With their lively little daughter, Eleanor, and another babe expected within the month, Wolf and Kit were more than content. They were delighted with life.
It was quite beyond Hugh.
Reaching the great hall, Hugh dismounted and watched as Nicholas assisted Lady Siân from his horse and guided her up the stone steps. As if that were necessary, Hugh thought as he regarded the lady’s sprightly step. Any evidence of her prior mishap was absent now. Deliberately turning his back on his two companions, Hugh spoke to the page who had arrived to take charge of the horses and instructed the lad to have someone fetch the great boar in the woods.
Ignoring the familiar hollowness inside him, Hugh began his own climb up the steps to meet his intended bride.
Chapter Two
Fresh rushes coated the floor of Clairmont’s great hall, and all the trestle tables were covered with clean cloths. No one lazed about, not even the dogs that were commonly seen in the great halls of the kingdom. Sunlight filtered in through lofty, narrow windows, and colorful banners hung from high oaken beams.
An elegantly dressed, efficient, silver-haired man approached them. “Lady Siân!” he exclaimed, noting her disheveled appearance. “Your brother—”
“—need not hear of my mishap, Sir George,” she said, a little too brightly as she gathered her skirts in hand and moved away from the newcomers to the castle. “All is well…No need for concern…I shall see to my little scrapes and bruises….”
Then she turned and was off, flitting like a candle into the dark stone depths of Castle Clairmont.
And Hugh wondered why the analogy of the candle came to mind.
“Lord Thornton, Lord Alldale,” the man said, still taken aback by Siân’s disheveled appearance. “I—I greet you on behalf of the lady Marguerite, and her son, Lord John. I am Sir George Packley, steward of Clairmont.”
“Thank you,” Nicholas replied, his German accent causing his speech to be distinctly different from that of his peers. An illegitimate grandson of the Margrave of Bremen, Nick had grown up in his grandfather’s court, along with his cousin, Wolf Colston, and Wolf’s young squire, Hugh Dryden. They’d gone to France together to serve King Henry in his pursuit of French possessions, and all three had been rewarded handsomely with English lands and titles.
Hugh, however, was the only one to never have laid claim to his estates. A trusted steward administered Alldale, but Hugh had not yet seen it. Two years before, he’d been ambushed and taken prisoner by the earl of Windermere, a cruel and perverse relative of Wolf Colston’s. Hugh had been kept chained to a wall in one of the damp, dark caverns under the castle, and tortured by the corrupt and wicked earl. With him in that terrible donjon had been the earl’s mad stepmother, whom Windermere had personally tortured and killed before Hugh’s eyes.
Though he’d never spoken of his ordeal under the castle, the atrocities committed were etched all over his body. One eye gouged out…a finger dismembered. Burns and lacerations covered him. Dehydration, filth…It was a wonder he’d survived.
But that’s all he’d done. Survived. Hugh had recovered to become a mere shell of his former self. He was a man alone, without purpose or intensity.
It was Wolf Colston’s wife, Kit, who was especially determined to see Hugh’s soul restored to him. A fair and compassionate woman, Kit wanted to see her husband’s closest friend healed in every way. The start of negotiations for Hugh’s marriage to Marguerite of Clairmont had been, in good measure, Kit’s doing.
Not that Lady Kit believed marriage would be the answer to Hugh’s indifference, but Clairmont was of strategic importance to the crown. Near the Scottish border, Clairmont lands provided the buffer between the northern warlords and England. A strong leader, a man with military experience, was essential to maintaining the integrity of the northern border.
Kit Colston hoped that if Hugh married Marguerite, he would take seriously his duty to defend the border for England, and protect Clairmont holdings for Marguerite’s infant son, John. She was confident that this challenge would rouse Hugh as nothing else had in the last two years.
And if his marriage should become a happy, fruitful one, then all the better.
Sir George escorted Hugh and Nicholas to a pair of chambers where they were to spend the night, and were informed that Lady Marguerite would see them at midday meal, as she had other matters to attend at present. Though they were both somewhat taken aback that Lady Marguerite did not deign to greet her guests immediately, they were even more surprised by the steward’s next words.
“The queen, however,” Sir George said, “is most anxious to see you.”
“The queen?” Nicholas asked. “Catherine is here?”
“She is,” the steward replied as he pulled open the heavy curtains covering the windows. “The royal entourage is here at Clairmont for the remainder of the month…Lady Siân Tudor is part of the queen’s party.”
“Tudor!”
“Squire Owen’s sister,” Sir George explained.
Both men knew Owen Tudor from his presence in the court of Henry V. Neither of them had known, however, that he had a sister—a sister who’d chosen to identify herself in the old Welsh way rather than call herself Tudor. Hugh wondered if there was some reason she hadn’t wanted to be associated with Owen.
Hugh and Nicholas remembered Tudor as a competent young man in King Henry’s court, a man with winning ways. He was exceptionally handsome, ambitious yet careful, and absolutely loyal to the crown. Hugh could not imagine any reason for Siân’s reticence to be associated with her brother’s name, but he let the irrelevant matter drop from his mind, and went along with Nicholas and Sir George to a spacious solar high in the castle tower.
“Your Majesty!” Nick said as he and Hugh knelt before their queen. She was a young woman, as lovely and elegant as ever, tall and slender, with intelligent, light-brown eyes sparkling in welcome. Neither Hugh nor Nick had seen her in over two years. Their last meeting had, in fact, been at the marriage of Kathryn and Wolf Colston in London.
“Your Majesty, it is an unexpected pleasure to see you here,” Nicholas said.
Catherine smiled sadly. “Ah, but London is tiresome this time of year,” she said.
“London?” Nicholas asked.
“Oui. London.” The queen’s eyes sparkled. “And…my brother-in-law and his uncle.”
“So, Gloucester and Beaufort are at it again?” Hugh asked.
Catherine bit her lip and looked away. “I will not become a pawn in their despicable power struggle.”
“What is it this time?” Nicholas queried.
“A hideous little plot to get me wed.”
“Wed? To whom?” Nicholas demanded. Only the council could approve the queen’s marriage, and neither he nor Hugh had heard of any such consent. But the Duke of Gloucester and Bishop Beaufort wielded a great deal of power among the lords of parliament. If either one were to choose a suitable husband for Catherine, and a guardian for her small
