Robine nearly choked on saliva. Her father might have killed the father of the man she would wed? Impossible, she wanted to assure herself, but it was not. Though once he had been somewhat affectionate, following his first wife’s death, that affection was absorbed by greater affection for warring. Only in recent years had his fondness for swinging blades waned, and then because his muscled body began weakening from various ailments such as that which caused him to forego this contest and his daughter’s wedding.
“Do you think he slew Baron D’Argent?” William asked.
“It is not for me to think one way or the other. I but question whether peace between the families can be achieved through marriage and what price that young woman will pay living under the dark of that rumor, even if it is never confirmed.”
“I will protect her,” William surprised. “The D’Argents and L’Épées are my vassals. Whether Hugh or Godfroi take her to wife, I will command that she be treated well.”
Then he will leave, Robine thought, and the boy who believes he will be heeded will never know what goes behind closed doors.
“My son, you are sweet.”
“I am not. I but exercise my right to impose order and peace for the good of Normandy.”
Enough was heard. Though Delphine would be angered her stepdaughter was not in her place of honor when the contest commenced, Robine could not bear to remain. This day she would wed a man likely to abuse her for the possibility her sire had slain his. That she could not avoid, but this she could. All she needed was a hiding place distant from the training yard transformed into an arena for the hundreds who had come to witness brother fighting brother and, possibly, the death of one.
Or both, she thought and silently rebuked herself for the sinful hope such tragedy would save her from replacing the name L’Épée with D’Argent.
Upon stepping forward, she discovered she had released her skirt. Too, her hand that had delved the purse on her belt without permission held a doll.
Halting alongside the canvas curtaining the rear of the stand, she raised the toy fashioned by the mother who was the only one to truly love Robine—unless she included the cat her stepmother refused to allow her to bring to Valeur. The doll was not much bigger than her hand, but once this hand had been much smaller.
“Would that you were here, Mother,” she whispered.
“Robine!”
She did not look whence that angry voice issued. Tightening her hold on the doll, she pushed through the canvas, certain her stepmother would not sacrifice her dignity to give chase. Another would be sent to retrieve her, but by then she would be lost among spectators now being let through the gate as told by the rising din.
And then where? she wondered as she ran the backs of the stands, causing the workers present to jump aside as she distanced herself from that woman and the contest that would make a prize of Valeur as well as Robine, the former coveted for its power and wealth, the latter as a giver of peace.
“Or revenge,” she whispered and, coming to a break in the stands, found herself in the thick of men and women converging from camps and castle. Pausing amid the jostling, she looked back the way she had come. And glimpsed a L’Épée man-at-arms set after her sooner than expected.
She pushed her way through the lesser crowd coming off the drawbridge. It was not how she was to have entered her new home, one of her sire’s beautiful mares given as a wedding gift to convey her from the contest without to the chapel within. However, this was the way forward, even if it proved the wrong one.
Knowing she drew attention wearing the finest of gowns and heading opposite the others, she was grateful she was not the highly anticipated spectacle—merely a curiosity to entertain one’s thoughts when the D’Argents did all they could to enthrall the masses.
Just inside the walls, the crowd thinned. Jumping to the side, she freed a slippered foot caught in her skirt’s hem and turned all about.
Might she hide in the stables? Non, those lingering about it would point the way to her, and neither would the workshop of the smithy nor the carpenter serve, both open to the bailey on three of four sides.
The dovecote opposite the hawks’ mews, she decided, but as she started forward, two servant girls came around a nearby granary, arms hooked as if in great anticipation of merchants come unto the castle.
Robine turned again. Seeing the door on the gatehouse’s eastern side was ajar, she hastened forward and peered through the gap at the empty room, then slipped inside.
The furnishings were too bare to provide cover, but light bending around a corner ahead revealed a passage. Dare she venture farther?
The decision was made when the voice of Delphine’s man sounded from the bailey, demanding whether a young lady was seen coming over the drawbridge.
Robine ran and turned that corner into a passage narrowed by numerous crates stacked on one side as revealed by light shining from the doorway ahead. Amid hesitation, she heard the whisper of hinges behind. Though she wanted to believe that sound was only fear-induced imagination and told herself to proceed with caution, she flew down the passage. And into a room far from empty.
“What do you here?” barked the priest who unclasped prayerful hands as Robine skid to a halt.
He was not the only one her appearance offended, those who knelt before him in undershirts and chausses having thrust upright and come around, the swords balanced horizontally between outstretched hands now gripped and pointed her direction.
“Heavenly Father!” she gasped, realizing she had interrupted a ceremony for warriors about to enter battle. Which of the men of dark, silvered hair was Godfroi and which Hugh was unknowable for how indistinguishable their handsome countenances—and expressions of outrage. At least, that was
