“Indeed,” Charles replied. “I’ve heard Lady Adelaide is very beautiful. Is her sister, as well?”
“Lord love you, no!” Peg retorted with a snort of laughter. “She’s pretty enough, I suppose, but compared to her sisters? Ugly as a hedgehog.”
Peg gave a little wriggle that seemed very promising. “Are you going to have some of what we’ve got to offer, sir?” she asked, making it clear she wasn’t thinking of ale.
“I certainly will.” Charles moved again, letting her feel the effect she was having on him, while his hand traveled toward her breast. “I’ll have some ale first, though.”
Peg made absolutely no move to stop his wandering hand, or to pour his drink. “Not wine?”
“Ale is cheaper.”
“Ale now, something else later…for two silver pennies,” Peg replied as she leaned across his arm and refilled his mug, pressing her breasts against him while he boldly caressed her some more.
God’s blood, he could have anything he liked in London for half that. “That’s expensive.”
Her smile grew, exposing fine white teeth, and she squirmed a little more. “I’m worth it.”
He slipped a hand into her loose bodice while simultaneously giving the big fellow by the cask a surreptitious look. Sure enough, the oaf grinned and looked as pleased as if his wife-to-be had given him a bag of gold. “All right. So, who’s this knight come visiting, then?”
“A handsome fellow, although he’s got a scar on his face. Bayard something.”
“Bayard de Boisbaston?” Charles asked sharply.
“Why? What if he is this Bayard Boise—batton? What’s he done?”
Charles shook his head and his expression grew grim. “Your lady had best have a care, if what I’ve heard of him is true. The women at court call him the ’Gyptian lover, saying he travels from bed to bed stealing hearts, just like those vagabonds who claim to be able to tell fortunes. They say he’s had at least fifty lovers and that’s just among the wives and daughters of the men at court.”
“Fifty?” Peg breathed, her eyes wide. “How come he ain’t been killed by some husband or father?”
“Because nobody dares to challenge him. He’s won every tournament that he’s ever been in, and they say he’s so fierce when he fights, even the devil himself would flee his blade—if he chooses to use it. He doesn’t always. Last year, he had charge of a castle in Normandy and surrendered after only three days. He was captured by the Duc d’Ormonde, whose wife was reputed to be a great beauty. Some at court say he surrendered just to have the chance to seduce her—and he did.”
Peg drew in her breath. “He surrendered a castle just to be able to seduce a woman?”
The wine merchant nodded. “That’s what they say, and now he’s come here.”
“If he’s got any foul intentions toward Lady Gillian, she’ll set him straight,” Young Davy staunchly declared, interrupting their conversation as he handed his grandfather a piece of thick brown bread to go with his ale and cheese. “She’s as fierce as the devil, too.”
“Blasphemy!” the chandler muttered in the corner where he nursed his ale.
“You women are always thinking about marriage,” Young Davy continued, ignoring him. “You had her married off to James d’Ardenay after the poor lad’d only been here a week.”
“Well, he died,” Peg said defensively.
“We wouldn’t have to worry if she’d take a husband,” Felton, the baker, noted from his place near the door.
“Would you have her take the first man who asked her?” the miller countered from across the room, as far from his enemy as he could get. “Would you want any of those fools who’ve come courting her to become the new lord? I wouldn’t. God save us from arrogant idiots!”
“She probably don’t want to marry ’cause o’ that father o’ hers,” Old Davy piped up from beside the hearth. “Cruel, vicious villain. He’d make any woman think death might be better than marriage.”
The wine merchant shifted again, this time with impatience. “Perhaps if all you want to do is talk about the lady, I should retire alone.”
Peg jumped to her feet and took his hand to lead him up to the second level of the tavern, where travelers slept and she plied her other trade. “Don’t be angry, Charlie. We have to care about what goes on up at the castle, same as you have to worry about the king’s taxes. Lady Gillian’s a good woman, even if she is a lady, so nobody wants any harm to come to her.”
Old Davy looked anxiously at the others after the merchant and Peg had disappeared up the stairs. “D’you suppose there’s any truth in what that fellow said?”
“Not a bit,” Young Davy said confidently. “Lady Gillian’s too honorable and too clever to be fooled by any smooth-talking knight, no matter how good-looking he is. Why, remember that one knight that come, Sir Wa-tersticks or whatever his name was? Didn’t she send him packing quick enough?”
The men in the tap room chuckled and nodded.
“Set his hair on fire,” Old Davy said between wheezes as he laughed. “She had to say it was an accident o’course, but it probably took a year for it to grow back. And oh, didn’t he curse?”
“Ah, love! It’s a grand thing,” the miller said with a smirk in the baker’s direction. Then he started to sing a ballad about a long-lost love, while the baker slammed down his mug and stormed out of the tavern.
Chapter Three
TRYING TO CONTAIN HIS frustration, Bayard tossed his helmet onto the large, canopied and curtained bed in the extremely tidy chamber to which a male servant had brought him after he’d left the solar. Linen shutters covered the window, and a chest painted green and blue stood in the corner opposite the bed. There was a cot for his squire and another table with an ewer and basin, and plenty of clean linen. The floor had been recently swept and everything looked remarkably free of dust.
It was certainly an improvement over their accommodations on the road, which had tended to be cramped—except that here, instead of being welcomed, he’d been met with distrust, disrespect, and disdain.
Although his rational mind told him that Lady Gillian was right to be suspicious, for these were dangerous times and John the most untrustworthy of kings, he couldn’t subdue his annoyance over his reception. You’d think he was the traitor, the way she’d treated him.
The garrison commander couldn’t be more suspicious if he were Philip of France himself. And as for that steward…
He wondered if the lady had any idea that her steward was in love with her. She was a lady, a ward of the king, and he was an untitled commoner, but a marriage between then was not completely impossible. John needed money to mount another campaign to win back his lost lands in France—a lot of money. He would eagerly accept bribes and payments that would enable him to do so, even from untitled commoners and in exchange for the hand of a noblewoman.
Yet, he’d seen no little looks of intimacy exchanged, no apparent desire on the lady’s part. Any tender concern had been in Dunstan’s eyes alone, not hers.
No doubt she was too selfish and too determined to rule this estate on her own to fall in love, for it was now abundantly clear that she, and she alone, was in command of Averette.
The only other women he’d ever heard controlling an estate had been widows and even then, not many and not for long. Then again, he’d never heard of a young woman like Lady Gillian, who might dress like a peasant, but was as arrogantly confident as any man he’d ever met. And stubborn.
Shaking