“Was she your whore?”
He stood close enough that she could feel his breath against her face. When and how he had moved, she knew not. His anger was back now. And then, as though he pulled his control around it, his temper eased and he stepped back.
“She was no whore, so do not call her one.”
The next question pushed forward and out before Brienne could control herself or consider the danger in poking an angry creature like Lord Hugh.
“What was her name?”
Silence was the reply as he walked back to his chair and sat. Brienne waited, hoping he would tell her, but those hopes were dashed with just one word.
“Begin.”
She let out a sigh and cleared her thoughts of all her anger and hope. Thinking only on the power within her, she let it simmer in her blood until the heat pulsed through her as her blood did.
The sphere appeared between them.
The next hours passed with few words and less pain than the first lessons had, and when the sound of her empty stomach gurgling filled the silent chamber as she practiced creating and controlling the different forms of fire, he called an end to it.
“Return to your chamber. I will have your meal sent to you.”
She glanced down at the linen that she’d wrapped around her, knowing that many servants and even the lady and her daughter would still be making their way through the building on the floors below them.
“Here,” Lord Hugh said. He held out a silken robe to her, and she tugged it on. “Turn around.” Clutching the robe to her, she turned, exposing her back to his gaze. She knew he reached out once more, but his hand never touched her. “Go,” he said in a whisper.
Brienne tugged the too-long sleeves up and lifted the length of it from the floor. What the servants would think, she did not know. But she knew they would never question her or the lord about it. After curtsying to him and walking to the door, she lifted the latch and tugged, holding the edges of the soft, sliding fabric together in front of her legs.
“I remember not her name.”
ChapterSeventeen
She dared not look at him then, hearing the words and hearing the lie they were, too. The door closed behind her, and she stood in the hallway alone. She gathered her breath before she headed back to her chamber.
Brienne wondered why he would lie to her. He remembered her mother. She knew it. And yet he’d said he did not. Why? Who could her mother be that he would deny any memory of her?
The promised meal arrived and, thankfully, Emilie did not. The girl must be attending supper in the hall with the rest of them. Brienne ate every speck of food on the tray, even wiping up the sauce with the last bits of bread. With her hunger and thirst appeased and finally cleaned and clothed, she lay on her bed.
The sounds of the keep across the yard traveled through her windows, and she thought about what William had said about the choice she had to make. Lord Hugh’s few clues about her mother only fed her confusion. She was the daughter of this nobleman who claimed blood back to the powerful families in Brittany and Normandy. She was the daughter of an unknown woman who had somehow known her father. As an infant, she’d been given over to Gavin and Fia to raise.
No matter their words before Lord Hugh, they had never planned to give her back. Even when they knew he’d noticed her, they still had not wanted to lose her. All of their words, actions, and love claimed her as their daughter.
And to William that love seemed even more important than noble blood. For his sad words revealed the pain of his upbringing—born of some liaison and not wanted by either or any of those he could name as parent.
So, who was she then? What person was she at her core? What part of her could no one take away?
She searched for that Brienne as she drifted into an exhausted sleep, one filled with dreams of William’s kisses and the loving embrace of two women—one was Fia but the other one she could never see. She could only hear her voice and the soft song she sang to Brienne before she died.
When morning came, Brienne still had no idea who she was, but the ripples of power coming from beneath the castle and from across the miles told her she would need to know very soon.
Hugh stoodon the battlements of the main keep, surveying his lands as the sun rose into a turbulent sky. The storms of yesterday had passed and yet the sky warned of more. He’d passed the night here, climbing to the heights and sending the guards away for the solitude he craved.
Thinking on the way the girl had faced him last evening, he tried not to feel pride in her. Beaten, bruised, exhausted, and frightened, she stood there and defied him. Smiling in spite of himself, he could see her face as she lifted her chin at him and fought off his incursions into her thoughts.
And all to gain the name of the woman who’d given birth to her.
He tried to tell himself it was stupidity on her part, to challenge him when her powers were so feeble and could never hope to beat his, but he felt something profound when she pushed back at him. A need so deep that it gave her more power than she should have. Hugh would usually have just destroyed someone for such an insult, such a challenge.
Then she fell against the table and he saw it.
