His Lady Bride (Brothers in Arms) (13 page)

With obvious reluctance, the young nobleman withdrew the parchment from his red tunic and handed it to Aric.

Settling beneath the relative dryness of a nearby elm that towered above him in sweeping green strokes, Aric tucked the carving of Gwenyth into the crook of his arm and opened the missive.

My brother,

Turmoil is afoot. Gossip says the Lancastrians are plotting to overthrow King Richard and place ignoble Henry Tudor upon his throne. Richard seeks your vow to fight in his favor. You must return home and gather a larger army.

Stephen

Fury washed through Aric. How like Stephen to desire the power of being Northwell’s lord whilst being negligent of its responsibilities. Come home to raise an army for the defense of a man capable of murdering children? Return to the woman who had betrayed him by marrying his own father, to the keep which had brought him little but misery?

Nay, Stephen wanted to be the lord of Northwell, so he would have all of its duties.

Nor could Aric deny that for a moment he wished the note had come from Guilford, or even Kieran or Drake. He’d begun to miss them more and more of late, and blast Gwenyth for reminding him of their absence days ago.

With a bitter grunt, Aric tossed the missive to the ground and watched with grim satisfaction as the fat drops of rain struck the parchment with plunk after plunk, and the ink began to blur.

The herald let out a horrified gasp and lunged for the missive. Aric stayed him with a raised hand.

“But, my lord—” His pale, earnest eyes pleaded.

“Leave it.”

“What message shall I return to my lord Stephen?” the herald asked.

A glance at the missive proved the rain had blurred the ink upon the page to little more than watery black streaks.

“Tell him I send no message,” Aric replied finally.

He felt Gwenyth’s gaze upon him, steady and questioning, from her perch just inside the window. Aric prayed the rider would not seek to break his journey inside the cottage. Little hope would he have then of keeping his past from his wife. The other man’s livery and his consistent use of “my lord” would no doubt give her broad hints regarding his secret.

After a long pause, the herald sighed and reached for his mount. “As you wish, my lord.”

“’Tis exactly as I wish,” he vowed, finding his next breath came more easily than the last. “Now be off with you. And do not return.”

His frown puzzled, the rider yanked on his mount’s reins, turned about, and disappeared into the rain.

Irritation and dread picked at Aric’s gut like a vulture upon a carcass, one painful nibble at a time. He pivoted slowly toward the cottage. As he suspected, Gwenyth stood in the portal, her bright blue gaze filled with speculation.

“Not now, Gwenyth.” He took long strides toward her, hoping he could pass her without another word between them.

His foolish hope died a quick death.

“Not now? ’Tis never with you, you infernal pig-minded droll. You tell me naught!”

“I have nothing to tell,” he lied.

She glared at him, her cheeks flushed with anger, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. The fact she looked like a passionate temptress offering her charms—if he ignored her scowl—only served to annoy him more. Why did he want her in a way he could never remember wanting any woman, even when she called him foul names and did her best to dig up his dishonorable past?

“Who was that man?” Gwenyth demanded, hanging on to the subject like a determined dog with a bone. “What did that missive say?”

“He came collecting taxes I refused to pay,” he improvised smoothly.

“Nay. I know all of Uncle Bardrick’s retainers and stewards. He is not among them, nor is that my uncle’s coat of arms.”

“How do you know he was not one of the king’s men?”

The glare she shot him told Aric once and for all he could not treat her as if she had the intellect of a child. “He wore no royal markings. And he bowed to you. Why?”

Aric sighed. He had to give Gwenyth credit. She missed very little.

“The man mistook me for someone else, and when I could not solve his problem, I asked him to leave.”

Gwenyth’s honeyed complexion only flushed with more color. “Were that true, you would not have so wantonly destroyed another’s missive. But since you are disinclined to tell me aught, I am disinclined to live here with you and accept you as a husband.”

“A threat?” he whispered, fighting a vague sense of panic that tightened his belly. Then he calmed himself with the reminder she had nowhere to go.

“Nay, a statement. Why should I wish to stay wed to a man I know not, who refuses any honest discourse?”

Though her words infuriated him, Aric saw her logic. Still, it changed naught. “You know the man I am today. It matters not who I was last month or last year. That man is gone, never to return.”

“Pity,” she shot back at him. “I’m certain he was more forthright and had a better disposition than a dead tree. I would have liked him better.”

She whirled around and darted into the cottage, shutting the door in Aric’s face.

Aric nearly ripped the door open and reminded her she seemed to like him well enough last week when he had her naked on his bed, but he bit the words back. A man experienced in the ways of sex could easily overwhelm an innocent like Gwenyth. Their near lovemaking had nothing to do with her possibly liking him.

For some reason, that fact irritated him. Why couldn’t the stubborn wench enjoy the indefinable flame that lay between them without probing into his past? And what the hell was he going to do about her?

* * * *

Four days later, birds sang a cheerful tune as Gwenyth hung clean clothes over nearby willow branches. She tried to disguise her shift, worn as it was, from her husband’s silent gaze, not that such mattered anymore. Where once he might have teased her about it, even whispered in that seductive timbre of his, he now ignored it—and her.

Adjusting the new gray dress about her shoulders, she reached for the brown woolen rag she could scarce call a gown anymore and draped it over the next branch.

Zounds, that man was stubborn, always insisting the past mattered not. ’Twas clear that herald had been no tax collector, no misdirected servant. He had sought Aric, more than like out of his past. Aric had turned the man away and been withdrawn since.

Calling the lout names did little, as he refused to rise to that bait. Traipsing about the house in her red dress, which she knew had once enticed him, earned her plenty of heated stares, which made something inside her ache. But still he refused to talk.

What in his past could be so awful, so sinful, that he refused to face it?

Gwenyth knew so little of what Arid hid so well that her speculation could go on for hours without bearing fruit.

Again, she sighed. For the past four days and nights, she had done her best to draw him into conversation, into her confidence. No more. If he could not see fit to speak to her like a human being, like a wife, then she had naught to say to the coxcomb.

She bit her lip. It could take him days, perhaps weeks, before he might notice her quiet. Already the air between them vibrated with sheer silence. Much more of it would surely unnerve her.

She stole a glance at her husband, only to find he held that infernal wooden carving of her nakedness between his powerful hands. Heat crept up her face until she realized he stared not at her bare likeness but over the tree-lined horizon as if it were endless and wise in its age. Like the walls of Penhurst had been a hundred years past, Aric’s expression appeared impenetrable. Gwenyth feared she would have to lay siege to him before he would ever notice her own withdrawal.

That meant she must continue to endure his silence, as well as the unfathomable energy between them.

Frowning, Gwenyth considered Aric and his unending stare across the damp-scented land. ’Twas as if he waited for something. His grim expression seemed to portend disaster.

Shaking her head, Gwenyth returned her attention to the laundry. His problem was not hers, since he had expressly chosen not to share it with her. Until he did, she would not show interest in him whatsoever.

* * * *

More than a week later, day dawned without fanfare, the sunrise obscured by haze and fog. Aric watched it from the hillside where he and Gwenyth had once talked of family and hopes, past and present, while saying naught of the future.

A future he would have to shape someday soon.

Beside Aric, Dog panted and whined, begging for his master’s attention. Absently, Aric stroked his coarse gray-brown fun. At his side, Dog settled, resting his canine jaw upon Aric’s thigh.

Sighing, Aric peered at the landscape around him. Fresh, damp grass carrying the scent of spring surrounded eons-old oaks that swept and swayed against the metallic sky, heavy with impending rain. He had come to know these lands as well as he had once known the hilt of his sword, every gentle swell and enticing valley memorized.

For months, the land had soothed him. Always, the view here had brought him peace, reminding him his life would hereafter consist of more than war and strife. As he had yearned for during the long winter, blossoms the yellow of pure sunshine colored the land like a banner of happiness and hope. Mingled with those blooms were some the blue-purple of a brilliant sky at dawn and a rare few the come-hither red of Gwenyth’s lush mouth.

Today, Aric felt only turmoil, its talons reaching into the present to snatch him back into the past.

Suddenly, Dog tensed and raised his head toward the cottage. Aric glanced over his shoulder to find Gwenyth climbing up the hillside toward him. He cursed. His little dragon would want to fight. For days now, she had been itching to say something, to scream at him, he was certain. But she had remained damnably mute, until Aric himself had wanted to rail at the silence. Unhappily, he wondered when being alone had ceased to hold appeal for him.

Before he could say aught to Gwenyth, he saw another figure emerge over the top of the hill, that of a man, lean and striding with great purpose.

Kieran!

Surprised joy spiked within Aric. He had missed his friend—all of his friends—during his retreat. ’Twould be good indeed to see a man he thought of as brother, even if Guilford had sent the scamp to retrieve him.

A wry smile curved his lips. Kieran was likely to be annoyed, for Aric knew he had not made himself terribly easy to find. Nor would his friend find him willing to return to his old life.

Rising to his feet, Aric made his way toward Kieran, noting some changes in his friend. His shoulders seemed broader, his waist leaner. For a man who had oft prided himself on his appearance, ’twas a shock to see Kieran’s brown-red hair in desperate need of a blade and a fresh scar beneath his ear, skipping along the curve of his jaw.

Before Aric could comment, Kieran drew him into a brotherly embrace.

“Aric, ’tis good to see you.”

In returning the embrace, Aric was struck by a sense of belonging and connection, of having something precious lost, then suddenly found.

“’Tis good to see you, as well,” he said finally, then stepped back. “Though I daresay I’ve scarce seen you look so…rugged.”

He shrugged. “The war in Spain has been a fervent one.”

Aric felt ten times the displeasure he allowed to show upon his face. “Aye, one likely to see you dead.”

Kieran shrugged. “I cannot let the world pass me by because I fear such—though I do heartily regret this moment of carelessness,” he said, fingering the scar. “It may bode ill for my chances with the ladies.”

Mocking and teasing even the most sacred of subjects. Such was Kieran’s way. Still, Aric wished, as did Guilford and Drake, that the brother of his spirit would treat his life with more care.

“Aric?” Gwenyth’s voice sounded quietly behind him.

He whirled at the sound of his name and found Gwenyth there, the black silk of her hair sweeping with the wild wind about her shoulders and waist. Those entrancing blue-velvet eyes reflected a trace of irritation, uncertainty, and hurt.

With a curse, he resisted the tug of that bright stare. Aric dreaded introducing his past to his present. He took in the measure of her expectancy, knowing he had little choice.

“Gwenyth, meet my good friend, Kieran Broderick.”

Shifting his gaze to Kieran to complete the introduction, Aric noticed his friend’s mischievous blue-green eyes drift over Gwenyth with something more than idle curiosity.

Glaring at Kieran, Aric stepped toward Gwenyth and placed a possessive hand at her waist. Kieran raised an amused brow at the gesture. Aric gritted his teeth.

“You may stop staring at my wife,” he ground out.

Aric could find no reason for his unaccountable irritation. Kieran, though a rogue as lucky with the ladies as he himself was with a sword, had never used his significant charm to win a female either Aric or Drake had fancied. Why did he suddenly feel the need to bind his wife in a habit and send her to a nunnery until Kieran left his cottage?

All pretense of charm fled Kieran’s face, replaced by thunderstruck shock. “Your wife?”

“Aye.”

“As in vows spoken in a church binding you for an eternity wife?”

Well, not in a church, but by a priest just the same. “Aye.”

Suddenly, Kieran smiled and leaned in to give Aric a hearty slap to his shoulder. “And all this time we feared for your sanity, when you merely wanted your bride to yourself. I can see why, for her beauty would make slaves of kings and sultans the world over.”

Aric sent Kieran another warning glare. “I know you mean that as no more than harmless tribute.”

Kieran smiled broadly. “Naturally.”

“As I know neither of you bray-butted imbeciles mean to discuss me as if I weren’t standing at your very feet,” Gwenyth interjected with heat.

Kieran’s smile became a full-blown laugh. Aric resisted the urge to grimace.

“Not a woman of shy virtue, are you?”

Gwenyth’s reply was a snort of disgust.