The Rose at Twilight (40 page)

“I know. I suspect the ragged lot who attacked our Harry and rode away, came here in search of a hiding place and ambushed Everingham’s little army. Mayhap, I ought to be grateful.”

“There was no army, sir. He lied about that.”

“Perchance he did, or perchance, having learned from Sir Lionel’s fine example, his army decided to turn tippet and join the king. It matters not. Who was their leader?” he asked in the same deceptively casual tone he had used before.

But she had expected the question and knew a simple claim of ignorance would not do, so she said fiercely, “I would not tell you if I knew him. I am too grateful to have been rescued.”

He nodded. “I, too,
mi calon,
am grateful to your rescuers, and glad that they were not captured before they reached you.”

She shivered at the thought of what would have happened to her in that instance, and Nicholas held her tighter, soothing her. Moments later, without a word, he scooped her up and held her close, then turned and, shifting her weight, bolted the door.

“I like this dress, madam,” he said, looking down at the gap in her bodice where the lacing let her breasts show through. “There is little to interfere with a man’s touch. Do you prefer the mattress where it lies, or shall we put it back on the bed?”

Smiling, she laid her head against his shoulder and said she did not care. Nor did she, even when he chose the mattress on the floor. The door was safely bolted, and though she had never made love with him outside the seclusion of the bed curtains, she was too relieved to have him safe home again, and too delighted to see his desire for her so openly expressed, to care where he took her. Giving herself up to her own passions, she attacked his clothing with even more eagerness than he did hers.

“Such wantonness becomes you,
mi calon
,” he said, laughing, and beginning to tease her naked body with his hands, his hot breath, and his agile tongue.

Moaning with delight, she returned his caresses until her body quivered beneath his and her thighs opened wide to receive him. The first peak was quickly reached, but they continued to make love far into the afternoon, undisturbed, until both fell fast asleep.

Alys awoke to find Nicholas smiling at her, and the glow she felt lasted through the evening, when they joined the others in the hall for supper. She decided her pleasure was contagious, for she saw Gwilym smile and Madeline blush, and Jonet was even civil to Hugh, though the giant scarcely took his eyes off her all evening, behavior to which she usually accorded short shrift.

A proper bedchamber had been prepared for Nicholas and Alys, and when they retired, he proved he had not yet slaked his thirst for her, but the next morning, mounted and preparing to lead his men to Birmingham, he seemed suddenly distant again, almost as if their intimacy had never occurred.

The change in his demeanor no longer surprised her, and she was prepared to play her own role before the men with proper dignity, but suddenly Nicholas looked down at her and said, “I shall return here before joining the king, madam, and we will decide how you are to proceed to the capital. In the meantime, I have that dagger with me. Should I chance to encounter its owner, I shall return it to him with my thanks.”

With that, he raised his hand in a signal to his men, and the courtyard was soon clear except for those men at arms who had been left behind to guard the castle. Nicholas was not a man who made the same mistake twice.

Alys watched until the last man was gone, her countenance rigid from the effort not to betray the shock Nicholas’s parting words had given her. So wrapped up had she been in their growing intimacy that she had forgotten Lovell’s presence in the castle. But now, mixed with sadness at seeing Nicholas ride off again was a strong sense of trepidation. She had hoped to return Lovell’s dagger herself. It had never occurred to her that Nicholas would keep it, let alone that he would decide to search out its owner. She was certain that he would discover only too soon whose device graced the gilded hilt, and when he did … She shuddered at the thought and it haunted her for the next fortnight.

She saw no sign of Lovell or his men, and assumed they had got away; and the days flew swiftly, for there was much to be done to set the castle to rights. But never a day passed that she did not wonder if Nicholas had learned the truth, and when he and his men rode into the courtyard fifteen days later, she saw at once that he had done so.

Scarcely taking time to give orders for the housing and care of his men, he bore her off to their chamber, where he lost no time in making his feelings plain. “You are fortunate,” he said grimly, “that you were nowhere nearby when I learned that what I thought was a wolf was the head of a damned dog! Where is he?”

“I do not know,” she answered, glad she spoke the truth. “He said he would go to Flanders.” When he did not respond at once, she said quietly, “You said you were grateful to my rescuer, sir. Does it make a difference that it was he?”

“Aye, it makes a difference. The man is an outlaw, a traitor. I have no wish to be beholden to him!”

“He is no traitor,” she said stoutly. “He is loyal to his liege lord. You should admire that quality in him, for you expressed contempt when you thought Sir Lionel’s men had run off to join the king—turn-tippets, you called them. Would you have admired them more had you known they were still here? They must have been here somewhere, and might actually have been glad to see you, considering their circumstances, but—”

“By God, madam,” he roared, “do you mean to tell me that that damned outlaw was still on the premises then? Beneath my very nose? And you protected him!”

In the face of his fury, she quailed, but she answered nonetheless firmly, “I did, and would again. I could not stop Sir Lionel. I tried to hit him with the poker, but he just took it away. And when he fell dead at my feet, I thought you had come. I cannot tell you how relieved I was, but when I saw that it was Lovell, the relief did not die, sir, merely because he was not you.” Feeling her face flush at the memory, she rushed on, saying, “He saved me, Nicholas. I could not give him over for punishment! Even you must see that.”

“What makes you think I cannot understand?” he asked.

“Oh, do not turn what I say! If you do understand, then you ought not to be so angry with me.”

He took a deep breath and said, “Would you have told me the truth if Everingham had never come here, if Lovell had simply sought refuge at Wolveston after his attempt to kill the king?”

“He was not going to kill him, only to abduct him!”

Nicholas said nothing.

She glared at him. “In truth, sir, I doubt that I would have betrayed him even then. If you mean to punish me for supporting a cause in which I believe, then there is naught I can do to stop you.” But despite her brave words, she put her hands protectively behind her and watched him warily.

He did not move, but there was nothing in his expression to comfort her. He said, “I leave for Nottingham Castle at dawn. Hugh and a party of men will remain here till Monday to provide escort for Mistress Fenlord and her woman to rejoin the court, which is now at Sheen Palace.”

“Aye,” she said, “we can be ready to depart by then.”

“You are not going.” When she began to protest, he snapped, “You will remain here until I decide you deserve to rejoin the court. Not only have you shouted your support for Henry Tudor’s enemies to anyone who would listen, but you cannot even see how foolhardy you have been in giving aid and comfort to the worst among them. Add to that the fact that you find it impossible to be friends with his queen, and you make it impossible for me to allow you to join her at court. I have made up my mind, madam. Debating the matter will avail you not.”

Alys did not give up so easily, of course, but though she argued and pleaded, if not to accompany him, at least not to lose Madeline’s companionship, he was adamant that the loss should be part of her punishment. Nor did he linger to discuss the matter. He and his men were gone the following morning, and two days later, when Hugh and the others departed, Alys found herself a prisoner in her own home, with Gwilym a surly jailer.

She had noted a new rapport developing between the quiet Welshman and Madeline at Wolveston. Gwilym had begun to smile occasionally, had even voiced his approval from time to time of things Madeline had done to help set the castle to rights. And in return, Madeline had lost much of her puppylike clumsiness and seemed to have acquired more assurance in her manner. Alys thought that if Nicholas still contemplated a match between the two he had made a grave error by removing Madeline from Wolveston just when matters were improving. Once she was back in London, among gallant courtiers who were well practiced in the art of flirtation, Madeline was likely to forget all about the Welshman who was still more prone to criticize than to praise her.

“R
IGHT TRUSTY AND WELL
-beloved friend,” Madeline’s letter from Sheen began, “I greet you well. There is not much news, but the king, having been at home for a month now, looks forward to the time when her grace, his wife, will be delivered of his son and heir. They are both most confident of a boy. The court goes to Winchester for the occasion, Alys, and you must try to join us there, for I miss your conversation and your laughter. I miss Wolveston Hazard, too. ’Tis a fine place, and pleasant withal.”

“’Tis a tiresome place,” Alys interjected, looking over the page at Jonet. She had been reading the letter aloud while they sat together by the hall fire after supper. “Even Nicholas does not want to be here, and has only written to me the one time.”

Jonet had turned her work to attend to a knot in her thread. She looked up and smiled. “You were not grateful when he did write, as I recall, mistress, and did not reply to his letter.”

Alys grimaced. “He feared I might decide to run away again, and only wrote to warn me of his displeasure if I did. As if I had not already considered that,” she added with a forlorn sigh. “He did not deserve a reply to such a letter, but it has been three months since they left. I thought he would relent by now, but he does not write, nor does he come to see me.”

“He has been too busy,” Jonet said placidly. “Though Lord Lovell has gone abroad, we no sooner learn that a riot has been quelled in Sussex than we hear of another in Norfolk. No doubt the master and his men are needed wherever there is unrest, but he will come home when he can, and he would write if you did. What else does Mistress Madeline have to say?”

Having skimmed several paragraphs while Jonet was speaking, Alys said, “She also mentions the riots, but she writes that the king believes Elizabeth’s babe, if it is a boy, will put an end to disorder because all factions will accept him as a proper heir to the throne. I hope she has a daughter,” Alys added sourly.

When the only reply was a look of disapproval, she sighed. “Do not heed my sulks.” Scanning more of the letter, she said, “This is odd. Listen. ‘Many men have sued for peace and general pardon, and the Tudor has shown much mercy. In sooth, in the case of a man named Sir James Tyrell, he has shown what some think to be an overabundance of it, for he has granted the man a general pardon not once but twice, with barely a month between the two.’ She adds that it was no doubt done in error.”

Jonet nodded agreement with that assessment, but Alys paused thoughtfully. For men to sue for general pardon had become quite common, and meant that individual infractions were not examined closely, nor even specifically written down. Since Sir James had been a follower of Richard’s, it was not odd that he had asked for a pardon, but to have received two of them only a month apart must mean that he had done something new in the meantime, something not covered by the first pardon. She could not believe in a casual error of such magnitude. What could he have done?

Her tumbling thoughts frightened her, but she thought it unwise to discuss them with Jonet, and there was no one else in whom she could confide. She was getting along with Gwilym but only because they rarely saw each other. When he was not busy with the estate, he occupied himself with training men or horses, and she was kept busy with the domestic details. As a result of their efforts, Wolveston was thriving as it had not done for years. The castle was now comfortably furnished, the farms had tenants planting crops again, and the villages, their populations once ravaged by the sweat, had begun to thrive anew.

Gwilym had moved rapidly into the vacuum left by the deaths of her father and brother, and was well regarded by the tenants for his generosity and evenhanded stewardship. He understood the military resources of the region too. Not only could he be depended upon to have numbers and names at his fingertips should Sir Nicholas need to mobilize more men for the king but he encouraged men to practice their skills, even handing out gold coins to boys he saw practicing with their longbows. Alys could and did admire Gwilym’s skills, but he seemed gloomy again, and unapproachable. They took their meals separately, and she would not, in any case, have confided her worries to him.

With Madeline’s letter in hand, her yearning to be in the center of things again was overwhelming, and when Jonet prompted her to go on reading, she said, “Oh, she writes little more, only that Nicholas is at court now. Methinks I shall write to him, as you suggest, Jonet, and remind him that Elizabeth might take offense if I am not in attendance when her child is born.”

But the response to her request for permission to join the court came with unexpected swiftness, and was a flat negative. Nicholas himself followed soon after it, however, and despite her frustration, Alys was glad to see him. She was in her solar with Jonet, counting linens, when he strode into the room. Casting aside an armful of hand cloths to throw herself into his arms, she scarcely noticed that Jonet’s face lit up then fell again when he came in alone; and her own delight lasted only until he told her he could stay less than a week.

“But you have been gone nearly three months!”

“I had duties, lass, far from here.”

“And an erring wife who required punishment,” she snapped, pulling away, making no effort to contain her flash of anger.