The Captive Bride

Chapter Three

From the long table set on the dais, Senet looked about him with approval. Lady Katharine had somehow done the impossible in the five short hours since he’d spoken with her, which was proof, he realized, of just how capable a female she was. The great hall of Castle Lomas had rapidly been prepared for a feast, and both food and drink of amazing quantity and fine quality had been set out for all to enjoy. That she had managed all this with such short notice was a miracle in and of itself. He’d assumed that he and his men would be fortunate to enjoy a thin stew and bitter ale. This, instead, was just the sort of feast that a woman might spend weeks preparing to honor the arrival of her future husband, in celebration of their coming marriage.

Musicians strolled among the impatiently waiting feasters, singing merry tunes to both entertain and appease until Lady Katharine and her ladies should arrive and signal that the festivities could properly begin. Servants continued to bring trays out of the kitchens, bearing a variety of meats, breads, vegetables and cheeses, so much food that Senet could hardly imagine it all being eaten, even by the hundreds of hungry people sitting at the tables spread out across the hall. Where had it all come from? He couldn’t remember Castle Lomas being so prosperous as this when his father had reigned there as lord.

Seated in the place of honor at the head of the table, surrounded by his men, Senet felt a deep sense of gratitude regarding his future wife’s conduct, and an equal appreciation for the grace with which she had accepted defeat. She’d clearly arranged the grand feast as a way of making apology for her earlier behavior, and he would not only accept the gesture, but publicly honor her for it, just as soon as she and her ladies arrived to take their places on the dais. He would gift her with his deepest bow, he decided, and then, before seating her beside him, he would take her hand in his and lift them, clasped, for all those assembled to see. It would be a gesture of their coming union, and of the deep respect he bore for her as one who had not only managed the lands and castle well in the past, but who would, with him, continue to do so in future.

The idea of ruling Lomas jointly with Lady Katharine pleased him more than he’d thought it would. Until this day, his only object had been to regain what was rightfully his, but now, having it again, claiming his lordship over Lomas, he realized how unfit he truly was to manage the estate. A great many years had passed since his father had taught him about the duties of being a lord, and although he believed with time he would regain the sense of them, he was grateful that Katharine would serve not only as his wife, but also as his guide.

Such a wife she would make! he thought for perhaps the hundredth time since setting sight on her. So proud, she was. So intelligent. And, yes, stubborn and haughty, too. She was like a wild falcon that needed a firm and knowing hand to master her—to bring out the best in her. He’d already proved that he was more than capable of mastering her this afternoon, when a measure of firmness had caused her to choose the better course between her dangerous pride and the wisdom of being reasonable. Life with Lady Katharine would never be dull, he thought with a smile, sipping at the wine in his goblet. For that, he was strangely glad.

He had not thought to marry. Not for more than ten years, when his heart had learned that it was far better to shut itself off from love than to be vulnerable to the pain that love, and its losses, could bring.

Just thinking of his beautiful Odelyn, even now, brought grief welling up, despite the years that had passed since her death and his fervent struggle to press the memories away.

She had been very different from—the kind of female that Lady Katharine was. Odelyn had been sweet and gentle and giving. God alone knew how her tenderness and patience had worked to bring him out of the darkness that had been the legacy of his years of slavery. If not for her, Senet had no doubt that he’d yet be living in that darkness. He’d built all his dreams about her, every plan for the future, and when he had lost her everything had faded away to darkness again. But it had been a different sort of darkness, for at least he had her memory to light his way. A distant illumination tempered the shadows—distant, aye, but there all the same, always there, and it was for that lone sweet, ghostlike presence that he’d pressed on.

Katharine Malthus was nothing at all like Odelyn. There was nothing gentle or sweet about her, or even tender, at least not insofar as he’d yet encountered. Lady Katharine would have frightened his delicate Odelyn with her height and severe manner, even with her stark beauty. But Odelyn had been so young when she’d died, only just out of childhood. As he’d been. Katharine was a woman full grown, in face, form and clearly in mind. A woman he wanted in every way that a man could want a woman. The knowledge brought him no little discomfort. He’d not expected to experience such.outright lust for the woman he took to wife. Lady Katharine deserved better from him than that. He’d desired Odelyn, but had always practiced a certain restraint with her. Restraint, with Katharine, disappeared. She was far too challenging to inspire such feelings.

“Will she appear any time within the next fortnight, do you think?”Aric, sitting beside him, muttered. “It’s been over an hour that we’ve sat here and waited.”

“Having spent the past several hours laboring on our behalf to arrange this feast,”Senet said, “as well as making our chambers ready and directing that pallets be set out for the men, it may be expected that Lady Katharine and her women require some few minutes to make themselves ready.”

He was looking forward to seeing her again, he realized with some surprise. Anticipation was foreign to him, but she was a lovely, mysterious creature, and he wanted to know more of her. To speak to her, and see if he might coax her to smile at him again, as she had briefly done earlier.

“Calm yourself,”Kayne advised Aric, sitting on that man’s other side. “Ladies are given to much concern over their appearance, especially in such times as these. Lady Katharine is to be wed on the morrow, after all, and will wish to present herself to her future husband in her very best raiment and looks.”

“She doesn’t require much help for that”John Ipris put in. “She’s remarkably beautiful, is she not? Not in the least an ugly hag.”He gave Senet a teasing grin. “You’re a fortunate man, Lord Lomas.”

“Hah,”Aric said. “A beauty she may be, but her tongue is sharp enough to slice a man in two. I don’t envy you in the least, Senet”

Clarise, sitting beside John, leaned forward to say, in English, rather than French, “But she was very kind to me, m’lor, after you had gone. Lady Katharine and her ladies. They were all very.happy, oui? très joyeuses.”

“There you have it,”Kayne said. “The lady of the castle has clearly decided to make the best of the situation, just as you have done, Senet. All will be well.”

“Just as soon as the lady decides to make an appearance,”Aric said irately. “God’s feet, Senet, send someone to tell her to make haste. You’re master here, now. Will you let her keep you waiting so long and looking a fool?”

Senet supposed it would do no harm to send one of the servants to request that Katharine hurry to present herself. The feast could not properly begin until the blessing had been given, and the priest could not give the blessing until the lady of the castle was in her place. Lifting a finger, he beckoned a serving maid to attend him.

“Go up to my lady’s chamber,”he instructed, “and give her my compliments. Tell her that I desire she join us within the quarter hour.”

“M’lor?”Clarise leaned forward again, looking past John. “M’lady is not in her chamber.”

Senet and the men surrounding him all turned to look at her. Clarise blushed hotly beneath their steady regard.

“I went to speak with her,”she explained slowly, striving to make her English perfect, “before coming to the hall. And the chamber, it was empty. I think she must be with her ladies.”She was thoughtful a moment, before saying, “I mean to say, in the chambers of the ladies?”

“I understand, Clarise,”Senet told her. “You’re certain she was not in her own chambers?”

Clarise shook her head. “I called for her. There was no one, m’lor. I thought it very strange, for there were many clothes, lying all places.partout, oui? It was a great disorder.”

“I don’t think that she means Lady Katharine’s simply a poor housekeeper,”John said, turning a wary gaze upon his friends.

Senet was already on his feet, with Kayne and Aric following him. Racing up the stairs he told himself that he was wrong, that she was merely somewhere in the castle, in one of her ladies’ chambers, just as Clarise had said, but his heart knew the truth even before he pushed open Katharine’s chamber door.

Breathing hard, he took in the sight before him. It was exactly as Clarise had described it. There were clothes everywhere. Fine clothes, and shoes, too, as if the women had been in far too much of a hurry to hide their escape.

“Where could they have gone?”Aric said, surveying the chamber through steely eyes.

“They can’t have left the castle,”Kayne muttered. “There were guards at every door. It would have been impossible for that many women to slip out And certainly not Lady Katharine, with her great beauty. There is no place where she might go unnoticed.”

Senet walked slowly across the room, to a tapestry that covered one wall. Reaching up with both hands, he yanked the elegant cloth from the wall, exposing the hidden door.

“Lomas is ridden with tunnels, secret and mazelike,”he said in a low voice. “She must have forgotten that I know this castle far better than she, or anyone else, could.”He turned to look at his friends. “Tell Sir Alain to get the horses and men ready, Aric.”A hard, grim smile that they knew well formed on his lips. “We’re going hunting.”

The Bull and Dog was, to Katharine’s mind, a thotoughly sorry refuge, but it was likely the only roof they’d be able to buy to cover their heads for the night. She’d paid the innkeeper dearly to give them the lone private room the dwelling possessed, as well as to put a guard over their horses until morning. It was small comfort set against the smells and vulgar sounds the inn’s patrons filled the place with, but it was better than sleeping in the rain, which had begun to pour an hour earlier.

In the filthy, tiny chamber that the inn’s only whore had vacated for their use, Katharine and her ladies sat on a single pallet and tried mightily to eat, but the greasy stew the innkeeper’s wife had brought them was difficult to identify and harder to stomach.

“Is it squirrel, perhaps?”Magan asked, lifting out of her bowl a hunk of something that still had hair on it.

“Let us pray that it is,”Dorothea replied. “Squirrel would be far preferable to what I think it is.”

Ariette let out a sudden scream and threw her bowl across the room, splaying the contents across the wall and floor.

“What in the name of all heaven—!”Katharine was across the room at once, peering at the discarded bowl and its spilled contents in the dim candlelight light before lifting a foot to squash what was crawling about among the stew’s other, more lifeless ingredients.

“I’m sorry!”Ariette cried, clutching her cloak tightly about herself. “It was moving.”

“’Twas only a roach,”Katharine said calmly, returning to sit beside the other women. “I’ve killed it, though God knows what good it will do us. The room is crawling with them. And other vermin.”

Exchanging glances, Magan and Dorothea put their bowls aside and discreetly scooted away from them.

Katharine set her hands on her indrawn knees and leaned her head against the wall. “How weary I am,”she murmured. “I realize this is no fine place, but at least we are dry, and so are the horses.”

“Yes,”Magan said, “we must be thankful for that.”

“Yes,”Ariette agreed quietly, without enthusiasm. “Although ‘tis cold in here as it is out of doors.”

“We’ll be fortunate if those leering brutes in the tavern don’t come bursting in all together, intent upon the most lecherous sort of evil,”Dorothea said. “They were loud enough in their thoughts when we entered this place.”

“Oh, my lady, will they?”Magan asked with open fear. “They did seem so very rough and crude.”

“If they do,”Katharine said from behind hands that rubbed at her face, “we’ll fend them off. You have your daggers, do you not? Don’t hesitate. to make use of them, for I assure you I’ll have mine well blooded before one of the wretches can so much as set a finger to me. And if they do attempt to enter this chamber, ‘twill be for our gold, most like, rather than our persons.”

“That is even worse,”Dorothea said dryly. “We need our gold far more dearly than we need our virtue. If we’re to make our way without starving to death,”she added when her companions looked at her.

“I think this a complete madness,”Ariette stated, drawing her cloak still more about her. “We’ll never find Kieran FitzAllen, and if Sir Senet should find us.”She left the dire thought unfinished.

“We will find Kieran,”Katharine said insistently. “If not us, then the messenger who left Lomas will do so, and then Kie will come looking for us. Somehow we’ll come across each other. It must be so.”

“You try to convince yourself, my lady,”Dorothea said, “but if Sir Senet finds us first, we’ll be fortunate to live through the beatings we’ll be given.”

“I know,”Katharine admitted morosely. The idea of running away from Lomas had seemed such a good one earlier, in the light of day and in the face of her fury at Senet Gaillard, but now, sitting in this dank hovel with the prospect of a long and sleepless night looming ahead—and a longer, difficult journey, as well—it wasn’t quite so appealing. “But that son of a traitor—that usurper—will not find us so easily. The feast will delay him from discovering that we’ve gone, and the rainthank a merciful God for it—will wash away the tracks we’ve made.”

Dorothea shook her head. “That won’t stop a man like Senet Gaillard.”

Katharine thought of the man, of his ice—blue eyes and black hair. Of the hard face that had been without emotion after the victory he’d won at Lomas.

“No,”she said softly, “I cannot think it will. I admit that my scheme to get away from him is perhaps a foolish one. I should never have let you all come with me.”

“We would never have let you go alone,”Ariette told her.

“Oh, no, dear lady,”Magan agreed. “How could we forsake you in such a desperate time? I do not care what Sir Senet may do to us. Truly.”

Poor little Magan, Katharine thought with affection, setting an arm about the trembling girl’s shoulders. She was far too young for such a frightening adventure.

“But I care, Magan,”she said. “And if, may God forbid it, he should find us, you must be obedient to his command and let me draw his wrath down upon my own head.”

“No,”Dorothea said firmly. “We are not such poor friends as to desert you.”

“’Tis not right, Doro, for any of you to suffer for my sake. I am older and stronger, and the lady of Lomas, besides. You will do as I say and let me handle Senet Gaillard in my own manner. I do not ask it. I command it. But we will have no worry for that now. Let us rest as we may this night and pray that our journey to discover Kieran FitzAllen finds success.”

They huddled together, sitting upon the pallet with their backs against the wall, and fell silent, not daring to lie down for fear of the vermin that crawled about the place. The loud din made by the patrons in the tavern continued unabated for hours, eventually lulling them to sleep. Katharine struggled to remain awake, to make some kind of guard for them against intrusion, but exhaustion overtook her and she drifted into uneasy dreams of Lomas, and of cold blue eyes in a hard, starkly handsome face.

His voice brought her awake with a start and a gasp. She flung her head up too quickly, striking the mortared wall and sending a shock of pain all the way down to her sleep—numbed toes.

“Search the tavern.”The command was loud against the clattering of boots and swords, of tables being overturned and dishes breaking on the floor.

It was yet dark outside, and so cold that Katharine’s skin burned with it. The lone candle that had earlier given them light had long since burned to naught, but the moment the door was flung open they would be discovered.

“Up!”she whispered fiercely, shaking the others. “Up! Magan! Ariette! Doro—”Her hand searched about in the dark for the third girl. “Doro!”

She wasn’t there, Katharine realized with growing panic as the searching men grew closer and louder.

“Oh!”Magan cried, scrambling to her feet as Katharine pulled her up from the floor. “It’s Sir Senet!”

“God save us!”Ariette murmured with pure fright. “Where’s Doro?”

“Gone,”Katharine said, quickly feeling for the leather pouches that she’d tied about her waist. “Out that window, most like. And taken half the gold. The fool! She’s gone in search of Kieran on her own. Ariette—”she pushed the older girl toward Magan “—go with Senet Gaillard and his men. Give them no trouble.”She began to climb out the window. “Take care of Magan.”

“But, my lady—!”

Katharine was out the window just as the door burst open. She heard one of Sir Senet’s men shouting, “My lord!”and waited to hear no more. She started running, headlong, into the dark forest, picking up her skirts to race as fast as she could away from the sounds of Ariette and Magan screaming. He wouldn’t hurt them, she told herself. He wouldn’t. He’d taken Lomas without killing even one of her men, without causing any great injuriessurely he wouldn’t beat two innocent women for crimes that were not their own.

She was the one he wanted—no, needed. Because without her he couldn’t have Lomas. Now it came down to which of them wanted it more. She would run all night if she had to. She would find Kieran if she had to cover every square inch of England on foot, alone.

The woods were filled with a fine, chilling mist that made it hard to find her way, and caused each desperate breath to ache like a frozen knife plunging in her chest. She stopped, after several minutes of panicked flight, and rested against a tree, panting harshly, trying to decide which direction to go. She was cold, so cold, and wet from the fog and mud. All around her the trees dripped with the rain that had fallen. In the distance she heard shouts, the sounds of horses whinnying and stomping. She wondered how Ariette and Magan had fared at the hands of Senet Gaillard and his men, and sent up a silent prayer that all was well.

Dozens of horses drew nearer in the dark, their hooves muffled in the mud. And then there were voices. Men’s voices. His voice, above all the others. Katharine pushed from the tree and started running again, cursing the darkness that made it so difficult to see her course.

“Kayne!”

It was Senet Gaillard, she realized with panic. Right behind her. She began running faster.