Lady of the English (29 page)

Adeliza touched his arm lightly. “No,” she said, “I have enjoyed your company.” She found a smile to ease the troubled look in his eyes.

He cleared his throat. “You will not mind if I visit on another occasion?”

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“You are welcome,” she said graciously, feeling a little torn between pleasure and caution at his request.

She accompanied him to take his leave. A small boy was playing in a noxious puddle of rainwater and dung near the stable wall, leaping in and out of it, shouting loudly each time he made a splash. He was perhaps five or six years old, and clad in a woollen tunic of bright blue and a brown hood. He had removed his shoes and placed them neatly to one side of the water, but there was no redeeming his garments. Will gave a broad chuckle and folded his arms. “He’s in trouble when his mother catches him,” he said.

“We buried his mother just before you arrived,” Adeliza replied. “She was a leper at the hostel. I daresay he’s given his nurse the slip. He’s as swift as an elver.” She clapped her hands.

“Adam!” Her voice was peremptory.

He jumped at her shout and anxiety furrowed his smooth, pale brow. “I was only breaking up the sky in the picture,” he said in a high-pitched treble.

“Look at the state of you! Where’s Hella?”

The child thrust out his lower lip. “Don’t know.”

“Why were you breaking up the sky?” Will asked.

“Because I thought I might look through it to heaven and see my mama again,” he said. “I can’t break the sky with my hands because I can’t reach it.”

Adeliza made a small sound and turned away, her fist clenched against her lips. Will crouched to the child’s level, his great hands resting on his long, powerful thigh bones. “You cannot part the reflected sky with your feet either, child,” he said gently. “You know that really, don’t you?”

The boy sucked his lower lip and nodded.

“She would want you to grieve for her like a good son, but wouldn’t she also want you to go on with your life and become a big, strong man who cares for others?”

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Another nod and a shy look upwards from big dark blue eyes.

Will gave the child an assessing look. “I have a task for you,”

he said. “I have a mind to gift my lady the queen with a guard dog for her chamber door, but he is still only a pup and he is missing his own mother. I want you to be responsible for taking care of him while he is still very small. Do you think you could do that?”

Adam stared at him, his gaze growing round and wide. “Do you have him here now?”

“No, but I will send him from the kennels before the week is out, I promise you. One thing you should know about me is that I always keep my promises.” He looked at Adeliza as he spoke and she looked back at him with moist eyes. He lifted a warning forefinger. “It is a very important duty; I would not give it to just anyone.”

The boy nodded and straightened his spine in a soldierly fashion. Will responded to the gesture with a firm nod of his own to seal the matter. An instant later, a plump woman bustled up to them and began clucking over the boy like an agitated mother hen. This, then, was Hella.

After she had hurried him away to be cleaned up, Adeliza turned to Will. “That was kindly done.”

He gave an embarrassed shrug. “Something to care for helps to take one’s mind away from grieving—or so I have found.”

He knelt to her again, rose, and turned to his horse.

She watched him mount the beast: a handsome pied animal, powerful and solid like him, with a kindly eye.

“Thank you,” she said. “…for everything.”

He made a gruff disclaimer and, with another salute from his saddle, rode out.

Adeliza watched the porter close the gates and listened until the clop of hooves and the jingle of harness faded to birdsong. Then she returned to her chamber. William D’Albini’s 226

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vigorous masculine energy had disturbed the air, and it had a completely different scent and feel now, as if the season had changed in a moment.

ttt

Stephen eyed the golden bundle of puppy squirming in Will’s arms. “This is a gift for the dowager queen?” He looked both dubious and amused. “It will chew her shoes and piss on her dress and you know how finicky she is. I would think there are better things to take her if you desire to win her favour.”

Will raised his chin and the dog followed him with a fast pink tongue, destroying all his dignity. “It is a gift I promised to a child under her care at Wilton,” he replied.

Stephen raised one eyebrow. “A leper child?”

Will shook his head. “He’s an orphan my lady has taken into her household.”

“I see.” Stephen gave him a keen look. “But you are taking the whelp yourself, not entrusting it to a servant?”

Will put the pup down and it immediately attacked his shoes.

He drew a deep breath. “Sire,” he said, “I ask your permission to court the dowager queen with a view to making her my wife.”

Stephen’s eyes widened. “God’s blood, you are ambitious!”

His amusement remained but mingled with wariness now. “Just how long have you been brooding on this notion?”

Will gave the puppy a gentle side shove with his foot and it growled at him. “I have always honoured the dowager queen and thought highly of her, sire. She has been in mourning for two years and it seemed to me that if she was not set on the cloister, I could offer her an honourable marriage.”

“And the way to a woman’s heart is through deeds of kindness, especially when you cannot hope to compete with what she had as a queen?” Stephen said with a knowing smile.

Will was uncomfortable with that assessment because while it was partly true, it also made coarse cloth from fabric he 227

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considered very fine. There were many things he could give her that had not been hers as queen of England. But he said nothing, merely set his lips.

Stephen shook his head. “You are a dark horse, Will. I would never have thought to witness such audacity in you, but I am discovering that men are seldom what they seem, and your request at least is harmless ambition.”

“Sire, I gave you my oath at your coronation and my loyalty is to you.”

Stephen grunted. “So you say, and so, in your case, I believe.

Well then”—he waved his hand—“go and court your queen, and if the lady consents to your suit, I will give you an earldom as a wedding present to make you a worthy consort.”

“Sire!” Elation sparked in him, but caution too, because while Stephen was generous, he would want something in exchange.

Stephen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It is perhaps of benefit that the dowager queen should have a new husband to give her direction. She has too much time to brood in that nunnery, and cling to the past.” His eyes lit with a hard gleam. “If you marry her, I trust you to keep her occupied and out of trouble. She has been overly concerned with her rights in Waltham Abbey, which belong to a reigning queen, not a dowager. I would expect you to set her right on the matter. By all means let her indulge in good works, but in her own sphere.”

Will inclined his head. That at least seemed simple enough.

“I will do so, sire.”

Stephen nodded approval. “I often thought that Adeliza was wasted on my uncle. He never saw her delicate charms the way others did.”

“Sire.” William scooped up the puppy and bowed from the chamber, feeling smirched and elated at the same time. He had been granted permission to ask for Adeliza’s hand in marriage, 228

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and he had the verbal promise of an earldom and in exchange for very little. All he had to do now was win Adeliza’s consent.

ttt

Adeliza had not expected Will D’Albini to return quite so soon, but she took his arrival in her stride, and thought well of him that he not only brought the pup for Adam, but spent a while with the lad and his new pet to see them settle into the relationship. She watched him tussle and play with boy and dog as naturally as a child himself.

“You like children, my lord,” she said as eventually they walked to her lodging to take refreshment.

He smiled and shrugged. “They are easier to deal with than adults. As are animals. If you love them, they will love you, and their needs are easily read. I enjoy them for that wholesome simplicity.”

She felt a pang at his words. There was very little of that in the world.

“I have something to ask you,” he said as they reached her door.

“About the leper hospital?” She looked up at him and was trapped in his bright hazel stare. No, not about the leper hospital, she thought, because that subject would not fill his gaze with such intensity or bring such a flush to his face.

Adeliza stumbled on the threshold and he caught her arm to steady her. She felt the span and strength of his grip.

“No,” he said, “or not directly.”

Adeliza had Juliana take his cloak and pour wine, and then dismissed all of her women, telling them to wait within call.

Folding her hands in front of her like a nun, she said, “What do you want to ask?”

His complexion was fire-red by now. He gathered himself, and spoke in a rush. The words emerged like a speech, so she knew he must have been rehearsing them for some time—probably 229

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since riding away last week. “I have long admired and esteemed you,” he said. “If it would be an honourable estate for you, then I offer my hand to you in marriage. I have the king’s permission to pursue my suit, and should you agree, he will bestow an earldom upon me so that you shall not be disparaged.”

Adeliza opened and closed her mouth. She had been queen to one of the greatest kings in Christendom for fifteen years, and had known what to say on every occasion, but now she had no voice, only a stare.

“I have shocked you,” he said. “Forgive me; I am too blunt.”

She struggled to draw her scattered wits together. She had suspected this was coming ever since he said he had something to ask her. Wilton was a safe haven where she could hide from the world and coddle herself. His masculine vitality frightened her. When he entered the room, he filled it with earthy life and she had grown accustomed to spiritual delicacy. And yet she had asked God to give her a sign, and perhaps this man was it. Not a shining miracle, but something spun of everyday cloth—something she had never had. “I am honoured, my lord,” she said and had to clear her throat as her voice caught,

“but I cannot give you an answer now. I must consult with my heart and with God and pray upon what you have asked.”

She saw his face fall, but he swiftly mastered himself. “I understand,” he said. “I was hoping you would give me an answer now, but I was not expecting it. I have thought upon the matter for a long time, but I know you have not.” He made a face. “In truth, I would not want you to think for as long as I have, but I have the patience to wait on your reply.”

She gave him a bemused look. “Why me, my lord? Why choose me?”

He flushed. “To choose anyone else would be to look at second best. You are beautiful and gracious, and a queen. You are no termagant. With you at my side, I could build great 230

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castles and found monasteries and hospitals. I could sit by the fire at night and be content to talk with you and watch you sew…or hold our child in your lap.”

Those last words shot through her like a fiery arrow and her knees almost buckled. She wondered if he knew the effect such a speech would have on her and thought he probably did.

“And,” he added in a voice that was soft but filled with knowing, “were you to ask why you should choose me, I would answer that I will protect your lands. I will fill your life with companionship—and your lap with children.”

“Only God can do that,” she replied unsteadily. “He did not see fit to grant me that privilege with my first lord husband, despite him having many children with other mothers. What if I am a barren wife?”

A spark kindled in his eyes. “I doubt that very much.”

“But if I were?” she insisted. “What then?”

“I am prepared to take that risk, and I will still have you, and all that you are.”

She felt as if she were drowning in a shallow sea. The talk of children made her loins heavy as if the potential was already curled within her, waiting. She was pragmatic enough to know that the statement “all that you are” involved more than just her physical person. It was the glamour of her former position as England’s queen that attracted him, and the wealth she possessed. Arundel, Shrewsbury, Bicknor. For the moment she could please herself, but if she remarried, she would have to obey a husband again. “What did Stephen say when he gave his permission?” She could not bring herself to call him the king.

He looked down, but she caught a flash of something in his eyes—chagrin? Embarrassment? “He wished me success.”

Stephen would, she thought. This man was his loyal supporter and promoting him would be useful.

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Will cleared his throat. “I will leave you to your talk with God,” he said. “Send to me when you have decided. I hope it will not be too long, but I am prepared to wait.”

She could see that he was. But whether it was the persistence of a hunter outside a burrow or the gentler patience of a farmer attuned to the seasons remained to be seen.

Once more she saw him to the stables. Adam emerged, carrying the licking squirming bundle of puppy, christened Rex because he had come from the royal kennels. Will ruffled the boy’s hair, tussled the pup in similar wise, bowed to her, and turned to his horse.

When he had gone, Adeliza felt a momentary surge of relief, followed by a shiver, as if she had forgotten to don her cloak on a chilly day. Biting her index finger, she turned towards the church. She tried to envisage being married to Will D’Albini and felt awkward. It was like having a new dish on her plate that was so different, she could barely pluck up the courage to taste it.