was leaning down from his higher position, gazing at her with an expression of deep concern while his hand stroked her cheek. He was such a beautiful sight that she couldn’t help but stare.
“What?” she asked dumbly. She couldn’t remember what they’d been discussing.
He ran his thumb over her cheek. “Are you all right, little sweeting?”
“Yes,” she whispered, still staring at him. She never wanted to stop, for when she looked at Hugh Caldwell she didn’t think even vaguely about Simon of Denning.
Rosaleen’s skin felt softer than silk beneath Hugh’s callused hand, and he didn’t want to stop touching her. The change she’d undergone when she’d thought of the man her uncle had betrothed her to had first stunned, then enraged him. It was clear that the man had hurt her badly, else her beautiful face never would have grown so stricken. He wanted to kill the bastard. He wanted to wipe that look of misery off Rosaleen’s face. Permanently. All he could think of at the moment, however, was a temporary solution. And she would probably never know what a sacrifice it was.
Slowly he withdrew his hand and straightened in his saddle.
“I was ten and six when I left my home,” he announced, nudging his steed, Saint, forward.
Rosaleen’s little mare followed, as Hugh had expected she would, and in a moment her mistress had shaken her dismals and gazed up at him with interest, as he had also expected she would.
“Ten and six!” she repeated with amazement, all thoughts of Sir Simon thoroughly displaced. “Were you all alone? What made you leave?”
Hugh smiled. He hadn’t known Rosaleen no-name very long, but already he could read her like a monk’s new manuscript. He had never before spoken of the time he had left his home, yet here he was, about to reopen all his old wounds in order to distract a silly, sharp-tongued female. The idea almost made him laugh. The great Hugh Caldwell, famed for his hardness and lack of heart, behaving like any other damned fool for the sake of a mere female. He could scarce believe it, and desperately hoped none of his acquaintances would ever hear of it.
“I was alone,” he began, “and more frightened than I was willing to admit, though of course I considered myself very brave, being as foolish as any sixteen-year-old is…”
Over the next few hours he told her of his life, those parts he could bear to tell, from the moment he had left home to all the adventures he’d had, including his sojourn in France, from whence he had just returned as a soldier for King Henry. Rosaleen listened raptly, laughing when the tale grew humorous and looking suspiciously teary when she thought it sad, and Hugh allowed himself to be amused at her interest in what his life had been.
Women! he thought silently. They were all the same, even this beautiful little shrew. They all seemed to think they knew what a man wanted and needed, but he’d never yet met the female who could even begin to understand the things that he barred so tightly from his heart.
“What will you do now, Hugh Caldwell?” Rosaleen asked. “Your brother will want you to stay with him in…where did you say you came from?”
“I didn’t. And I’m not going to. We’ll just keep our destination a little secret, shall we? That way neither of us will know what to expect.”
The stiffness of his tone said more than his words did. For all that he was a big, muscular fighting man, it was plain to Rosaleen that he was as nervous about going home to face his family as a naughty little boy who’d done something bad might be, and the very thought softened her heart. Perhaps she didn’t want to have him hanged, after all.
“Very well, Hugh Caldwell. It shall be a secret.”
Hugh glanced at her suspiciously. “That meek tone suits you not, Rosaleen no-name. Much more of that and I’ll be thinking you’re not the same lady who called me every unthinkable name in King Henry’s English this very morn.”
She reddened. “And with good reason! Until I am proved otherwise, I shall continue to believe that you are exactly what I have proclaimed you.”
“Why, Rosaleen,” he uttered with feigned surprise, “should you like me to make proof of your innocence? There is nothing, I promise you, in all of God’s earth that would please me more.”
“You, sir, are a bastard,” she replied, keeping her eyes forward and wondering if she shouldn’t reconsider having him hanged.
“And your mouth, my lady, needs cleansing. How is it that your uncle ever allowed you to use such language?”
Rosaleen laughed bitterly. “It was from him that I learned it, my lord. Sometimes it was my only defense against him, though I was loath to so lower myself.”
Again, Hugh felt a fierce need to kill the man who’d beaten her.
“Rosaleen,” he said, “I’m going to do something I’ve not done in a long, long time.”
“Oh? Behave decently, you mean?”
“No,” he returned dryly. “I am going to beg your pardon for what I said a moment ago. About your language. It was amiss in me to judge you so hastily, and I’m sorry.”
Rosaleen bit her lip to keep from laughing. It was evident that Hugh Caldwell was sorely unused to apologizing for anything at all. “Your apology is accepted, Hugh Caldwell, but only on the condition that you answer my question about what you mean to do once we reach your childhood home. Do you intend to stay there or no?”
“I’ll only stay long enough to make certain you are taken care of, Rosaleen, and then I will leave. I am to become my own man,” he added before she could ask why he wouldn’t stay. “There was a fellow I fought beside in France, a baron named John Rowsenly, who possessed a fief called Briarstone, which he gambled away to me one night. I hadn’t meant to keep it, as it was his family home, but he was killed at Agincourt, and I have determined that I shall go and make my life there as best I can.”
He glanced at her and saw that she was gazing at him in disbelief.
“His people will be expecting me,” he went on, “for I sent them a missive regarding their lord’s death and assuring them that I would come and take care of them.”
She kept staring, and he said, almost defensively, “I cannot let them sit unprotected any longer. Any band of wandering knaves might wreak havoc, seeing the place unmanned. Rowsenly was a fool to wager away his holdings, but his people don’t deserve to be left alone because of it. I’m no great lord, but I can manage a small fief such as Briarstone without any trouble, I vow, and hold it safe against any intruders.”
Rosaleen regarded the masculine profile he offered her, then let her gaze wander over his broad shoulders, his hard, lean body and long, muscular arms and legs. His hands were as big and hard as the rest of him, yet looked agile and skilled. He was a beautiful man, a fighting man, and she had seen enough of such men to know that he was good at his trade. He’d have no difficulty protecting his little fief, she decided, and he already spoke of Briarstone with a pride of ownership, though he’d not yet set eyes on the place. It must be a very small estate, indeed, for she had never before heard of it.
“Rowsenly left no heirs? No wife or children?” she asked.
“Not that I know of. He never spoke of any, and when I won the deed to the place he assured me it was mine and no one else’s.”
“The king has a say in such matters, Hugh Caldwell, though you may not be aware of it. He could declare Sir Rowsenly’s lands forfeit to the throne and deed them to one of his favorites as a reward. It’s his right as your liege, you know.”
Her words brought a smile to Hugh’s lips. She was a high-handed little thing, thinking him so ignorant as to need such instruction. He was tempted to play the idiot and let her spend the next hour making a fool of herself. God’s mercy, it was going to be pleasant to see the look on her face when they finally rode through the gates of Castle Gyer and she realized just exactly who his brother was.
“I