red-crossed white cloth surcoats over chain mail, were grouped to their left. One glance was all he required to see that the men were waiting patiently, and he jumped down again.
“They look good. Their horses are being loaded now. I’ll have de Berenger, the vice-admiral, send you instructions as to where and when your men should board—and here he is, the very man.”
Sir Edward de Berenger had approached, unnoticed until that moment, and Sinclair introduced him to Kenneth, then asked where the admiral had gone. De Berenger smiled and waved towards a single large tent, a hundred yards from where they stood, and as William glanced towards it he noticed a knot of people he identified by their dress as villagers, standing huddled off to one side, well clear of the activities on the beach. He indicated them with a nod.
“What about the village folk there? Did you have any problems with them?”
“Nah!” Kenneth shook his head. “They were terrified when we came down on them from the cliffs, but once they saw that we meant them no harm but were interested only in their wharf, they threw up their hands and left us to it. The head man is a fellow called Pierre. He calmed them down. I told him to keep them well out of our way and gave him a purse of silver for their trouble. I did it publicly, too, so he won’t be able to keep it for himself. None of them has said a word since then. Oh, I told him, too, that if anyone comes questioning them, to hold nothing back, but tell about everything they saw. It won’t make any difference to us by then.”
“Hmm.” His brother twisted his mouth wryly. “If anyone comes looking for us here, it won’t matter what these people say. Their lives will be forfeit. I’m sure they know that, too.” He turned to de Berenger. “Well, Sir Edward, we should join the admiral, since he called us here in person. Kenneth, you should rejoin your men.”
Kenneth nodded to both of them and turned away as de Berenger raised a finger to Sinclair.
“I cannot join you yet. I have another matter of some urgency—a problem with one of the hoists—and it will not wait. Present my apologies to Sir Charles, if you will, and I will come to you presently.”
Sinclair was chagrined, as he headed for the admiral’s tent, to see the Baroness St. Valéry already there, sitting on the pebbled foreshore beside her good-brother, and his heart seemed to sink into the pit of his stomach. He found himself wondering if she intended to participate in every discussion that was to take place, and the thought set him immediately on edge. He saw St. Valéry take note of his arrival only to turn away, distracted by someone who had approached him with tidings of some kind.
St. Valéry rose to his feet and said something to the Baroness, flipped a hand in salute to the still-approaching Sinclair, and followed the messenger, disappearing quickly among the throng of bodies behind him. Less than half a hundred paces now separated Sinclair from where the Baroness sat gazing out at the shipping in the small harbor, and as he struggled to walk quickly over the yielding mass of the pebbled beach that seemed to drag at the soles of his boots, he lowered his eyes to watch his feet, thus avoiding looking at her. Despite his exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, he had not been able to sleep aboard ship the previous night and had spent a long time thinking about the woman, once he had finally accepted that he was unable not to think about her.
Lady Jessica Randolph unsettled him deeply, and lying on his rocking bunk in the hours before dawn, he had understood that for him, she was the embodiment of something utterly beyond his experience, the essence of everything he had willingly abandoned upon joining the Brotherhood of the Temple and undertaking his solemn vows of monkhood. As monk, soldier, and Crusader, his had been a life of purely masculine concerns: combat, training, and campaigning in times of war; garrison duties, unrelenting discipline, and the incessant prayer schedule of the Templars’ Rule in times of peace. Even in recent years, while undergoing intensive training for his future role as a member of the Governing Council of the Order, he had been held separate from the affairs of the world outside the brotherhood, his time dedicated to the staggeringly complex task of learning the esoteric secrets shared only by the privileged elite of the Temple’s highest initiates, that knowledge referred to—although not often and never publicly—as the Higher Mysteries of the Ancient Order of Sion. That task had consumed him, and as his comprehension of its immensity grew, it had even frightened him at times, forcing him to review the entire sum of knowledge and beliefs that he had acquired in a lifetime of total ignorance of the Mysteries’ existence.
And then had come this woman to distract him with the sound of her voice, the sight of her body, the smell of her presence, and the awareness of her femininity.
When no more than twenty paces separated them, she saw him coming, and her face cleared, losing the slight air of preoccupation it had worn and taking on an expression of…what? Disinterest? No, Sinclair corrected himself. Plain emptiness was what it was. As though he were beneath her notice. Well, he thought, that would earn her no displeasure from him. If she wanted to behave as she thought a man behaved, then so be it; she would be treated as a man could expect to be treated…a lesser man, of course. An underling. Sinclair felt himself grinding his teeth and made a conscious effort to relax.
She looked up at him as he arrived beside her and he nodded stiffly, in a tacit, perfunctory greeting.
“Good day, Sir William.” Her voice, while not welcoming, conveyed no hint of displeasure. “Sir Charles will join us directly. Please sit down.”
It may have been the “us” that angered him, her assumption that she would share whatever he might have to say to St. Valéry, or vice versa, or it may have been the cool air of impenetrable self-possession with which she invited him to sit and plainly expected him to obey, but whatever the reason, he felt the ire flare up in him, outrage and humiliation vying with each other to undo him equally—for he knew beyond doubt, even then, that he would be in the wrong no matter what he said or did, and so he stood there mute for long moments, unable either to move or to speak. Fortunately for him, the woman misinterpreted his inaction and looked up at him with a shade more warmth in her gaze.
“Please, sit, if you will. Charles saw you coming but was called away before he could greet you. Something to do with the loading of livestock. I must admit to being surprised at the number of your brother’s company here. I had expected a score or so of men and horses, but there must be more than a hundred of each. Please, sit you down here. My ladies have gone looking for firewood, to take the chill off the afternoon air, but they should soon be back, and we’ll be warmer once the fire is lit.”
Bemused by her easy openness and lack of apparent guile, Sinclair found himself moving to comply with her wishes, even though he had no slightest idea of what to say to her. But she simply kept talking as he lowered himself to perch on a boulder across from her, and he found himself listening and preparing to answer in spite of himself.
“I confess, were it not for my ladies, I should freeze and die of exposure, for I have no notion of how to light a fire in the open air, do you? Are you adept with flint and steel? I suppose you must be, being a Temple Knight. I am told there is nothing practical that you and your fellows cannot do.”
“No, that’s a nonsense,” he heard himself say, and nearly winced at his own brusqueness. “I have a tinder box, wi’ flint and steel, but a’ God’s name, Lady, I cannot remember when I last used it, if I ever did. Tam does all that, and I am grateful to him for it. He starts our fires and keeps them alight, and he keeps me fed, for else I would most likely starve. I have little attention for such things.”
Well, at least you are capable of speaking like a reasonably normal person. From what I’ve seen and learned of you until now, that is a very important development in your status vis-à-vis women—
Sinclair was already rising to his feet again. “Here come your women now, madam. I’ll leave you with them.” Sinclair nodded towards the only two other women on the beach, who were bearing armloads of logs and followed by a group of sergeants carrying more.
Jessica stood up, too, as the armloads of logs clattered to the pebbles, one after the other, and called to Sinclair as he was on the point of walking away.
“Wait,