The Unveiling (15 page)

“Nay, it belonged to my brother.”

His brother... Something about the young man’s voice and the accusation in his eyes wrenched Garr far from Wulfen.

It could not be. He looked again to the misericorde, turned it, and found the initials that, newly knighted, he had scratched into the blade beneath the hilt: G.W.

It was. The filthy urchin who had so hated him with her eyes, who had marked him with her nails, and now her teeth, had become a woman.

Anger coursed through Garr, once more testing the first lesson his father had taught him. Before he could dam the emotion, it flooded him and he caught the front of his assailant’s tunic. Staring into her startled blue eyes, he slashed the dagger down through the material.

A cry parted bowed lips and showed straight, even teeth.

Garr stared at the bindings revealed between the edges of the rent tunic. And he was not the only one to see the truth of Jame Braose.

Amid shock that parted mouths and put tongues to voices, Garr returned to the face he had never truly seen. A pretty face. The face of a woman, and one whose chin did not fall, whose eyes were wide with an anger that challenged his own.

He dragged her near. Not until her face was inches from his, and no less defiant, did the full impact of her presence hit him. A woman within Wulfen’s walls where there had never been one. A woman! And one not unknown to him.

Were I a man, I would kill you. Were I a man...

Garr put his face nearer hers and dared her to hold his gaze. Though something flickered in her eyes—fear, he thought, though with women one could not be certain—she did not look away.

“A woman at Wulfen!” Lavonne jeered. “Tell, Lord Wulfrith, who is this foul creature who has made a fool of you?”

Still Garr waited for her to look away. “The
lady’s
name is Annyn Bretanne.”

Despite the unveiling, she did not even blink.

Lavonne choked, spluttered, and demanded, “What do you say?”

“This is Lady Annyn Bretanne of Aillil,” Garr repeated, the hand with which he held her aching to batter flesh and bone. Praying Lavonne would give him a reason to turn his anger from the woman to whom he could not put a fist, he looked to the baron.

The horror in Lavonne’s eyes turned to rage. “Unhand the termagant!” From the color that rose on his face and the spasming of his right eye, he did not demand the Bretanne woman’s release that he might offer her his protection. “Unhand her I say!”

Garr twisted her tunic in his fist, bringing her so near he could feel her breath on his jaw. “She is my prisoner.”

“Nay, she is my...” Lavonne drew a rattled breath. “...betrothed.”

The grudging pronouncement stunned Garr, as it also seemed to stun the woman who gasped and breathed, “Nay.”

“This
termagant,
” Garr bit, “the same who tried to murder me, is to be your
wife?
”

Lavonne raised his seething gaze. “By order of Duke Henry. But do not think I knew what she intended, for until this hour she was unknown to me. Nine days past she and her man, Rowan, fled Castle Lillia. None knew she was destined for Wulfen, and certainly none knew she had donned men’s clothes to pretend herself a man.”

Though Garr was unconvinced Lavonne was blameless, for the moment he was done with him. He looked to Everard, Abel, and Sir Merrick, and momentarily wondered at the unease wreathing the latter’s face. Did his breath trouble him again?

“Clear the hall!” Garr shouted. He would have none lend an ear to his dealings with the Bretanne woman. He dragged her toward the dais.

“Lord Wulfrith,” Lavonne called, “I demand—”

“Remove the baron!” Garr shouted over his shoulder.

Despite Lavonne’s protests, his voice quickly faded from the hall.

Garr pulled the woman around the high table, thrust the curtain aside, and propelled her ahead of him into the solar. If not for the table she stumbled against, she might have lost her footing. He almost wished she had. Such anger he felt to once more know betrayal at the hands of a Bretanne!

Annyn returned the stare of the man whose death she had denied herself. Now it was surely she who would die, for regardless that Henry had promised her to the detestable Lavonne, Wulfrith would not deny himself.

Though fear made her long to clutch her tunic closed, she found strength in knowing her destiny. Laying her hands flat on the table behind, she raised her chin.

Still holding the misericorde that had waited four years to bleed him, Wulfrith strode toward her.

Annyn steeled herself for his assault.

He halted before her. Eyes so cold it was as if an icy wind swept the solar, he slid the misericorde beneath his belt. “You have made a fool of me, Annyn Bretanne.”

Though she longed to sidestep and put the room between them, she stretched her chin higher. “I would think you pleased that I did not make a corpse of you.”

A muscle in his jaw leapt, but the anger that had pulsed from him in the hall had diminished as if he were gaining control of it. “Were you a man, you would kill me, hmm?” he repeated the threat she had made upon seeing Jonas laid out at Lillia.

She squeezed the table edge. “It is what I said. It is what I meant.”
But what I could not do.
Did he know? As no sooner had she forsaken her vow to Rowan than Wulfrith had seized her, she could not be certain. “My brother’s death was no mishap as you told—as you lied. He was murdered.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Did you truly believe the rope burns around his neck would go undiscovered?”

Wulfrith’s jaw strained, his only reaction to learning she knew the truth.

“Honorable death!” Were she a man, she would spit.

“I kill when ’tis necessary to defend home, land, and my people,” Wulfrith growled, “but I am no murderer. No innocents fall to my sword.”

“Do they not? You were ready to hang, draw, and quarter Lavonne!”

He smiled grimly. “Was I?”

Had his threat to the baron been only that—meant to reveal the one whom Wulfrith believed Lavonne had enlisted?

“In one thing you are right,” Wulfrith conceded. “Your brother’s death was not honorable. Forsooth, ’twas most
dis
honorable.”

The admission, could it be called that, took Annyn’s breath. She waited for more, but he strode to the cool brazier.

“How dishonorable?”

He looked around. “Where is Jame Braose?”

Then he would not tell her of Jonas’s death. Very well. Murder was murder regardless how it was done. Still, to know...

“Did you and your man Rowan, whom I presume is the one who calls himself Sir Killary, murder him?”

“Murder!” Annyn pushed off the table. “I am no mur—” She lowered her gaze. From what had passed this night, he would believe her capable of murder. He need never know of her failing.

She met his gaze. “Jame Braose is at Castle Lillia where he was brought after Duke Henry captured him and his escort. I took his name and place. That is all.”

Wulfrith traversed the solar and once more placed himself over her. “Nay, Annyn Bretanne, that is not all.”

Though he seemed to have gained control of his emotions, still there was anger in him, anger for her daring to enter a place forbidden to women, for disguising herself as a man, for the dagger that had sought his blood, for the fool she had made of him. Would her death satisfy?

“Is my fate to be the same as my brother’s? Will you hang me?”

She heard his teeth snap and would have looked away if not that her fate could be no worse than that which she had already accepted. However, she was unprepared when his large hands settled around her neck, causing a small cry to burst from her.

With his thumbs, he pressed her chin higher. “Though ’twould be within my rights to put you to the noose and none would call it murder, there are better means of punishment.”

Why could she not breathe when his hands were not so tight as to prevent it? Though she swallowed, still she could not open her throat.

“’Twas Rowan in the wood, was it not?” he asked.

Sliced by fear for the man who had stood by her when there was no other, she lowered her gaze so Wulfrith would not see her weakness. Glimpsing his chest revealed between the edges of his robe, she looked lower and lit upon the misericorde. It was within reach.

“You wish to try again?” Wulfrith challenged. “To fail again?”

She hated him for knowing the course of her thoughts.

“Aye,” he said, “it was Rowan in the wood, though what I do not understand is why you did not turn the arrow on me.”

Finally, breath stuttered through her. Defiance all that held her head above fear, she said, “I should have.”

Slowly—purposefully—he drew his thumbs downward, but did not stop at the base of her throat. Hands splaying her collarbone, he continued to the upper edge of her bindings and hooked his thumbs beneath.

Would he tear them from her? Make her suffer greater humiliation than when he had revealed her in the hall? Ravish her? This last jolted, for she could not believe it was something he would do.

Poltroon!
shrilled the darkness within. If he could murder, he could violate. Still, she remembered the chapel and the man on his knees praying for England. Could that man murder? Ravish?

The uncertainty, the warring between past and present, and her body’s response to his touch, made her long to scream.

“I shall find this Rowan,” Wulfrith broke through her turmoil.

So few words for so great a threat! For her, Rowan had sacrificed his allegiance to Henry. And now, perhaps, his life. She would rather die ten times than have him suffer for her ills.

“He has done naught. Though I convinced him to assume the person of Sir Killary, still I would have come had he not agreed. He did it to protect me.”

“Protect you?” Wulfrith dropped his hands from her. He turned, put a stride between them, and came back around. “Where is he now that you are in need of protection—
dire
need of protection?” He pointed to the outside wall of the solar. “He cowers in yon wood waiting for you to murder a man he also wishes dead.”

He did not know that. Did he?

“I am right, hmm?”

Annyn took an entreating step forward. “Pray, do not—”

“You are lovers?”

She drew a sharp breath. Truly Wulfrith must think her base to believe such when he, her enemy, had been more intimate with her than any. Of course he could not know his was the first man’s body she had seen unclothed. “Rowan should not be made to answer for what I did. Pray—”

“Pray! Aye, that you should do. And do not stop ’til you’ve no more breath.”

Then there was nothing she could say or do. Her revenge was now his and he would not turn from it.

Annyn stiffened her spine and crossed her arms over her chest. “I have naught else to say to you.”

“That is good, but there is one thing more I need to know.” He came to her again. “Raise your arms.”

“For what?”

He stepped nearer and slid his hands beneath her arms and down her sides.

Annyn strained away, but he gripped her sides.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Have you more weapons?”

“Only my teeth.”

His lips thinned, but rather than speak the words surely on his tongue, he continued his search. Less gentle, though still impersonal, his hands at her waist caused the fine hairs along her limbs to stand erect. And when he ventured up again, one hand curving around to her back, the other passing over her belly, she tried again to evade him.

He placed a hand against her lower ribs and sought her gaze.

“I have no more weapons,” she said through clenched teeth.

His hard eyes did not believe her. “If you wish me to spare you further humiliation, you will remain still.” He dropped to his haunches, turned a hand around each ankle, and slid upward.

Trying to put her mind anywhere but here, Annyn looked to the ceiling.

He felt her calves, her knees, her thighs. She trembled. He swept her hips, brushed the hose tucked in her braies. She shuddered.

“Hose?” he rumbled.

“Aye.” She steeled herself for further degradation, but he straightened and swung away.

“We leave within the hour.”

She felt as if dashed with chill water. “Leave?”

He halted before the curtains. “I will not have Wulfen further befouled by a woman.”

As if women were all the ill of the world when they were the life and breath of it as her mother had told. “Where are you taking me?”

“Away.” He swept the curtain aside. “All of Wulfen is known to me, Annyn Bretanne,” he warned, then strode from the solar.

Leaning back against the table, she dropped her chin to her chest. She had failed, and now punishment would be hers. Unless...

Though there was no escaping Wulfen, once they left she might find an opportunity. But if she escaped Wulfrith, where would she go?

She shook her head. Later she would worry on it. If later came.

CHAPTER TEN

Now that Annyn Bretanne was unveiled, her deception revealed, where
would
he take her? Garr halted in the center of the hall. More, once he delivered her, what was to be done with this woman who had tried to murder him?

Hands remembering the feel of her, her trembling when he had searched her, he was disturbed as he did not wish to be.

He turned his hands into fists, but it provided no ease, and the anger he had pushed down found a foothold and climbed back up. This time, however, it was more anger for himself than Annyn Bretanne. During the past sennight, she had shown herself—in the unreadable eyes of a woman, her unease at viewing his man’s body, that she had slept fully clothed, the instances of a pitched voice he had told himself was between a boy’s and a man’s, and a grace unknown to young men. But perhaps the greatest evidence was when she had dropped to the horse and not been pained.

Remembering the hose in her braies, Garr growled. Though there were times he felt unworthy of lording Wulfrith lands, there had been none as great as this—unless one included Jonas Bretanne’s betrayal and subsequent death shortly after Drogo ceded the barony to Garr.