Simon’s Lady Read online

  Beresford let her words wash over him for the first minute or two, nodding, listening, even drifting away for a moment as he tried to imagine the nature of Adela’s intentions.

  Then he heard her say unmistakably, “And that is why, my lord, I have grown concerned about the loneliness of your present state.”

  His attention snapped back. “My loneliness?” he repeated, astonished. “I am hardly lonely, madam, I assure you! I live in a very full household, as you must know.”

  “Ah, but you have been a widower some five years already,” she said softly.

  “That is true,” Beresford answered. “But I fail to see the trend of your argument.”

  Adela smiled a woman’s smile. “You have grieved your dear, departed Roesia long enough—”

  “Never a day of it!” Beresford interpolated bluntly, hastening to correct her misimpression.

  A titter of laughter went around the table, but Adela admirably kept her composure. She continued smoothly, “—and so bravely. You have been raising your sons without a mother, trying vainly to keep a household in order—”

  “My household is in excellent order,” he objected, rudely interrupting her again in his continuing astonishment.

  “—Managing your many estates alone under great duress. For these reasons, my lord, and principally that of your personal happiness, I am delighted to inform you that we—King Stephen and I—have found you the perfect wife.”

  Beresford was momentarily stunned, as if he had taken a physical blow. Then, without another thought, he thrust back his chair, causing it to stutter against the floor. Rising, he ejaculated a fiery, “What?” He nearly choked in his surprise and anger. He did not bother to address Adela but turned directly to Stephen. “A wife? For what, pray? My personal happiness? Tell me that you are joking, sire, and I will forget this outrage!”

  A moment of silence fell, as the very room held its breath at the unprecedented insult of a knight to his king. Had these words been uttered by any man other than Simon of Beresford, calls of treason would have been hurled down on his head. Under the circumstances, however, not a baron was disappointed, and they eagerly awaited more.

  Adela raised a calm hand and smiled at this trusted knight’s outburst, thereby excusing him. “Her name is Gwyneth of Northumbria,” she continued, “and she has been recently widowed. Since you are a widower and have experience with both the bliss of the married state and the great loss of it, you are the perfect man to comfort her in her grief.”

  Beresford’s mouth dropped open. It was hardly necessary to remind anyone present that he had been unhappily married for eight years to an infamous shrew. He had not wished for Roesia’s death, but neither had he, in truth, missed her a day since she had died. In fact, he had known a great contentment during these past five years of his unmarried state, a contentment he had not fully realized until this moment. So hapless and befuddled was his expression that several of the barons could not contain their merriment.

  Adela took advantage of Beresford’s momentary speechlessness by inviting him, in soothing tones, to be seated.

  Beresford sat back down but did not bother to rein in his anger. “I am very far from being the perfect man to comfort any woman in her grief!”

  “And she is, furthermore, very beautiful,” Adela added.

  “Then give her to Lancaster,” Simon fired back, gesturing to the baron on his left, a noted ladies’ man.

  Adela averted what could have been hearty laughter with her quick response, “Lancaster is having difficulties just now on his estates, which are in the quarrelsome west. Your Gwyneth comes with a vast tract of land in the north that will need to be managed by a steady and undistracted hand such as yours.”

  Beresford’s brows snapped together fiercely. “Then she must be Canute’s widow,” he said. Canute had been a northern supporter of Henry, whose followers Stephen’s forces had, almost by accident, recently defeated. Beresford saw the trend, and his analysis was blunt. “You want my well-trained vassals to do the work of subduing the remaining rebels.” After a brief pause, he continued, “My loyalty to you, madam, and to the king are well known, and I am happy to put all my men at your disposal—on the instant!—for the task in Northumbria. It is not necessary to bind me in marriage to assure yourself of my willing help.”

  Only by a slight compression of her lips did Adela betray that she misliked having to state her case so openly. “It is not your loyalty that concerns me, my lord. Rather it is necessary to bind Gwyneth in proper alliance, so that Canute’s men can be made to shift their loyalty—” she glanced to her right “—to King Stephen.”

  “Have her wed Fortescue then,” Beresford said, flicking his hand toward another baron at the table. “He’s a widower with more vassals at his disposal than I have.”

  Adela’s mouth turned down. She said delicately, “The lovely Gwyneth needs a man more in the vigor of his youth, in order to provide her with children, since she is childless.” She nodded to Fortescue. “With all due respect to Sir Walter, who has served the king long and well, I wish to honor his long-stated desire to devote more time to his grandchildren.”

  “What about Northampton?” Beresford said. He tried to call to mind every widowed man of his acquaintance with sizable estates and ample ranks of vassals.

  Adela’s frown deepened. “It is fortunate,” she said, her pleasant tones overlaid with a hint of displeasure, “that Bernard of Northampton is not here this afternoon, my good lord, for it would pain him to hear me remind you that he has been twice married and still has no children to his name.”

  “And Valmey?” Beresford shifted his eyes around the table and pointed to the man next to the queen. “Everyone knows that he has sired a passel of bastards, and he’s not married.”

  The muffled laughter at this bald comment was not entirely masked by Adela’s sedate response. “He is promised elsewhere.”

  Beresford wished that he had paid more attention to court gossip, for he could have sworn that Cedric of Valmey was currently in an adulterous relationship with one of Adela’s favorite ladies. However, since he was beginning to perceive that he was in a losing battle, he did not think it wise to challenge Adela on this tricky point. Even he knew some limits.

  Beresford was desperate now to find an acceptable substitute husband for Gwyneth of Northumbria. “Warenne, then,” he suggested, flinging an arm at the man next to him, who ducked in self-defense.

  The laughter was open this time. “Warenne’s wife, Felicia, might object,” Adela said, having to bite her lip to contain her own laughter.

  Because Felicia Warenne was such a mousy woman, Beresford had forgotten that she existed. His initial thought was “She wouldn’t object!” but the general hilarity at the table had put him at a disadvantage. “I beg your pardon, Roger,” he said gruffly.

  Seizing the moment, Adela said swiftly, “Let us toast your impending happiness then, Simon of Beresford.”

  The wine was poured and the chalices raised.

  Beresford felt a sudden physical restriction, like a cramp in his sword arm. Recognizing defeat, he lifted his chalice and brought it to his grimacing lips. He did not so much drink the wine as filter it through his teeth. It was very bitter.

  Chapter Two

  At a signal from the king, the barons rose from the table, but they did not immediately leave the council room. Instead, they lingered, speaking of this and that, as was the custom after the conclusion of official business. One or two of the braver barons paused to say a few words to Beresford. The aging Walter Fortescue, along with Cedric of Valmey, who was or was not promised elsewhere, went so far as to wish him well. Lancaster, the ladies’ man, had his mind on the Saint Barnabas Day tourney and engaged Beresford on that topic.

  Beresford had risen with the others and was accepting their congratulations with very bad grace. He felt a strong sense of injustice and was hungry for prey.

  He found it. “Senlis!” he summoned angrily, his tone bringing
his good friend’s head around with a snap. He strode forward and grasped two handfuls of Senlis’s tunic, chest high. Nose-to-nose, he accused, “You knew, you cur, and you delivered me into the hands of the king as unsuspecting as a babe!”

  Senlis tried to shrug free of Beresford’s grip, but to no avail. “I did not know, Simon!” he protested, torn between laughter and alarm. “Truly I didn’t!”

  Beresford wanted to wipe the poorly suppressed grin off his friend’s handsome face. He was within an inch of yielding to the urge when a group of barons overheard the exchange and came to Senlis’s aid.

  “No one knew,” Roger Warenne said, seconding Senlis’s assertion.

  When Beresford did not immediately release his friend, Lancaster offered, “I thought your summons had to do with some change in the tourney. Why, I was saying as much to Valmey here earlier this afternoon.”

  Cedric of Valmey soothed slyly. “Yes, in fact, Lancaster assured me that Adela was calling for a change in plans on the field of contest, but instead you have the honor of marrying in service of your king. Why, had I been available to be chosen for the honor, I hope that I would have known my duty and willingly submitted, just as you have.”

  This distracted Beresford’s murderous attention from Senlis, but he still did not release his friend. Eyeing Valmey coldly, Beresford asked, “Could Adela have chosen you, then? God’s teeth, Valmey, you led the successful campaign in Northumbria! Were you asked first, but declined, pleading a prior promise that might well not exist?”

  Valmey quickly held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I was not asked, Simon! My guess is that you were the king’s first and only choice!” Tacitly declining Beresford’s challenge of his “prior promise,” he continued smoothly, “And a remarkably good choice it proved to be, as became clear when you encouraged Adela to compare your qualifications, so favorably, to all other possible men of rank.”

  Beresford was a straight-speaking man, and he hated that Valmey could so deftly bend a man’s words to his own purposes, like a skilled smith with hot steel. Beresford would have clutched Valmey’s throat in response had not his fingers been already tightly enmeshed in Senlis’s tunic. “God’s wounds, Valmey! Don’t try me too far—!” he began, but was interrupted.

  Walter Fortescue stepped into the fray by saying blithely, “Now, there you’re wrong, Cedric!” He seemed oblivious to the tension in the atmosphere, and thereby inadvertently reduced it. “Beresford didn’t encourage Adela to sing his praises. Not the boastful type, our Simon! Sounded more like he wanted nothing to do with another marriage! Not that I blame him, if I recall his late wife correctly! Well! That’s the way I interpreted his exchange with Adela, in all events.”

  Valmey murmured, “I stand corrected,” but did not have the look of a man who had erred without purpose.

  Fortescue nodded at Valmey and smiled, rather pleased by his own analysis. “Oh, I was surprised when Adela announced that Beresford should wed Gwyneth of Northumbria, instead of allying the poor woman to a man with more liking for the ladies. Not, of course,” he said affably, turning to Beresford, “that you’re of Bernard of Northampton’s ilk and prefer men to women, God wot! We all know about your Ermina. She’s a toothsome wench, but you’ll have to admit you don’t have a soft touch with the ladies, even though you’ve produced your share of sons. And that’s why you were chosen, Beresford—to give sons to Gwyneth. You’re the very man to get the job done!”

  The amused silence that followed this amazingly insensitive, amazingly accurate speech permitted Fortescue to add, “Now, Simon, do you let go of your friend’s clothing, for we all know there’s no need to kill the messenger who brings the news.”

  Beresford’s hands had, in truth, grown slack on Senlis’s tunic. Now he loosened his grip completely and whirled. “Who should I kill, then?” he demanded through his teeth, ready to fall on Fortescue.

  “No need to kill anyone, Simon,” Fortescue said simply, “for the news you received is not bad, but good. With this marriage, you’ll be doubling your lands.”

  Beresford was disciplined enough not to brutalize a man twice his age. He balled his hands into fists and thrust them down at his sides. “I’ve land—and heirs!—to spare!”

  “You’ll soon have more of both,” Fortescue replied complacently. “And I wouldn’t complain, if your Gwyneth is as beautiful as Adela says.”

  Adela chose her moment well. Just then, she stepped up to the group of her most powerful barons, who fell aside at her approach. She did not immediately pursue the subject of Gwyneth’s beauty or her land. Instead, she asked Beresford, “Have you had time, my lord, to adjust to your turn of good fortune?” When he hesitated, she glanced over her shoulder at Stephen, who was still seated at the table, now with a court scribe at his side. The king was bent over a curling sheaf of parchment, apparently in the act of applying the royal seal to the document. “Stephen has chosen to grant you an earldom into the bargain. What do you say to that?”

  The news that Beresford’s coffers would now increase with the earl’s “third penny” affected the various barons differently and caused the eyes of several to widen. Valmey’s narrowed.

  Beresford’s did not change, for he could not have cared less about an earldom. However, when Adela smiled and held her hand straight out in front of her in a commanding gesture, he saw how he must answer. He tethered the frayed edges of his temper, knelt and bowed his head over her hand. “I say, madam,” he said obediently, “that my good fortune has just doubled.”

  When he rose, Adela said, “You will now go to meet Gwyneth of Northumbria. She is at present in the great hall, awaiting your convenience, in company of Lady Chester. I would introduce you to her myself, but for the fact,” she said, glancing at the king, “that I am needed elsewhere at the moment.” She returned her gaze to Beresford. “If you are acquainted with Lady Chester, you might effect your own introduction.”

  Beresford grumpily denied acquaintanceship with her.

  Senlis, who had twitched his tunic back into place, said he knew Lady Chester, and volunteered to make Beresford known to his future wife. Adela smiled and moved away from the group. The barons bowed at her exit and dispersed.

  When Senlis turned to Beresford, he had difficulty containing his mirth at the sight of his friend’s gloomy, glowering expression. With a foolhardiness that occasionally gripped him, he suggested pleasantly, “Perhaps you’ll wish to change your tunic before presenting yourself to Gwyneth—as you wanted to do earlier for Adela.”

  Beresford returned a black regard that might have slain a lesser man. “Not a chance of it,” he grated.

  ****

  Gwyneth of Northumbria was standing in a slanting ray of sunlight that fell from the high, unshuttered windows of the great hall, hoping the warmth would penetrate her cold skin. She had a few minutes to herself, for Rosalyn, Lady Chester, had just left the room. She breathed an inward sigh of relief for the moment of relative freedom. She was exhausted. She closed her eyes to master the fluttery fear that danced erratically in her stomach, but it eluded her control and rose to flit around her heart and flap painfully at her throat. She felt winded and out of breath.

  It was a familiar sensation, being out of breath, but this time it was worse: she felt out of courage.

  Where was it now, she wondered, the steady courage that had not wavered during the past fortnight of bloody defeat and terrifying capture, the bone-deep courage that had carried her, head high, through five humiliating years of marriage to Canute. She had always taken it for granted, this bone-deep courage that she had never before had to name or summon, this plain and simple courage of which she had never before realized that she had been so proud. Where was it, this wonderful courage, and why should it go into hiding now?

  She could almost feel the weight and thickness of the stones that separated her from freedom. In her mind’s eye, she penetrated the walls of the White Tower and traveled through the inner curtain wall to the outer curtain wa
ll. There her energies faltered, for she knew yet a third wall stood before the deep moat which surrounded the whole. Her courage sank lower.

  To raise her spirits, she reminded herself that she had found herself in this situation before and had survived it. It should make little difference that three stout walls of the Tower of London surrounded her now rather than those of Castle Norham. It should make little difference that she was trapped in the main Norman stronghold rather than in the shrieval castle of the Northumbrian Danelaw. It should make little difference that she was promised to a Norman baron she did not know, for he could not possibly be worse than the Danish beast she had wed.

  She had been younger then, too, and more tender when she had been taken from her Saxon home and bargained in marriage to Canute to prevent the devastation of her father’s estate. She remembered the valor with which she had faced her fate then, and which was so very different from how she was feeling now. Why had she been, as a girl of eighteen, braver than she was as a woman of almost four and twenty?

  It made no sense. She had had years of experience in mastering the fear produced by the threats and abuse she had borne from Canute. She knew the signs. Her stomach would flip-flop. Her throat would constrict. She would have difficulty breathing. Yet she had never allowed herself to be overcome by her physical anxiety or to expose her vulnerability. Her courage would always rise up to save her. She would always protect whom she needed to protect, even if it meant further endangering herself. She would always find ways to maneuver around her husband’s wretched decisions and would always outwit him in the end.

  The knowledge of her successes should be giving her confidence, not draining her of her courage. Unaccountably, the constriction in her throat became tighter.