Fairest of Them All Page 7

  She forced herself to meet his gaze, then wished she hadn’t. As he searched her eyes, a faint frown of bewilderment creased his brow. Holly quickly inclined her head. There had been nothing she or Elspeth could do to disguise the unusual hue of her eyes.

  She expected him to boldly proclaim his victory. She expected him to demand of her papa the prize that was his due. What she did not expect was the ethereal brush of bluebell petals against her ears as he settled the chaplet of flowers on her brow, ringing the ugliness of her shorn head with the unspoiled beauty of a child’s generosity.

  A tremor of shame went through her as he dropped to one knee at her feet, bowed his shaggy head, and brought her hand to his lips. “My lady,” he said, the simple words both tribute and vow.

  CHAPTER 7

  Holly slipped into the castle chapel, forsaking the warmth of the afternoon sun for a dank coolness preserved year round by stone walls six feet thick. She had retreated to this place to seek her own counsel, but was not surprised to find her papa standing over her mother’s tomb, his hands splayed over the granite as if to draw strength from it.

  She crept silently to his side. Her mother’s carved effigy bore none of the warmth Holly remembered. Felicia de Chastel had not been the beauty her daughter was. Her charm was of the more subtle variety, her snub nose and cherubic mouth hinting at a delight in life impossible to recreate in stone, no matter how talented the artist.

  “Papa?” Holly dared.

  Her father’s graceless fingers caressed the carved tendrils of his wife’s hair. “I have failed her. I have failed you both.”

  His pain wounded Holly in ways she had not anticipated. “Of course, you haven’t! Why if Mother were here, she’d probably be laughing right now, thinking this all a great jest.”

  “I’m glad she’s dead.” Holly recoiled from his stark words. “Better dead than forced to witness such a debacle. She warned me of your strong will, said I might have to take harsh measures to protect you from yourself. But I failed to heed her. From the moment she died, I let that will rule our lives. When you cried, I nearly wept myself. When you pouted and sulked, I gave in to your demands. Now my weakness has brought us all to ruin.”

  Like everyone else at Tewksbury, her father seemed to be having difficulty looking at her. Holly seized his dangling sleeve, desperate to evoke some familiar response from him. “Not ruin, Papa, surely. Perhaps if we go to this Sir Austyn, the both of us together, and explain … he seems a reasonable enough fellow.”

  The words sounded hollow, even to Holly. She was talking about a man who had chased her through a garden with drawn sword, accused her of witchcraft, kissed her with a tender hunger that still had the power to make her toes curl, then proceeded to alternately threaten to ravish her and chasten her for behaving the strumpet Reasonable indeed!

  “If he was very angry with us, might you not lock him away in the dungeon?” she inquired timidly, ignoring a twinge of guilt. “Just for a few years until his temper cools?”

  Her papa’s sleeve was torn from her fingers as he paced away from her. His voice echoed from the rafters like cracks of thunder portending a mighty storm. “Aye, let us go to him together, this Gavenmore, and explain how your fine jest has made a mockery of the both of us! We shall tell him that I intend to break my vow to deliver you as bride to the champion of the tournament and forever cast a shadow on the name of Tewksbury. And if he chooses to lay siege to the castle and take you by force, what then? Will he still honor you with marriage or will he seek to punish you for making such a jape of him?” Her father pivoted on his heel, flinging his shout in her bloodless face. “Aye, we shall go to him, you and I, and explain that it was no more than a cruel, childish prank that brought a proud and mighty warrior to his knees at your feet!”

  Holly pressed her fingertips to her lips to still their trembling. His words had done nothing but echo her growing sense of shame. She shook her head helplessly. “Truly I meant no harm.”

  “You never do when it comes to seeking your own will. But you’ve sealed your fate this time. The Welshman will take you to wife just as I promised he would.” His next words were spoken so softly that Holly suspected they weren’t meant for her ears. “You could have had anyone. A man who would have adored you. A man who would have humbled himself just to kiss the hem of your gown.”

  If Holly could have choked the words past her raw throat, she might have told him that she wanted no such man. That she knew in her most secret heart that she was nothing more than a vain, ornamental creature, praised only for outward things. That she could never give her heart to any man fool enough to adore her. But she sensed another blow would stagger him so she gathered her skirts and left him to his regrets.

  When his daughter had drifted from the chapel, her profaned visage nearly unrecognizable, Bernard de Chastel did what he had not dared do in the thirteen years since his wife’s death.

  He shook his fist not at his wife’s effigy, but at the vast and indifferent heavens beyond the chapel roof. “Damn you, Felicia! I’ve done everything I could for her. The rest is up to you!”

  Cast from the solace of the chapel, Holly fled to the garden, fearing that after the wedding that was to take place that afternoon she would be forever denied its sanctuary.

  The somnolent spring day mocked her agitation. A chubby bumblebee hummed its satisfaction over a primrose blossom. Butterflies flitted from violet to heliotrope, their lacy wings limned in sunlight. The sultry perfume of jasmine caressed her sharpened senses.

  Despite the warmth of the air, the chapel’s chill still clung to her. Even more intolerable than her father’s bitter denouncement had been the revulsion she had glimpsed in his face, a revulsion that seemed less for her appearance than for her character.

  Holly drew her fingers along the ropes of the swing. It swayed gently at her touch as she struggled to comprehend that her father refused to relent, that he had every intention of giving her to the hulking giant of a Welshman who hadn’t given her a moment’s peace since invading this garden.

  The grass beside the bench was still crushed from his fall. She remembered how he had lain with arms outflung, seeming somehow both vulnerable and formidable all at once. She brushed her fingertips against her lips, still stung by the impossible tenderness of his kiss. A kiss meant not for her, but for another.

  Resisting the harsh reminder, her eyes drifted shut, provoking the dreamy mists of memory and moonlight to recreate that peculiar moment.

  A brutal hand clapped over her mouth. A wiry arm seized her waist.

  Holly’s first irrational thought was that Gavenmore had somehow divined her perfidy. That he had summoned his mysterious minions from the forest and they were even now scaling the castle walls to lay Tewksbury to ruin, beginning, as was fitting, with her.

  At the hoarse whisper in her ear, both relief and repugnance flooded her. “You’ve done it now, haven’t you, you haughty wench. I’d hazard your clever little scheme didn’t work out quite the way you planned.”

  Holly might endure her father acting the voice of her conscience, but she did not have to tolerate such posturing from Eugene de Legget. She slammed her heel sharply into his shin.

  He released her, exhaling with such force that she could scent stale blood, coppery and feral, on his breath.

  She whirled to face him. He would have never dared lay hands on her before, but now he had naught to lose. His good name was ruined, his honor shredded to tatters by his own villainy. Even with a trickle of blood dried on his chin and his cheekbone swollen, his eyes glittered with such malice that Holly could summon no pity for him, but only scorn.

  She dropped him a deep curtsy, inclining her head. With precious little hair to stop them, the chaplet of bluebells slid down over one eye. “Have you come to gaze once more upon my beauty, my lord? Did you bring your minstrel to sing praises to my lustrous hair? My pearly teeth?” She bared her stained teeth at him in a travesty of a smile.

  His withering gaze ra
ked her, lingering over her bound breasts and padded hips. “Gavenmore may lack the imagination to divine the treasures that lay beneath that ridiculous costume, but I do not.” His eyes burned with unholy hunger. “I should have taken you the first time I saw you. Had I defiled his precious child, your father would have had no choice but to give you to me. Now it seems I’ve no choice but to bid you a good riddance.”

  Genuine curiosity prompted her. “Without revealing me?”

  Eugene stroked his chin, his thoughtful smile more threatening than a scowl. “Oh, I entertained the notion of exposing you for the deceitful little bitch you are, but decided being wed to the Welshman would be a far more fitting punishment. Perhaps once you’ve bedded a beast like Gavenmore, you’ll be more than eager to welcome a man between your pretty legs.” He swept her a genteel bow. “Fare thee well, my lady. For now.” He took his leave, his fresh limp granting him more dignity than he deserved.

  Once you’ve bedded a beast like Gavenmore.… The crude words lingered in the air like a curse.

  Holly shuddered. She had never considered the intimacies that marriage entailed. In truth, she wasn’t quite clear on the precise nature of the inexplicable act that bound wife to husband. She owed her veneer of sophistication to nothing more than Brother Nathanael’s obsession with poise.

  Nathanael!

  Her gaze flew to the tower that housed her chamber. In all the excitement, she had nearly forgotten the priest imprisoned in her wardrobe. The priest who would be summoned by her father in a matter of hours to hear her wedding vows. Provided, of course, that he hadn’t run out of air in the tiny cell and was even now gasping his last.

  Lifting her skirts, Holly raced for the outer stairs, her spirits buoyed by a stubborn surge of optimism. If she had ever had need of Nathanael’s superior wisdom, it was now.

  Holly tapped the priest’s lax cheek while Elspeth flicked drops of water in his face. Upon tumbling from the wardrobe to discover Holly’s transformed visage hovering over him, his reddened face had gone bone white and he had fainted dead away.

  They had revived him long enough for Holly to breathlessly explain her scheme, but her sheepish confession of its blundered outcome had sent him into a fresh swoon.

  Holly’s gentle taps seemed to be having little effect. She gazed up at Elspeth from her kneeling position, a worried frown creasing her brow. “Perhaps a bit more.”

  Elspeth upended the ewer, dumping its chill contents in the priest’s face. A concerned moue puckered the nurse’s mouth, but satisfaction twinkled in her eyes. Elspeth had clashed with the haughty priest more than once over the proper raising of her lady.

  At the impromptu baptism, Nathanael shot to a sitting position, coughing and sputtering. Waving away Holly’s offer of assistance, he scrambled to his feet, launching into a gasping tirade as if his brief spell of unconsciousness had only whet the razor-sharp edge of his tongue.

  “Oh, woe is me! What terrible sin have I committed to deserve such grief?” His homespun robes swished as he paced the chamber, scattering sheafs of Holly’s fallen hair with each step. Droplets of water flew from the sandy hair ringing his tonsure. “A gem! I sculpted a flawless gem only to lose it to an unworthy savage. I molded a bride fit for a king only to have her cast into the grasping hands of a mercenary.” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Surely even God Himself envied such a magnificent paragon of womanhood and has sought in His infinite wisdom to punish me for daring to usurp His role as Creator. I am chastised, my Lord! I am humbled!” With a wail of despair, he sank down on a chest and buried his face in his hands.

  Holly exchanged a dubious look with Elspeth. From the priest’s incessant harping, neither of them would have guessed he was fond of her, much less thought her “a magnificent paragon of womanhood.” Holly could not help but find his abrupt embrace of humility suspect, especially when he persisted in accusing God of being jealous of him.

  “Nathanael?” She approached his penitent form.

  “Brother Nathanael to you,” he snapped, his tone recovering its waspish note. This time his sharp eyes did not shy from her, but studied her critically. “So how did you manage to create such a vision of ugliness?”

  Holly spread her skirt and pivoted for his perusal, unable to resist a twinge of pride for her efforts. “ ’Twasn’t difficult. We simply rid me of all the virtues my suitors persisted in praising. My raven tresses. My lush lashes. My bounteous breasts.”

  “At least your wit is intact. And how do you plan to maintain this charade when your husband takes you to his bed?”

  Holly dropped her skirt, her pride deflated by the reminder. “ ’Tis why I sought you out,” she admitted timidly. “I’ve no mother, you see, and I’ve little idea what’s to be expected of me.”

  This time it was Elspeth and Nathanael who exchanged a glance, compatriots in their naïveté. Realizing that she was questioning a virgin and an avowed celibate about the carnal intimacies of the marriage bed, Holly felt a pang of doubt.

  But Nathanael knew everything, she assured herself. Purely by virtue of his calling, he was nearly as omniscient as God. Hadn’t he told her so a hundred times?

  He did not disappoint her. Straightening upon the chest as if it were a throne of judgment, he cleared his throat with a stentorian whinny. “Your sole duty, my child, will be to submit to your husband’s will.”

  “Aye, submit,” Elspeth echoed, her chins jiggling in agreement.

  The priest frowned at the nurse. “God has fashioned man so that he has upon his person a divine instrument, if you will. A mighty and holy lance.”

  Holly’s eyes widened as she remembered the thick length of staff the Welsh knight had proffered to her during the tourney.

  “Aye, and he’ll want to poke it in ye, he will,” Elspeth contributed eagerly. “And there’ll be blood. Buckets of it. But ye’ll take pleasure in the letting of it.”

  Holly was beginning to feel quite faint. ’Twas a pity Elspeth had wasted all the water on Nathanael. She feared she might yet have need of it.

  “Silence, woman,” Nathanael commanded the nurse. Elspeth subsided with a visible pout. “Of course she won’t take pleasure in it. ’Tis a woman’s place to suffer submission to atone for her sin in the garden.”

  Holly started guiltily. Was the priest truly so omniscient as to have learned of her sin in the garden? Did he know that she had surrendered to the knight’s carnal kiss with nary even a pretense of struggle?

  “Had she not partaken of the apple proffered by the serpent,” he intoned, “mankind might still exist in a state of grace.”

  Holly sighed in relief to realize Nathanael was talking about Eve’s sin, not her own.

  Her nurse winked at her. “Ye must endure it, child, else he can’t put his babe up inside of ye.”

  Holly’s horror welled anew. A baby! A baby who would bind her to the Welshman forever. She shuddered, envisioning a litter of furry little cubs with curved claws and upturned snouts. What manner of God would have concocted such a hellish punishment?

  Her desperation drove her to pace just as Nathanael had. She was more than willing to accept reproof for her own sins, but would be damned indeed before she’d suffer punishment for a distant ancestress with an infernal weakness for the cunning of serpents.

  After several moments of violent contemplation, she whirled around to face them both. “I’ll wed this Welshman. I have little choice. But I have no intention of becoming a wife to him.” Holly loathed humbling herself before her mentor, but she forced herself to kneel at Nathanael’s feet and seize his hand. “ ’Tis imperative that I remain so repulsive this Gavenmore can hardly bear to look upon me, much less lay with me. Will you help me?”

  “ ’Tis not too late to flee,” Carey said as he and Austyn trailed an aged maidservant through the inner bailey of Castle Tewksbury. “We don’t even have to go back to Gavenmore. We can go adventuring, you and I. Why, there are lords aplenty willing to empty their purses to purchase a pair of skilled sword a
rms such as ours.”

  Austyn cocked an eyebrow at him. “Suffering pangs of conscience, are you? Was it not you who compelled me to petition for the woman? You who claimed there was no surer way to break the curse than to wed this Lady Ivy?”

  “Holly,” Carey corrected absently. “But given time to contemplate the reality of waking up each morning to that … that … face …”

  He subsided into doleful silence, heightening Austyn’s impression that he was marching to the gallows instead of the altar. As they followed the crone who had summoned him to meet his bride, the sun dipped behind a black-bellied cloud, mirroring the resigned gloom of his mood. A cooling breeze teased his brow. ’Twas in just such a moment that he might have once felt Rhiannon’s mocking presence, but on this afternoon the air was empty, devoid of any derision but his own for himself.

  Perhaps Carey was right. Perhaps in his union with this woman he could finally lay to rest all of his ghosts. Odd that he felt no peace in their absence, but only a peculiar emptiness.

  Austyn’s determined steps did not falter until they neared a stone wall. The crone pushed aside a curtain of ivy to reveal an iron gate, a gate that would have been nearly invisible in the shadows of night. A sense of bleak irony assailed him as he ducked beneath a stone portal to enter a wild tangle of a garden that lost little of its enchantment by daylight.

  “You’d have thought she’d have wanted to be wed at night,” Carey muttered. “In the dark.”

  Austyn elbowed him. “Stifle yourself. ’Tis hardly the girl’s fault she is ill-favored.”

  The earl had mercifully banished all revelers from the ceremony, leaving only himself and a tonsured priest standing before the marble bench to witness their vows. Tewksbury looked even smaller than Austyn remembered, as if the prospect of losing his daughter had somehow diminished him. The maidservant did not depart at completing her errand, but stepped back to hover in the shade of a rowan tree, drawing out a kerchief to muffle her bleating sniffles.