“She hates you,” Trenton said with quiet bluntness. “I have heard her tell her friends that.”
Gaston clasped his hands in front of him. “I am sorry you have heard such things, but whatever she thinks of me, please know that we both love you a great deal.”
Trenton pondered his father’s words. “She says that you never wanted me, and that you hate children.”
Gaston felt anger surge through him. “That’s a lie, Trenton. I love you very much. You are my only son.”
“Then why are you always gone?” the boy turned his face to his father, pleadingly.
Gaston could read the pain and he was doubly pained by it. He knew how his absences reflected on his son, because they reflected on him the same way. “I am a soldier, Trenton, and I serve the crown,” he said. “You know that there has been quite a bit of upheaval within the past few years and I have been in the middle of it, fighting for our king. If I could have taken you with me, I would have gladly, but life on the move is no place for a boy. You were much better off with your mother at Clearwell.”
Trenton lowered his head. Gaston looked at the dark hair, the color of his own and wondered what the lad was thinking. “Then do you have friends like mother does?” Trenton asked softly.
Gaston wasn’t quite sure what he meant. “Arik is my friend.”
“Nay, I mean friends like mother,” the boy repeated. “Friends from France, and Spain, men who talk strange.”
Gaston grasped his thoughts and took a deep breath to steady himself. “Nay, Trenton, I do not. What your mother does is her own business.”
“But…but you sleep in Lady Remington’s bedchamber?” Trenton asked timidly. “Mother sleeps with her friends, too.”
Damn, what that bitch had exposed her son to. Gaston felt himself tensing. “I have my own bedchamber, Trenton.”
Trenton sat a moment, mulling over the conversation, and thinking on everything he had ever heard about his father. He truly loved his father and over the past few days saw that his father was a kind and patient man, nothing as his mother had told him. He was a man who took time with him and made him feel wanted. Not even his mother had ever made him feel wanted.
The discussion lagged a bit and Trenton looked at his hands, embarrassed at the entire confrontation. Gaston rose from the edge of the wagon.
“Would you like to go swimming?” he asked.
Trenton’s head shot up, his eyes wide. “Swimming? Aye, I would!”
Gaston’s heart squeezed at his son’s eagerness for something as simple as swimming. The lad was just like Dane; so tremendously easy to please, as those who have been abused usually are. Though he knew Mari-Elle had never laid a hand on the lad, the emotional damage she had done was apparent.
He smiled at his son. “Come on, then,” he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder as they crossed the bailey, pausing only long enough to exchange a few words with Arik.
Just as they were passing under the portcullis, they came face to face with Oleg and old Eudora, lugging two heavy baskets between them. Gaston pointed his finger at the burdens they held.
“Where are you going with those?” he asked.
Oleg was extremely intimidated by the Dark Knight. Being somewhat superstitious, he half-expected the man to speak with a serpent’s forked tongue. “We are taking food to Lady Remington and Master Dane, my lord. The lady’s sisters will be joining them shortly.”
Gaston peered into the baskets. “By God, there’s enough to feed my army,” he took the wicker burdens to himself; the combined weight was barely mentionable. “My son and I were heading that way as it was. We shall make sure the feast is delivered.”
Oleg nodded hesitantly, clutching Eudora’s arm and backing away. Gaston eyed the old man a moment, not puzzled at the terror he read but annoyed somewhat; he would have hoped thatover the weeks he had occupied Mt. Holyoak that the populace would come to fear him less and respect him more.
Oleg and Eudora watched the man and his son walk down the narrow road that led to the wooded fields below.
“If I was twenty years younger, I’d have that man,” Eudora quipped softly.
Oleg shook his head, letting out a loud sigh. “He’s the devil, woman. Can you not see that?”
Eudora snorted. “Lady Remington does not think so. In fact, I’d say they are rather fond of each other.”
Oleg rolled his eyes. “God help us all. Adultery.”
Eudora looked at him disapprovingly. “I’d hardly call the marriage between Guy and Remington a marriage at all. It’s a license permitting the master to beat her senseless, it is. Allow the woman some happiness, you old spittlecock.”
Oleg shook his head. “Call you it what you will, but it’s still adultery.”
