No Dark Place

16

Hugh wrote to Lord Guy, telling the earl who he was and asking if he could pay a visit to his old home of Chippenham. Nigel’s messenger returned with Guy’s reply the following day.

“What does he say?” Nigel asked. The messenger had found the two men at the blacksmith’s forge, watching while Nigel’s stallion was shod. Hugh had been patiently working with the horse, holding his feet for longer and longer periods until he was able to stand quietly for five minutes at a time. This was his first shoeing and he was behaving very well.

Hugh slowly rerolled the parchment upon which Guy’s letter had been written. “He says he finds my claim of identity dubious, but that I am welcome to visit Chippenham if I wish.”

The stallion swished his tail irritably and Hugh said, “Put his foot down, Giles, and give him a rest.”

“Of course he is not going to admit your identity,” Nigel said scornfully. “To do so would be to throw his own legitimacy into question.”

“There is also the minor problem that I don’t have any proof,” Hugh pointed out.

Nigel grunted. “Your face is proof enough.”

Hugh gave the stallion a treat and his thick, arched neck. “Not for Guy,” he said.

“If your memory returned and you could answer questions about your childhood, then your claim would have validity.”

Hugh rubbed the back of his own neck as if it ached. “Aye, I suppose that is so.”

The air was filled with the acrid odor of burnt hoof. The stallion looked at Hugh and blew softly through his nostrils. Hugh said, “All right, Giles, you can try again.”

The blacksmith lifted the stallion’s rear foot and Nigel said, “I am going to accompany you to Chippenham. You will need someone to watch your back while you are there.”

“You cannot accompany me,” Hugh said. He was watching intently as the blacksmith fitted a shoe to the stallion’s hoof. “You are Guy’s vassal and simply by finding me you have done enough to anger him. It would not be wise to oppose him further.” Abruptly Hugh switched his attention from the horse to Nigel. “You yourself have been at pains to point out to me exactly how much power Guy wields. You don’t want him to send an army against Somerford, sir.”

“He won’t do that,” Nigel said. “I haven’t openly opposed him in anything. And I would never forgive myself, lad, if something happened to you that my presence might have prevented.” He smiled ruefully. “My daughter wouldn’t forgive me, either.”

Hugh looked unconvinced.

“I am not asking you if I might come, Hugh,” Nigel said pleasantly. “I am telling you.”

Abruptly Hugh’s face lit with his rare, radiant smile, the one that made him look as young as he actually was. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I shall appreciate your assistance. You can point out to me which of my father’s knights are still at Chippenham so that I may question them.”

The Somerford household was at supper when the knights whom Nigel had sent to accompany Stephen’s army to Arundel returned home. They brought the astonishing news that not only had Stephen raised the siege, but he had agreed to give the empress a safe conduct to join her half-brother, the Earl of Gloucester, in Bristol.

Hugh was incredulous. “He let her go?” he said to the mail-clad knight who was standing in front of the high table addressing them.

Matthew was one of Nigel’s oldest retainers and his seamed, weather-beaten face was grim as he replied, “Yes, my lord. He let her go. Bishop Henry and Count Waleran of Meulan were to escort her to meet her brother.”

Even Nigel looked shaken by such news.

“What could the king have been thinking of, to do such a thing?” Cristen asked in amazement.

“I believe his thinking is perfectly clear, Lady Cristen,” Henry Fairfax said in a pompous, patronizing tone. “By raising the siege of Arundel, the king has freed his forces. This will enable him to concentrate them on Earl Robert, who is his real enemy.” He gave her the sort of smile one would give to a small child whom one was instructing. “Surely you can appreciate the chivalry of the king in choosing Robert as his main target, and not a lady.”

“His chivalry is misplaced, to say the least, if its result is to plunge the country into civil war,” Cristen replied tartly.

Fairfax looked first startled and then annoyed. Clearly he did not relish being contradicted by a woman.

Hugh said coldly, “What the king has done in releasing Matilda is to give Gloucester the moral claim he needs to make his cause a just one. What the king has done is to give Gloucester and his sister a solid, compact base in the west and Wales. What the king has done is to open the door to chaos.”

By now Fairfax was looking angry. “I rather think that the king has a better grasp of what is best for the country than does a young knight such as yourself, Corbaille.”

Hugh looked at him.

Fairfax’s already skin flushed a brighter red.

“You are disrespectful,” he said angrily.

Hugh said, each word dropping like a chink of ice into the vast silence of the hall, “It is difficult to respect a man who acts as stupidly as Stephen does.”

“What do you think he should have done?” Fairfax demanded. “Captured Matilda and thrown her into chains? Or perhaps you think he should have had her executed? I can imagine what the Church would have to say about that!” He leaned his upper body toward Hugh, who was sitting on the other side of Nigel, and said nastily, “Tell me, Corbaille, what would you have done if you were Stephen?”

“It isn’t difficult to answer that question,” Hugh said. As Fairfax grew hotter, Hugh was growing colder. “I would have captured Matilda and put her on a ship back to Normandy.”

“That would have been best,” Nigel agreed unwillingly. “I cannot see that allowing the empress to go free was a good move, Fairfax.”

Sir Henry scowled to find himself under attack from yet another quarter. “Stephen has a big heart,” he said. “It is one of his most admirable traits.”

Hugh lifted an ironic eyebrow. “I would rather have a king with a big brain.”

By now Fairfax’s face was scarlet. “I don’t know who you think you are, Corbaille…” he began furiously.

Hugh grew very pale. His light eyes glittered between their dark lashes. He stared at the older man for a long moment of silence before he replied evenly, “My name is not Corbaille, it is de Leon. And I can tell you who I think I am, Fairfax. I think I am your rightful overlord, the Earl of Wiltshire.”

Henry Fairfax retired to his bedroom early, still fuming at Hugh’s opposition and suspicious of his claim of identity. After Fairfax had gone, leaving Nigel and Cristen alone together in the solar, he told her that while he was at Chippenham he would ask Lord Guy’s permission for her to wed with the lord of Bowden.

Cristen was sitting in her usual chair, her feet resting on her footstool, her dogs on either side of her. “But I don’t wish to marry Sir Henry, Father,” she replied calmly. “I don’t like him.”

Nigel was sitting in the large, high-backed chair with carved lion’s paws for armrests that was next to hers. At her reply, his head snapped around and his brows drew together. “Don’t like him?” he repeated. “Nonsense. What is there not to like about him? He’s a fine-looking man, and, I might add, a careful steward of his own property. He is the sort of man who will look after you and Somerford the way I want you looked after.”

“He patronizes me,” Cristen said.

“Nonsense,” Nigel said gruffly, his frown deepening.

She shook her head decisively. “It’s not nonsense, Father. You heard him yourself this evening. He talks to me as if I were a child. I may not always be correct, Father, but I do claim the right to make my own moral judgments. You have always accorded me that honor.”

Nigel looked at his daughter. She seemed so small and delicate as she sat there, almost lost in her chair, but he knew better than anyone that there was steel in Cristen’s backbone. The servants of Somerford adored her, but they also respected and obeyed her. They had done so since she had taken over as chatelaine when her mother died seven years before.

“You must marry someone, Cristen,” he said reasonably, “and good matches such as Henry Fairfax don’t grow on trees. His first wife died last year and he is in the market to replace her. The addition of Somerford to his honor would greatly enhance his stature. You would be a lady of some consequence if you married him.”

“I don’t like him,” Cristen repeated. “He’s too big. His face is too red. And he patronizes me.” Her eyes sparkled with indignation. “Did you hear him call me tenderhearted because I said I disapproved of hunting for sport? I disapprove of hunting because I find it morally repugnant, Father, not because I’m tenderhearted!”

“Cristen…” Nigel gave her a worried look. He bit his lip. “I trust you are not placing your hopes in Hugh.”

Her eyebrows lifted, two fine aloof arches over her inquiring brown eyes. “My hopes?”

“I trust you are not hoping to marry Hugh,” he said bluntly. “I can see how close the two of you have grown, but it will not do, Cristen. His situation at present is too precarious for him to be able to offer you any stability. And if he does succeed in winning his rightful place, he will be your overlord.”

“I know that, Father,” she said serenely.

He looked at her in frustration.

Her brown eyes were full of sympathy. “Poor Father. Am I such a trial to you?”

“You are not a trial at all,” he said gruffly. “You have always been my greatest joy. It is of the utmost importance to me to see you happily married.”

“I would never be happy married to Henry Fairfax,” she said positively.

“You haven’t given him a chance.”

She sighed. “He’s the worst sort of combination, Father. A man who isn’t clever and thinks he is. I also suspect that he’s a bit of a bully. And I do not take well to being bullied.”

Nigel slammed his hands down on the lion’s-paw armrests of his chair. “Is that what you want me to tell the man? That you think he is a stupid bully?”

Her full, serious mouth quirked. “I don’t think that would be terribly tactful.”

“Well, what am I to say, then?” Nigel was clearly disgruntled. “I don’t want to insult him, and he will be insulted if you refuse him.”

“Tell him I don’t want to leave you,” she said. She smiled at him. “It will be the truth, Father.”

He tried to hide his pleasure. “You’re seventeen years old,” he complained. “Many girls are married at fifteen, Cristen.”

She slid out of her chair and came over to give him a hug. “You should go to bed,” she said. “You and Hugh are to leave for Chippenham tomorrow.”

“Humph,” he said.

She kissed his cheek. “Good night, Father.”

“Good night, Cristen.”

He watched her trail off to her room, a worried frown between his brows.

Hugh awoke the following morning with a headache. Cristen ruthlessly evicted Henry Fairfax from his room and installed Hugh in his old bed.

“There must be something going wrong inside my brain,” Hugh said to Cristen tightly as she changed the cold cloths she was putting on his forehead. “I never had headaches before.”

She gently put the new cloths into place and said composedly, “I think they will go away once you find out the truth about yourself.”

The window shutters had been closed to keep out the light and no candles had been lit, but even in the dimness she could see how pale he was. The muscles in his face were tense with pain.

His lashes lifted. His eyes were much darker than usual. “Do you think the headaches have to do with my…search?”

“Yes, I do.”

In fact, she was convinced of it. He had managed to survive in his identity of Hugh Corbaille by denying his past. Now that his past had caught up with him, however, the fear of facing it was tearing him apart.

No wonder he had headaches.

He said wretchedly, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

She held the bowl for him.

“I hate this,” he said intensely when he had laid back down again.

She understood that it was not just the pain he was talking about. It was the humiliation of being ill.

“You’re not perfect,” she said calmly. “You can become ill just like anyone else.”

“What time is it?” he asked.

She looked at the hourglass. The last two headaches had lasted for eight hours.

“You have four more hours to go,” she said.

His lashes flickered.

Four more hours of agony, she thought despairingly. It isn’t fair, Dear Lord. Haven’t You already given him enough to bear?

“My lady.” It was Brian at the door. “Sir Nigel sent me to tell you that Sir Henry is leaving.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”

Brian left and Cristen stood up. “I told Father last night that I wouldn’t marry Sir Henry,” she said to Hugh’s pain-tensed face.

He managed a smile. “Good.”

She bent and kissed his hair above the compress. “I’ll be back,” she said softly, and left to make her farewells to a very indignant lord of Bowden.

The headache held true to form and lifted eight hours after it had begun. A pale and tired-looking Hugh was able to join the household for supper, although he ate very little.

Nigel, warned by Cristen, said nothing about Hugh’s illness. After supper, Cristen’s ladies joined the knights in front of the fire in the Great Hall, and everyone sang to the accompaniment of Thomas’ lute. Then, after the ladies had retired, Hugh remained in the hall to play a game of chess with Matthew.

The solar was dark when Hugh entered, and the doors to both Nigel’s and Cristen’s rooms were closed. Hugh went into his own room and told the squire who was waiting for him that he would undress himself. Once the squire had gone, Hugh returned to the solar.

He stood in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed on her bedroom door, and willed her to come out.

It took her thirty seconds.

She had on her green velvet robe and her shining hair was tucked behind her small ears, spreading in a smooth fan to her waist. She held a finger to her lips and pointed to his room. On silent feet the two of them went inside and closed the door behind them.

He reached out and took her into his arms.

She leaned against him and closed her eyes.

“You got rid of Fairfax all right?” he asked tensely.

“Aye.”

He put his cheek against the silky round top of her head. Her hair smelled of lavender. “Good.”

“Hugh,” she said. “I understand that you must go to Chippenham, but please promise me that you will be careful.”

“I promise,” he said huskily.

“If anything should happen to you, I might find myself married to Henry Fairfax after all.”

His arms tightened around her. “Never.”

She pulled back a little and looked up into his face. Her skin was as perfect as a baby’s, he thought, it was so closely textured and pure.

He bent his head and kissed her.

Her head tipped back and her hair streamed like a silken mantle down over his wrists. Her lips opened under the pressure of his and the kiss became deeply erotic.

When he finally tore himself away from her, he was breathing hard and a pulse was beating rapidly in his throat. “I wish we were already married,” he said fiercely.

She felt his need, and all her instinct was to give him what he desired. “Do we have to wait until we’re married?”

His mouth compressed into a hard, straight line. “Yes,” he said. “We do.”

She didn’t answer.

He touched her cheek. “No matter what happens, I can bear it as long as I have you.”

“You’ll always have me,” she said.

He smiled. “Aye,” he said. “I know.”