Knave Of Hearts. Shari Anton

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 was also ill and quite frail, which had kept him from accompanying Carolyn to Westminster. Stephen saw no difficulty in having his way with Carolyn’s father.

      “I doubt the proceedings will lead to a confrontation, rather to a meeting of the minds.”

      “His lordship might be of a mind to deny you. You are late.”

      Long overdue, by several weeks. He’d been stuck in Normandy longer than planned. Then he’d spent several more weeks helping Richard. Then he’d stopped at Wilmont to report to Gerard. The four to six weeks he’d planned to be gone had stretched into three full months. Carolyn might not be pleased by his extended absence, but Stephen didn’t see how he could have done anything differently and still do right by Richard.

      And he’d done right by Richard—now settled at Collingwood, playing lord of the manor, getting along well with his ward and perhaps a bit too well with his ward’s mother. Stephen withheld judgment on that affair—’twas Richard’s decision to make the woman his bed mate or not.

      Still, Carolyn’s reaction to his tardy arrival might be a problem.

      “Then I shall have to placate his lordship somehow. Mayhap the keg of Burgundy wine will prove an acceptable bribe for forgiveness.” Stephen smiled. “Or perhaps I should have accepted Audra’s offer of refreshment in her parents’ hut. They might have told me how to best treat their lord.”

      Armand answered with a wry smile. “Can you imagine the reaction of the parents if a Norman noble deigned to grace their hut? The poor peasants might have died of heart failure!”

      Harlan, the white-bearded, crusty old knight on Stephen’s left, huffed. “Unnatural, I say, for a peasant tyke to make such an offer, and with the manners of the high born, too. Girl is headed for trouble if her parents continue to allow such behavior.”

      A valid observation, Stephen acknowledged. A peasant who forgot his or her place was most often severely reprimanded if caught by one of high rank who took offense. Audra’s actions had amused him, but another lord might have backhanded the girl, or worse, for her presumption. ’Twasn’t his problem, yet the thought of anyone mistreating the little girl didn’t sit well.

      Seeking a reason for Audra’s unusual behavior, Stephen wondered aloud. “Mayhap the girls are being trained for service in a noble household, and so are taught such manners?”

      Armand let out a laugh. “If so, then Lyssa is not taking to her lessons well. What a scamp!”

      Harlan shook his head. “’Twould never happen, not with twins. What noble household would have them?”

      Stephen knew of one. “Gerard would take them at Wilmont.”

      “Name me another.”

      Stephen conceded the point. The superstitions people held about twins would prevent their acceptance in most noble households. People feared what they considered an abomination of nature, so much so that dispensing of one of the twins at birth wasn’t unheard of among high and low born alike. Apparently, Audra and Lyssa’s parents didn’t fear the girls might become pawns of the devil and had allowed both girls to live.

      As had the parents of another set of twins. Corwin, Stephen’s best friend, was twin to Ardith, who had married his brother Gerard. No one at Wilmont would dare accuse either of consorting with the devil, at least not to their faces. The little girls might not be so fortunate.

      Cute tykes, destined to be lovely women. Their father would need to keep his wits about him as they grew up, to protect them from the randy bucks sure to come around, not caring if the object of their fancy was a twin or not.

      “We are spotted,” Armand said, ending Stephen’s musings.

      An imposing timber palisade surrounded Branwick Keep. Near the gate, several guards gathered to observe his company’s arrival.

      “Harlan, have the wagon drivers stay tight to each other,” Stephen commanded. “Once inside, halt the soldiers СКАЧАТЬ