“Defy? What do you mean?”

He looked displeased with himself for having said so much, then grimaced with resolve to share what he knew. “It was Ethelred who wed Lord Christian and his lady in the very chapel you speak of,” he grimly explained. “The Abbot of Rievaulx had refused to marry them, offering no other reason than his differences with the baron. Ethelred petitioned the archbishop and received permission to perform the sacrament in Gilbert’s stead.”

“Gilbert is the Abbot of Rievaulx?” she asked.

“Aye.” He gave her an odd look. “You must not have lingered long at the abbey to have escaped that knowledge.”

“I was housed separately from the men,” she answered, wincing. Coward! You should have seized the opportunity to confess to him.

“Ah. Well, on the day of the wedding, Gilbert discovered Ethelred’s betrayal. He tried to stop the ceremony but arrived too late. In a choleric fit, he cried out a warning that has caused a rift between the serfs and their seneschal ever since, just as he meant it to.”

“What was it?” Clarise asked, feeling a chill on the top of her head. At last she would know why the folk at Helmesly persisted in fearing their master.

The knight began dumping leftovers in the basket.

“Please tell me,” she softly begged him.

He stilled, struggling with himself. “My lord is an honorable man,” he told her. The scars stood out starkly on his face.

Clarise felt her eyes sting in response to such loyalty. “I have seen the better side of him,” she admitted. And she would doubtless see the worst unless she could soften the blow when it came. “What did Gilbert say?”

Sir Roger looked down at his own callused hand. “He said Lady Genrose would be slain by her husband.”

Clarise barely smothered her gasp. A vision of a body desecrated rose up in her mind’s eye, and she shook it free.

Sir Roger’s eyes flashed with unaccustomed fierceness. “The lady labored long and died in childbirth. Lord Christian saved Simon from dying, also. He never wanted such a fate for his wife!”

She put her own hand over his roughened one. “I believe you,” she said convincingly. “I do. And God will reward such loyalty as yours.” As she squeezed his fingers, she mourned that their bond of friendship would soon be put to the test. “Gilbert is mad,” she added, saying out loud what she had thought the moment she saw the unreal glitter in the abbot’s eyes. “When I spoke with him, he left me feeling quite uneasy.”

“You may be right,” Saintonge agreed. “They say he works night and day pouring over his herbs. Likely he has tried one too many of his concoctions, and it has turned his brain to mush.”

Clarise smiled at the knight’s imagination. “I don’t know why the servants put any credence in the things he has to say,” she commented lightly.

His eyes began to crinkle at the corners. His smile took up its post once more. “Helmesly is a happier place for your presence, lady,” he told her with feeling. “You have cast your light into my lord’s dark heart, and I thank you for it.”

So that he wouldn’t see the guilt in her face, she lifted her gaze toward the main keep where it stood between its graceful buttresses. To her amazement, contentment flooded her heart when she looked upon its clean lines. How could she feel so connected to a place when the foundation of her existence here was built on sand?

Heathersgill had ceased to be a home after Ferguson usurped her father. For months she’d felt abandoned by Alec, overwhelmed by her family’s plight. Now all those feelings were removed from her, by time and distance. It was wrong of her to forget her family.

“Do you know if Alec has made reply to Lord Christian’s offer?” she dared to ask. If there were any way to escape her final judgment, she would take it. Alec’s chances of defeating Ferguson were not as high as Christian’s. But at least she knew him for an honorable man, a kind man.

The knight studied her from beneath his lashes. “There’s been no word,” he said neutrally.

Sir Roger had praised her for bringing happiness to Helmesly, but he didn’t yet trust her with issues of power and politics. She could not forget that underneath his friendly veneer there remained a bond of loyalty, firm and enduring. “Tell me how you came to serve Lord Christian,” she heard herself inquire.

Saintonge leaned in with an air of confidence. “I served the Wolf before him.”

“His father?” she asked in amazement.

“I didn’t know he was his father. Nor did Lord Christian, until later. He came to Wendesby to train as a squire. He was but twelve years old—a slim lad with a vocabulary that had me scratching my head to remember my grammar. He spoke eloquently of angels and apostles and a vision of the future.”

Clarise went curiously light-headed. “He was that innocent, then?” she breathed, all ears as she waited for more. “Go on,” she said when the knight paused thoughtfully.

“The Wolf refused to recognize him publicly. He kept their kinship a secret, I think because he didn’t understand him. He looked at the boy and saw his weakness rather than his strength. He felt the need to turn the whelp into a warrior.”

Oh, nay. She felt a sudden pang for Christian’s lost simplicity. “Did Lord Christian take offense to that? Is that why . . . why he razed his father’s demesne six years ago? Did he hate him so much?”

Sir Roger picked up the baby, whose head had dropped wearily to the blanket. He held Simon against the hard surface of his iron-linked chest. “My lord was ill treated by his sire. He was made to sweat and to toil. To train long hours and then grow hungry. He did not discover that the Wolf was his father until his half brother taunted him on the lists, calling him a bastard.”

Clarise stifled a gasp of sympathy.

“By then I had grown fond of him,” the knight continued. “He was a quick study in the art of warfare. In just a few years, he had grown as tall and strong as the father who denied him. His sword arm became the stuff of legends. Yet what I most admired in him was that he never lost his sense of right and wrong. He had a determined spirit and a streak of chivalry that the Wolf could not snuff out.”

He patted the baby, transferring his loyalty to the Slayer’s child. “That is how he got the scar on his cheek,” he recalled. “His father found an altar he had built in one corner of the stables. He was a Dane, himself, and a godless man. He ordered Christian chained to a post and whipped. My lord refused to cry out. He even turned his head to send the Wolf a defiant look, and the tip of the whip cracked his face. He was only fifteen.”

Clarise touched a finger to her cheek. She could almost feel the sting of the whip herself. Why, he’d been only a boy! How could a father treat his flesh and blood so cruelly? She stared at the knight, aghast.

“Five years later my lord left Wendesby with blood on his hands. I cannot say that I blame him. All those years he’d trained under a man he hated. It was too much to learn that the man was his father.

“When he left, I was afraid he would lose the honor that I cherished in him. So I mounted my horse and followed him. There have been times,” the knight said with a sigh, “when I believed the Wolf succeeded in claiming his soul for evil. But lately, I remark more of the Christian I once knew. He is coming back into himself,” he decided with a contented nod.

Clarise was enraptured by the tale. She found herself rallying fiercely behind the Slayer of Helmesly. So, she was right in guessing that he was not as ruthless as rumor depicted. Ah, the Saints, she should have trusted her instincts and told him what had brought her to Helmesly. Perhaps if she had, she would now have a champion at her side. As it was, she would have to earn his trust all over again.

“We traveled east,” the knight added, recapturing her attention, “and pledged our swords to various lords. The Baron of Helmesly saw Christian fight in a tourney and hired him at once to train his men. A few years later, desiring to go to the Holy Lands and needing to leave his estate in capable hands, the baron betrothed my lord to his only daughter.”

Simon, who was finding the unyielding surface of Sir Roger’s armor too hard, let out a plaintiff cry. The knight quickly passed him to Clarise. As always, when she took him in her arms, she felt a rush of tenderness for the helpless babe. The fear that her days at Helmesly might be numbered tinged the tenderness with grief. “Sir Roger,” she began in a strangled voice, “I . . .”

Someone across the field called out his name at the same time and waved him over.

The knight struggled to his feet, unaware of the confession that hovered on her tongue. “Thank you for the meal,” he said. “I pray that Doris soon recovers.”

“As do we all,” Clarise replied. Perhaps this evening she would get around to admitting to what had brought her to Helmesly. “Er, there’s just one more thing, Sir Knight,” she added, coming to her own feet. “Could you ask Dame Maeve to give me the key to the chapel? She won’t heed my request.” She’d asked the steward’s wife herself, but the woman had refused her.

He nodded his head distractedly. “Very well.”

“Oh and, er, may I have your permission to make some changes in the castle?”

Now she had his full attention. “Like what?” he asked, scowling suspiciously.

“Well, I think the hall would benefit from the addition of flowers, don’t you? And there is an urgent need for more torches to be made, or perhaps you haven’t noticed that everyone scuttles about in the darkness? Also, it would not be amiss to hang a tapestry or two.”

Sir Roger wiped away the sweat that was dripping from his forehead. He looked quite overwhelmed by her quick suggestions. “Fine, fine,” he said, clearly eager to return to such simple things as weapons and their use.