The Unveiling by Tamara Leigh (beach read book .TXT) 📖

against testing him, especially as she had then done so.

Annyn crossed the solar and stepped into the corridor.

“Be of good care,” Garr warned Warren.

“I assuredly shall, my lord.” He closed the door.

Garr sank back against the pillows and squeezed his shoulder. Had he torn the stitches when he seized Annyn? He looked to the bandages. God willing, there would be no seepage, for if he was to recover before Henry descended upon Stern, he could not waste even a day.

Annyn leaned back against the wall for fear she might crumble before Squire Warren. He would like that, but even if it was his due, she would not yield. She pushed off.

“Come.” He stepped past her.

Where? Of course, did it matter when her audience with Wulfrith had only gained her scorn? Though she, who had set to motion all that transpired, was once more made a lady, Rowan weakened in that horrible cell. And it seemed there was nothing she could do.

“Lady Annyn!”

She met the squire’s impatient gaze.

“Lady Isobel said you are to take the nooning meal with her, and it has begun.”

Though Annyn tried to ease the scratch in her throat by swallowing hard, it did not aid. As she followed the squire to the stairs, she coughed into the kerchief and knew she sounded nearly as bad as Rowan.

The mood of the hall altered with her arrival as all pondered and judged her. Still, she did not falter as Squire Warren guided her to the high table where Lady Isobel was seated with her daughters. And farther down the table sat Sir Merrick who allowed her no more than a brooding glance before looking elsewhere.

What was it about him? What did he know? When might she speak with him?

“Sit beside me, Lady Annyn,” bid the lady of the castle.

Skirting the table, Annyn looked to Gaenor and Beatrix whose eyes bored through her, then lowered to the bench beside Lady Isobel.

The woman leaned near. “Worry not. God shall deal with my son.”

“To what end?”

“Methinks that depends on you.” Wulfrith’s mother dipped her spoon into the steaming trencher, the contents of which would have made Annyn’s mouth moist were she not struck by the realization that the lady might be a valuable ally.

Though Annyn was not allowed to leave the donjon, there was nothing to prevent Lady Isobel from doing so. But how to convince her to aid the one who had nearly killed her son? For whatever reason she had pardoned Annyn—an incredible stretch—surely it would not extend to Rowan. Still, it was his only hope.

Ignoring Gaenor and Beatrix who continued to watch her from the other side of their mother, Annyn scooped stew from the trencher that had appeared before her. For the first time in days, the food she spooned into her mouth was hot, but though it warmed a path to her belly, her guilt that Rowan was not here to savor it bade her to lower her spoon.

“Lady Isobel,” she spoke low, “if I could speak to you about Sir Rowan?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You press my generosity too far.”

Of course she did. “Apologies, my lady.” Annyn rolled the spoon’s handle between thumb and forefinger while the woman continued to glare at her. Finally, Lady Isobel returned to her meal, but Annyn could not.

She coughed into the kerchief. How her throat ached, first from affecting a man’s voice, now from malady. But surely it did not compare to what Rowan suffered in that filthy, dank cell.

Annyn turned again to Lady Isobel. “I am beset with fatigue. If ’twould not offend you, I would seek my rest.”

Concern flitted across the woman’s face, and she looked to Squire Warren. “See Lady Annyn to Wulfrith’s chamber. It shall be hers for the duration of her stay.”

The protest that rose to Annyn’s lips died with the realization it was not the solar of which the woman spoke, but the chamber in which Annyn had bathed.

Once Annyn was clear of the hall, she breathed out relief. However, at the landing she fell beneath Squire Samuel’s regard where he stood outside the solar.

The young man’s becoming face was made unbecoming by the scorn that bent his mouth and made slits of his eyes. “My lady,” he mocked as she drew even.

Annyn halted and let the spark in her light a fire. “I am a lady,” she said with her chin high. “A lady that you, with all your training to become the consummate warrior, were too blind to see. A lady that you allowed to steal past you and compromise your lord’s safety.”

His brow grooved so deeply it nearly made him appear elderly.

“Good eve, Squire Samuel.” Annyn stepped past. “Sleep light.” She met Squire Warren’s livid gaze where he stood a stride ahead. Though her words had not been directed at him, it had fallen as heavily. She did not care. A man might be dying and all the discomfort these two suffered was pricked pride.

As Squire Samuel sputtered at her back, she strode past Wulfrith’s first squire.

“Were you the least bit pretty,” Samuel’s convulsing tongue finally formed words, “you could not have done what you did.

He struck harder than he could know, nearly taking her breath for all these years of knowing she could never measure against her mother’s comeliness. Now, finally, someone had spoken it—worse, for the young man was not even comparing her against her mother’s profound beauty. Not even pretty...

Annyn’s spirit awakened and found good in it. At the door to her chamber, she turned and smiled. “I shall take that as a compliment, Squire Samuel, for if that is all that held this lady from being revealed, it recommends that I, a mere woman, am equal to men as they would not have me believe. Thank you.”

Mouths slackening, the young men stared.

Annyn shouldered into the chamber that wafted blessed heat, closed the door, and crossed to the small table beside the bed. She lifted the hand mirror that lay alongside the basin.

The face reflected back at her was one she had always known, though these past years she was less inclined to look upon it—oval, set with dark eyebrows above pale blue eyes that were a bit too large, a small nose flecked with freckles, and an unremarkable mouth.

Pretty, Lady Isobel had said, but she had only been kind.

Annyn spread her lips. Her teeth were her best feature, white and evenly set. The only real difference to be found since last she had looked upon her reflection was the bruise on her cheek. The swan that Uncle Artur had years ago assured her she would become had yet to materialize, meaning it would not.

As she set the mirror back, a tickle rose in her throat. She coughed, wiped her nose, and eyed the bed. She would rest, and in the morn perhaps she would think more clearly on Rowan.

When she curled beneath the coverlet, the cough turned more insistent and summoned an ache between her eyes. Burying herself deeper beneath the covers, she groaned. Such misery!

“What is this?” Garr frowned at the folded garment tossed into his lap.

As eventide deepened, Isobel perched on the mattress edge. “Do you not recognize the tunic over which your mother toiled though she detests needlework?”

What was she plotting? He lifted the garment and saw it was the one he had given to Annyn. “I know it. Why do you bring it to me?”

“Look to the hem.”

He did. It was torn, and he was momentarily swept with fury at the possibility one of his men had assaulted Annyn. But Abel would not have allowed it.

“What would you have me see, Mother?”

“From that tunic was taken the cloth that bound your shoulder. Lady Annyn herself tore it to stanch your bleeding.”

Annyn who had run with Rowan after the man had put an arrow through him. Garr dropped the garment. “Why do you champion her?”

“When I sought her out in the tower, ’twas with an angry heart, but something...” She shook her head. “She is not as expected.”

“Just as she is not Jame Braose.” He made no attempt to lighten his loathing. “The woman is a deceiver. She will say and most certainly do whatever best serves her.”

Isobel leaned near. “She knows you did not murder her brother, though she has but the evidence of her heart to tell her.”

“Heart!”

Isobel laid a hand over his. “You have been too long without prayer. I bid you, go to it and find comfort. Anger will be torn from your eyes that you may see more clearly.”

He pulled away from her, and when he spoke, his voice was chill. “Does a bed not await you, Mother?”

Disappointment thinning her mouth, she stood. “Do not let all I taught you ere you were stolen from me be for naught, Garr. Now more than ever you need—”

“I know what I need!” He flexed his stiff fingers. “A sword to hand and an arm to swing swift and sure.”

“But going before it must be forgiveness.”

He thrust off the pillows. “You dare speak to me of forgiveness when for how many years did you war with my father? Still you wear black when he is dead and buried and can no more be eaten by your longing for another man.”

Her eyes dulled as if whatever nibble of light was in her had gone out.

“God’s patience,” he growled and dropped back onto the pillows. He was once more the young boy whose father had tested his anger and corrected it time and again. He had hurt his mother, and it was wrong, whether by Drogo’s law or God’s.

“You are right,” Isobel said softly. “Thus, who better to advise you to forgive than one who did not and now lives in deepest regret?”

Garr frowned.

She nodded. “Though the day I wed Drogo I vowed to wear black until death parted us, only when he was gone did I realize the wrong I had done him. For that, my son—not revenge—I continue to wear black to remind me of my unpardonable error.”

It was the most she had ever spoken of her relationship with his father. Though Garr knew it was not for a Wulfrith to care about such things, he hungered to understand what had happened between the two who had conceived him in bitterness.

A knock sounded, causing his mother to startle. “The physician.” She hurried to the door as though she fled the devil himself.

Garr ground his teeth. His injury had waited this long for the man to return from attending an ill villager earlier in the day. It could wait longer. “Mother!”

She pulled the door open and swept past Squire Samuel and the physician.

Tempted as Garr was to vault after her, he knew one could not make a woman talk unless she wished to. And even if one could, it would be wrong to press Isobel further. The little she said had cost her much. If more were to be told, it would have to save for the day of her choosing.

“Your color is better,” the physician said as he approached the bed. “How does your shoulder fare?”

“It does not pain me.”

The man set his bag on the bed. “Let us see if the stitches hold.”

Throughout the examination and redressing of the wound, Garr experienced a restlessness so great he was beseeched a dozen times to be still. A quarter hour later, the physician pronounced that the injury was healing well and withdrew.

Garr looked to the torches and followed their convulsing light that reached to the torn tunic. Was it true Annyn