“Put it on.”
He took it from her and impatiently flung it around his shoulders.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
Speaking in an emotionless monotone, he told her what he had learned from Alan. He stopped, however, before he had quite reached the end.
There was a faint frown between Cristen’s delicate brows. “So Ivo stayed to try to protect your mother?” she prompted.
He nodded. His lips were folded into a tight, tense line.
“Hugh?” Her voice was gentle but implacable.
“He stayed,” Hugh agreed. Then, visibly controlling all his sense of horror, he managed to get it out. “Roger castrated him, Cristen. After that, once he was left alone, Ivo killed himself.”
“Oh my dear God,” Cristen whispered.
Hugh’s eyes were so dilated that they looked almost black. “So you see, Walter Crespin had good reason to kill Earl Roger. And you can also see why Roger’s knights transferred their allegiance so easily to Guy. They knew that Guy had had nothing to do with his brother’s death. Nor had they any cause to feel overly loyal to their former lord.”
Cristen reached out and took his icy hands into her own warm clasp.
“Aye, I can see all of that,” she said quietly. “But what I don’t see, Hugh, is why Walter would want to kidnap you.”
“I think…” His voice quivered. His hands clutched hers. He stopped and when he spoke again, his voice was steadier. “I think I was in the chapel when Roger was killed. I remember…things. Perhaps I was taken because I knew too much.”
“Oh, Hugh,” Cristen said. Her voice was full of an aching sadness. “This is so much for you to bear.”
“I have you,” he said hoarsely. “I can bear anything, Cristen, as long as I have you.”
They stared at each as the seconds ticked by unre-garded. Then he pulled her forward, into his arms.
There was desperation in his embrace. His face was buried in the warm fold between her neck and her shoulder. His lips moved on her bare skin. Their touch burned like fire.
“Cristen.” His voice was like a groan.
She slid her arms around him and held him close. He was quivering like a bow that has been strung too tightly. “It’s all right, Hugh,” she said. “It’s all right.”
His lips moved from her throat to her mouth. His kiss was hard and urgent with need. She yielded to it, yielded to him and the almost frantic passion that was driving him.
She loved him so much. She didn’t mind it that he hurt her, she was only fiercely glad that she was able to give him this release that he so desperately needed. When he finally lay still against her, she cradled him against her breast, buried her lips in his black hair, and whispered, “Go to sleep, Hugh. Go to sleep, my love.”
Long after he had fallen into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion, she lay awake, listening to the rain beating against the shutters and thinking of what he had told her and of what it might mean.
When Hugh finally awoke, the candle was almost burned out and the rain was still pelting against the shutters. He felt the softness of Cristen beside him and remembered instantly what had happened.
Cautiously, he raised himself on his elbow and looked at the sleeping face of the girl laying beside him. Her long lashes lay quietly on her cheek and her loosened hair streamed across the rumpled bed covers.
He shut his eyes in pain.
What have I done?
He remembered his frantic possession of her just hours before, and his mouth was taut with pain.
How could I have done that to Cristen?
When he opened his eyes, she was stirring, as if she had sensed his distress. He watched her, his heart hammering. If she should turn from him in revulsion, he would want to die.
Her lashes lifted and she looked at him. The first expression he saw in her great brown eyes was surprise. Then, as her memory returned, the surprise turned to a look of guilt.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked.
He stared at her in utter stupefaction. “It is I who should be asking that question of you,” he said at last.
She shook her head in disagreement. “It was my doing. I could have stopped you if I had wanted to.” She smiled tentatively. “I didn’t want to, you know.”
He looked at her for a minute in silence and then the glimmer of an answering smile softened his grim young mouth.
“We will have to get married now,” he said.
She reached her hands up to touch his face. “So we will,” she agreed. “So we will.”
It was an hour before dawn when Cristen finally left Hugh to creep back to her own room. This time the dogs got up to come and greet her when she came into the solar. She patted their heads without speaking, then slipped through the door into her bedroom.
The rain was still drumming against the shutters. Her bed, unoccupied for most of the night, was cold. She was sore between her legs.
But she was happy. Something irrevocable had happened between her and Hugh this night. Now they truly belonged to each other.
I can bear anything as long as I have you.
He had said that to her and she knew it was true. It had been like that between them almost from the moment they had met. He had never been a stranger. It was almost as if she had recognized him, as if they had known each other before and were only waiting for the time when they could come together again.
Beneath her joy, however, ran an irresistible current of fear.
What was the truth about Roger’s murder?
She had not said this to Hugh, but she could not help but wonder why, if Walter Crespin had killed the earl to avenge his brother, he had waited a full year to do it.
Perhaps it was done in a moment of uncontrollable anger, she thought. It must have been. There could be no other explanation for murdering a man in front of his son.
But Cristen could not rid herself of the conviction that there was more to the story than they already knew. Hugh had told her that he was going to seek out Father Anselm, who had been the one to find Roger’s dead body in the chapel.
“I need someone to corroborate Alan’s tale about Ivo,” he had said as they lay together after a second, heartstoppingly tender lovemaking. “There is always the possibility that he told me that terrible story in order to get me to exonerate Guy.”
Cristen’s brain agreed that Hugh needed to seek out the priest. It was her heart that feared for what else he might learn.
20
Hugh met Cristen at the breaking of fast in the hall. The two of them exchanged a single, veiled look before attending assiduously to their bread and ale.
The rain had finally stopped, although the hall was gloomy due to the lack of sunshine. Nigel asked Hugh if he would like to join the rest of the knights on the practice field that morning.
Hugh finished chewing his bread, then said, “Actually, sir, I have been thinking that I might return to Evesham.”
These words made Nigel look grim. At the moment, the king was in the Thames Valley besieging Wallingford Castle-a difficult task, as Brian fitz Count was well enough supplied to hold out against him for years. The result of Stephen’s attempt to blockade Wallingford was that the west was left wide open to the Earl of Gloucester, who had been recently joined by his sister-courtesy of Stephen.
Considering all this, Nigel thought he knew the reason for Hugh’s sudden desire to revisit Evesham. He said in a hard voice, “You are going to accept Gloucester’s offer to support your claim to the earldom, then?”
“No,” Hugh said. “I desire only to speak to Father Anselm, and he was at Evesham when last I saw him.”
He took another bite of his bread.
Nigel watched him. The terrible strained look the boy had worn all day yesterday was gone, and he was eating as if he were truly hungry.