Where Love Has Gone (17 page)

“Elaine, please believe me,” Lord Bertrand
began.

“I will never believe you again!” she
exclaimed. “Not a single word you say.”

“Tell me this, Lord Bertrand,” Desmond said,
his fists firmly planted on his hips and his scowl deepening, “has
Lady Benedicta learned of the affair?
Was
it an affair, or
did you ravish Aglise against her will? Did she threaten to tell
what you had done to her?”

“I never hurt her. I loved her, and she loved
me,” Lord Bertrand said, his hands on his face as if to rub away
the look of inexpressible weariness that rested there. “Please,
just let it go. I didn’t kill Aglise. That’s all you need to
know.”

“Are you mad?” Elaine cried. “We cannot let
it go; surely, you realize that. If you didn’t kill her – though
why we should believe in your innocence, I cannot imagine – then,
someone else did. I intend to discover who it was.”

“If Lady Benedicta did know of the affair,”
Cadwallon said, “the knowledge would give her a good reason to kill
a beautiful and much younger rival.”

“I – I can’t talk about this any longer,”
Lord Bertrand said. Tears stood in his eyes. When he blinked, they
began to run down his cheeks. If Elaine hadn’t been so enraged with
him, and so horrified at the way he had violated his sacred trust
to protect his foster daughter, she almost could have felt sorry
for him.

“You cannot avoid talking about it,” Desmond
told him with implacable logic. “You will speak with us now, or we
will conduct you under guard to Caen, to stand before King Henry
and make your explanations to him. If we do take you to Caen, Lady
Benedicta must go with us. Once you are at court, both of you will
be subjected to insinuations and scandal, which I am sure you would
prefer to avoid. The truth may well help you. You say you did not
kill Aglise. Tell us what you do know about her death.”

“She was so bright and cheerful,” Lord
Bertrand whispered as if he was speaking to himself. “I’ve known
little warmth in my life, only fighting and bloodshed, a warrior’s
constant hardness and the cool respect of an arranged marriage. I
wanted just a little softness, a bit of sweetness and tenderness,
before I grew too old to savor what Aglise offered.”

“She should have been like a daughter to
you!” Cadwallon exclaimed.

“You didn’t know Aglise,” Lord Bertrand said.
He shook his head, despair in every line of his harsh features.
“Anyone less like a daughter, you cannot imagine. Always teasing
me, always laughing, giggling, so seductive – and so beautiful. So
very, very beautiful.”

“It was your duty to resist her lures,”
Cadwallon reminded him sternly. “It was your duty to protect her,
even against yourself.”

“I know.” Lord Bertrand sighed, a sound that
seemed to rise from the depths of his benighted soul. “I did try to
resist. For a long time I fought my desire for her. But once we
became lovers, I was helpless to stop. I was like a fish caught in
a net, that wriggles and wriggles, trying to get free, and all the
time it’s being pulled out of the water, slowly and inexorably,
sensing it’s doomed, but unable to escape.

“After the first time we made love,” Lord
Bertrand continued, “I went to her room whenever I knew she was
there alone. I had her in the stables, in a storeroom, on the beach
beneath the cliffs. Once, even in the dungeon when she followed me
there. She was insatiable, and I was besotted with her. We could
not stay away from each other.”

“You are disgusting,” Elaine cried, wishing
she could block her ears and hear no more about her sister’s
sensual corruption.

“I suppose I am,” he said sadly.

“I cannot be shocked at what you’ve said,”
Desmond told him. “I have seen too much of human depravity ever to
be shocked again. But, like Elaine, I am disgusted by what you’ve
done.”

“After she was dead, I took her necklace,”
Lord Bertrand said, gesturing toward the links still twined around
Desmond’s fingers, “because I yearned to have a keepsake, a
reminder of what I had lost. And I needed a reminder of my
sins.”

“What
you
had lost?” Elaine cried.
“Aglise lost her virtue, and her life. Against all that, you lost
nothing.”

“Only my heart.”

“You don’t have a heart. If you had, you
never would have seduced her. If you truly loved her, you would
have considered what was best for her and restrained your vile
lust.”

“She seduced me,” Lord Bertrand said.
“Though, I admit, I was her willing victim.”

“I will not listen to another word of your
pitiful excuses,” Elaine told him. “There can be no excuse for what
you’ve done. You are a disgrace to your noble rank. If Aglise, in
her youthful foolishness, had no compunctions about lying with you,
then you, being older and supposedly wiser, should have sent her
away from here rather than ruin her.”

“But,” Lord Bertrand cried, looking
desperate, “I did not kill her!”

“Then, who did?” Desmond asked.

Lord Bertrand clamped his lips together and
stood silent.

“What, no more words?” Desmond said, looking
grim. “After all your passionate excuses, after casting the blame
for your misdeeds onto a young woman who can no longer defend
herself against slander, suddenly you have nothing more to say?
Why, my lord? Can it be that if you tell the truth, you’ll put your
own life in jeopardy? The punishment for despoiling and murdering a
noble virgin is not a pleasant one.”

“Aglise was no virgin.”

“Liar!” Elaine stepped forward and slapped
Lord Bertrand hard across his mouth. “How dare you speak that way
about my little sister?”

“You are far too naive, Elaine.” Lord
Bertrand’s pale smile sent a chill through her. “You saw what
Aglise was doing, and you refused to believe it. She was much like
your mother, you know.”

“If only I had a sword,” Elaine declared,
“you would not live to draw another breath.”

“All of this talk is procrastination and
diversion,” Cadwallon interrupted. “Elaine, you’ve already learned
how this man lies every time he opens his mouth. At the moment, he
is deliberately lying to upset you, so he can avoid telling us what
we want to know. What we
will
know, one way or another, my
lord. Who killed Aglise?”

“I have nothing more to say,” Lord Bertrand
told them. “If any of you has a complaint against me, you may take
it to King Henry. With his consent, I will defend my honor with my
sword.”

“You have no honor,” Elaine declared. “You
forfeited all claim to knightly honor the first time you lay with
Aglise.”

“I refuse to listen to any more insults here,
in my own private chamber,” Lord Bertrand said. Lifting his head,
with all sign of humility and loss gone from his face, he looked
down his nose at them. “Since the weather is so foul, I will be
generous and allow you to remain at Warden’s Manor tonight – but,
only tonight. All three of you will leave Jersey on the first boat
departing from Gorey Harbor tomorrow. Whether it be your own ship,
the
Daisy
, that comes to retrieve you, or the meanest,
leaking fishing vessel, you will go.”

“Your order makes you look guilty,” Desmond
said, a faint smile curling his lips.

“I have sworn to you that I am not guilty of
murder. Since I am lord here, and my word is law, you will simply
have to believe me. Should King Henry wish my presence after he
hears your report to him, he may request it, and I will wait upon
him in due time. Now, leave me. I do not want to see any of you, or
speak to you, again.” With all the lordly arrogance of which he was
capable, Lord Bertrand pointed to the door.

“We will indeed leave,” Cadwallon told him
with an aristocratic coldness equal to that of any great nobleman,
“not because you command it, but because we can no longer bear to
look upon your face. Should King Henry decide on a contest of arms
to prove your guilt or innocence, I will beg him to allow me to be
his champion. Farewell, Bertrand.” Cadwallon turned his back and
stalked out of the lord’s chamber.

Elaine was shaking with indignation at the
way in which she and her friends had been dismissed. She longed to
stay and nag at her foster father until he gave in and revealed the
murderer’s name. She was certain he knew who had killed Aglise.
And, much like her suspicions of months past, when she had feared
she knew the identity of Aglise’s lover while knowing of no proof
that would carry any weight, she now feared she knew who the guilty
person must be. Yet, once again, she had no proof to back her
belief, and thus she dared make no accusation.

Before she could face down Lord Bertrand and
ask more questions that might elicit the truth if only he would
answer them, Desmond laid his arm across her shoulders and drew her
out of the room onto the landing at the top of the stairs. The
latch of the heavy door clicked shut behind them.

With Desmond’s arm still around her, Elaine
started down the steps. She was so distraught that she wasn’t
paying attention to where she went and the gloom prevented her from
seeing clearly.

At the next landing below the lord’s chamber
she stumbled and would have fallen if not for Desmond’s support. He
caught her, pulling her back onto the landing and into his embrace,
with both of his arms holding her securely. A moment later,
besieged by sudden weakness, Elaine found herself clinging to him
as if her very life depended on his reliable strength.

The sound of Cadwallon’s footsteps faded away
as he continued down the curving staircase to the entry hall. Two
doors opened off the landing where they stood, but both doors were
closed and no one else was present on the steps. In a busy manor
filled with people, they were alone, granted a rare moment of
privacy.

Elaine felt Desmond’s lips brushing against
her forehead. The strong circle of his arms offered safety and
respite from deadly concerns. Trembling a little, she lifted her
face. Her lips parted. Then his mouth covered hers as he crushed
her to him, thigh to thigh, manly chest to softly rounded
bosom.

Save for the occasional, formal and expected
salute on her cheek from male relatives, no man had ever kissed
her. Often she had wondered what it was like to be held in a tender
embrace. Knowing she was the plain sister and, thus, it wasn’t
likely anyone would desire her with great passion while Aglise was
around, Elaine had always assumed she would, in due time, be
married for her dowry, after which she would live in the polite
coolness that characterized most noble marriages. Never had it
occurred to her that a man might want to kiss her as Desmond was
doing, with gentleness and sweetness, deepening as the moments
passed into a not-so-gentle, yet still incredibly sweet plundering
of her mouth.

Slowly his lips caressed hers, his tongue
pushing against her with warm insistence. With a little cry of
surprise, she opened her mouth and he plunged deep, tasting her in
a startling invasion.

All thought of safety in Desmond’s arms fled,
to be replaced by a sense of heart-stopping danger and a longing
she couldn’t define. She didn’t care whether she ought to be
kissing him or not; she only knew she ached for more of what he was
doing to her. She spared one brief thought for Aglise, wondering if
the heated need she was presently experiencing was the same emotion
that had ensnared and doomed her sister. Then she stopped thinking
and gave herself up to the wonder of newly awakened desire,
glorying in the experience.

She hadn’t known, hadn’t dared to dream, that
a man’s mouth could wreck such havoc on her senses, awakening each
of them to intense awareness. Desmond smelled of clean,
rosemary-scented soap, and he tasted of the almond custard he’d
eaten at the end of the funeral feast. He was warm and strong, and
he held her as if she was a treasure he would never willingly
release.

Yet he did release her, and all too soon for
Elaine’s liking. The tender pressure of his arms slackened and he
slowly drew away from her. Elaine’s knees were unsteady, so with
one hand she clutched at his arm, but Desmond shook his head and
pried her fingers loose.

“Please,” she whispered, “I don’t
understand.”

“I know you don’t. I have no right to take
such unfair advantage of you while you are grieving and frightened.
It was dishonorable of me. I apologize.”

“I didn’t mind.”

“You are too innocent to appreciate what a
knave I am,” he muttered.

He flung away from her and for one terrifying
instant Elaine feared he intended to throw himself off the stairs
to the stone entry hall below. It would be easy enough to do; there
was no guard rail on the stairs and they were steep and narrow.
Elaine, who did not care for heights, always ascended that stairway
by staying close to the stone wall while resting one hand on the
wall for balance. Her stomach clenched at the thought of Desmond
tumbling to his death.

She should not have worried, for he turned
back to her almost at once. His face was calm, his feet were firmly
planted on the landing, and she could see no trace of emotion in
him. How amazing that she could still be quaking with newly
awakened desires she didn’t understand, her insides fluttering and
her heart racing, while Desmond was so controlled.

“Truly,” she said, “I did not mind what you
did. I’m not offended.”

She stopped short of telling him she wouldn’t
mind if he kissed her again. Elaine carried in her heart and soul a
full measure of a Norman noblewoman’s pride. True to her rank, love
was something she had never quite believed in and had always known
better than to expect. In her world, love was a foolish emotion
that drove serving girls to commit rash acts. It was also the
uncontrolled emotion that had led her mother to make a second
marriage which Elaine feared would eventually prove disastrous.
Having guessed well before Aglise’s disappearance that she had
probably taken a lover, and having just learned how perilous the
affair had been to her sister’s well-being, Elaine was inclined to
be extremely cautious where her own emotions were concerned. Still,
the heated yearning in the very center of her being did not
diminish.