The Elusive Bride. Deborah Hale

tongue and listen!” flared the Empress.

      Rowan clenched his mouth shut with rather ill grace. It would take a greater fool than him to ignore the dangerous flicker that leapt in Maud’s ice-blue eyes.

      “Cecily Tyrell was but a child when my cousin usurped my crown. Since then, Brantham Keep has been in the eye of the maelstrom. Most of Tyrell’s near neighbors declared for Stephen.” Her measured words took on an edge of cold wrath. Woe betide those neighbors if Maud should ever win the throne.

      “Few from our side dared venture that far east to go a-courting.” She cast a withering glance around the hall. Fevered pretense of conversation broke out among the clusters of noblemen, feigning to have missed both the Empress’s scornful remark and the implication of her contemptuous look.

      “Besides,” continued Maud, “the girl had four brothers in line ahead of her for the Tyrell honor. No one expected her to inherit. I gather she once entertained an inclination to take the veil….”

      Rowan almost groaned aloud. Just what he needed—a nun for a wife! Jacquetta’s pained reluctance on their wedding night would seem like wanton passion by comparison. All the same, a nun might recognize the importance of keeping vows.

      “Impossible.”

      The Empress heaved an exasperated sigh. “You are not some villein and the miller’s daughter, who can wed to suit their fancy. The higher the station one is born to, the more that hangs on a bride choice—you know that as well as I.”

      Rowan heard a wistful note in her voice, and it shamed him. Barely out of the nursery, Maud had been wed to a man old enough to be her grandfather. Widowed at the age of twenty-four, she’d been made to marry Geoffrey of Anjou—a swaggering cub ten years her junior. Whether she’d felt any affection for her first husband, Rowan did not know. But he had ridden with her to Rouen for her second nuptials. He’d seen her face on her wedding day.

      Perhaps Maud also recalled their progress to Rouen, when she had set out to charm her escorts: Gloucester, FitzCount and DeCourtenay. Her voice softened. “If you cannot be devoted to one another, then be bound by your common devotion to my cause. Who knows but it may prove the stronger bond in the long run. I need Brantham to hold the way open to Reading and Wallingford. You are just the man for the task.”

      Perhaps affronted by his look, or tired of cajoling where she was used to commanding, Maud stiffened. “Do you despair of my cause, DeCourtenay? Do you think Stephen’s chit of a wife has me on the run? Is that why you refuse to declare for me publicly by marrying Cecily Tyrell?”

      “Of course not!” Rowan drew himself up to his full height. “How can you doubt my allegiance? I returned to England from my cousin’s court in Edessa to pledge you my sword.”

      The Empress eyed him coldly. “Then put some muscle behind your hollow promises of support, sirrah. Your bride awaits you at Brantham. Mount and ride out to claim her by sundown. Or mark me, I will take it as a sign you have thrown in your lot with Stephen.”

      By an act of will, Rowan bent his head and his stubborn knees. Sweeping a low bow, he pressed his lips to Maud’s ring. “As you command, my liege.”

      Wielding a glare that dared any of the assembled nobles to gloat, Rowan DeCourtenay quit the hall. He admired Maud and knew her cause was just. That didn’t mean he had to like the imperious shrew. At that moment, the notion of a meek, biddable nun for a wife seemed almost appealing.

      “Cecily!”

      The word reached her faintly, as though from a great distance or through a thick fog. She had dreamed herself back in the glade at Wenwith again, reliving her encounter with that compelling fugitive. As she had almost every night since their meeting.

      Savoring the feel of his arms around her, Cecily ignored the call—it must be Sister Goliath.

      “Do wake up, Mistress Cecily! There are armed men at the gates. Sire Paston says Brantham is surrounded!”

      The threat to Brantham rent her dream, like a broadsword cleaving a heavy tapestry. Cecily wrenched her eyes open.

      “Armed men?” she croaked in a voice hoarse from sleep. “Has Stephen’s queen brought her Flemings to besiege us?” She rolled out of bed, groping for her gown.

      The serving wench was in such a state of alarm that she proved no help at all in dressing her mistress. “Near as bad.” She wrung her hands. “’Tis my lord DeBoissard and his men.”

      “Fulke!” Cecily spat the name as though it were the vilest oath in Christendom. “What’s brought that stoat sniffing about?”

      Descending the winding stairs of the tower two at a time, she burst out of the keep, crossing the ward at a dead run. Servants, children and chickens scrambled out of her path.

      She reached the gatehouse with scarcely enough breath to gasp, “How now?”

      Brantham’s castellan and marshal turned on her with faces grave and drawn.

      “DeBoissard’s men rode up, bold as you please, and surrounded the castle, milady,” explained the marshal, as if she could not see for herself. “They’ve made no hostile moves otherwise, so I’ve bid the archers hold their fire. I’ve asked my lord Tyrell his will, but he says nothing. What are we to do, my lady?”

      Cecily glanced toward the narrow window. She could see DeBoissard and a small mounted retinue waiting before the main gate. Even from this distance, she sensed the aura of arrogance that hung around him.

      “I suppose we must ask him what he wants with us.” Her tone left no doubt that she considered it an odious chore.

      “We’ve asked, my lady,” replied the marshal. “He says he wishes to speak with you.”

      “Oh, he’ll get his wish,” Cecily muttered as she strode to the window. “What brings you to Brantham, DeBoissard?” she called down. Some unholy urge made her add, “Have you switched your allegiance back to the Empress?”

      Fulke doffed his elaborate capuchon with an oily flourish. “Lady Cecily, welcome home. I see your sojourn at the nunnery has not dulled your wit. I’ll own, I toyed with the notion of joining the Countess of Anjou. Somehow I knew she’d wrest defeat from the lap of victory. I am Stephen’s man yet. And you?”

      The note of polite mockery in his voice goaded her. “At Brantham we hold to our sworn fealty. The Tyrells are no oath breakers.”

      If he minded the insult, DeBoissard gave no sign. “A noble ideal, to be sure. I fear I am of a more practical bent.”

      “A more treacherous bent, you mean!” Cecily tried to bite back the words. She must not give Fulke any greater excuse to attack Brantham.

      The knave merely laughed indulgently—a sound that piqued Cecily’s rage to an even keener pitch. “It does my wit good to spar with you again, dear lady.”

      Under her breath, Cecily muttered, “I’d sooner spar with you over drawn daggers, foul viper.” In a louder voice she called down, “Is that your answer to my question? Have you ridden here with an armed force only to trade quibbles with me?”

      “I have come to trade words with you, mistress,” he replied. “Though fonder exchanges than this, I hope.”

      “Be plain for once in your life, sir. I have no patience for your riddles.”

      “You are tetchy, Lady Cecily. But no matter. I fear the strain of your new status has overset your usual gentle nature.”

      “What do you know of my status?” Leaden fear weighted Cecily’s stomach.

      “Only that you are now heiress to Brantham, my dear. Pray accept my most tender condolence upon the death of your brother. Has the House of Tyrell not lost enough in its misplaced fealty to Maud?”

      The mannerly insolence of his question undid her. Scooping a handful of loose pebbles and dirt from the gatehouse floor, she flung them through