Bert scuffled her feet in the dirt of the training ground and wailed, “Daddy, I don’t want her here.”
“She has to learn how to protect herself, just like you have. You don’t want her to be hurt because she doesn’t know how to use a sword, do you?” David observed his daughter as she struggled with her answer. She didn’t care whether Alisoun learned to use a sword; as he’d told Guy, he believed his daughter dreamed of using her own prowess against Alisoun. But Bert’s fierce heart hid wells of tenderness, and David thought he could plumb those wells. “Your new mama has been threatened by someone.”
“By who?” Bert demanded.
“I don’t know, but that’s how we met. She hired me because someone tried to shoot an arrow at her.”
“She tried to give someone a bath,” Bert muttered.
David ignored that. “Someone took her cat and hurt it until it died.”
“Nay, they didn’t!” Bert rolled up her sleeves as if something—her anger, David guessed—made her hot. “That lady has a kitty. See?” She pointed to some long red marks on her arm. “It scratches.”
“I gave her the new kitty because she was crying over her old one.”
“Did you see her tears?” Bert asked suspiciously.
“Nay, it was worse than that.” Glancing at the sky, David observed the solid gray overcast of clouds that hid the sun. A good day to train squires; not hot, not bright, not likely to rain. “See those clouds?” He pointed, and his daughter nodded. “They have rain in them, but they won’t let it go. They hold it in, aching, wanting to cry out all their water, but they can’t. For some reason, they hold it in. Your new mama’s like that. Her tears are the kind of tears she keeps inside, and you know how much those hurt.”
“Like when you left me here and I knew I had to be brave but I wanted you really, really bad?”
“Like that.”
Scratching her chin, Bert thought, then said, “She doesn’t like the kitty you gave her. She never pets it or anything. She never talks to it.” Her mouth drooped. “She never gives it a good-night kiss.”
Bert didn’t speak of the kitten, David realized. She didn’t care whether that cat got a good-night kiss, but the child’s fragile ego couldn’t comprehend Alisoun’s hesitant affection. Bert’s bold emotions demanded a mother who would hug her and kiss her and tuck her into bed, not speak to her of propriety and spinning and baths. Kneeling beside his daughter, David framed his words carefully. “She’s afraid to like the kitty. She liked her other one so much, and she’s afraid if she likes this one it’ll die, too.”
“That’s stupid. You’re not going to let someone take her kitty and hurt it again.”
No one matched Bert’s implicit faith in him—especially not Alisoun. “But she doesn’t trust me.”
She wrapped her grubby arms around his neck. “But you’re my daddy!”
Hugging her against him, David explained, “She doesn’t understand what that means. She doesn’t understand that I would do anything to protect you and her. You’re my daughter. She’s my wife. We’re a family, and our family is the most important thing in the world to me.”
“You gotta tell her!”
“I’m showing her. I’m letting her come and learn with you and Eudo how to be a warrior.”
He’d left Bert with nothing to say, and that unusual experience heartened him. Perhaps he was doing the right thing. “Come,” he said. “Help me get the weapons out of the storage shed.”
As they laid out the shields, the knives, the swords, and the bows and arrows on the trestle table set up for his purpose, David’s mind returned to that scene in the solar. If anything proved Alisoun didn’t yet trust him, it was that.
That spot on Hazel’s behind was no birthmark. He’d wager Radcliffe on that. The child had been burned somehow, and her mother didn’t want to confess. But why did Alisoun lie, also? And Lady Edlyn—Alisoun had been startled when Lady Edlyn stepped in and fibbed so easily. It all meant trouble, and he feared he would have to do what he told Bert. He feared he would have to protect his family against a very great challenge. He’d learned a lot in these last years of famine, and he only hoped that this time he would make the right choices.
“Here they come.”
Bert’s gloomy voice pierced his reverie. Alisoun and Eudo walked toward them, and he grinned when he saw Alisoun’s idea of proper warrior wear. She wore an old cotte with tight sleeves, a sturdy pair of over-boots and a wimple tied at the base of her neck. Two long braids of hair hung down her back, and grim determination stiffened her spine.
David recognized her expression. Eudo sported the same one every time he had to train with Bert. She was going to do this. She wouldn’t like it, but she would do it.
“Welcome, my lady, to our squire instruction.” David bowed with mocking delight. “Are you prepared to obey my every instruction and learn to use your weapons as every squire should?”
“I am, my lord.” She stood still as he circled her. “Although I still do not understand what use this will be to me.”
“It’s so no one will kill your kitty again,” Bert piped up.
David cringed. He knew Alisoun didn’t want her distress announced to anyone. The woman hoarded her emotions and valued her privacy, and he wondered if she would take her unhappiness with him out on Bert.
He gave her too little credit. Alisoun stared at Bert in astonishment, then in a small voice said, “That is indeed a reason.”
David jumped into the fray before any other indiscretions could be aired. “First we’re going to learn how to shoot a bow and arrow.”
“Aye!” Eudo grinned. Guy taught archery, and he assured David that in Eudo they had found a natural talent. Still too small to have any advantage in a close fight, Eudo found the singing flight of an arrow evened his chances for victory, and he relished every moment spent with a bow in his hand.
“Aye!” Bert imitated Eudo. She had her own miniature bow, and she practiced for hours trying to match her hero’s skill.
“Set up the targets, squires.” David picked up a training bow and a quiver of arrows. “I will instruct Lady Alisoun.”
Bert set her heels in the dirt and glared. “I want you to instruct me!”
Eudo pushed her from behind. “My lord told us to set up the targets.”
“He’s my father.”
“A good squire doesn’t argue with his lord.” Eudo started toward the shed that housed the training weapons. Over his shoulder, he yelled, “Lasses can’t follow directions.”
“I can, too.” Bert scampered after him. “I can, too.”
“Does Eudo resent you training me?” Alisoun asked.
David handed her the bow. “Hold this while I put the wrist and finger guards on you.” She ought to learn to do it herself, he knew, but he wanted the chance to touch her, to stroke her skin with his fingers. “Nay, it’s not you he resents. It’s Bert.” He glanced at the children as they dragged out the targets and argued about their location. “You’ll be pleased to know Eudo also disapproves of my daughter’s combat training.”
“Why would I be pleased to know that?” She kept her gaze on his hands as they worked the leather over her wrist. “I taught Eudo to have respect for his lord and obey his every command.”
“He obeys me.”
“Cheerfully?”
“Not that,” David admitted as he set the bowstring. “But Bert does make that difficult sometimes. Mayhap if you…nay, never mind, that’s a stupid idea.”
“What?”
“Really.” Standing behind her, he placed the bow in her hand. “It’s nothing.”
“I do not think, my lord, that your ideas are nothing.” She took a deep breath as he wrapped his arms around her.
Taking her hand, he showed her how to wrap her fingers around the string. “It just seems that if you show Bert affection and respect while we work here, mayhap Eudo would behave in a like manner.”
“I always show every one of God’s creatures respect.”
He said nothing.
Grudgingly, she asked, “What kind of affection?”
“I’ve seen you place a hand on Eudo’s shoulder when you praise him.”
“Bert doesn’t like me to touch her.”
“That’s because you only touch her to clean her. I’m talking about a gesture of regard.”
She stood relaxed within the circle of his arms as she considered. Then she nodded decisively. “I could do that.”
“And inquire about her progress with her studies.”
“As far as I can see, she has no studies. She neither picks up a book nor learns womanly arts.”
“Right now, she is learning to be a warrior.”
“I don’t approve of that. Why would I ask after her progress?”
He managed to keep the triumph from his tone, but only barely. “You’re doing it, too.”
“Only because—”
He could almost hear her thinking. Only because I wanted to distract you from that diaper on the baby. But she didn’t say that.
“Only because you are right. If I am to be threatened, I need to be able to defend myself in some small degree.”
He wanted to pull her against him and kiss her until he’d ruffled some of her dignity. He wanted to reward her for saying those so difficult words—you are right. He wanted to pledge himself to her again and again until she believed he would always protect her and hers.
Instead he shouted at a few of his servants who were loitering to watch him and Alisoun. “If you have nothing to do, I’m sure I can find you something.” They wheeled away, and he told Alisoun, “Pull back the string with gentle yet firm tension. Back further. Back further. Pull it almost to your cheek and hold it higher. That’s it. Now let it go.”
She released the empty string and it struck her wrist guard with a sharp thump.
“Ouch.” She dropped the bow and rubbed her arm. “That hurt!”
“Let’s try it with an arrow.” Pulling an arrow from the quiver, he set the nock in the string and showed her how to rest it on her fingers. The children hastily finished setting up the targets and ran back to their sides.
“Go ahead and practice, children,” Alisoun called.
They paid no attention to her words. They focused totally on the point of the arrow as she pulled the string back once more.
“Hold it up! Use a finer tension! Hold it up!” David squinted as the bow quivered in her grasp. “Now, let it fly!”
Plowing a furrow along the dirt, the arrow came to rest against a clump of grass not five feet in front of her. The children stared at it in confounded silence.
David told Alisoun, “You can open your eyes now.”
Her eyes popped open. “I didn’t realize I’d closed them.” She looked eagerly at the targets.
Bert’s laughter exploded in a snort and Eudo smothered it with his hand. Bewildered, Alisoun looked at them, then looked again at the targets. Taking her head, David moved it down until she could see the abused and dirty arrow.
“You didn’t point high enough,” he said.
“Oh.” She looked at the children again, but they had their merriment firmly under control. “I’ll do it again.”
One thing David had to say about Alisoun, she didn’t give up easily. More arrow points ate dirt than in his entire history of teaching squires. At last he said, “That’s enough for now. Your wrist will be swollen if you don’t stop.”
“I’ve almost got it.” She set her chin with determination. “Just one more.” Notching the arrow, she lifted the bow high, and let it fly…over the training ground, over the weapons shed, and out of sight.
David, Alisoun, and the children stood frozen, waiting, wondering.
They heard a squawk. One squawk, then nothing.
“What have I done?” Alisoun whispered.
One of the goose girls came flying around the shed, holding a dead gander by its feet. “Who did that?” she shouted. “Me best stud, killed by an arrow!” She turned the bird and showed the shaft embedded in the gander’s head.
“I’m sorry,” David shouted back. “It’s my fault.”
“Likely story.” The girl shook her finger toward Eudo. “’Twas probably this one, wi’ his fancy aimin’ an’ his foreign ways.”
Bert shouldered her way to the front. “Nay, Nancy, ’twas me.” She took the bow out of Alisoun’s limp grip and waved it. “I’m getting good, aren’t I?”
Nancy squinted at the bow, then at the child holding it. She wanted to call Bert a liar, but she didn’t dare.
“Take the gander to the kitchen,” David instructed. “We’ll have him for dinner and my lady will get us a new gander.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Won’t you?”
“Aye, and gladly, too.” Alisoun tried to smile, but it was nothing more than a lift of the lips to show her teeth.
Nancy nodded resentfully, and when she disappeared again Alisoun turned to David. “I am so sorry.”
“’Tis nothing.” He rubbed her back.
“Your best gander!”
Bert patted her hip. “Nancy thinks all of the ganders are her best gander.”
Alisoun seemed to suddenly realize David and Bert were touching her, while she herself had not complied with David’s request to give his child affection. Awkwardly, she patted Bert on the head. The girl looked up in astonishment. David waited, cringing, but Bert just shrugged and moved away.
“Can we do the swords now?” Bert loved the swords best. Laid out on a trestle table, the gray practice blades shone in the sun. No rust speckled their surface; even worn swords such as these merited good treatment. The wooden swords, too, had been carefully formed and kept for the younger boys’ practice.
With reverent hands, Bert reached out and stroked one of the iron blades.
Catching her wrist, David said, “Swords would be a good idea.” He thrust a wooden sword into her hand. “With this.”
She pouted, sure she wouldn’t get her way but resolved to try. “I’m big enough for a real sword.”
“You’re not.”
“Let me try.”
Hefting his own short sword, Eudo said, “A real squire wouldn’t beg like a girl.”
Even Bert’s ears turned red. David could see the tips where they stuck out from her butchered hair. But she shut her mouth with a snap.
David turned to Alisoun. “We’ll start you on a wooden sword, also.”
Bert saw her chance to take her pique out on someone else. “Aren’t you going to have her lift the broadsword?”
“Not this day.” David spoke to Alisoun. “You hold the hilt in both your hands—”
“You made me pick up the broadsword first.” Bert spoke in a singsong voice. “You always make the new swordsman pick up the broadsword first.”
Annoyed, David said, “Nay, Bert.”
“What’s so entertaining about picking up the broadsword?” Alisoun fondled the handle of the biggest blade.
Bert smirked. “Have you ever picked one up?”
“You’re such a baby,” Eudo said in obvious disgust.
“She’s not going to pick up a broadsword,” David insisted.
“I think I would like to, now.” Alisoun asked for permission with an appealing glance.
David glared at his daughter, then answered, “As you wish, my lady. However, they’re very heavy and if you’re not careful—”
She withdrew it from its sheath. It slid it off the table and the tip of the blade slapped to the ground.
“—you’ll drop it.” He tweaked Bert’s hair hard enough to stop her from giggling, then moved to Alisoun’s side. Again he took the opportunity to wrap his arms around her. Putting his hands over hers, he helped her lift it. “It’s a good blade still,” he told her. “Can you feel the balance? The weight?” Swaying back and forth, they swung it until it whistled. “In a fight, it’s not necessarily the man with the most skill who wins. Often, it’s the man with the most endurance.”
“I understand. Let me hold it now.”
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he warned.
Never taking their gazes from the sword, the children moved away.
“Aye.”
“I’m letting go now.” He loosened his grip, and when she didn’t immediately drop it, he stepped away.
She continued to move it, staring at the tip in amazement.
Then Bert said, “Lift it over your head.”
David yelled, “Nay!”
He was too late. Alisoun brought the blade up. It hesitated just over her head, then tilted backward. She didn’t have the strength to control it, but she didn’t drop it. Instead she followed it as it tilted farther and farther, and at last she toppled backward.
She hit the ground as hard as one of her arrows.
David reached her side even as dust ruffled up. “Alisoun? Alisoun!”
She blinked her eyes open.
“Are you hurt?”
“It didn’t feel good.”
He slid his arm around her and helped her slowly sit up. Her wimple slid off the back of her head. She grabbed at it, but her braids dangled free and she grimaced. “Do you think—” David glanced at the children and lowered his voice, “—the babe is injured?”
“I think the babe is better cushioned than I am.” She answered as quietly, then rubbed at her tailbone.
A small voice broke into their conversation. “I’m sorry.”
David didn’t turn his head, but Alisoun did.
“Daddy, I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know she’d hit so hard.”
For the first time ever, David found himself thoroughly angry at his daughter. He could scarcely maintain a civil tone when he said, “Don’t ask my forgiveness, Bert. Ask your stepmother’s. She’s the one who suffered.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady.” Bert fought tears now. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“I am only bruised, Bertrade, and of course I forgive you.” She reached over David’s shoulder and patted the girl’s head, and this time she did it comfortably. “After all, it’s mostly your daddy’s fault.”
“My fault?” David reared back. “Why my fault?”
“Isn’t that jest one you play on all your squires?”
Trying to be righteous, David proclaimed, “It gives them an idea of the work they need to do before they can be dubbed a knight.”
“I think it’s mean.”
David found himself wanting to squirm.
“So why wouldn’t your daughter want me to supply the same entertainment the other squires have provided?” She shook her head reprovingly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to take credit for this, David. Now help me up and we’ll go to work.”
When had he become the one who needed to be taught? Trying to regain control of the practice, David said, “We’ll do the knifework now.” Bert began to protest, but he stared at her until she shut her mouth, and he added, “’Twill be your most likely source of defense anyway, my lady.”
Eudo put away the swords while Bert removed the wooden knives and put them on the table, never touching or asking to touch the real blades with their sharp edges. The children both showed off their best behavior, realizing, no doubt, that David had quickly reached his limit.
Too quickly, he admitted ruefully. If he had been sleeping regularly in Alisoun’s bed, he might have felt secure enough to listen to Alisoun’s reproval without becoming defensive.
Bert tugged at the hem of his gown. “I’ll use the wooden blade, Daddy.”
“Good.” David nodded.
Eudo’s hand hovered over the hilts. “Which blade would you like Lady Alisoun to use, my lord?”
“The light one,” David answered.
Eudo handed it to Alisoun hilt first, and she accepted it with a gracious smile. “You have been good to allow me to interrupt your true instruction.”
Bert wiggled in between them. “It’s my true instruction, too.”
Eudo rolled his eyes.
Without even seeing him, Bert said, “Well, it is!”
“It’s harder than I expected.” Alisoun cradled the knife between her two palms. “You must be very proud of your skills.”
Inveterately honest, Bert was forced to admit, “I’m not good yet, but I’m a lot better than I used to be. You’ll see. You’ll get better, too.”
Something loosened in David. The training session might have gone poorly, but his intuition had been correct. Bert was talking to Alisoun now. She saw her as someone who had to learn, to grow, someone whose apparent perfection had been hard won, and who was willing to study under those who knew more than she—possibly even from Bert.
David tugged on one of Alisoun’s loose braids until she turned and looked at him. “Bert is one of my best pupils, and with Eudo’s ingenuity he’ll be the new legendary mercenary of England.”
Eudo flushed and Bert grinned, and Alisoun swung the knife enthusiastically. “Long live Bert and Eudo!”
Suddenly the end of the braid was dangling from David’s hand.
He stared at it. He stared at her braid, shorter by five inches. He stared at an open-mouthed Bert, at round-eyed Eudo, and finally at Alisoun. Alisoun, too stunned to speak or move.
The moment seemed frozen in time.
Then a tiny sound broke their paralysis.
Alisoun choked.
“Don’t cry,” David begged, removing the dagger from her hand.
She choked again.
Bert wrapped one of her own mutilated locks around her finger. “It’ll grow back.”
“It’s not so bad, my lady,” Eudo said. “You’ve still got lots of hair left.”
Alisoun laughed. Not too loudly, but she laughed.
After a moment, Bert joined her, and then Eudo.
Smiling, David shook his head at his three warriors. “I’ve never failed with a squire yet.”
Alisoun laughed again. Giggling, Bert leaned against her for support, and Eudo straightened his face only to have his grave expression crumple beneath a new onslaught of amusement.
When Alisoun had gained control, she held out her other braid. “You might as well cut this off, too.” David took it while she lifted the shortened hair on the other side. The string that held it was gone, cut off by her knife, and the braid unraveled in great, heavy waves.
He measured one side against the other, then evened them up with a clean slice.
She lifted her face to his. The smile still quivered on her lips. “I apologize for being so difficult a pupil.”
The exertion, the laughter, the companionship had washed the stiffness from her face and left it open to him to read. Or had he just grown skilled at deciphering her thoughts? “A difficult pupil, aye. And just so you come away with a lesson you can use, let me tell you about the dagger.”
Taking one of the wooden knives—he would take no chance with real steel—he pointed at each part of her body as he spoke. “If you have need to defend yourself or to attack another, aim for the eyes, the throat, or the gut.”
“Not the heart?”
“The heart is the best place, but you’re likely to hit the ribs and I think in your case the less difficulty, the better.”
This time Eudo giggled out loud, and when David looked around he realized the children stood watching them, heads cocked, eyes bright with interest.
“Mama, will you come back tomorrow and practice with us again?”
Bert spoke without a shred of self-consciousness, but David wanted to clutch his heart and cheer at the same time. Alisoun has won his daughter over. She hadn’t even tried, and he doubted she knew how she’d done it.
But Alisoun did know enough not to show surprise at her new title. “There’s much in the keep which requires my attention, and I fear I’ll not have the time to practice these skills as much as I obviously require.” She sighed. “If only I had more help…”
Eudo stepped up. “A squire should know all manner of things around the keep, and so I would be honored to have you teach me all you know.”
Bert stuck her skinny elbow into Eudo’s ribs. “Hey! I was going to tell her to teach me!”
“You never wanted to work in the keep, and you’re just a girl. No girl could learn knightly skills and a lady’s skills at the same time. You’d collapse from brain fever.”
“I would not!”
“Would, too.” Eudo carefully inserted the daggers into their sheaths.
“Would not.” She collected the wooden blades.
With his hand on her arm, David moved Alisoun away from the training ground. In a low voice, he explained, “That’s how we got her to read. Bert always faces a challenge head-on.”
“I’ll remember.” Alisoun tried to work the guard off of her hand, but her fingers shook and she finally extended her arm in appeal. “Would you help me with this? I did very little, yet I’m exhausted.”
“Doing it badly is much more difficult than doing it well,” he assured her, and they stopped before the gate of the herb garden while he worked the leather off her wrist.
“Yet you do it very well, and you must have started out as badly as I did.”
He glanced up at her quizzically.
“Fine. Insinuate I performed more poorly than you.” She tossed her half-braided hair over her shoulders. “But you must have started out with a little less skill than you have now.”
“A little less.” He freed her from the wrist guard and rubbed the bruised flesh there. “Your skin’s too tender for this.”
She ignored him. “And you became the best mercenary in England and France. You became the legendary mercenary David of Radcliffe.”
With a wry twist to his mouth, he stripped off her finger guard and stuffed the leather into his pouch. “Aye, that’s who I am. The legendary mercenary who fought a dragon and won.”
“I think you have yourself confused with Saint George,” she answered seriously. “But truly, with the practice you have performed at George’s Cross and your experience, I would wager you are the best mercenary in England this day.”
“Have you seen the herb garden?” He opened the gate and waved his arm inside.
“Aye.” She stepped inside. “’Tis very well kept.”
He hesitated. He didn’t want to go inside with her. Not when her hair hung loose down her back. Not when amusement softened the curve of her mouth. But she kept talking, and he dared not cut off this communication. Not after so many days and nights of only polite conversation.
“Don’t you think you’re the best mercenary?”
He walked in and left the gate gaping behind him. “I’m not. Not anymore.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head. “There’s more to it than just skill, strength, and experience. I’ll never fight like I did before, because I’ve lost my taste for killing.”
She had leaned over to break off a sprig of mint, but she looked up at his words. “Really?”
Leaning against the wall, he watched her pluck the leaves and sniff them. “Battle is a young man’s game, and only men who have no respect for death can face it with equanimity.”
She tasted the mint and he could almost taste it with her. “Now you have respect for death?”
“I’ve seen the grief it can cause. I’ve lost dear comrades for no better reason than another knight on the circuit wanted his armor and got too enthusiastic in the melée.”
Her soft whimper of sympathy soothed him, and he moved toward her. “I have something to lose now. I have a wife and a child—two children!” He corrected himself and she stroked her belly. “I think there are better ways to retain what I’ve earned than by battering myself bloody.”
“Is that why you wed me?” She moved away as she asked the question, using a careless tone as if she cared nothing for the answer.
He suspected—he hoped—that she did. He should have chosen his words, taking care not to frighten her with undue emotion or anything less than good sense.
Instead he spoke from his heart. “I felt I owed you protection, but what I owed you and what I wanted to give you were two different things. I owed you security.”
She stopped. He stopped. When he didn’t finished, she asked, “What did you want to give me?”
“Love.”
“Love?” She whirled and stared. “Love? That’s nothing but stupid, romantic nonsense. Love doesn’t exist!”
“I never thought so, either.” He took one huge step and stood before her. “But I never thought someone like you existed, either.”
“First you tell me you chose to be the kind of warrior whose thoughtful good sense makes you a welcome mate and I think I can tell you all and you will understand. Then you say something as crack-pated as—”
He gripped her arms. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not my secret to tell.”
“But you’re the one in danger.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Have I ever betrayed your trust?”
“Nay.”
“Then let me start you. Your dearest friend was married to Osbern, duke of Framlingford.”
All expression left her face. She became Alisoun, countess of George’s Cross, just as he had first met her. But now he knew how to read her.
Calmly, she replied, “Everyone knows that.”
“She lost her affection for him.” The tension around her mouth relaxed, and he realized he had guessed wrong. “Or maybe she loved him, but he beat her half to death.”
Her jaw tightened.
So Osbern did beat his wife. This was no surprise to David. Most men did. “So she wanted to leave him, and you helped her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“There’s a wolf and a wolf cub in her coffin, my lady. Do you think I’m a fool who believes she turned into a wolf when she died? That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? That if the coffin were ever opened, superstition would overwhelm suspicion and the wolf would be reburied as furtively as it was dug up.”
Alisoun fixed her gaze over his shoulder, trying still to defeat him as he guessed at the chain of events which had brought them together.
David wouldn’t allow it. Not anymore. Not when he was so close. Taking her chin, he made her look toward him and bent down so he filled her gaze. “You staged Lady Framlingford’s death, then whisked her away…somewhere.”
Alisoun’s breath escaped her harshly now, and she trembled under his hands.
“Tell me where. Has she gone to a lover? Is she in one of your other castles? Have you sent her to France?”
Alisoun tried to shake her head.
“Ignorance is dangerous, Alisoun, at least in this case. Framlingford is dangerous. At least tell me where she is so I can—”
“Send her back?”
“You do think ill of me, don’t you?” He didn’t give her a chance to reply. “I have my friends, and believe me, Framlingford knows them not. If I could send her to them, he’d never find her and you would be innocent of any knowledge of her whereabouts.”
“How would that stop him from stalking me?” She blasted him with the pyre of her frustration. “He won’t be happy until he makes me hurt as he hurt…my friend.”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
“How will you stop him? You say you don’t relish killing anymore. Well, Osbern does. He especially likes to do it slowly.” Pale with disgust, Alisoun asked, “Do you know that he killed one of the pages in his care?”
“I had heard that.” David didn’t allow his compassion for one dead boy to divert him from his purpose. He needed to protect Alisoun and all connected with her, and so he said, “The lad had no connections—Osbern manages his cruelty as a cold-blooded sport.”
“A sport.” She nodded. “Aye.”
“You are well connected. We can go to the king and—”
“Philippa is an heiress. The king married her to Osbern. If the king knew that I had helped her escape her husband, he would—”
“Philippa?”
Alisoun’s hand flew to cover her mouth.
“Did you say Philippa?” Rage blew like a cold wind through his body, chilling his blood and bringing his terror to a new level. “By Goddes corpus, she’s here in this castle now?”
Grasping his arm, she said, “I had to keep her with me. The babe was just born, and I dared not send her on a long trip.”
Still he could scarcely comprehend the expanse of Alisoun’s betrayal. “She’s here? You never sent her anywhere away from you?”
“No one suspected she was anything but an impoverished cousin with an illegitimate child.”
“In my own castle. I’m harboring Osbern’s wife in my own castle.” He closed his eyes against the immensity of the disaster.
“Osbern watched George’s Cross. I feared to send her anywhere because I feared he would take her.”
“Obviously he suspected, for he dug up that grave.”
“He knew how I despised him. Once he broke both her legs.” She shook him hard. “That’s when he got her with child.”
Pain twisted in David’s gut. Aye, he knew Osbern. He despised Osbern. But David had a daughter, and a wife who carried their child. Osbern knew that somewhere his wife lived, and Osbern would never give up until he had her in his hands again. A measure of calm had returned to Alisoun. She knew what should be done but she seemed unable to comprehend the danger. “I promised I would keep Philippa and the baby safe, and with your help I can do it.”
“You’ve given me no choice.”
She enveloped him in an embrace. “You’ll see the right of it soon enough. I know you will.”
But she was wrong. He would never see the right of it. Not when they stepped out of the herb garden and heard the hail from the visitors beyond the drawbridge.
“Osbern, duke of Framlingford to visit his dear friend Sir David of Radcliffe.”