The Rose of Blacksword (2 page)

“Please, milady, come along now. Let me see you back to Lady Gwynne and Lord Ogden. Your aunt was most concerned that you should rest.…” He took a hesitant step toward her small, bowed figure. “You’re finished here now. Come away.…”

He trailed off as she turned a pale and haunted face up to him. Her eyes became even more brilliant than usual, their pale gold and green centers glistening with her tears.

“I
am
finished here,” she agreed in a soft, wistful tone. She rubbed absently at the dirt clinging to her hands as the thought that had been lurking in her mind these past two days now became clearer. “I no longer need tend my little brother. There’s truly no reason for me to stay here at Millwort Castle any longer, is there?” She sighed and looked down at her hands, unaccountably frightened by what she realized she must do. “Giles is beyond all help now. It’s time that I went home.”

“Home?” Cleve ventured nearer the mourning girl. “But, milady, this
is
your home. You needn’t leave here. Why, my Lady Gwynne would be quite distraught to lose you. And anyway, until your father hears of Master Giles’s
death—” He hesitated and then made a quick sign of the cross. “Until he is told and decides what to do, then you mustn’t think of leaving here atall. No, not atall,” he stated quite firmly.

Rosalynde pushed a thick tendril of her dark mahogany hair back from her cheek. “And who’s to tell the Lord of Stanwood about the loss of his son if not I? If not the very one he entrusted his only male heir to?” She turned her face back to the little mound of earth that was her brother’s grave and to the scrawny rosebush that marked its presence. She remembered well her father’s parting words to her despite her tender age so long ago. He’d said it that first time he had left her off at Millwort with her infant brother. And he’d said it each of the few times he had visited them these long eight years since. “Take good care of your brother,” he had told her. “Take good care of your brother.”

She had tried very hard to do just that despite Giles’s weak constitution. But she had failed. For all that she had tried her best to save him, she had failed.

New tears started and fell unabashedly down her pale cheeks, and she was hard-pressed to know whether they were caused by sorrow or an inexplicable dread of seeing her father. Yet she knew she could not avoid him. Her eyes grew wide as she stared bleakly at her brother’s grave. “I am the one who must do it. I must tell my father that his heir is dead.”

Rosalynde took one last look about the cheerful chamber that had been her own for the past eight years. It was much more home to her now than was the castle where she had been born and lived her first eleven years. Lady Gwynne and Lord Ogden had been good to her since her mother died. They had opened their home and their
hearts to a frightened girl and her newborn baby brother. When her mother had died in childbirth, it had seemed to Rosalynde that she had lost both of her parents, for her father had become an angry, unreasonable stranger after that. Then as soon as the tiny baby had been able to be moved, they had both been sent to live at Millwort Castle. Lady Gwynne had welcomed her only sister’s children, and in the intervening years she had been as much a mother to them as was possible to be.

For Giles, Lady Gwynne and Lord Ogden had been the only parents he had ever known. The silent, scowling stranger who had visited them only three times through the years had hardly seemed a father to him. But Rosalynde had never forgotten her true parents. Her father’s brief stopovers at Millwort had been joyfully anticipated but heartbreakingly cruel. All the old wounds had been opened each time by his aloofness, by the distance he kept between himself and his children. All the feelings of abandonment had become fresh once more, blinding her to everything but her private pain.

Giles had not understood. Lady Gwynne had only shushed Rosalynde’s tears, telling her she expected too much, that a powerful knight like Sir Edward, Lord of Stanwood, could not be expected to display the sort of soft affection she wanted of him. Men simply weren’t like that, she had explained.

But Rosalynde had known otherwise. She remembered a father who had swung her up on his shoulders despite her mother’s laughing objections. She remembered a father who had carved two wooden horses for her—a mare and a stallion. He had promised her the foal as well. She recalled clearly when he had made that promise: Her mother had lain abovestairs, struggling to have a child
while her husband and daughter had waited nervously below in the main hall.

But over the long hours of that day, into the evening and then the night, their hopefulness had turned to fear and then to awful dread. The babe had finally come, tiny and frail, hardly expected to last out the night. But her mother, the beautiful laughing Lady Anne, had simply faded away. No words to her husband or child. No complaints or even cries of anguish to the women attending her. She had just slipped away quietly, leaving in her wake a gloom that very likely still lingered at Stanwood.

Rosalynde sighed deeply and rubbed her burning eyes. Perhaps that was what had affected her father the most, she speculated unhappily. He had not had the chance to bid good-bye to the woman he had adored. As a consequence, he had turned a hardened heart to everyone, his children included.

But how was he to react to this latest loss? she wondered. How would he respond when she arrived unannounced with such awful news? Although he had never indicated the slightest feelings for the babe that had been the cause of his wife’s death, Rosalynde was certain this new blow would hit him hard. Despite his emotional remoteness, she knew he cared deeply about his children’s welfare and about his eventual heir. That was why he had sent them to Millwort. Rosalynde was to be well trained in the wifely arts, and Giles, when he was old enough, was to be trained in his letters and all the manly pursuits. She was to become a suitable man’s wife. Giles was to inherit Stanwood Castle and the surrounding demesne.

As the years had gone by, however, her father had neglected Lady Gwynne’s appeals that he decide on a husband for Rosalynde. He had delayed and delayed, although never with any real reason to do so. The good Lady
Gwynne had fussed that he simply did not want to believe that Rosalynde was old enough to be wed.

Rosalynde had been secretly relieved, for she had no desire to be removed to another home, far away from the only security she knew. She was happy at Millwort. Besides, although she knew her marriage to some lord of her father’s choosing was inevitable, she did not look forward to it at all. She was content to live at Millwort Castle with her aunt and uncle. She learned her duties gladly and even participated in Giles’s lessons. As a result she had learned to read and to letter quite proficiently. The somber monk who had taught her brother had been particularly outdone that a girl could cipher so well. Not at all proper knowledge for a lady, he had grumbled time and time again. But Lady Gwynne had always soothed him with extra sweets from the kitchens, and so the years had passed in relative peace.

Only now it had come to an end.

Rosalynde slid her hand lovingly one last time along the satin-stitched coverlet that adorned her high wooden bed. She and Lady Gwynne had labored long over it. Well, maybe one day she would return to its comfort, she told herself. Perhaps she might be back at Millwort before very long at all.

But deep inside Rosalynde did not believe it. She was going to Stanwood Castle because she felt she must. What was to come after that she could not begin to imagine.

“You need not go,” Lady Gwynne beseeched Rosalynde one more time. “You still may change your mind and let Lord Ogden send the news to your father by messenger.”

“It must be me who tells him. I owe him that much,” Rosalynde replied earnestly to her aunt’s concerned expression. “He left Giles with me—”

“He left Giles with Lord Ogden and myself,” the good lady interrupted almost angrily. “You were but a child yourself, and only a little more than that now.” Then her tone softened and she pressed her palms affectionately to Rosalynde’s wan cheeks. “It was our heavenly Father’s will to take Giles, Rosalynde. We may not question His purpose.”

Rosalynde stared at her aunt’s kindly face, wishing she could feel that same unshakable faith. But although she knew her aunt was right—indeed, prior to Giles’s passing she would never have questioned God’s will—now she was not so sure. She sighed and managed a weak smile.

“No matter the reason, ’tis time I went home. Even if my father does not want me there, that household no doubt needs a woman’s hand.”

Rosalynde knew that was one argument her aunt could not reason against, for she had many times voiced the same thought. Nevertheless, the older woman could only give her niece a watery smile and then pat her cheek one last time.

“Be a good girl,” she instructed, though tears streamed down her lined face. She tucked Rosalynde’s maidenly plait into the hood of her forest-green wool cloak. “Be a good girl and remember everything you’ve been taught.”

“I will,” Rosalynde reassured the dear woman as she gave her a tight hug. “Thank you. Thank you for everything—” Her voice caught on a sob as she realized she truly was leaving. “I won’t let you down,” she whispered through her tears.

“I doubt you could, even if you wanted to.” Lady Gwynne gave a sad laugh as she squeezed her young charge’s hand.

“And don’t be fearing your father, young lady.” Lord Ogden gave her a brief awkward hug, then stepped hastily
back from her, uncomfortable with his own emotions.

“He’s a difficult man. Perhaps he doesn’t meet the expectations of a young girl like yourself. But he’s your father and you owe him your duty.”

“I know that,” Rosalynde murmured. “And I’ll not disappoint you.” She gave a sad smile to her aunt and uncle. Could she ever thank them enough for how good they had been to her and Giles? She stared at their downcast faces and bit her lower lip against the terrible sorrow that threatened to overwhelm her. How she would miss them.

Then her cream-colored palfrey was led around, and before she was quite prepared to go, she was mounted and everyone was ready to leave. Lord Ogden had a few last-minute instructions for the men-at-arms who would be her escort. She was to ride in their midst, never ahead or behind them. Because her regular maid was with child, another was to accompany her, but in addition to the reluctant maid, Rosalynde had asked for Cleve to come with her to Stanwood, and in a weak moment Lord Ogden had acquiesced. Now as the gangling youth guided his sturdy mount beside her mare, he gave her an encouraging look.

“It will be all right, milady. You’ll see.” Then he grinned, obviously excited at the prospect of the journey to his new home. He had never been off the Millwort holdings except for one brief trip to Abingdon Abbey. Now he was to go five days’ journey east to Stanwood, and he could not contain his exuberance. If for no other reason than that, Rosalynde was pleased to have him along. A faint smile lifted her piquant features as she fell in line with two knights before her, another two following, and the pair of two-wheeled carts trailing behind with her maid, her belongings, and the necessary provisions for the journey.

“It appears that you are as anxious to leave as I am
anxious to stay.” She gave Cleve a rueful glance. “Have you no regrets at all to be leaving your home?”

“None,” he answered at once. “But you needn’t go, Lady Rosalynde. You needn’t. The messenger can carry the news to your father. It need not be you who tells him.”

“Oh, but it must,” she answered with a faraway look in her amber-green eyes. “I’m all that’s left to my father, whether he cares or not. I was to look after Giles, and I’m the one to tell him of our loss.”

She was silent after that and the boy decided it best not to press her. As time went by she would come out of this sadness that weighed so heavily upon her. Once she arrived at her father’s home and gave him the sad news, she would begin to feel a little better. He maneuvered his pony as ordered by one of the knights but he kept his dark-brown eyes on his mistress’s preoccupied face.

It was not like her to be so somber, so subdued. Her grief for her little brother affected Cleve sorely, for she of all people did not deserve such sorrow. He had always thought Lady Rosalynde the most beautiful, the most delightful maiden in the land. Or at least the fairest that he had ever seen. But it went far beyond the lustrous mahogany gleam of her long thick hair and the luminous glint in her unusual golden-green eyes. Any other maiden might have been quite vain to be possessed of such a slender yet curvaceous figure. Any other might have preened over such a translucently pale complexion, which still showed the bloom of roses in her cheeks.

But his mistress always thought of others before herself. She saw beauty all around her and goodness where it might otherwise go undetected and, in so doing, never saw what he and everyone else so clearly recognized. She was a jewel among common river rocks, a sparkling gem set amid pebbles of lesser worth. Where she walked the sun
shone brighter, the grass grew greener, and the birds sang far sweeter.

He shook his head at his own poetic nonsense. He was halfway to being in love with her—so were most of the other serving lads at Millwort Castle, for she did not put herself too high to have a pleasant word for whomever crossed her path. But she surpassed his sixteen years by another three, and as for her social ranking, what hope had a mere page when it came to a lady of the realm? Still, that did not prevent him from enjoying her company whenever she required something of him. She might be far beyond him, but he only admired her the more for it. He would be willing to do anything for his Lady Rosalynde.

Now as he stared at her she straightened, inadvertently causing the dark-green hood to slip down from her head. In the crisp morning light her dark hair gleamed like a halo. Cleve blinked his eyes hard as he stared at her fragile beauty. Then she spoke and her voice, though soft and small, had the musical lilt of an angel’s.

“We’d best not dawdle. The journey shall be long enough, and my father must be told.”