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“Oh, Robin’s well,” Mathilde answered looking unperturbed. “He didn’t really steal her, you know. She followed us home.”
“Hmmm,” she shrugged. “She always was a willful hussy, that one. But maybe she has learnt her lesson.”
“Robin insists she possesses uncommon intelligence.”
Helga snorted. “She’s so sharp, she’d cut herself.”
“We did try to find our way back but somehow, before today, we could not find the way.”
Helga glanced back at her bird. “Is that so?” she said. “The cat could find her way back if she chose to.”
“I was not sure,” Guy put in, feeling he needed to uphold his part in the conversation, “that you still lived here.”
“Oh yes,” Helga muttered. “I can still be found here. When the occasion demands it.”
Which was a funny way of putting it, Guy thought, but then again, what else could you expect from her kind.
She pushed a basket of nuts before them, by way of hospitality. Mathilde took a walnut and cracked it neatly, fishing out the two halves. “My friend Will taught me how to do it that way,” she confided. “It was his father’s steward that taught him the trick.”
Guy frowned over the mention again of these male acquaintances of Mathilde’s. When she had spoken of them playing at cards with her, he had thought them perhaps manservants or retainers. But if this Will had a father with a steward, then perhaps that was not the case? He shifted his position uneasily. A dry crack of laughter startled him from his thoughts, and he found the old witch’s piercing gaze resting on him with evident glee.
“A penny for them,” she suggested softly, a glint in her eye. “Whatever they are, they are turning your blue eyes quite green.”
Green? Guy glanced at her warily, unsure of her meaning.
“Does Tancred not eat nuts?” Mathilde interrupted them suddenly. Guy noticed the bird was now perched on the bowl and staring down at the nuts curiously.
Old Helga regarded her a moment. “Why don’t you offer him one betwixt your fingers, dearie?” she suggested.
Guy’s hand shot out to catch Mathilde’s, before she could even reach for it. “Never fear,” he said darkly. “He’d have her fingers off, soon as look at her.”
Old Helga went off into a peal of laughter, slapping her scrawny thigh. “Tancred’s mellowed some since you last saw him, my lord.”
“I highly doubt that.” Guy eyed the malevolent looking bird, who gazed steadily back at him.
“He’s a very fine bird,” said Mathilde, who was clearly no judge of character.
“Aye, that he is.” The old woman nodded, selecting a nut and passing it up casually to Tancred. He cracked the shell between his beak in an instant and devoured the tasty nut.
“Don’t squander it,” said Old Helga suddenly, in a different voice this time, low and portentous. Guy started, his skin breaking out in goosebumps. When he looked at her, he found her regarding him steadily. He shot a quick look at Mathilde, but she was absorbed watching Tancred who had now jumped down from the witch’s shoulder to select another nut.
“The road has forked,” Helga continued in the same heavy tone. “And you have a chance to deviate from the path that was laid out before you by another man’s hand.”
Guy’s eyebrows snapped together. “I don’t follow your meaning, old woman.”
“Your kind never does. Until it’s almost too late.” Her retort was sharp, annoyed even. She wasn’t using her seer’s voice anymore, but her regular one. What man? pondered Guy. The king’s man, Oswald Vawdrey, who had forced his hand and made him sign that marriage contract? Or his father? “Just the same as the old one,” she said bitterly. “Just as stubborn. He never listened.” She threw him a sharp look. “Did he tell you why he banished me from Acton March?”
“My father?” he asked startled. “Nay.”
She gave a brief nod. “Didn’t like the reading I gave him. Didn’t want the truth.” She huffed.
Guy regarded her warily, remembering what he’d been told. She had prophesized something his father had not appreciated. “What did you tell him? That the north would fall?” he guessed shrewdly.
She gave a crack of laughter. “Even I would not be so foolhardy as to tell a zealot that his cause was a lost one.”
“What then?” He was genuinely curious.
She gave a small smile. “What if I told you it concerned the fate of his precious son and heir?” she asked curiously.
“My fate?” She nodded slowly. “I survived the war,” he said pointedly. “He should have been contented with that. Many from these parts were not so fortunate.”
She shrugged. “Discontented men are seldom grateful.”
He looked at her sharply. Did her words contain a rebuke for him? He shifted again, uneasily. “Any ban from our hall is hereby revoked,” he said firmly. “You have been missed on feast days.” He flushed slightly, thinking of his own lack of celebrations. His tenants and household had perhaps reason to feel hard-used these past few years since he had taken over the reins. He needed to do better.
She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement of his words. “Fairly spoken,” she muttered. “May you never regret your words.”
Why should he? Guy frowned, but already Helga had turned back to Mathilde.
The rest of the afternoon passed far too quickly. Guy escorted Mathilde back to the lodge and reluctantly returned home before supper. He had managed, for the most part, to push from his mind the fact his unwanted house guests were arriving today. Still, he supposed he ought to be present for supper at least, though the thought gave him very little pleasure. Because you’d rather be at the lodge, a small voice whispered in his ear. With her. He didn’t even bother denying it to himself. Leaving her was starting to be a wrench. The truth was, he would rather neglect his duties playing truant with his mistress, than dutifully take up the role of host to his guests. The thought unnerved him, he had always put duty first in the past. His father would have been appalled at such behavior.
He made his way through the manor quickly, intent on escaping anyone’s notice before he was ready. By some miracle he actually managed to reach his study without anyone hindering him. Swinging back the door to his safe haven, he received his first unwelcome surprise. Someone had invaded his private space. Guy checked on the threshold. Julia Allworthy stood at his window, gazing out, showing her perfect profile with its straight nose and high, pure brow. Silently he cursed Firmin for not warning him she was in his study. Even as he started to back out of the room on silent feet, she turned suddenly, catching sight of him.
“Guy!” she cried in her full-bodied voice. “How wonderful!” She took several impetuous steps toward him, before halting, biting her lip and looking him up and down in seeming admiration. “How well you look!”
She clasped her hands in front of her like a nun at prayer. Nothing else about her was remotely nunlike. She wore a plum velvet gown with gold trim and her rich auburn hair dressed high on her head and studded with jeweled pins and a gauzy veil which did nothing to conceal her long swanlike neck. Guy turned around wondering who else was in the room to benefit from this display, but he was the only other occupant. Had she always spoken so loudly? If she were a man, you would say she had a booming voice. He wasn’t sure what you called it in a woman. Julia advanced even closer, her voice turning intimate and confiding.
“You needn’t fear, we are quite alone,” she said in a low voice that vibrated with emotion and extended a hand toward him to kiss.
Guy frowned at her. “Why should I fear seeing you in company?” he asked, pressing a perfunctory kiss on the back of her hand. For some reason there was a floaty scarf dangling pointlessly from her fingers that distracted him a moment. “You’re a guest in my house.”
Julia gave a delighted laugh. “How droll you are Guy. I see you have not changed.” She sighed. “How comforting that is, to one such as I, displaced and in exile.”
Guy
stared at her. “Is something amiss with Allworthy House then?” he asked in some bewilderment. The letter had not mentioned as much.
Julia gave him a look of sweet reproach. “Allworthy House will never be my true home, Guy,” she said sadly. “And I think you know that.” She turned and made her way over to the window seat, elegantly arranging herself there.
It was on the tip of Guy’s tongue to point out that a wife’s home was wherever her husband lived, but then he remembered his own circumstances. He didn’t want to add hypocrisy to his ever-growing list of transgressions. “I, er, have a few things to be getting on with before supper, Julia,” he said briskly.
She smiled indulgently. “I’m sure you know me better than to think I will interrupt you when you are busy with your estates,” she responded archly.
Guy eyed her warily as he rounded his desk. She had no needlework or anything to occupy her, he noticed with irritation. Julia had never been a peaceable woman. She was the sort who expected to be entertained, and lavishly. Ignoring her, he opened his ledger and started checking the entries before totaling them up for the month. It was exactly two minutes before Julia interrupted the peace.
“How this takes me back,” she declared huskily. “Was it not ever thus, between us?” Guy’s frown deepened. He didn’t remember her as being quite this annoying, in truth. “True accord,” she continued when he did not respond. “Is when you can sit in perfect silence with another person and feel no obligation to speak.”
“Quite,” said Guy tersely. He dipped his quill in the ink and returned to his columns.
“Alas,” she sighed. “That I cannot spend my every day thus employed. How vastly contented I would be!” She paused expectantly, clearly expecting some rejoinder from him.
Why the hells would she want to sit all day watching someone about their business? “Where’s Cecil on this visit? He does not accompany you?”
“Cecil?” she sounded surprised.
“Your husband,” he reminded her.
Her smile faltered. “Poor Cecil, he will never feel as we do about the north.” Guy shrugged and returned to his page. “Do you remember, Guy,” Julia asked pressing a hand to her breast. “That summer I turned eighteen?”
Guy suppressed a sigh and laid down his pen. “We are the same age,” he pointed out. “So, of course I do.”
“And the words you said to me, down at the hollowed oak?” she asked, casting down her eyes demurely, raising the floaty scarf to her cheek. “I will never forget them. Never!”
Guy thought a moment. Was that where he had proposed to her? He had some vague recollection of it.
“How you must hate me!” she flung at him passionately, making him start. “For the way I trifled with your heart, fool that I was! How —” She lowered her voice again. “How I hate myself for the wretched mistakes of the past.” Her bosom heaved; she raised her stormy violet eyes to meet his. “Can you — can you ever forgive me, Guy?” she asked tremulously.
Guy blinked. What the hells was all this? He had seen Julia several times since her marriage and she’d never subjected him to such a scene.
“Of course, Julia,” he said stiffly. “Don’t distress yourself.”
For one horrible moment, he thought she was going to rise off the window seat and fling herself at his feet in impassioned entreaty. Jumping up from his chair to forestall her, he made some excuse and beat a hasty retreat.
“Firmin!” he bawled as he strode down the corridor. He heard Firmin answer him from the long gallery and made haste in that direction. He spotted him at last instructing one of the underservants next to a portrait of the fourth Marquess. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me Lady Julia was lurking in my study?” he fumed, as Firmin hastily dismissed the servant. “I do not want to be left alone with her for the duration of her stay, do I make myself clear? And I want it made very plain my private rooms are strictly out of bounds to guests!”
A soft chuckle from the other side of the gallery made him wheel around. On a cushioned bench there lolled her brother, Tristan, resplendent in a purple doublet, his auburn locks gleaming about his shoulders. He looked very like his sister. Guy wondered waspishly if they had deliberately dressed in matching colors. “Kerslake,” Guy greeted him coldly.
“Guy,” Tristan greeted him effusively. “Well met! It must be some fourteen months or so since I last saw you.”
Guy nodded brusquely. “Or thereabouts,” he agreed.
“It seems my sister is making herself at home,” Tristan murmured, a gleam of unholy amusement in his eye. “How she loves these trips back to the land of our forebears. I vow each time she grows more nostalgic and waxes yet more lyrical than the last.” Guy glared at him resentfully. “I daresay you’ve noticed, she has now recast you in her memories?” Tristan gave a gurgle of amusement. “You are no longer the disappointed suitor,” he explained with relish. “But the man from whose arms she was torn, by cruel circumstance and an indifferent fate.”
Guy glowered. “She jilted me in favor of Allworthy, as I remember it.”
Tristan tutted. “Tsk, tsk, now that just won’t do Guy! That just won’t do! She’ll get very hurt if you don’t fall in line and play along in the role she’s assigned you.”
“I’ve no intention—” Guy started hotly, before another thought crossed his mind and he turned back to Firmin. “Get Temur to bring that wife of his up to the house,” he said shortly. “She can keep Julia company for the duration of her visit.”
Firmin bridled. “Lettys?”
“Aye, that’s her. Well remembered.”
“I doubt very much her company is refined enough —” Firmin started, but the expression on Guy’s face halted him. “Aye,” he muttered. “If that’s what you want, Guy.”
“It is! And she’s to dog her every step, mind!”
Tristan laughed again softly as Firmin departed, vibrating with disapproval. “Julia will hate that, you know. She heartily despises the company of women.” Guy shot a startled glance at him. She did? “She won’t put it that way of course,” Tristan yawned. “She’ll simply tell you, oh so sadly, that other women are unkind to her, and she has no idea why.” He pulled a face. “That’s your cue to explain it’s all down to jealousy on their behalf.”
Guy regarded Tristan uncertainly. “How long are you staying?” he asked in an abrupt change of subject.
Tristan grinned lazily. “She mentioned a month, but who knows? Last spring we stayed with the Earl of Strethneal for three. His wife was practically tearing her hair out by the time we left.” Guy struggled not to utter an expletive. “Alas,” sighed Tristan. “I am wholly dependent on my brother-in-law’s purse-strings, and must dance to my sister’s tune. Luckily, for some considerable time now I have been dead to all shame. Otherwise the life I live would be quite simply unbearable.”
Guy regarded him sourly. “Why does Allworthy not accompany her this time?” he demanded.
Tristan’s eyebrows rose. “He’s practically on his deathbed, poor old sod. Why else do you think Julia’s so keen to do a headcount of her old suitors?”
“I’m married,” Guy pointed out abruptly. He had never been grateful for the fact before.
“Well yes,” admitted Tristan, inspecting his nails. “But you’ve never abided under the same roof as your marchioness, now have you? Likely, my dear sister is thinking that after four years, you may be able to petition for an annulment.” Hells. Tristan smiled. “Quite so, my dear Guy,” he murmured. “Quite so.”
He did not find Tristan so easy to shake off as his sister, and ended up in his company for the next hour before dinner, catching each other up with news of mutual acquaintances. Guy bade a vintage, full-bodied wine to be opened, which the two men cordially shared. When they went in to their supper, they found Julia awaiting them with her most gracious smile. Guy noticed that the table had been set up informally, so they were all up the one end of its vast expanse. A lavish arrangement of hard-boiled eggs covered in saffron and flavore
d with cloves was set down in the center of the table. No doubt this was in honor of their guests, as usually only plain food was served from their kitchen.
Guy frowned, and set himself at the head of the table, Julia sat at his right and Tristan at his left. There seemed only three covers laid.
“Cruel creatures,” Julia pouted. “You have been neglecting me as a mere female, while you talk of your horrid men’s business.”
Guy eyed her with surprise. Had Julia always been so coquettish in manner? She was thirty-one now and he thought such behavior ill suited her.
“Guy has been bringing me up to date with our old neighbors,” Tristan said mildly, as they were served the first course of sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar.
Guy turned to Jankin who was hovering nearby. “Where is Firmin?” he demanded. “Tell him to come and be seated. He always takes his meals in here of an evening.” Jankin ran off to find the steward.
Julia cleared her throat. “Perhaps he thought the occasion demanded a more intimate setting for the reunion of childhood friends?” she suggested sweetly.
Guy did not deign to answer this, just looked up at Firmin’s approaching footsteps. “Sit down, man!” he bade him sternly, and Firmin made haste to do so. “From tomorrow night see to it that Temur, his wife, and Waldon are also seated here for dinner.”
Firmin bobbed his head, though he looked a little taken-aback. “Yes my lord, I merely thought—”
“Well don’t,” Guy interrupted him. “I don’t pay you to anticipate my wishes.” Which wasn’t strictly speaking true, but he did not trouble himself too much about that. “Inform the kitchen,” he ordered over his shoulder. “We are four of us dining.” Jankin made haste to fetch another setting.
“I was thinking,” Julia began, reopening conversation. “Of taking a ride tomorrow afternoon.” She threw him an ingratiating smile. “I remember that pretty bay mare you lent me the use of last time. I feel sure she will remember me.”
“I no longer have her,” Guy answered shortly. “I gave her away.” He thought of the bay mare stabled next to Destrian at the hunting lodge currently. What was the name Mathilde had called her? Sabrina.