Lady of Valor Page 26

  “'Tis a surprise. I found it at the market yesterday. I wanted to save it until we returned to Fallonmour, but it pleases me more to give it to you now.” The affection he saw shining in her eyes both elated and wrenched him. He did not know what to say.

  “Open it,” Emmalyn instructed eagerly, climbing up onto the mattress and inching closer to him as if she meant to unwrap the gift herself should he hesitate any longer.

  Gingerly, Cabal loosened the twine that held the linen wrapping together. He swept aside the fabric and stared dumbfounded at the exquisite object that had been inside. It was a book, a costly-looking volume, ornately bound and heavy with countless gilded pages. Intricate scrollwork covered the top of the tome, the leather deeply tooled with twisting vines and a large rose in its center, the petals spread wide, carved with such care, they appeared almost real.

  Though his pride urged him to stop there, he was compelled to open the cover and peer inside. He turned past the first few pages, marveling at the many colors and illustrations contained within. Speechless with wonder and profound humility, he closed the book and set it aside.

  “You do not like it?” Emmalyn asked, her voice edged with disappointment.

  “No, I like it very much. In fact, 'tis the most beautiful gift I have ever received.” He turned toward her and cupped her cheek in his palm. “I shall treasure it always. Thank you.”

  Frowning, she pulled away from him slightly. “If you like it, what is wrong?”

  A soft, humorless chuckle escaped him, surely betraying the depth of his discomfiture. “Emmalyn, I'm a soldier, not a scholar. I've had no use for letters. I don't read.”

  “Then I shall teach you,” she said gently. She reached around him and brought the book onto her lap, opening it to the inside cover. “We can start with the inscription I wrote for you last night.”

  Her slender finger following along on the page, she began to read the words she had written for him. “To Cabal, champion of my heart. None of these great men can compare to the hero I have found in you.”

  Wholly moved, he let the words soak in for a long while, then he leaned in and kissed her. “Emmalyn,” he said, hardly able to summon his voice he was so touched. “My sweet, dearest lady. I do not deserve such kind affection. You cannot know how much this gift means to me.”

  “Would you like to hear one of the tales now?” she asked, clearly overjoyed that her present pleased him. “I can read you something about King Arthur.”

  “Truly?” Cabal asked, his interest piqued. “The great king is mentioned in this book?”

  “Indeed, his life is the most detailed account of all.”

  Cabal leaned back on the bed while Emmalyn stretched out beside him and flipped through the colorful pages. After some searching, she settled on a passage and began to recite the story of how King Arthur came to love and wed his enchanting Guinevere.

  It did not take more than a few moments of lying next to her for Cabal to lose himself in the sound of Emmalyn's voice, no longer hearing what she read but transfixed by the movements of her lips as she formed beautiful words out of the jumble of confusion he saw scattered on the pages spread open before her. He could not resist reaching out to touch the delicate shell of her ear.

  “That tickles,” she protested on a soft gasp of laughter. “Now you have made me lose my place.”

  “I would be only too pleased to help you find it again, my lady.”

  Playfully, he moved closer to her, pulling her hand toward his lap and attempting to push the book aside, but Emmalyn held fast. She shot him a look of mock exasperation. “Never you mind, sir. Here is where I left off.”

  Ignoring his throaty growl, she continued on with the story. Cabal pretended to listen a little while longer, but mischief soon got the best of him once more and he began to toy with the wispy hairs at Emmalyn's neck, blowing them softly and watching in sheer amusement as her skin prickled with gooseflesh. Each time she shivered, his body coiled a bit tighter, edging his self-control closer and closer to the point of breaking.

  “My lady,” he teased, tracing his finger down the length of her bare arm, “as you insist on reading to me about romance, I feel it only fair to warn you that my thoughts are becoming less chivalrous by the moment. It would not take much to persuade me to bar the door and hold you captive in this chamber, ravishing you for the remainder of the day and well into the night.”

  She slanted him a coy smile. “'Tis tempting, but I don't think my sister or the queen would find that very sociable behavior on either of our parts. Perhaps I had better see if I can find something less...stimulating?” Giggling, she skipped forward in the book. “Ah, here is an account of King Arthur on the hunt. Do you think that talk of boars and hounds will pose any manner of problems for us, my lord?”

  “My lady, I reckon you could read to me about the cleaning of the garderobe and I would still want to ravish you.” His quip drew a gasp of shock from Emmalyn before she dissolved with him into a burst of delicious laughter. “Read on, if you will,” he told her. “I will strive to control myself.”

  He closed his eyes and listened as Emmalyn recited a story about one day when King Arthur and his knights set off on a quest to hunt an exiled king-turned-boar. The wily Twrch Trwyth possessed between his bristly swine's ears the special instruments needed to slay an enemy of the realm. It was up to Arthur and his men to outsmart their foe and see the deed done. “The king had brought with him on this most important quest his favorite hunting dog,” Emmalyn read, “and this faithful hound was named...”

  When her voice trailed off suddenly, Cabal opened his eyes. “Pray tell me you do not mean to stop just when the tale was getting interesting.”

  She did not laugh at his mild jest. Her brow was pinched into a frown and it seemed to be something of a struggle for her to hold his gaze. “'Tis getting late,” she said quietly as she rose up from the bed. “May we finish this another time? We will have plenty of opportunity for reading together once we return to Fallonmour.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No,” she answered quickly. Too quickly. Her smile seemed forced. “Nothing is wrong. 'Tis just that I have much yet to do before the queen arrives. Josette may need my help, and I still need to see the tailor about my gown.”

  She was making excuses, already off the bed and crossing to the door, ready to grant him his leave. Confused by her queer change of mood, Cabal retrieved his clothing and dressed. She would hardly look at him. Tying the laces on his hose, he glanced down at the book, which lay open still to the tale of Arthur on the hunt.

  “May I take this with me?” he asked, watching her expression closely. He saw sympathy there, and something else. Something elusive that softened the line of her mouth so that it made her look on the verge of tears.

  “Of course you may take it,” she answered gently. “'Tis yours, Cabal.”

  He picked up the book, inserting his finger between the pages to hold the place as he then closed the cover and tucked the thick volume under his arm.

  “I hope you understand,” she said as he crossed the room to where she waited. “Would that we could spend the rest of the day alone together. We will have plenty of time once we are home.”

  At his nod, she rose up on her toes and placed a kiss on his cheek. “I will look for you at supper this eve,” she told him as if she thought that might reassure him.

  She seemed strangely melancholy as he stepped out into the hall and slowly closed the door between them. Cabal waited for a moment, staring at the cold oak barrier, wondering what he might have done or said--what she might have seen--that caused her to react so peculiarly. What might have made her so anxious to dismiss him. He had the niggling feeling that he would find the answer in the book she had given him.

  Taking it into the garrison's quarters, Cabal pulled a chair up next to the hearth and opened to the section that described the king's hunt. The black hash marks on the parchment meant nothing to him at all, just a mass of ind
iscernible pen strokes framed by an elaborate, colorful painting that stretched down the side of the page. An emblem of a snarling, rampant red hound engulfed the upper left corner of the page, its tail curling and looping around itself like a vine, sweeping down the full length of the margin. Beneath the beast, clutched in its hind feet, was a flared banner that beheld a single word. A word that looked somehow familiar to Cabal.

  He ran his thumb over the scripted letters, staring at the beastly hound as if it might speak to him, tell him what had so troubled Emmalyn when she had been reading these passages. But the hound kept its secret; the page remained a cryptic puzzle even though Cabal knew the answer was surely there before his eyes. He scanned the page, searching for some clue or pattern that would make it come clear for him, but in the end the exercise served only to make him all the more frustrated with his own ignorance.

  “God's blood,” he swore as he slammed the book shut. How could he think to decipher a sea of words when he could not even read the simple inscription Emmalyn had penned for him? To prove it to himself, he lifted the ornate cover and turned to the place where she had written those kind, undeserving words about him. He could not read it, but he remembered every word as though she were speaking it to him again. To Cabal, champion of my heart. None of these great men can compare...

  Suddenly, his temples started to pound. Something cold began to coil in his gut and his heart thudded heavy and hard in his chest. Dread crept up his throat as he looked at the beginning of her inscription once more. He willed her voice to slow in his head, pausing to look closely at each word, praying he was wrong. To... Cabal...

  Calmly, with a deliberation that rode a mere hair's breadth ahead of the emotional storm stirring to life inside him, Cabal turned back to the place in the book where Emmalyn had left off in her reading. Now the red hound did not seem so much snarling as he did sneering, his lips pulled back, teeth bared as if in mocking, derisive laughter. Cabal's eyes drifted down the page to the bottom of the painted illustration.

  From somewhere distant, he heard Emmalyn's voice again, reciting the last line she had read to him, the words becoming clearer as his gaze settled on the banner clutched in the beast's clawed feet.

  “And this faithful hound was named...”

  Cabal.

  That was why she had stopped reading, the reason she was acting so queerly. And it hadn't been sadness he saw in her eyes as she dismissed him from the room, he realized now, but pity. She felt sorry for him. Cabal stared at the single, damning word written on the hound's scroll. It was his own name. No, he thought bitterly, not his name. A beast's name.

  And the fact that Emmalyn had not told him--that she had let him take the book with him, certain that his ignorance would keep him from figuring it out, wounded him. He had trusted her, allowing her to get closer than anyone ever had, and she had betrayed him. The realization cut deeply. More deeply even than the pain of knowing he had been branded a fool for the whole of his miserable life. A bastard given a beast's name by a father he never knew. How his noble sire must have laughed over the richness of his jest.

  Cabal struggled to hold back the rising swell of his anger. His throat had suddenly gone parched, burning with the acrid bile of his lifelong, untold shame. Inside he was empty, bereft by the knowledge that Emmalyn knew of his shattering humiliation, too.

  Was she laughing at his dishonor now, or was she weeping for the fool she had chosen as her champion and lover? Damnation, but how could he ever face her again with any measure of pride? How could he ever bear to hear his name upon her lips when each time it would remind him of his shame?

  Grabbing an abandoned tankard of ale, Cabal quaffed what was left of its contents. The bitter draught soothed him for an instant, but he found that the promise of inebriation only left him thirsty for more. He did not want to feel this pain. Not here, not now. If he could not choke it down by force of will, he decided as he quit the garrison's quarters, then he would simply drown it.

  Chapter 23

  Emmalyn had not realized quite how nervous she was to see the queen until she found herself curtsying before Her Majesty in Beaucourt's solar that evening. The lavish antechamber had been set up as a royal receiving room in prelude to the grand feast, with the queen seated in an elaborate, cushioned chair brought with her from London, her favorite court maids assembled behind her like a colorful, perfumed backdrop of sophisticated finery. Josette, resplendent in her new gown of red sendal, stood to the queen's right, motioning the queue of waiting visitors in, one by one, to make their proper introductions.

  Though Eleanor of Aquitaine, dowager queen of England, could be no less than seventy years old, no one in the room or in the corridor immediately outside seemed able to look away from her legendary, noble visage. She was thinner than Emmalyn had recalled--doubtless fraught with worry for King Richard, her imprisoned, favored son--but Eleanor still exuded flawless grace and the natural regality that had earned the matriarch her esteemed reputation throughout all of Christendom.

  “Rise, my dear,” the queen bade Emmalyn, her once-crystalline voice a trifle rusty for her years. “It has been some time since I have last seen you, almost a year if memory serves. Fare you well, Lady Emmalyn?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I am honored that you would ask.” Emmalyn rose, but kept her head slightly bowed in deference of the great lady seated serenely before her.

  “We received Fallonmour's generous ransom contribution for the king's return,” the queen said evenly. “Your gift is well appreciated, by myself and on behalf my son.”

  “I am pleased that I could help, Your Majesty.” Emmalyn dipped into a slight curtsy, but her heart sank even lower with dread for what was certain to come next. If the queen had received her ransom portion, she had more than likely also received her letter of appeal regarding Fallonmour.

  “Come, stand here beside me.” Eleanor gestured regally with her left hand. “I would like to talk further, but there are still many yet to greet this eve.”

  Emmalyn did as requested, standing patiently--if somewhat apprehensively--aside while the line of visiting nobles continued forward, richly clothed lords and ladies dropping into deep obeisance in the presence of their queen. Eleanor met each one with a placid kindness that clearly dazzled all who felt the warmth of her regard. Only Emmalyn seemed to notice the smooth efficiency of the queen's conversations, the subtle care she seemed to take that no one be allowed to linger longer than another.

  The queen kept the line moving quickly while still managing to make every comer feel that he or she was special among the crowd. More the capable politician than her now-deceased husband, Henry II, or any of their princely sons, Eleanor knew how to finesse her subjects. Her beauty had won her the most acclaim in the days of her youth, but it was her wit and keen intelligence that marked her as a force to be reckoned with, even now. As if she sensed Emmalyn's thoughtful observation, the queen glanced sidelong at her and offered her a sly wink before turning back to greet the portly lord now struggling into a clumsy bow before her.

  During the space between his departure and the arrival of the next guest in line, the queen inquired, “I understand that you have increased Fallonmour's wool production, Lady Emmalyn.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” she answered hesitantly, hoping the queen would not consider the venture foolish, as Garrett and Arlo both had. “'Twas done gradually,” Emmalyn explained, “growing the flock over the past three years. We had to sacrifice several fields to grazing, but Fallonmour now earns twice as much revenue from our fleece as we do from our other crops combined.”

  Eleanor's mouth quirked in mild approval. “A daring endeavor, but obviously not without merit. You will have to tell me more about this, my dear. Perhaps you will convince me to consider much the same with my own estates.”

  The queen then turned the full measure of her charm onto a young baron and his wife, accepting their gift of a silver chalice with a gracious smile that left the lady weeping and overcome with emotio
n. As the couple departed, Eleanor whispered discreetly to her steward to see that the expensive gift was added to the king's ransom coffers. Countless more like offerings were made and similarly received over the course of the next hour.

  Between the comings and goings of her visiting subjects, Queen Eleanor kept Emmalyn occupied with pleasant, if brief, conversation. She asked after Fallonmour and the welfare of its people, surprising Emmalyn with her remembrances by name of common folk such as Bertie and Father Bryce, inquiring about Minerva's pregnancy and beaming with genuine delight to hear that twin foals were delivered whole and hale.

  Somehow, although she tried to measure carefully what she said, Emmalyn found that with every mention of Fallonmour, she kept coming back to Cabal. It was difficult to comment on any aspect of her life without also bringing up his name and the positive effects of his having arrived at Fallonmour.

  She told the queen of their recent troubles with Hugh and Cabal's clever means of fending him off, praising his skill in turning her garrison into a feasible army. She told how he had protected her at the festival and then rid Fallonmour of the thieves Arlo had hired. She could not hide her admiration, and it did not take long for the sage old queen to reach that very conclusion.

  “This hardly sounds like the same man you so convincingly requested I have removed from Fallonmour, my dear.”

  So her letter had reached London after all. Emmalyn swallowed hard, regretting more than ever her hasty appeal to the queen all those days ago. “I warrant he is not the same man, Your Majesty,” she admitted. “That is to say, I have revised my opinion of him greatly...having come to know him better.”

  The queen waited for another guest to depart before sliding Emmalyn a knowing glance. “You have some manner of affection for this knight my son dispatched to guard Fallonmour, do you?”

  Emmalyn inclined her head, embarrassed that she had been so careless as to make her feelings obvious and well aware that the queen was watching her closely now. “I had not intended--” she began, then broke off abruptly, not sure what say about her feelings for Cabal. “I don't know what I would do without him, Your Majesty.”