The Longing (6 page)

The boy raised his eyebrows. “
Could
you be my father?”

Lady Susanna gasped.

The impertinence! “Boy,” Everard growled, “how old are you?”

Though Judas de Balliol’s gaze wavered, the rest of him was still. “I am ten. And my name is Judas, not
boy
. So you could be my father?”

Everard realized that, by questioning the boy’s age, Judas had assumed it was done to determine if the sin committed with his mother could have resulted in pregnancy.

“All of ten,” he clipped, “much too young to be so bold. However, since you are of so few years, I shall answer the question asked twice of me though it was well enough answered the first time. Nay, I could not be your father, no matter your age. And you do your mother, God rest her soul, grave ill to think it.”

Judas drew a deep breath and looked to his aunt. “Cheverel is mine.”

Only then did Everard realize the boy had been speaking of his father in the past tense, and he knew what it told, even before he looked to the woman beside him.

She met his gaze. “Alan de Balliol is dead, God rest—” She closed her mouth and gave a slight shake of her head as if to deny her thoughts the very words she had denied her tongue.

Things had not been well between her and her brother? Not that it was any concern of his.

“You have what you came for,” Everard said. “A day and night’s stay I will grant to ensure you and your horses recover sufficiently, and then you will be gone from Wulfen.”

Susanna held her tongue, for now was not the time to tell him she did not have all she had come for. As for what he had given her, it depended on whether or not he spoke true. Strange, but she wished he lied, for her brother had not deserved a son like Judas. But then, did Everard Wulfrith?

She smiled tightly. “I thank you, Lord Wulfrith. And now, I would like to rest.”
Ere I fall at your feet.

He inclined his head, stepped around Judas, and did not look back.

As his footsteps receded, she settled her gaze upon her nephew. “So now you know.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps.”

Dear God, is the last of my sweet Judas slipping away that he should be nearer yet in thought to me?

Heart aching, she reached forward—and almost drew back for fear the gesture of affection would be deemed offensive. But he allowed her to tuck behind his ear the lank of hair that had fallen into his eyes. Her little boy was not completely lost to her. Not yet.

CHAPTER SIX

How she could have slept so soundly to find that when she opened her eyes it was once more nearing night, she did not know. Not that she had not needed the dozen or more hours of sleep after the merciless flight from Cheverel, but she had long ago learned to sleep lightly and in snatches the better to watch over Judas. Was it because it felt safe here, so distant from the place that had ever been her home?

Not wanting to move from where she lay on her stomach, she slid her gaze from the unshuttered window through which late afternoon sunlight fell, to the platter of food that had been left on the bedside table. Her belly grumbled—thankfully, not in a way unreceptive to sustenance—and she nearly reached for something to settle it. However, the longing to return to sleep was too great to resist.

“Safe,” she breathed and closed her eyes.

Are you? Believe it at Judas’s peril.

She sat up and looked around the chamber. She was alone as she had been in the earliest hours of morn after Judas had returned to the room he shared with Sir Elias. But surely he was next door—

She abandoned the bed, so swiftly that she nearly tripped on the sheet that came with her. Ignoring her aching muscles, she kicked her feet free of the cloth and lunged across the room. Shortly, she rapped her knuckles on the door of the chamber beside hers.

“Judas!”

No answer though, in truth, she did not allow much time in which to give one before thrusting the door inward. A bed and two pallets, all three empty.

“Dear Lord,” she breathed and stepped back into the corridor. If the din that met her ears had been present moments earlier, she had not heard it. Though she told herself the boisterous sounds had nothing to do with Judas, it was the same she had told herself when she had awakened years past to find her five-year-old nephew absent from his bed beside hers. After exhausting her search abovestairs, she had ventured to the hall. There she had found Alan and his men gathered around Judas who stood with arms folded over his chest as he looked warily from one drunkard to the other, shrugging and shaking his head when they put to him questions about the betrayal of Jesus by the one with whom he shared a name.

Susanna told herself that such a thing would not happen at Wulfen Castle, then she ran. She knew she was barefoot, knew she wore only a chemise, knew her hair was too loose, but she did not care. However, the dozens upon dozens of boys and young men streaming into the hall did care, for as she sprang off the last step, their eyes stuck to her and feet faltered.

She searched among their faces. And there, on the far side of the hall, was Judas beside Sir Elias.

Thank you, Lord.

Judas took a step forward as if to gain her side. And halted. As he stared uncertainly at her, Sir Elias bent his head to her nephew and said something, then the knight strode toward her.

“Be about your duties!” a deep voice commanded, setting into motion those who had stopped to stare.

Before Susanna could search out the speaker, Everard Wulfrith placed himself in front of her as if to shield the others from the sight of her. He was angry. She saw it in his glittering eyes and the set of his dirt-streaked jaw, but it seemed not the kind of anger to which she had grown accustomed in her brother’s household. His appeared to be more of the disapproving sort like her father had turned upon her, rather than the sort that warned punishment would not come near to fitting the crime.

“For this,” he said low, “women are not welcome at Wulfen. Now return to your chamber.”

She drew a deep breath and blinked her eyes wide when struck by the thick smell of unwashed, sweat-doused bodies that was certainly not exclusive to the man before her. Without thinking, she lifted the back of a hand to her mouth and nose.

Everard Wulfrith smiled grimly. “Yet another reason—the easily offended sensibilities of a lady. ’Tis good you leave us first thing on the morrow.”

She lowered her hand. “I am sorry. I was concerned about Judas. But as to our departure, I would speak to you on that. There is more that must needs be—”

“There is not.”

She swallowed. “But I—”

“My lady!” Sir Elias halted alongside their host and nodded over his shoulder. “As you can see, Judas fares well.”

She glanced at where her nephew continued to watch from afar. Though hurt that he hung back, she understood. After all, she was unapproachable on two fronts—a woman in a place where none were allowed, and one who did not present as a lady in her state of dress. And there was poor Judas, surrounded by peers for whom he was surely too much of a curiosity as it was.

“Return to your chamber,” Everard Wulfrith said again.

Sir Elias stepped nearer. “Allow me to see you abovestairs, my lady.”

Before she could decline, for she would not have Judas left unattended, Everard Wulfrith clipped, “Stand down, Sir Elias. That the lady not further add to the unseemliness of her behavior, she will take herself abovestairs.”

Overlooking what was behind his objection to Sir Elias serving as escort, especially as he was right to be concerned with how it might be perceived considering her appearance, she said. “I shall, Lord Wulfrith, but first I would request another audience—”

“Go.”

There would be no moving him, she realized as she stared into eyes that were mostly pupil, ringed by a fine line of the grey-green that had made her heart flutter so many years ago.

Knowing she would have to await another opportunity—or make one—she pivoted and, rebelling against appearing to have been sent away like an errant child, measuredly ascended the stairs.

CHAPTER SEVEN

If not for her determination to speak with Everard Wulfrith, even if it meant once more sullying his hall to seek him out, Susanna would not have changed into fresh clothes with it so near unto night. Once she had tended to her ablutions, made all the easier by the washbasin Squire Joseph delivered following her departure from the hall, she had donned a fresh chemise and bliaut and worked a comb through her hair until it was manageable enough to be plaited.

Now she waited and, from time to time, eyed the supper viands that had replaced the cold ones to which she had earlier awakened. She knew she ought to eat, but as the minutes counted themselves into hours that drew nearer the morn when Judas and Sir Elias and she would be ejected from Wulfen Castle, more and more her nerves picked at her and pained her belly.

She rose from the chair before the brazier, crossed to the door, and opened it to once more attend to the sounds that rose from that place she was not welcome. It seemed the dining was done, but there were yet numerous voices and bursts of laughter, indicating the night was not near enough its end that those below would soon seek their rest. And still Judas and Sir Elias had not returned abovestairs.

She closed the door and began to pace. If Everard Wulfrith did not come to her this night, she would go to him. She had seen the curtained wall behind the dais in the hall and knew the lord’s solar lay behind it rather than abovestairs. Thus, she would have to negotiate the hall once all were abed and do so without awakening its numerous occupants. Fortunately—in a manner of thinking—she had learned enough of stealth these past years that she stood a good chance of reaching her destination. And then…

She pulled her braid over her shoulder and began to worry at the crossed tresses, their smooth courses from one hump to the next soothing her. What words would reach Everard Wulfrith? How much needed to be told to gain his aid?

A knock sounded.

He had come! After a moment of foolish vanity, during which she wished she had a mirror with which to check her appearance, she hastened across the chamber. Containing the impulse to throw the door wide, she eased it open.

“Sir Elias!” She looked left and right of him. “Where is Judas?”

“He wished to remain in the hall. It seems the knight who first denied us entrance to Wulfen knows how to spin tales of sword and spear and bow. Judas is entranced.”

She took a step toward Sir Elias. “You left him alone?”

“Hardly alone, and certainly not lacking protection.”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems Lord Wulfrith has taken an interest in him—at least, from a distance.”

“Make sense, Sir Elias!”

He gave a crooked smile. “He watches Judas—as he did much of the day while we were out about the castle grounds.”

Susanna caught the inside of her lip between her teeth and, heart beating faster, pondered the reason Everard Wulfrith showed interest in a boy he was determined to send out from the safety of his walls. Did he see Judith in him? Perhaps himself? Regardless, there was hope in that.

“You are thinking we may not be set out on the morrow,” Sir Elias said.

She returned him to focus. “That is my hope.”

He nodded. “We shall see, hmm?”

“Aye.”

Silence fell, one that made her long to push the door closed, but she knew her business with him was not finished. And it could be—done with now and forever…

Or another day, perhaps one that will never come. After all, there are worse things than not keeping one’s word.

Still, she would have to give him something. Knowing she would be a fool to yield anything behind a closed door, she stepped forward, causing him to step back, and pulled the door closed behind her. She leaned against it and raised her gaze to his. “Now, I suppose, you wish to collect your reward.”

He raised his eyebrows and took back the step he had given away.

Unlike some of the others with whom she had bargained in the past, he did not hungrily descend upon her, allowing her to rise to her toes and press her mouth to his. Then she dropped back to her heels.

His brow furrowed. “Come, Lady Susanna, you know I was promised a greater reward than that.”

She curled her fingers into her palms. “Wulfen Castle is hardly the place to… It would be unseemly…”

What looked to be hurt passed over his face. “You think that was the bargain struck—that I deal in the currency of a lady’s virtue?”

Of course that was what he had meant, for it was certainly what the others had meant, forcing her to move on to the next bestower of favors once they became dissatisfied with mere kisses.

Sure there would be teasing in his eyes, Susanna searched them. It was there, but not so deep as to be mocking or cruel, and she found herself wondering if he truly believed she yet had virtue about her. After all, he had to know he was not the only one to grant her favors. She had seen the looks exchanged between knights, did not doubt they talked amongst themselves. And lied.

She swallowed hard, asked softly, “Is that not our bargain?”

“It is not.”

Though she knew she should not be so ready to believe him, she felt warmth bloom in her breast that always seemed cold except in the presence of Judas. But as she felt a smile move onto her mouth, it occurred to her he might find her unworthy of greater intimacy. After all, she was no beauty, and the mirror denied her would only show her to be several years beyond her true age. Good for a kiss, but that was all?

“I am not so dishonorable as that,” he said, and she knew her face reflected more than ever she allowed it to.

Did he speak true? It was but a matter of honor? She momentarily closed her eyes, and when she opened them, he wore a slight smile. “Then what did you mean when you said your aid would cost more than a kiss?”