“I don’t see any reluctance on your part,” Stephen said.
Gavin chuckled. “No, none on mine, but I have been reluctant to…force myself on her. I thought that Demari meant something to her.”
“Only a means to save your unappreciative neck.”
Gavin smiled. “Pass me that wine. We have more to celebrate tonight than a mere Scots princess.”
Stephen grabbed the jug before Gavin could touch it. “You are a cruel brother.”
“I learned it from my wife,” Gavin smiled and filled his own mug.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I CANNOT ALLOW THIS!” ELA SAID, HER BACKBONE HELD rigid. She stood beside Alice in a little partitioned chamber in the castle.
“Since when do you allow or disallow what I want?” Alice sneered. “My life is my own and all you do is help me dress.”
“It isn’t right that you throw yourself at this man. There isn’t a day that some man doesn’t ask to marry you. Can’t you content yourself with one of them?”
Alice turned on her maid. “And let her have him? I would die first.”
“Do you really want him for your own?” Ela persisted.
“What does that matter?” Alice demanded as she adjusted her veil and circlet. “He is mine and will stay mine.”
The stairway was dark when she left the room. Alice had soon discovered that the court of King Henry was an easy place to find out what she wanted to know. There were many who were willing, for a price, to do anything that she asked. Her spies had told her that Gavin sat below with his brother, away from his wife. Alice knew how befuddled a man could get with drink, and she planned to use the opportunity to the best advantage. He wouldn’t be able to resist her when his mind swam from drink.
She cursed when she reached the great hall and neither Gavin nor his brother were in sight. “Where is Lord Gavin?” Alice asked harshly of a yawning servant girl. The floor was cluttered with sleeping retainers on straw pallets.
“He left—that’s all I know.”
Alice grabbed the girl’s arm. “Where?”
“I have no idea.”
Alice pulled a gold coin from her pocket and watched the girl’s eyes gleam. “What would you do for this?”
The girl came fully awake. “I would do anything.”
“Good,” Alice smiled. “Then listen to me carefully.”
Judith woke from a sound sleep to a faint scraping at the door. She stretched out her arm before she opened her eyes, only to find Gavin’s side of the bed empty. She sat up, knitting her brows, then remembered he’d said something about saying good-bye to Stephen.
The scratching at the door continued. Joan, who often stayed with her mistress when Gavin was away, wasn’t in the room. Reluctantly, Judith threw the covers back and slipped her arms into the emerald-green velvet of her bedrobe. “What is it?” she asked as she opened the door to a servant girl.
“I don’t know, my lady,” the girl said with a smirk. “I was told that you were needed and must come straightaway.”
“Who said this? My husband?”
The girl shrugged in reply.
Judith frowned. The court crawled with anonymous messages, and all of them seemed to lead to places she did not care to be. Yet perhaps her mother needed her. More likely Gavin was too drunk to mount the stairs and she must help him. She smiled at the thought of the tongue-lashing she would give him.
She followed the girl down the dark stone stairs to the floor below. It seemed darker than usual; some of the torches on the walls hadn’t been lit. Cut within the twelve-foot-thick walls were dreary rooms, not favored by the nobler guests. The servant girl stopped before one of these rooms that lay near the steep circular stairwell.
The girl gave Judith a look that she didn’t understand, then disappeared into the darkness. Judith was aggravated at this skulking about and meant to say so when a woman’s voice ca
ught her attention.