that? Is she here at last?” Father Damien asked, peering about myopically. “Where? I don’t see anybody.”
“She’s not here, but we will not wait,” Sir Roger said loudly.
“Ah, my son,” Father Damien said in his high, cracking voice, “shouldn’t we wait—”
“No!”
Everyone in the room jumped a bit and Father Damien immediately started to mumble a brief blessing.
His duties finished, the priest moved to his place at the table with surprising alacrity, and Sir Roger turned to his oldest friend. “You sit here, Albert,” Sir Roger said in a tone that would brook no denial as he indicated the seat that was to have been his bride’s.
Sir Albert did as he was told with obvious reluctance.
The servants also moved swiftly, and Dudley seemed to relax somewhat as the first course arrived, apparently none the worse for the delay.
Albert looked at Roger, an expression of condemnation in his usually mild brown eyes. “Your guests could be delayed by the storm, Roger, and—”
“And if that is so, they should have sent a messenger on ahead to tell us.”
“I understand your impatience, Roger. I, too, would be far from happy if my future bride was delayed. However, let us hope they have stopped at an inn to wait out the storm.”
“That would be the sensible thing to do,” Roger said as a roasted capon was set before him by a buxom serving wench whose shapely lips fell into a pout when he ignored her.
Roger stabbed the meat angrily. “Unfortunately, Chilcott is not a sensible man. They could be anywhere between his estate and mine.”
“At least he has the sense to pick a fine husband for his half sister.”
Roger snorted with unsuppressed contempt. “Save your flattery for someone else, Albert. He might have made no end of trouble over his broken betrothal to my sister if I had not agreed.”
“So why did you not insist that Madeline marry him? You could have stopped her marriage to that Welshman. He impersonated Chilcott, after all. I must confess I expected you to kill the fellow, Roger, right there on the steps of the chapel. When you offered to knight him—God’s blood, I almost dropped dead myself. It’s a good thing he refused. Think what Baron DeGuerre would have said!”
“If the Welshman had sworn fealty to me, the baron would have been appeased. Besides, I wanted the guests to enjoy themselves after I had gone to such expense for the feast. They were all sitting there like statues until I made the offer. But it doesn’t matter now.” Roger wiped the trencher in front of him with a piece of bread. “For the first—and last—time in my life I acted like a softhearted fool.”
“Or as if you had a heart,” Albert mumbled under his breath as he pulled the wing from a roasted duck.
“What did you say?” Roger demanded.
“I understand your predicament,” Albert replied. “Still, Baron DeGuerre will be pleased that this alliance is going to come about after all.”
A foot soldier appeared at the wide doors of the hall. Because Roger had heard no cry of alarm, he assumed that the matter was some minor household trouble. Dudley hurried toward the man and listened to his words.
For a moment, Roger felt some pity for his steward. Dudley was not a young man, and between the anxiety over the preparations for his lord’s wedding, which he had planned with as much care as if Roger were the king, and this unaccountable delay, he had aged considerably.
Roger’s anger at Chilcott grew even more. It was an insult to him and to his steward that Chilcott didn’t have the courtesy to arrive on time.
Dudley came bustling toward the high table as fast as his plump legs would carry him. “My lord!” he said, looking as if he feared the castle were about to fall down around his head, “they are here! In the inner ward! Lord Chilcott and his half sister and their retinue!”
Albert gave Roger a censorious look, which grew deeper when Roger made no move to get up, let alone leave the hall, but Roger didn’t care. “Have the servants show them to their quarters,” he ordered brusquely. “They can have wine and fruit there.”
Dudley wrung his hands and chewed his lip. “Forgive my impertinence, my lord, but should you not greet them? Or at least invite them into the hall to dine? They have journeyed a long way, and—”
“Arrived too late. If they wish more to eat, they may join us at the table. Or not, as they please. I am not interrupting my meal for latecomers who do not have the courtesy to advise me of any unexpected difficulty.”
With a baleful look at Albert, who gave a slight, resigned shrug of his shoulders, Dudley nodded and hurried out of the hall, wringing his hands with dismay.
“Just what do you hope to gain by this discourtesy?” Albert asked quietly.
“Are you accusing me of incivility?”
“Yes. There could be many reasons for their tardiness. If you had only waited a little longer—”
“I don’t care to hear their excuses.”
“She is your bride, after all.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“Aren’t you curious to see her at all?” Albert asked, impatience creeping into his voice.
Roger looked at his friend with some surprise. “Not in the least. I daresay she’s like that popinjay Chilcott, a vain, overdressed, affected young lady whose spending habits will cause me some grief before I train her out of them. Nor do I intend to encourage tardiness from my future wife, now or at any time. If you’re so interested, why don’t you go and greet her?”
“Because I am not the groom,” Albert replied.
“And because it’s raining hard enough to put dents in the stones,” Roger added laconically.
Albert grinned slightly, then frowned. “It still doesn’t make it right for you to be rude.”
“I’ll be seeing the woman for a long time to come,” Roger said in a tone that signaled the end of the discussion. “And this meal was too expensive to be ruined with delay.”
Lord Reginald Chilcott, knight of the realm, lord of several manors, whose ancestors had sailed with William the Conqueror himself, stood shivering in the dark courtyard of Montmorency Castle gazing mournfully at Sir Roger’s steward. Rain dripped off his bedraggled velvet cloak; his once finely perfumed and dressed hair hung limply about his narrow shoulders, and he wiped his aquiline nose, which was now dripping from within and without. Behind him, his men muttered discontentedly and his wagons were soaking. The smell of damp horse was nearly overwhelming.
“Not coming to greet us?” Chilcott repeated incredulously for the fourth time. “You are absolutely certain?”
“Yes, my lord. You must understand, the hour grew late and Sir Roger does not like to be kept waiting. If you had sent a messenger—”
“We did not realize Sir Roger keeps his bridges in such poor repair that a summer’s storm would wash them away, or we would have,” a woman’s voice interrupted. Dudley tried to see past Lord Chilcott to what appeared to be a cloaked and hooded woman mounted on a rather inferior beast.
“Mina!” Chilcott chided, his tone between a plea and a warning as he turned toward the woman.
The woman dismounted. “It is true, Reginald, and you know it.”
She faced Dudley, who tried to see beneath her hood without being overly obvious. “My lord has told me to show you to your quarters, where wine and fruit will be brought to you,” he offered.
At that moment, one of the servants left