The Unveiling (22 page)

Was she so transformed? Could a bath and bliaut effect such?

He recovered, as evidenced by eyes that were no more kind than Squire Samuel’s or Charles’s when she had been brought from the tower.

“My lady,” he greeted Wulfrith’s mother.

“Squire Warren. Wulfrith is alone?”

“Nay, Lady Gaenor and Lady Beatrix yet attend him.”

Gaenor, to whom belonged the bliaut Annyn wore. Something painful sank through Annyn, something Rowan would not like.

“You may announce us,” Lady Isobel said.

Squire Warren turned and knocked.

“Enter!”

Wulfrith’s voice, strong and sure as if he had not suffered these past days, made Annyn’s heart jump. Telling herself it was time to put aside pride and plead for Rowan, she pressed her shoulders back.

Squire Warren pushed the door inward. “My lord, your lady mother calls and brings with her Jame—er, Lady Annyn Bretanne.”

Silence.

Annyn looked to Lady Isobel, but the woman’s eyes were forward. Would Wulfrith not see her?

“Bid them enter.”

A chill coursed Annyn, but it was more than the cold she had yet to fully warm away. Praying she would not shiver when she stood before Wulfrith, hoping Lady Gaenor was not terribly beautiful, Annyn followed Lady Isobel into the solar.

Garr was unprepared for the woman who entered behind his mother, who sought his gaze with those same eyes that had looked through his dreams at him. Though he had kissed her, even acknowledged she was pretty, Annyn Bretanne clothed and presented as a lady made a dry pit of his mouth. And caused his resentment to root deeper.

The transformation to lady was what had delayed her. What was his mother thinking? Here was the one who sought his death, who was responsible for an injury that could lame him for the remainder of his life, and yet she dressed Annyn in finest as if she were not a prisoner.

“She is the one?” Beatrix whispered where she sat to his left. “What ill befell her face?”

Her observation jolted Garr, for he had not noticed the bruise. Though it was more yellow than the purple it had been when last he had looked upon her, it remained distinct. But he had looked past it.

Gaenor shifted beside him, and when he glanced at her he saw she also stared. However, she held her tongue as her sister did not know how to do.

Though Isobel drew alongside the bed, Annyn halted at the center of the room, looked to Garr’s sisters where they sat on either side of him, then gave her stiff gaze to Garr.

Stiff because of his partly bared chest, he realized, remembering how she had avoided looking upon his body when she was disguised as a squire. For that, he nearly drew the coverlet higher. But she ought to be ill at ease.

Gaenor gasped. “She wears my bliaut! That vile creature wears my bliaut!”

It seemed she did
not
know how to hold her tongue.

“Aye, Daughter,” Lady Isobel said, “it is the same you were to wear to receive Lord Harrod who offers for you. Pity you cannot do so lacking a proper gown, hmm?”

That cooled Gaenor. Still, it was obvious she resented the woman in their midst. And neither was Beatrix pleased, though her pique was tempered by youthful curiosity.

Garr waved to the door where Squire Warren lingered. “Out! All of you!” He narrowed his gaze on Annyn. “Except you.”

Gripping a kerchief, she remained unmoving as Gaenor and Beatrix exited the chamber ahead of their mother.

“Mother!” Garr called.

She looked around.

“We shall speak on this.”

She inclined her head and closed the door.

Silence swelled between Garr and Annyn when their eyes met again.

Finally, she stepped forward. “I would speak to you of Rowan. He—”

“—is to know no mercy, just as he knows no honor.”

She halted at the foot of the bed. “Jonas was as a son to him. All these years he has believed, as I did, that ’twas you who killed him.”

As she had done? No longer did? Telling himself he did not care what she thought, he sat forward, causing the coverlet to fall to his waist. “For the last time”—he winced at the pain that lanced his shoulder—“I say your brother was not killed. Shame was his end.”

“You are wrong. I—” She snatched the kerchief to her mouth, turned her head, and coughed into it.

Was she ill? When she looked back, Garr saw the whites of her eyes were red and her cheeks flushed. And her cough had been nearer a bark.

She wiped her nose. “Upon my word, you are wrong.”

He should not have allowed Abel to hold her in the tower. As his mother had warned, she was a lady. Of course, no lady he had known could have endured what Annyn had at Wulfen.

She came around the bed. “Pray, Lord Wulfrith—”

“I will not argue it.”

“But he is ill.”

And she was not? It bothered that she should care so much for the man, and again he wondered if her relationship with Rowan was one of lost innocence. True, her mouth had seemed untried, but that did not mean the rest of her was.

He drew a breath and caught the scent of roses. Shot with a desire to breathe more deeply of her, he berated himself. “’Tis for yourself you ought to plead.”

She stepped nearer—within reach. “Then you would have him die there?”

“If that is what the Lord wills.”

Anger brightened her eyes. “The Lord did not place him in that...abyss of inhumanity.”

Once more, Garr turned his aching hand around an imaginary sword. “He did not, just as He did not make your Rowan loose an arrow on me!” Lord, why did he allow this conversation?

“That I have already explained. I can say no more on it.”

“Then do not.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Was it truly from you that my brother learned revenge belonged to God? Impossible, for you are without heart, Wulfrith who does not even bear a Christian name—with good reason I am sure.”

Garr knew he should let her retaliation pass, but the first lesson taught him refused to hold with this woman. Arm protesting, he clamped a hand around her wrist, dragged her forward, and slapped her hand to his bared chest. “I have a heart, Annyn Bretanne,” he bit inches from her face, “though your Rowan would have had it be otherwise.”

He heard her sharply indrawn breath, felt its trembling release on his face. In her eyes that he should not be able to read, he saw she remembered the last time they had been so near. As if no ill stood between them, as if her beauty were unsurpassed, as if she were warm and willing to lie down for him, his body stirred to the beat of his heart against her palm.

“Aye”—she slipped a tongue to her lips to moisten them—“but of such a heart one should not boast, Wulfrith.”

Garr released her. “I am done with you, Annyn Bretanne.”

She straightened. “For how long?”

“For however long it pleases me.”

“And then?”

“Then you shall see. Squire Warren!”

The door swung inward and the young man stepped inside.

“The lady is to be allowed the reach of the donjon, and only the donjon. This task I give you and Squire Samuel that you may redeem yourselves. Other than the garderobe, she goes nowhere without attendance.”

Dismay flickered in the squire’s eyes. “’Twill be done, my lord.”

“If she escapes,” Garr continued, “your time at Wulfen and Squire Samuel’s will be done.” He looked to where Annyn stood alongside the bed. “Take your leave and do not trouble my men overly much.”

She smiled tightly. “I would not think to.”

It vexed Garr that it was the same his mother had replied when he had earlier warned her against testing him, especially as she had then done so.

Annyn crossed the solar and stepped into the corridor.

“Be of good care,” Garr warned Warren.

“I assuredly shall, my lord.” He closed the door.

Garr sank back against the pillows and squeezed his shoulder. Had he torn the stitches when he seized Annyn? He looked to the bandages. God willing, there would be no seepage, for if he was to recover before Henry descended upon Stern, he could not waste even a day.

Annyn leaned back against the wall for fear she might crumble before Squire Warren. He would like that, but even if it was his due, she would not yield. She pushed off.

“Come.” He stepped past her.

Where? Of course, did it matter when her audience with Wulfrith had only gained her scorn? Though she, who had set to motion all that transpired, was once more made a lady, Rowan weakened in that horrible cell. And it seemed there was nothing she could do.

“Lady Annyn!”

She met the squire’s impatient gaze.

“Lady Isobel said you are to take the nooning meal with her, and it has begun.”

Though Annyn tried to ease the scratch in her throat by swallowing hard, it did not aid. As she followed the squire to the stairs, she coughed into the kerchief and knew she sounded nearly as bad as Rowan.

The mood of the hall altered with her arrival as all pondered and judged her. Still, she did not falter as Squire Warren guided her to the high table where Lady Isobel was seated with her daughters. And farther down the table sat Sir Merrick who allowed her no more than a brooding glance before looking elsewhere.

What was it about him? What did he know? When might she speak with him?

“Sit beside me, Lady Annyn,” bid the lady of the castle.

Skirting the table, Annyn looked to Gaenor and Beatrix whose eyes bored through her, then lowered to the bench beside Lady Isobel.

The woman leaned near. “Worry not. God shall deal with my son.”

“To what end?”

“Methinks that depends on you.” Wulfrith’s mother dipped her spoon into the steaming trencher, the contents of which would have made Annyn’s mouth moist were she not struck by the realization that the lady might be a valuable ally.

Though Annyn was not allowed to leave the donjon, there was nothing to prevent Lady Isobel from doing so. But how to convince her to aid the one who had nearly killed her son? For whatever reason she had pardoned Annyn—an incredible stretch—surely it would not extend to Rowan. Still, it was his only hope.

Ignoring Gaenor and Beatrix who continued to watch her from the other side of their mother, Annyn scooped stew from the trencher that had appeared before her. For the first time in days, the food she spooned into her mouth was hot, but though it warmed a path to her belly, her guilt that Rowan was not here to savor it bade her to lower her spoon.

“Lady Isobel,” she spoke low, “if I could speak to you about Sir Rowan?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You press my generosity too far.”

Of course she did. “Apologies, my lady.” Annyn rolled the spoon’s handle between thumb and forefinger while the woman continued to glare at her. Finally, Lady Isobel returned to her meal, but Annyn could not.

She coughed into the kerchief. How her throat ached, first from affecting a man’s voice, now from malady. But surely it did not compare to what Rowan suffered in that filthy, dank cell.

Annyn turned again to Lady Isobel. “I am beset with fatigue. If ’twould not offend you, I would seek my rest.”

Concern flitted across the woman’s face, and she looked to Squire Warren. “See Lady Annyn to Wulfrith’s chamber. It shall be hers for the duration of her stay.”

The protest that rose to Annyn’s lips died with the realization it was not the solar of which the woman spoke, but the chamber in which Annyn had bathed.

Once Annyn was clear of the hall, she breathed out relief. However, at the landing she fell beneath Squire Samuel’s regard where he stood outside the solar.

The young man’s becoming face was made unbecoming by the scorn that bent his mouth and made slits of his eyes. “My lady,” he mocked as she drew even.

Annyn halted and let the spark in her light a fire. “I
am
a lady,” she said with her chin high. “A lady that you, with all your training to become the consummate warrior, were too blind to see. A lady that you allowed to steal past you and compromise your lord’s safety.”

His brow grooved so deeply it nearly made him appear elderly.

“Good eve, Squire Samuel.” Annyn stepped past. “Sleep light.” She met Squire Warren’s livid gaze where he stood a stride ahead. Though her words had not been directed at him, it had fallen as heavily. She did not care. A man might be dying and all the discomfort these two suffered was pricked pride.

As Squire Samuel sputtered at her back, she strode past Wulfrith’s first squire.

“Were you the least bit pretty,” Samuel’s convulsing tongue finally formed words, “you could not have done what you did.

He struck harder than he could know, nearly taking her breath for all these years of knowing she could never measure against her mother’s comeliness. Now, finally, someone had spoken it—worse, for the young man was not even comparing her against her mother’s profound beauty. Not even pretty...

Annyn’s spirit awakened and found good in it. At the door to her chamber, she turned and smiled. “I shall take that as a compliment, Squire Samuel, for if that is all that held this lady from being revealed, it recommends that I, a mere woman, am equal to men as they would not have me believe. Thank you.”

Mouths slackening, the young men stared.

Annyn shouldered into the chamber that wafted blessed heat, closed the door, and crossed to the small table beside the bed. She lifted the hand mirror that lay alongside the basin.

The face reflected back at her was one she had always known, though these past years she was less inclined to look upon it—oval, set with dark eyebrows above pale blue eyes that were a bit too large, a small nose flecked with freckles, and an unremarkable mouth.

Pretty, Lady Isobel had said, but she had only been kind.

Annyn spread her lips. Her teeth were her best feature, white and evenly set. The only real difference to be found since last she had looked upon her reflection was the bruise on her cheek. The swan that Uncle Artur had years ago assured her she would become had yet to materialize, meaning it would not.

As she set the mirror back, a tickle rose in her throat. She coughed, wiped her nose, and eyed the bed. She would rest, and in the morn perhaps she would think more clearly on Rowan.