The Bride of Windermere Read online

  “I must... talk to ye now.” Her words were whispered painstakingly, her breath so short that Kit had to strain to hear what she said. “...I know why King Henry...wants ye... The secret...well-kept these many years... Meghan’s wish...but now...ye must know.”

  “Rest, Bridget. Tell me tomorrow when you are better.”

  “Now.” The urgency of her tone silenced Kit.

  “Yer mother...met Henry Hereford...King Henry’s father... in London... when he became King... She was young... a bonny lass... inexperienced... Hereford was...taken with her...riding on the wings of his success.”

  Her breathing was so labored, Kit wanted her to stop, but Bridget insisted on continuing.

  “They...they...”

  “What happened, Bridget?” Kit urged her to continue. “What must I know?”

  Bridget experienced a severe coughing spell before she was able to speak again. “Hereford sent her to Somerton... to marry Lord Thomas... It was remote...but far enough...from Scottish raids... He knew ye’d both be safe...”

  “Who? Mother and Lord Somers? Mother and I would be safe?”

  Bridget tried to speak again, but though her lips moved, no words came.

  Kit wanted to question her further, but it was obvious that Bridget’s strength was ebbing. Kit felt lost, truly lost for the first time in her life. Tears rolled down her face unheeded as she took Bridget’s hand in hers, bent over it and wept quietly.

  Wolf didn’t know why he had to be so preoccupied with that hellion girl, ministering to her old friend alone in that dark, dreary room. He was at Windermere for the first time in twenty years, with his enemy at hand, and all he could think of was how Kit was dealing with old Bridget’s illness. What did it matter to him? Wolf knew he had to concentrate on Philip and not allow anything to distract him from his plan.

  It was nigh on midnight by the time the ladies retired from the hall, and several of the gentlemen were enjoying a glass of wine near the fire before retiring to their beds. Wolf prodded Philip into recounting the story of his “dishonorable” Uncle Bartholomew. Philip asserted that Bartholomew had been one of King Richard’s sympathizers, positioning himself against the Lords Appellant, including Henry Hereford, who would soon wrest the crown from Richard to become King Henry IV.

  “My dear Uncle Bart was foolish enough to engage some cutthroat to murder King Henry during the Owen Glendower affair. Oh, yes, the Mortimers and the Percys were involved, but none so stupidly as my uncle.”

  “I am unfamiliar with the case, my lord,” Nicholas said. “How was it proved that Bartholomew sent an assassin to kill Henry? Didn’t the late earl and his sons die abroad near the time of the Glendower revolt?”

  “The assassin failed, of course,” Philip sneered.

  “But the villain escaped being caught, as I recall,” Baron Wellesley remarked, shaking his head sadly. “The bumbling fool somehow dropped his purse containing the gold he was paid as well as an incriminating writ from Bartholomew, duly signed and sealed by the earl himself. It made no sense at the time, and I vow I’ll never understand it.”

  So this was the evidence used to involve Bartholomew in the plot, Wolf thought, a writ sealed by his father’s stolen signet. There was no question that it would have incriminated Bartholomew in treason.

  “I’d heard that the earl’s seal had been stolen some time before.”

  “Naturally, my uncle circulated that story,” Philip was swift to reply, “knowing full well that he would soon use our family’s noble seal illegally.”

  An elderly baron, standing near the massive fireplace, warming his backside, furrowed his brow. His long white eyebrows came almost together. “I seem to remember that Bartholomew had another seal cast. Different from the old seal. What was it?” he asked, frustrated that the memory had eluded him.

  “Never could understand why Bart wouldn’t have used the new signet,” said another of the barons, “to authorize that cutthroat—”

  “Yes, yes, well, that was lost as well.”

  “Right,” the old man said. “It was never found after the earl and his sons were overtaken on the road and killed in Europe.”

  “Was it ever determined who was responsible for that?” Wolf asked in a controlled voice.

  “Bandits. Highwaymen. No one knows.” Philip shrugged.

  “Your father, Lord Clarence, investigated, did he not?” Wellesley asked Philip.

  “There were no answers to be found. No one survived the attack.” Philip drained his cup. “It seems we’ve dragged out all the old ghosts tonight. Let us move on to happier subjects.”

  The following conversation, having to do with plans for a hunt on the morrow, was of no interest to Wolf, so he soon left Nicholas in the company of the earl and the barons, and went in search of food. He knew Kit had missed dinner, and he thought to take her something to eat. It would be a long night for her.

  When he tapped on her door, there was no answer, so he let himself in and set the platter of bread and cheese on the chest. His heart wrenched in an unfamiliar way, seeing her crumpled over her friend, weeping silently. Bridget lay unconscious, her breathing less labored now, but just as noisy. Soldiers called it the death rattle, and Wolf knew Lady Kathryn’s old companion wouldn’t last the night.

  The fire in the grate had all but died, and he went over to revive it. Then he went back to Bridget’s bed, crouched down next to Kit and slid a gentle arm around her shoulders to pull her away.

  “Will you eat something?”

  She shook her head but leaned back against his arm. Wolf couldn’t remember a time when anyone had needed him like this.

  “Has she awakened at all?”

  “Once.”

  “You’ve done what you can, Kit.” He tightened his arm around her, and she melted into him. He swallowed hard, well aware that she was even more alone in the world than he was. A strange sensation of protectiveness moved through him, and he wished he could shield her from the pain of losing old Bridget. He understood the pain of loss, but had no experience in giving comfort.

  “Will you try to rest now?”

  “I remember when my mother died,” she whispered, ignoring his question. “Bridget stayed and stayed and wouldn’t come out to me. I thought she must love only my mother; not me.”

  “Come away and eat something.”

  Kit had no appetite and shook her head at Wolfs offer of food. She remembered something suddenly and went over to the chest. Opening it, Kit drew out a long, brown woolen stocking that was weighted by something stuck in the toe.

  “A strange old woman gave me this today,” she said. He heard none of the usual brashness or vitality in her voice. “She told me to show no one but you.” Kit handed the sock to Wolf and went back to sit next to Bridget.

  When he peeled away the soft wool of her stocking and saw his father’s seal, the one that had been stolen, Wolf was astonished by how little effect it had on him. A small voice in the back of his mind urged him to question Kit about the old woman who had given her the seal, but it all seemed unimportant now. A new voice, a strange and much stronger voice, told him that his present task was to somehow provide comfort and support for the young woman who was about to lose her oldest friend, likely her only friend, the woman who had been a mother to her.

  Chapter Six

  Bridget stopped breathing well before dawn.

  Kit watched, detached, as Wolf pulled up the soft linen sheet to cover the old woman’s familiar features; the cheerful face that had laughed and scolded and cried over the years. Kit knew she must have wept, but was hardly aware of it. She felt sick at heart, nauseated and exhausted. There was a stale taste in her mouth, her joints creaked and all her bones ached.

  Wolf drew her into his arms and sat down with her in the big chair next to the fire. He stretched out his long legs and propped his feet on the stool. Kit sat nestled comfortably, securely, feeling the slow, steady thump of his heart in his chest.

  . Wolf watched the sun rise an
d pulled Kit closer. She was so unlike any woman he’d ever known, he thought with a sigh. When had he started thinking she was beautiful? She dressed in rags that none of Queen Catherine’s women would have allowed in the same room with them. She submitted to beatings from a drunken stepfather, yet ran away from Wolf’s protection on the road to return to Somerton and faithfully await Rupert Aires. Just yesterday, Wolf had caught her scampering up the stairs like a kitten on the run. She’d intervened on the Juvet boy’s behalf like one of King Henry’s justices, and ministered tenderly to her dying cousin.

  How could he think of her as anything but beautiful?

  “She never had children of her own,” Kit remarked quietly. Wolf’s arm tightened around her shoulders momentarily. “Rupert and I were all she had. He should have been here.”

  Her words slammed into his consciousness.

  Rupert. He’d get her to Sir Rupert, by God. As fast as Janus could get them to London.

  The funeral Mass and burial took place before the noon hour. For all the earl’s pompous posturing around Kit, she noticed he didn’t bother to attend the requiem for her kinswoman. He’d gone hunting.

  She was grateful to Wolf and his men, all of whom attended, as well as the few servants who’d had contact with Bridget. It was also a surprise to see young Alfie attending, with several of the people Kit had spoken to in the town.

  When the funeral was over, Kit returned to the room she had shared with Bridget. It suited her to be alone, but not cooped up in the musty old room, her eyes drawn to Bridget’s deathbed whenever she looked up. There was a great emptiness inside her, begging to be let go.

  She changed into her old traveling clothes: the brown breeches and rough woolen tunic along with her cloak and the hat that concealed her hair so well. All was quiet as Kit went through the great hall, and she met no one on the way to the stables. A mare was saddled for her, and Kit headed out past the drawbridge and into the meadow beyond the castle walls.

  Wolf looked for her soon after she left. Finding her room empty, he asked various servants regarding her whereabouts, but none had seen her. Thinking she might have returned to the cemetery, he went there, but didn’t find her. Worry turning to alarm now, he hastened back to the stable to have a groom saddle Janus for him.

  “Goin’ out after Lady Kathryn, are ye, sir?” the boy asked.

  “Lady Kathryn? What do you know of her?” Wolf demanded.

  “Nothin‘, sir, just that she rode out of here some little while ago.”

  “Alone?”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders.

  “Where? Which way was she going?”

  The boy pointed out the direction.

  Wolf took off at a full gallop in search of Kit. Being alone outside of the castle walls was dangerous for a woman. It was unwise—no, downright foolhardy for her to be out riding in unfamiliar territory, he thought angrily, and with the fair going on in town, there were strangers about. Wolf was personally responsible to the king for her safety, but his sense of dread went deeper than that. Though the sensation was an unfamiliar one, the fear that something might happen to her went beyond having to answer to the king for it.

  He rode a long way through the meadow where he had played with his brothers twenty years before. So many hiding spots here, so many pitfalls for the unwary rider. Wolfs worst fears were realized when he saw a saddled horse, wandering riderless near the small lake where he used to fish with his father and brothers. Gripped by panic that she’d been thrown from her horse and was lying injured somewhere in the grass, Wolf dismounted.

  An uprooted tree lay across the still waters of the lake, and Kit climbed up its huge root system to walk across the long, thick trunk. Scrambling around a branch which jutted vertically from the trunk, she sat down on the tree with her back resting against the branch and dangled her feet over the lake. It wasn’t long before she had her shoes off and was dipping her toes in the clear, chilly water.

  She had been sitting there for some time before she heard the steady approach of a rider. It took a while before he finally came on foot to the water’s edge, and Kit was relieved to see Wolf.

  He appeared to be searching for something in the grass, and Kit was a bit disappointed that he didn’t seem to be looking for her. She thought of the way he had helped her get through the night, sitting quietly with her. She had never expected such a thing from anyone, much less Wolf.

  The sound of a whistle startled him. It was unlike any birdsong he’d ever heard and when he looked up to scan the area, his eyes finally lighted on Kit, perched on the edge of a huge fallen oak, two fingers poised at the corners of her mouth, ready to whistle again. Her britches were rolled up above her ankles and she dipped her feet casually in the icy water, without so much as a grimace or a shiver due to the cold. He thought immediately of a mysterious water nymph, raising her arms to the moon, but quickly shrugged aside the notion.

  Wolf stepped up onto the trunk and walked across to Kit, then sat down on the opposite side of the branch which she used as a backrest. He’d had every intention of throttling her for making him worry so, but looking into her sad eyes, Wolf couldn’t bring himself to upbraid her. She was working too hard to keep her spirits up.

  “Your boots will get wet,” she said, watching him lower his long legs towards the water.

  He adjusted his legs so that wouldn’t happen.

  “Were you looking for something?” Kit asked.

  “You.”

  She was pleased, even though he seemed cross. She looked over at his profile. How could a man be so beautiful, she wondered. Even with the terrible scar that cut across his forehead, he was achingly handsome. She didn’t want him to be angry with her. “Looking for me? In the grass? By all the saints, Gerhart, I could swear you were searching for toads.”

  “Not toads,” he said. “Just a kitten, strayed too far from the yard.”

  “That’s what Bridget used to call me,” she said, blinking back tears. “Kitten. Or Kitty.”

  “I know.”

  “Rupert was the one who started calling me ‘Kit,’” she said. “What about you? Do you have many names? Or are you always Gerhart?”

  “I suppose I’m many things, Kathryn,” he replied tersely, having been reminded of Rupert, “and only sometimes am I Gerhart.”

  “What of your parents?” she asked. “What do they call you?”

  “My father is dead. But my mother used to call me, ‘mein Sohn,’ which means simply, ‘my son.”’

  “Used to call you?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “She’s still living, then?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you see her ever? Your mother?”

  “Not in five years,” Wolf replied. He didn’t need to have seen her for twenty years to know she was the same. Staring out her window at her father’s palace at Bremen, eating only what was fed to her, hearing nothing... “But I know she is well enough, and secure.”

  “I hardly knew my mother. I was only five when she died.” She dipped one toe in the water. “Bridget told me last night that the old King Henry sent my mother to Somerton to marry Thomas Somers. I’d always wondered why my mother married Baron Somers and I wanted to ask Bridget more, but her breath was so short, she could hardly speak.”

  “She told you this before she died?”

  Kit nodded and swung her foot back into the water. “She said there was something she had to tell me. That was it.” She shrugged. Perhaps Wolf, having been sent from King Henry, could add to what Bridget had said.

  “Not much of a deathbed revelation,” Wolf remarked.

  “Hmm.”

  “The question is why Henry sent your mother to Somerton. The king must never have met Thomas Somers.”

  Wolf obviously knew nothing regarding her mother or her marriage all those years before.

  “Seems I’m to be the recipient of all sorts of information here at Windermere,” she said at last.

  “You mean the seal?”
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  “I’ve expected you to ask me about it.”

  “I daresay I’ve been more or less preoccupied,” he replied. It was true. For all its importance in the body of evidence against Philip Colston, Wolf was more interested in Kit’s welfare right now than in the signet stolen from his father. He wished he could force himself to care less about her, but found it an impossible task.

  “A strange old woman gave it to me. At first I thought she was a ghost or a spectre of some kind,” Kit explained, “but I found she had slipped into my room through a secret door.”

  “Secret door? I know of no—I mean I’ve never heard of any secret passages in Windermere Castle.” He thought he knew every nook and cranny of Windermere. Yet it had been many years since he’d been here. He was only a lad of nine when he’d left for Bremen that last time. It was possible that the castle held secrets not open to a young boy.

  “Well, it’s there. I’ll show you when we go back.”

  “Who was the old woman? Did she tell you her name?”

  “Agatha, she said.”

  “Agatha!” he exclaimed.

  Kit looked over at him in astonishment.

  “Agatha was the second wife of Clarence, Philip’s father.” Wolf was clearly disturbed by the information Kit gave him. “It’s been thought, these many years, that she was dead.”

  “I don’t believe so, Gerhart,” Kit contradicted. “I myself saw her in the flesh twice, the second time in her own chambers. It was there that she had me pull out a loose piece of granite outside of her window to find the ring. She had it stashed there.”

  “And she told you to give it to me?” he asked. He watched as she pulled her feet gracefully out of the water and put her soft leather shoes back on.

  “She said I was to give it to the man with the silver eyes and black hair. That could only be you,” Kit told him, omitting the fact that Agatha had called him “the wolf.” As they walked across the log and back onto land, she wondered what the importance was of the hidden seal and why Agatha had wanted Wolf to have it. The woman’s ramblings were so muddled, Kit thought perhaps Agatha had chosen Wolf at random from all the guests at Windermere to be the recipient of the ring. Maybe Lady Agatha merely liked his looks. They were certainly pleasing.