Gisele screeched in surprise, barely kept herself from falling into the pond, and spun around to glare at Nigel. “One of these times you are going to frighten me so much my poor heart shall stop dead in my chest.”
He laughed and sat down beside her. “Why were ye calling yourself an idiot?”
“Because I cannot seem to just take my ease and enjoy a day with nothing to do.” She stared at the water as she answered him, a little afraid that he would read her evasion in her face.
“It is long past time that ye had a rest, loving.”
“Mayhap, but I have been running and hiding for so long it just feels wrong.”
“Then we must keep ye busy so that ye cannae think on it too much.”
“Keep me busy?” She eyed him with a touch of suspicion as he stood up and held out his hand.
“Now, lass, ye must trust me and cease questioning my motives.” He pulled her into his arms and gave her a brief, hard kiss. “Did ye not ask me to teach ye how to walk softly?”
Gisele smiled and nodded. “I will confess that I may be envious of how you can do that, and that is why I wish to learn the skill. Howbeit, I am also thinking it is a much—” she hesitated, then corrected herself—“veryuseful skill. There is no knowing how long I will have to remain hidden, is there?”
“It will end soon.”
“How can you be so certain of that?”
“Your kinsmen now work to get ye free of this.”
“But if, as you believe, I killed my husband, how can they release me from that accusation? DeVeau was a rich, powerful man with connections to the king himself. Few would dismiss my crime simply because they felt the man deserved to die. Few would think my killing him was justice just because he treated me so poorly.”
“Put your boots on.”
Gisele smiled faintly as she did as he ordered. “You have not answered me.”
“Ye try to trick me with questions that are difficult to answer and with clever assumptions.”
“Perhaps.”
“There is no perhaps about it. If I respond one way, ye hear me admit that I think ye are guilty. If I answer in another way, then ye can say that I think ye are innocent. Since I have yet to decide, ’tis best if I dinnae answer at all.”
She cursed softly as she stood up and scowled at him. “Oui, I try to get you to proclaim me one or the other, guilty or innocent. We have been together for a week, and knew each other for a week before that, but you still have not decided? Do you truly believe me capable of such bloodthirstiness?Oui, simply killing him, that I might have done. There were many times when I ached to do so. But I would never have desecrated his body in such a manner, no matter how much I loathed that part of the man. I certainly would never have tortured him, mutilating him first and then killing him.”
Nigel was not sure why he could not just agree that she was innocent, especially since he was beginning to think she was. He decided that he just needed some more proof, no matter how he felt about her. His indecision was aided by the feeling that no woman could or should be faulted for killing such a man. It was, in many ways, self-defense.
“Aye, I do find it hard to believe that ye could disfigure a mon. Why do ye ne’er call your husband by his name, his full name? Ye always call him DeVeau.”
Gisele felt as if she were banging her head against a very hard wall, but decided to just give up on the argument. It only made her angry, and now she realized that his doubt also hurt. Badgering the man to proclaim her innocence would also ruin what could be a very nice day, and she needed one.
“His name was Michael,” she said, not surprised to hear a hint of anger still lingering in her voice. It would take a few minutes for her to regain her calm. “I called him by that name once, at our wedding. After our wedding night, I called him only DeVeau to his face, and many unkind things when he could not hear me. I did call him some rougher names to his face, but only a few times in the beginning, for the beatings I got quickly taught me some discretion.”
He hugged her in a brief expression of sympathy, and inwardly cursed DeVeau. It was such tales, however, that made him hesitant to completely believe her claim of total innocence. Gisele was a proud woman, spirited, and she possessed a temper. At some point in her marriage, the humiliation and brutality DeVeau meted out could have driven her to kill him. There was also the chance that, horrified by what she had done, she had simply cast the memory from her mind. He just wished that his indecision did not upset her as it did.
“You were going to teach me how to walk quietly, how to slip through the wood like a ghost,” she reminded him as she stepped out of his hold.
Nigel smiled faintly and carefully explained the way one had to walk to make each step quiet. “Ye must train yourself to walk toe to heel, rolling your wee foot down even as ye start to do the same with the other foot. What ye are trying to do is nay set too much weight on any part of your foot as ye walk.”
“Am I to float above the ground like some spirit?”
He just laughed and took her by the hand. “It can be difficult to explain. Watch me closely, and do as I do.”
Gisele tried, again and again. She could see how he moved, but found that it was hard to imitate. When she finally stumbled over a half-buried tree root because she was paying more attention to how to walk than to where she was walking, she quit and sat down on the soft grass. Cursing softly over her embarrassing clumsiness, she rubbed her aching legs.
“Ye didnae do too badly, lass,” Nigel said as he sat down next to her.
