“Holy Christ!” she swore, scowling at him, her hand pressed to her heart, Brautus’s dinner smashed and splattered on the rushes at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying not to laugh. The usually reserved young lady of Charmot had shrieked as if she’d been bitten on the bottom by a goose. Muttering a response he was glad he couldn’t quite make out, she bent down to
start picking up the dropped tray. “Where is everyone?” he asked. He had already searched the courtyard and the stables without finding another soul.
“What do you care?” she countered, scraping up a puddle of stew in a half-moon of broken crockery. “What are you doing up here?”
“Let me help you.” He bent down to pick up the flagon that was spilling wine into the rushes. She slapped his hand away, cutting her own hand on another shard of broken bowl in the process.
“Shit!” she swore, flinging the shard she still held halfway across the room. His eyes went wide, and she was glad; she hoped he fainted from the shock. She was sick unto death of being polite to him; suddenly every grievance that oppressed her felt like his fault, unjust as that surely must be. But she was in no mood to be reasonable.
“Forgive me.” He stood up slowly, tearing his gaze away from the wound in her palm with an effort. He closed his eyes, the sudden perfume of her blood making him feel drunk.
“They went to the druid’s grove, to the May Night dance.” She yanked the kerchief from her head and knotted it around her hand as best she could, since her knight errant seemed to have no interest in attending her. In faith, the great wolf-killer of Charmot looked as if he might be about to be sick. “Up here amongst the living, today was the first of May.”
Simon looked at her, shocked, but she had gone back to gathering up the mess she’d made, oblivious to how keenly her barb had found its mark. “Why didn’t you go?”
“Because I can’t.” She picked up the tray and headed for the kitchen, and Simon followed. “The May Night dance is a peasant festival.” She dumped the tray in the refuse barrel, then stripped out of her ruined apron and threw it in as well. “I am the lady of Charmot.” She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror Susannah had left on the table. “All appearances to the contrary,” she muttered, setting it aside with its glass turned down.
“And that makes such a difference?” Simon said. “Back in Ireland, we had May dances, too, and the duke and his knights found it no shame to attend.”
“The duke and his knights were men, I suspect. I am a woman.” She filled a bowl with water and unknotted the makeshift bandage from her wounded hand. “Forgive me; I thought you had noticed.”
“I did indeed,” he answered, smiling at her sarcasm.
“You noticed, but you don’t understand.” The shallow gash had already stopped bleeding, but it stung when she washed it even so, adding still more fuel to her already raging temper. “My father’s legacy depends on my character. If my behavior is not above reproach at every moment, Charmot and all he built here could be lost.”
“Did your father tell you this?” Simon said, watching her face as she spoke, her expressions more telling than her words. She was angry, but she was hurt as well.
“No one had to tell me, Simon,” she retorted. “I am not a fool. This castle has no lord, no master, and has had none for ten years past, and for whatever reason, the king has decided he wants it. The only reason he has sent single knights to claim it in single combat instead of troops to lay siege to the walls is that I am here, a titled virgin of good repute with a claim to the manor of blood. I am the lady of Charmot.” She had never spoken of this with anyone, even Brautus, but in truth, it was the great truth of her life, and she knew it only too well. “If I’m just some peasant girl, dancing in a pagan grove, I’m nothing for the king to fret about, and Charmot is nothing but an empty fortress, ripe for the picking. And my father—” She broke off, turning away. “No one has to tell me how to behave, Simon,” she finished, emptying the bowl. “I am not a child.”
“No,” he said tenderly, touched more than he cared to confess by what she’d said. He reached to take her wounded hand. “You are not.”
“Stop it,” she said, snatching her hand away. “I am not that, either.”
He froze, shocked by her rebuff. “Not what?”
“Not some doe-eyed simpleton like Susannah who lives and quivers for the moment you might touch me,” she retorted, the words coming more quickly than her thoughts, she realized, as if she’d been waiting to say them for weeks. “Or some Eve in the garden, waiting to tempt you, some worldly vice you must give up like sunshine or fruitcake or whatever else it is you think God would forbid you.” He didn’t answer, just stared back at her with those dark angel’s eyes, a painted saint she could worship but never really touch. “But why do I even tell you this?” she said, turning away from his cold beauty. “Why do I always end up telling you everything that comes into my head, things that I’ve never spoken to another soul? You never tell me anything.”
“Do I not?” he countered, moving around her to see her face, his own temper starting to rise. How dare this child attack him this way, this innocent little snip who thought the world began and ended at the gates of her father’s castle? She had told him she was not a child—no, in faith, she was an infant. “The first night I came here, I told you more than any soul living has ever known of my quest—”
“Your curse, you mean?” she demanded, incredulous. “Aye, Simon, that you told me, and shall I tell you what I think of it? I think it’s bollocks. A curse that damns a man to live in darkness on bread crusts and go poking around in old crypts full of dead papers—what mad sort of idiot could believe in such a thing?”
“You think I am a liar, then?” he answered, furious now in truth. He was a liar, but that did not mean he cared to be called one, least of all by her.
“No, cousin,” she said, her face very near to his. “I think you are a fool.” His expression darkened, and she took a half-conscious step backward, quelled a bit by the look in his eyes in spite of her own fury. “Someone—Orlando, I suspect—has told you that you are a monster, that you deserve to be punished for some great evil, and you, poor fool, believe him.”
“I should show you,” he said with a smile that was more like a snarl. “I should let you see just what sort of monster I am.”
“In faith, Simon, I wish you would,” she retorted. “At least then I might have some chance of understanding you. What sort of monster are you?” He looked away, his jaw set in a sullen scowl quite different from any other expression she had ever seen him make. All the saintliness was gone, the angelic reserve that made him seem so distant even when he kissed her that she wanted to scream. “What is this terrible thing that you have done to make God despise you?”
“I cannot tell you—”
“Why not?” She moved around him, trying to make him face her. “Do you think I will despise you, too, that I will try to turn you out? We both know I couldn’t do that now even if I wanted you gone, which, by the by, I do not. You’re a good man, Simon, I swear it, and I am as fond of you as I have ever been of any friend I have ever had. I can’t believe you could have done anything so terrible—”
“Isabel, stop it,” he ordered, trying to walk away, to shut out her words before it was too late. He didn’t want to be her friend, and he could not be anything else. “You don’t know what you ask of me—”
“But I do.” She caught his arm. “I’m asking you to trust me as I have been forced to trust you. You say that your salvation is here at Charmot, but you will not tell me why.” The sorrow in his face as he turned away again was enough to make her almost regret her harsh words, and she softened her tone. “You want me to help you—”