The girls called a greeting to whoever was passing by. The altar cloth put aside, Marian got up to observe.
Stunned, her feet rooted to the floor when she saw him. Panic swelled and threatened to clog her throat. Breathe! her body shouted. She could barely obey.
Stephen of Wilmont, mounted on a magnificent black horse, smiled down at the twins who gave him their rapt attention.
Marian squelched the urge to scream at the girls to come into the safety of the hut, or to shout at Stephen to be on his way. Neither the girls nor Stephen would understand her panic at seeing the three of them together.
The threat he presented nearly overwhelming her, Marian took refuge in glancing over his escort.
Two chain-mail-clad knights rode horses of brownish red, of the same renowned Wilmont stock as Stephen’s. Six helmeted foot soldiers, carrying spears and shields, flanked two wagons pulled by teams of sturdy oxen. As did most nobles when traveling to a keep where they intended to visit a long while, Stephen arrived bearing crates and barrels—filled with his belongings, extra food, gifts for his hosts—and furniture. Above the sides of the last wagon she spied the half moon of a round table. Towering above it all were the thick, unmistakable four posts of a huge bed. Stephen’s bed.
The girls giggled. Lyssa climbed up onto the wall, the better to talk to the man who beamed down at her. Audra dared a couple of stones to rise higher, to get a better view of the noble lord who, for whatever reason, stopped to speak with them.
Marian remained rooted, not daring to go outside until she brought her fears under control. Stephen had no reason to harm the girls, or to suspect they were other than the daughters of a peasant. The realization calmed her some.
She wished she could hear clearly what they spoke of, but all that reached her ears was Stephen’s deeply timbered tone and the girls’ high trills.
Why couldn’t he have found some other adventure to pursue to keep him away longer, or better yet forever? After a month had passed, then two, she’d been sure another woman had caught his fancy, enticing him to forget about marrying Carolyn.
Now, a full three months after their meeting in Westminster, Stephen arrived in full splendor, apparently intent on winning Carolyn, so sure of his welcome he planned on a prolonged stay and brought along his bed.
Stephen had obviously taken great care in his choice of garments today, wanting to impress, and impress he did. Over a bloodred, long-sleeved sherte he wore a gold-trimmed, black silk tunic. A girdle of gold links wrapped twice around his waist. Impressively noble garb on a magnificently formed male.
He possessed coin aplenty, or so Carolyn claimed. His brother, the baron, had gifted both Stephen and their half brother Richard with several holdings apiece from which to draw income. Enough coin for Uncle William to take Stephen’s suit for Carolyn’s hand seriously, though Marian suspected Stephen’s being the sibling of a powerful baron was more a factor in William’s acceding to Carolyn’s pleas to hear Stephen’s offer.
Carolyn, on the other hand, cared little for the coin or Stephen’s rank. A gifted Adonis, Carolyn had dreamily termed the young man with the comely face, exquisitely formed body, and lack of desire to interfere with her wish to be sole overlord of Branwick when she inherited.
Truly, Marian’s youthful lover had most definitely come into the fullness of his manhood. Stephen had grown tall, wide across the chest and narrow in the hips. Unlike most Norman nobles, he wore his hair long in Saxon fashion, the wind-tossed black tips skimming his broad shoulders.
No boyish innocence remained in his striking features. His clean-shaven jaw jutted forward at a determined but not arrogant angle. A noble brow hooded his deep-set eyes of sparkling, spring green—both predatory and mesmerizing—that darkened to nearly emerald when lust reached feverish heights. His mouth, so quick to smile, with lips full and warm and mobile—
Marian’s heart stuttered, an unwanted reminder that those lustful bouts with Stephen remained so vivid and affected her so forcefully, even from across the full length of the yard. Even over the passing of years. She thought she’d been fully prepared to see him again if necessary, had steeled her heart and mind against his appeal. ’Twas galling to admit she’d failed so utterly.
Audra swept a hand behind her, palm up, stopping when her fingers pointed at the hut. Inviting Stephen inside?
Dear Lord, have mercy, no!
Stephen glanced at the doorway. Marian stepped back. A foolish gesture. He couldn’t see this far inside the hut from the road.
Coward, a niggling voice chided her. If Stephen were here to stay, if he married Carolyn, he would learn where Marian lived, that the girls were hers. What sense putting off what couldn’t be avoided?
Her secret was safe. She’d told no one, and no one could guess merely by noting that the girls and Stephen shared but the one physical trait of shining, raven-hued hair.
Marian took a step forward.
Stephen shook his head, an aggrieved smile on his face. With a courtly bow to the girls, he backed his horse from the fence, signaled to his escort, and resumed his journey to Branwick Keep.
Marian sank down on the stool and covered her face with her hands, so relieved that she moaned.
The twins came into the hut at a run.
“Mama, he is here!” Lyssa cried. “Stephen of Wilmont has come to marry Carolyn!”
“He comes to ask Lord William’s permission to marry her, you mean,” Audra corrected Lyssa, once again proving that Audra missed none of the servants’ gossip. She set the basket of eggs on the table. “Will William like Stephen over Edwin, Mama, as Carolyn does?”
To Marian’s bewilderment, Carolyn preferred to marry Stephen of Wilmont over Edwin of Tinfield. True, Stephen was young, unlike Carolyn’s first two husbands. Stephen had no wish to usurp Carolyn’s place as ruler of her dower lands and eventually Branwick, as she feared Edwin might try to do. Stephen pleased Carolyn in bed, a fact Carolyn had been eager to point out to Marian, if not to her father.
That Carolyn had the chance to marry Edwin, a man she’d been fond of for years, held no sway with Carolyn in her choice of husbands.
William was inclined to allow his daughter some say in her third marriage. He’d chosen both of her first two husbands and saw how miserably and quickly those marriages had ended!
“’Tis for William to decide,” Marian finally answered.
“Can we go now, Mama? We have the eggs!” Lyssa said proudly.
Marian glanced at the altar cloth. “Not yet,” she said, grateful for the short reprieve.
Mayhap, if fate proved kind, she could slip in and out of Branwick Keep later today without hardly a soul, especially Stephen, knowing she was there. No sense flirting with further distress when it would likely find her soon enough.
With Branwick Keep in view, Stephen shifted in the saddle, the better to swipe at the road dust on his tunic and breeches. There wasn’t any hope for his boots, so he didn’t bother with them.
“Nervous?”
The question came from the man who rode at Stephen’s right, Armand, one of Gerard’s favorite squires and a pleasant companion on a long journey.
Stephen shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “Not unduly.”
After all, one Norman noble thought and acted much like another. He usually handled himself well around the likes of barons and earls, and King Henry—the most headstrong Norman in the kingdom. ’Struth, his last encounter with the king hadn’t gone at all well. Still, William de Grass, lord of Branwick, shouldn’t present a challenge.
“I would be, knowing I was minutes away from confronting and being judged by the father of the woman I hoped to marry,” Armand admitted with a shiver.
William