman into Wulfen. Of course, perhaps he was not meant to know, and for this—to be certain Susanna was out of sight—Everard wished to be done with the ride before his brother came unto the walls.

“Of course. I shall follow.”

He waved her forward. “I prefer that you ride at my side.”

There went her heart again, leaning so heavily toward him that it felt as if it strained against her breastbone. “I would like that.”

As they spurred their horses over the land before the castle, their advance moved the warm, still air, and she had to release the saddle’s pommel to grip the hood closed.

 “Let it go,” Everard called to her.

She looked at him and, when he nodded, allowed the hood to fall down around her shoulders.

Over the next quarter hour, they sped across the open ground and, for the first time since she was a girl, she rode merely for the joy of riding. Indeed, it was more exciting now, for never had she managed such a brisk pace other than during the flight from Cheverel when all she had felt was fear of being overtaken, relief as each league passed without event, and fatigue. As then, she did not ride sidesaddle, but this time no skirts hindered her and she did not share her mount with Judas.

Everard veered toward the trees and, as they neared, slowed. “We can continue on,” he said, “or start back by way of the wood. The latter will allow us to pause at the waterfall if you would like to see it.”

Susanna knew she should soften her expression of pleasure, but she did not. “I would very much like to see it.”

He moved his gaze over her face, said, “You do not know how lovely you are, do you, Susanna de Balliol?”

She lost her smile. He did not speak true, for she was nothing approaching lovely and, garbed as she was, there could not even be pretense of it. She forced a laugh. “And you do not know how kind you are, do you, Everard Wulfrith?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What I see has naught to do with kindness.”

Guilt, then. Atonement. Even if he did not know it.

Determined that she would not bring ruin to their outing by arguing, she said, “I would see the waterfall now.”

Few words passed between them as they negotiated the trees, and then none at all once the sound of falling water reached them.

In and out of the slants of sunlight and overarching shade they guided their mounts. Throughout, Susanna attended to the smell of moist earth and fragrant plants, the crunch of leaves beneath hooves, the scuttling of things unseen, the sight of woodland creatures running up trees and flitting hedge to hedge and branch to branch.

The waterfall was a long time in appearing, but when she caught sight of it, the reason its sound had carried so far was evidenced by its height and breadth.

She gasped. “’Tis beautiful!”

“I thought you would like it.”

Some minutes later, downstream from the pool into which the thickly ruffled veil of water poured, Everard’s hands were once more upon her waist as he lifted her from the mare.

Lest he notice her color was on the rise, she kept her chin lowered until he released her and stepped aside.

“On the ridge above,” he said, “is a path our young men often take during pre-dawn runs.”

She considered the vegetation-strewn wall that rose up on the other side of the stream. “‘Twould be a bad tumble should one draw too near the edge.”

“Aye. For that, all the senses must be engaged.”

“Have many fallen?”

“It is a rare occurrence but, for those who do not heed their senses, it is not so sharply inclined that they suffer much more than a broken bone.”

She almost laughed. “I suppose that is a comfort.”

Everard took up the mare’s reins, then the stallion’s, and turned away. As he led the horses to the bank of the stream, Susanna crossed to a great oak and leaned against it.

He soon joined her and also settled his back to the tree. “When the upper portion runs shallow,” he said, looking to the falls, “the young men traverse it and descend to this side before making their way back to Wulfen.”

The thought of Judas up there amid the rush of water caused her heart to lurch. “Even shallow, it must be treacherous,” she said.

“Right before the fall it is, but the crossing is made well back from the edge so that, at worst, a dousing is the price paid for careless footing—and bruising, as weighted belts are worn to increase strength and stamina.”

She put her head to the side. “It makes me almost glad to have been born female.”

He swung his gaze to her. “Almost?”

Wishing she had not said that, for she wanted no more of his guilt, she sighed. “I exaggerate. Like many women, I envy the freedom of men—at least, those privileged enough to dictate the terms of their own lives so they need answer to no one.” Men like her brother.

Everard turned his body toward her and set his shoulder to the tree. “Everyone answers to someone, Susanna, even the king who stands to make enemies out of allies if he abuses his power. And, if he should be foolish enough to turn all those sword arms against himself, still he answers to God—as we all do.”

He was right, but that raised another matter that she knew she should not dwell upon. Before she could push it back down, she heard herself say, “Why do you think God so often takes years and years to ask questions of those who owe Him a great debt of answers?”

Everard was silent so long that she thought he did not intend to venture a guess. “Perhaps,” he finally said, “He but gives us time to ask the questions of ourselves so that, in answering them, we have the opportunity to right our wrongs before we are made to stand before Him. Time to atone.”

It was not easy to hold her eyes to his, so strongly did she wish to look away, but she forced herself to stare into those grey-green depths. And wait.

He drew a deep breath. “I know I did wrong eleven years ago, Susanna. Though Judith was promised to another, I was arrogant enough to believe that, having been born one of those privileged enough to dictate the terms of his own life, I could claim her without consequence. Thus, though she discouraged my attentions and said she liked your brother well enough to do her duty to her family, I determined that I would convince her otherwise. And I thought I had. But in the end, she went the way she had said she would.”

What he told was far more than what Susanna had waited for—almost too much honesty, for never had she expected him to share such private emotions and matters regardless of how deep his need to atone. What did it mean?

“When she sent me away,” he continued, “I was hurt and angry and did not believe I needed to answer to anyone for having loved her. Only after I learned she had died from childbirth did I begin to ask questions of myself and loathe the answers—so much that I nearly set Judas and you outside my walls.”

She pushed her fingers into the crevices of the bark at her back to keep from laying a hand upon his arm. “But you did not,” she said.

His smile was grim. “Prayer. When I avail myself of it—humble myself—always I know the course to take. And this course was a steep one to set my feet upon, not only because you, a woman I believed had betrayed her friend out of jealousy, demanded that I set things right, but because it meant acknowledging that my indiscretion had reached so far into the life of Judith’s son that I could be the ruin of him.” He heaved a sigh. “I am glad I was wrong about you, Susanna, but the blow is heavier yet knowing I caused you to suffer all these years.”

She swallowed. “I have said you are forgiven, and though I am glad for the freedom you have granted me, if it is but a means of assuaging your guilt, methinks it better for both of us had I remained in my chamber.”

He nodded slowly. “I do feel guilt, for I am not without conscience, but this is more than that, just as what happened between us last eve was more than guilt or desire.”

She stopped her breath, wondered how talk of the training of squires had landed her back on the roof beneath a night sky with Everard’s arms around her.

“I still cannot say why I kissed you,” he said, “but I know I did it as much for myself as I did it for you. And that ’twas you I held, not the memory of a woman I once loved.”

As on the night past, Susanna felt a flutter of hope, but that part of her grounded in survival rose up and demanded she see this for what it was—dangerous hope that could be dashed upon rocks capable of breaking her. Whether it was guilt or desire or both that had caused him to act as he had on the night past, whether it was known to him or unknown, she must accept that she had no future with him beyond what he could do to help Judas.