The Spymaster's Protection (7 page)

"Yes, we are a monastic order, but our purpose is
narrower than most. We are strictly military monks; fighting men."

"I understand that you, frère, also do more than protect
and serve. Reynald has run a wide-reaching intelligence network for years. You
do the same for your Order, do you not, Brother de Aubric?"

"Is that what you have heard?"

"I have, from several people," Gabrielle informed
him, trying not to react to his crooked smile and the dangerous appeal in his
dark eyes.

Bemused by him and her response to him, she decided he could
charm the devil, himself. He was an incredibly attractive man, and she found
herself irritatingly drawn to him. The hard planes and angles of his face were
utterly mesmerizingly, especially when he smiled.

"What you have heard is accurate," Lucien finally
admitted. "I do have many contacts in the Muslim world, and I might be
able to assist you in placing these children. I could at least talk to a few of
my contacts and encourage them to help you on the matter. I would not recommend
you do this alone, though."

"Would you be willing to introduce me to some of these
people?" She was relieved that he was now being more serious. Lucien de
Aubric’s smile was simply too disturbing.

"I will put out some inquiries, and if I can generate
interest, I will set up a meeting. I will, of course, go with you."

Gabrielle frowned uncertainly. "Will your Order allow you
to accompany me?"

"I will arrange it."

She remembered Hazir saying this man followed his own path.
She knew that the rank and file Templars could never do that. They were bound
by oath to be obedient in all things, and they could not go about on their own,
but that did not always hold true for the higher-ranking officers. She had seen
many of them come and go, on their own, at Kerak and at the royal palace.
Still, there was no way she could visit the Templar garrison here in Jerusalem
the way she did the Hospitaller complex. While the Hospital allowed women to
work and be treated here, the Templars allowed access to no female, unless they
were under siege and taking all nearby inhabitants inside their garrison for
protection.

"You may use Hazir as a messenger," she offered.

"I will." Leaning with an arm braced casually
against the tree she sat under, he looked down at her and gave her one last
slow smile. It stretched into a long moment of silence.

Thankfully for Gabrielle, Brother Giles returned and handed
them both a wooden cup of cool well water, then announced that Lucien's friend,
Brother Conrad, was looking for him.

"The messenger said he is waiting in our chapter
house," the Hospitaller stated.

Lucien was reluctant to leave. His visit with Gabrielle de
Châtillon had been entirely too short, and he was already thinking of some way
to see her again. But with Brother Conrad waiting, he could hardly delay.
Finally, he bid her good day.

Gabrielle watched him walk across the small courtyard and into
the residential hall with Brother Giles. His powerful physique disappeared too
quickly, and she was left feeling strangely bereft.

For the remainder of the day, she continued to think about
Lucien de Aubric. His dark angular face and tall muscular build drew a woman's
attention immediately, and he smelled better than any Templar she had ever met.
While most of them kept their habits clean and orderly, thanks to the Order's
drapers, they did not believe in regular bathing like the Arabs did. She had
even overheard Reynald snicker behind their backs about their practice of never
changing their lambs' wool drawers. Considering how foul-smelling many were,
Gabrielle believed the story to be true.

But Brother de Aubric smelled of leather and sandalwood soap.
There was nothing offensive about him, except his slight penchant for
arrogance. It was not the same overbearing, belittling arrogance Reynald and
her father demonstrated, though. And, despite her initial impression of him,
she’d discovered that he did possess a capricious sense of humor. Or maybe he
simply enjoyed teasing her. It had taken Gabrielle awhile to recognize it as
such.

She wasn't used to being teased by a man. Her father had
always been a harsh, disapproving man, first with her mother, then with her.
Gabrielle had concluded long ago that he had never loved either of them. While
Simone Chaumont had been alive, she had sheltered her from his scorn and
abusive rages.

To her great disappointment, her father’s rages had not
stopped after Gabrielle’s marriage. His brutality had simply been replaced by
her husband’s. Reynald de Châtillon was was every bit as physically abusive,
and he had added a disgusting sexual deviancy that she had found detestable and
always painful. All of her fourteen-year-old innocence had been utterly
shattered by the husband who had been over two score years her senior. Reynald
de Châtillon had emerged from fifteen years in a Saracen prison more malevolent
than when he had entered.

She'd truly been chattel to both her husband and her father
until she'd found a way to escape her hellish existence. Now, she was simply
unwanted baggage. They paid her no more attention than they had to, and as long
as she did not embarrass them or inconvenience them, they let her be. Although
Gabrielle was aware that Reynald wished to be rid of her in order to marry the
licentious heiress of Hebron, she had never wished to accommodate his quest for
an annulment. By acquiring Silvia’s fiefdom, Reynald would command a demesne
that would rival the wealth of Galilee and the political influence of the count
of Tripoli.

Gabrielle wished her husband and her father both would expire
of heart failure or be mortally wounded in their numerous raids into Saladin's
territory. God forgive her for her sinfulness, but never did two men deserve
retribution as much as Armand Chaumont and Reynald de Châtillon.

Both men had been comrades in conquest for over three decades.
They had come to Outremer with King Louis VII in 1148. When Reynald became Lord
of Antioch in 1153 by marrying Princess Alice, Armand became his seneschal. Together,
they had killed, raped, and pillaged from Antioch to Cyprus to beyond the Red
Sea. Gabrielle knew for a certainty that they had destroyed more innocent lives
than simply her own.

When Reynald had been captured by the Saracens and sent to
Aleppo, Armand had taken his wife and infant daughter to Jerusalem and
eventually had become bailli to King Amalric. As a reward for his service, the
king gave Armand a small fief in Oultrejourdan, recently vacated by the death
of Paganus the Butler, Kerak’s builder.

Upon release from an Arab prison, Reynald had immediately
looked up his old friend. The potential wealth he saw in the region prompted
his unholy bargain with Armand. Gabrielle became the prize, and with her
marriage to Reynald, Armand saw Castle Kerak and his fief in Oultrejourdan grow
in size until it was one of the largest, most strategic in the Kingdom of
Jerusalem. As a reward for selling his young daughter, Armand became the very
wealthy seneschal of Montreal, a garrison Reynald captured to the south of
Kerak.

After years of her tortuous marriage to the man known as the
kingmaker, she had fortunately been set aside to live peacefully in Jerusalem.
There she had finally begun to build a worthy life for herself. And now, she
had, by chance, met a man who made her pulse flutter every time she saw him. In
all of her nearly twenty-six years, she had never been attracted to any man.
Maybe her budding interest in Lucien de Aubric was simply a result of
inexperience and naiveté, but it felt like something more; something fateful
and singularly significant.

When he looked at her, it was with warmth, affection, and a
keen interest that was so completely focused on her. She'd received admiring
looks from men before, but they had always been predatory, lustful, and base.

Lucien de Aubric looked beneath the surface; beyond the
exterior appeal. And from the first, she'd felt an indefinable connection
between them; some affinity that seemed quite extraordinary. Maybe she was
simply indulging in ridiculous fantasies, but it was a heady sensation, and,
against all her better judgment, she wanted to explore it. She wanted to see
Lucien de Aubric again.

She wondered if that was why she had asked him to help her
find appropriate homes for the Muslim children at the orphanage? She had been,
afterall, managing to do just that for a couple of years now on her own.
Brother Giles and several other clerics had put her in contact with several
good Muslim families willing to help.

Asking Brother de Aubric for help felt very much like an
excuse to see him again. She wondered with no small measure of embarrassment if
he had seen such a motive in her request.

It was all well and good to seek help wherever she could, but
he was a monk, afterall. She had no business encouraging meetings between them.
Long ago her marriage vows had stopped holding any sanctity for her. While she
had remained faithful to Reynald, it had not been out of respect for him, but
out of respect for herself.

But she could not, in all good conscience, think of Brother
Lucien's vows as anything but sacred and inviolate. She must only think of him
as a friend, the way she thought of Brother Giles and the other clerics she
worked with. No matter that his dark sensual stare felt like a physical caress,
or that his deep husky voice made her shiver. She’d try to ignore that
devilishly charming smile that could melt stone. For his sake and hers, none of
that could matter. The next time she saw him, she would control all those
treacherous responses that had played such havoc with her senses and her
principles from the moment she had met him in the desert.

CHAPTER
5

Gabrielle had a
fortnight to convince herself that she would respond differently to Lucien de
Aubric the next time she saw him. Like all the nobility in Jerusalem, she had
been invited to the celebration for the king's birthday at the palace. No one
dared to ignore the summons, especially after all the dissent and rancor that
had followed the recent coup. While many would have tolerated Sibylla on the
throne, few liked having Guy of Lusignan. But now that he was king, few wanted
to incur his disfavor by shunning him.

Gabrielle dreaded
the occasion because it brought her husband and father into town. They arrived
the day before the scheduled event and took over her home like they owned it,
which of course they did. But Gabrielle seldom saw either of them anymore, and
she felt invaded. All of her small handpicked household staff was immediately
set upon; bullied and shouted at and ordered around relentlessly by her demanding
father and husband.

She seethed with silent fury over the degrading way both men
treated her Arabic staff, for each one of them had become more family to her
than servant. All she could do to protect them was to keep them out of sight as
much as possible, which meant she saw to many of the needs of the two men
herself. Their maltreatment was nothing new to her, but it was hard not to
retaliate after she had enjoyed so much freedom these past five years.

Moving away from Kerak and finding such personal fulfillment
in her work with the orphans had healed her and made her stronger. As a result,
her greatest fury came from her renewed feelings of impotence. Yet it would
have been foolhardy to challenge her husband. She did not dare invite his heavy
hand, for herself or her staff. So she held her tongue and reminded herself
that both men were only here for a couple of days.

On the day of the birthday celebration, she arrived at court
with Reynald and Armand, praying for a swift conclusion to the event.

Knowing how the royals liked to dress in the Oriental fashions
of the Byzantine empire, Gabrielle chose to wear a sleeveless gold damask
surcoat over a simple ivory chainse with long wide sleeves, banded above her
elbows, trimmed in bright gold thread. Instead of being girdled at the hips as
was the fashion in the West, her outer garment fell in slender tapering lines
to her silk slippered feet, with long armholes cut to her waist. Her headrail,
worn over a wimple of sheer ivory silk, was wound and interwoven with braided
gold cord into a turban.

Neither Reynald, nor her father had remarked on her
appearance, though Hazir’s daughter, who acted as her maidservant, had
pronounced her lovely enough to rival the queen. Secretly, Gabrielle knew she
had taken such care with her appearance simply in the hope of seeing a certain
dark-haired Templar.

The palace where the Christian kings and queens of Jerusalem
had resided since King Baldwin the II had moved out of the Temple Mount and the
al-Aqsa mosque, leaving it to the Templars, was a newly erected building next
to the Tower of David. Designed with a Byzantine influence, it was a sprawling
complex, which rose four stories high and covered an entire block. Fortress
walls surrounded the entire structure, with a double gatehouse, bridged by a
heavy oak and iron gate at the primary entrance.

In the center of the square structure, there was an enormous
open-air courtyard, bordered on the outer edges by opulent Mediterranean
gardens that provided a cool buffer between the interior and exterior of the
palace. A wide variety of potted palms and stately trees shaded the marble
benches lining the edges of the rectangular court. And in the center, a huge
multi-tiered fountain rose two stories high, spilling water in a shimmering
cascade to the large circular pool at its base.

Latticed balconies and long porticoes rimmed the upper levels
of the palace, all looking over the flag-stoned courtyard below. As Gabrielle
walked across the square to the cavernous receiving hall, brilliantly colored
silk draperies blew from open windows above her head, mingling with the riotous
shades of bougainvillea, snow-white jasmine, and a breathtaking array of
hanging flowers.