Blankets? Belle shook the cobwebs of sleep from her mind. Dexter sat down and stared fixedly at her. His long white whiskers quivered. Barely believing her sudden good fortune, Belle counted three blankets where last evening there had been only one. The topmost was her familiar filthy covering that had kept the winds at bay. It hid two plain brown blankets made of thick wool—clean and free of rents.
“Oh, Dexter! What kindly spirit visited us last night?”
Mark’s kiss still tingled on her lips. She banished the disturbing memory. Nay! He had left her long before she fell asleep.
“Besides he hates me,” she explained to the cat. “He nearly lost the use of his sword arm because of my childish prank. That kiss of his was merely…unfinished business.”
Dexter got up, stretched then pawed at a loose pile of straw. He mewed once or twice for Belle’s attention. His claws scraped against something unfamiliar.
Belle investigated. Dexter had unearthed a covered crock that was still very warm to the touch. When she raised its lid, the aroma of stewed meat and seasoned vegetables wafted in the chill breeze.
“Oh most blessed spirit!” Belle cried with joy. Lifting the pot to her mouth, she drank greedily. “Kat would chide my lack of proper manners if she saw me now, but tis a goodly broth! Heaven-sent to be sure!’
Dexter licked his lips with a long pink tongue by way of reminding Belle to share her wealth as he had shared his with her. She poured a little gravy into the lid.
“Someday, Dexter, you will overeat and explode,” she observed with a smile. Then something red in the straw caught her eye. “More wonders?” she asked the cat.
She picked up one of her stepmother’s precious roses, its stem plucked free of thorns. The last bloom of this year, Belle surmised as she inhaled its rich perfume. This gift, more than the blankets or the stew, brought rare tears to her eyes.
No one had ever given her a flower before, not even Cuthbert.
Belle brushed the velvet petals against her cheek. “I wonder, Dexter, if Sondra’s tales are true. Does the ghostly knight of Bodiam really exist?”
Not for a moment would she allow herself to believe that Mark Hayward, the bane of her childhood, was her mysterious benefactor. She must put that lunatic idea out of her mind at once before it had a chance to take root there.
“Tis not Mark’s style at all,” she told the purring cat.
Chapter Five
Mark overslept the next morning and the rain-plagued day only went downhill from there. When Kitt appeared with his shaving water, it was merely tepid instead of steaming hot the way Mark liked it. He opened his mouth to chastise the boy but held his tongue when he saw a fresh bruise under his eye.
Mark touched the injury. “More of that beslubbering cook’s opinion?” he asked.
Kitt turned away. “I fell over my own feet,” he replied. “Indeed, I have been informed that they would make a fine pair of shovels,” he added in an undertone.
Mark stropped his razor while his anger grew warmer. “What pignut told you this witticism?”
Kitt shrugged his shoulder then turned his attention to his bedmaking. “Tis none of your concern, Mark. Jobe says that a man must fight his own battles.”
Mark considered this bit of wisdom as he lathered up his face with cold soapsuds. “You are still in the schoolroom, Kitt.” he remarked. While he shaved, he observed his apprentice squire in the looking glass.
Kitt tossed his head. “Not now. I am on the road to a new beginning, Jobe says.”
Methinks Jobe says far too much in this stripling’s innocent ear!
Kitt shook out Mark’s hose, then laid his other clean shirt across the lumpy bed covering. “How fares my sister?” he asked in an off-hand manner.
In the mirror, Mark saw that the boy cast him a penetrating look. “As well as can be expected,” he answered, rinsing his razor. “Belle was never fond of small dark places.” He chose not to reveal her true sad state to her brother. Being blessed with a strong dose of the Cavendish temperament, the lad would no doubt hurl himself headlong into some rash deed.
Kitt polished one of Mark’s boots with his sleeve. “Then why do we tarry in this fetid place? You told me that we would be in Hawkhurst by now. Let us grab Belle and be gone.”
Mark dried his face with a scrap of hucktoweling. Mortimer Fletcher was a parsimonious host. “There are complications. Your sister refuses to leave Bodiam and thereby hangs the tale.”
Kitt’s jaw dropped. “She’s addlepated!”
“Agreed,” Mark growled under his breath.
“I will shake some sense into her woolly head,” Kitt announced. “Lead me to her!”
“Nay.” Mark pulled his shirt over his head, then held out his arms to the boy. Kitt stared at them. Mark pointed to the bandstrings that hung down from each cuff. “A good squire ties up his master’s laces.”
With a snort, Kitt attended to his new task. “Belle is my sister,” he continued in a low tone. “As her brother, tis my sworn duty to—”
Mark grabbed a handful of Kitt’s collar and backed the boy against the wall. “Listen to me well, my little minnow. I am caught between two people who are hell-bent to destroy each other: your sister and Mortimer Fletcher. We must tread our way carefully between them if we expect to quit this place with the minimum of bloodshed. Tis no schoolboy game that we play here, but one in deadly earnest. You will do exactly as I say. For the time being, Belle is not to know you are at Bodiam. Have I made myself clear, pudding-head?”
“Marvelously much,” Kitt snarled. Then he nodded. “I will obey you—for now. But I like it not!” With that bit of defiance, he banged out of the chamber with the basin of soapy water.
Mark shook his head at his reflection. Why did God make the Cavendish family so stubborn?
Mark planned to snatch a quick breakfast, then ride into the forest where he would meet Jobe. Instead, Griselda pounced on him like a cat at a mouse hole.
“Good morrow, Sir Mark,” she squealed in that ear-piercing voice of hers. “You slept well?”
He fixed a painted smile on his lips. “All the night through, sweet dumpling.” He forced himself not to choke on his words. Of all the many maids he had wooed in the past thirteen years, Griselda was the most unappealing and perversely the one wench most anxious to invite him between her sheets.
“I would have warmed your dreams,” she simpered through her nose as she latched onto his arm like an apothecary’s leech.
“I fear I did not dream at all,” he murmured. His stomach gnawed for food.
Griselda caressed his cold fingers. “Then I shall make it my duty and my pleasure to give you sweet dreams every night, my dearest love.”
Twould be nightmares! Mark widened his smile. “I look forward to that happy time, my dainty duck.”
Griselda pulled him back from the stairway where he could smell the aroma of roasted meats and baked breads in the hall.
“Why wait?” she whined. “We have already agreed to the match. Tis nothing but a few words in front of the church door between us and our bliss.”
Mark dug his heels against the paving stones. “Nay, my sportful honeycomb! Twould be a most unseemly haste. I have not yet spoken with your brother, nor signed a betrothal agreement.” Nor given you a kiss to seal the bargain, he added to himself with a shudder. Nor will I ever! I would rather dance a galliard