“’Tis about time you came along,” a voice grumbled, though with unmistakable affection.
“Mildred!”
“Aye, and spending my whole morn up here just waiting for you to leave the weaving room. How did I miss you that you are coming from below?”
Rowena was too busy hugging the older woman to say anything for a moment, but then the words flowed out of her. “How do you come to be at Fulkhurst? Has Warrick sought revenge against you, too? I am sogladyou are here, Mildred, but not if you are being abused by that monster. But I thought never to see you again and—”
“Shush, my sweet one,” Mildred soothed, and led Rowena to sit on a stool amidst baskets of sewing materials. “How can I answer if you do not pause for breath so I can? And why did you not answer my own question? I was told you would be sleeping in the weaving room.”
Mildred took the stool next to her, but Rowena did not look at her when she said, “I slept below yestereve.”
From the bright pink tingeing Rowena’s cheeks, Mildred was wise enough not to ask where. All she said was, “I am not surprised.”
Rowena’s head snapped up. “You are not?Whyare you not? It shocked me that he would want to—to…He had already had his revenge in that way.”
“Did he?”
“Aye, exactly like for like. All that was done to him he did to me—and now more.”
“Then it has been so terrible?”
“Worse than terrible.”
“All of it?”
Rowena frowned at that particular question. “What do you fish for?”
Mildred shrugged. “Like for like, my lamb, means you would experience the same pleasure he had at your hands. Did you?” Rowena’s cheeks got pinker. “I see that you did. But ’tis to be expected when you have such a fine-looking—”
“Cruel-looking—”
“—man who knows what he is about.”
“Theonlything Warrick de Chaville is about, Mildred, is making me pay for Gilbert’s greed. Now what do you here? I feared you would be left in Kirkburough’s ruins, with no way to return even to Tures.”
“No one was left in the ruins. Lord Warrick did not burn the town except for the inn where he was captured, but even so, he offered all at the keep new homes on his own properties did they want them. For myself, he felt he owed me for his release, even though I had told him I did only your bidding.”
“I know how he does not like to hear excuses,willnot hear them.”
“Aye, I thought he would kill me did I say another word about it, so angry was he at the mere mention of your innocence. But he offered me a home here at Fulkhurst if I would give him my loyalty henceforth—forsaking you. ’Twas the only way I could follow you here, so I accepted gladly. Only he has forbidden me to speak to you.”
Rowena sighed. “So I guessed. He would not want me to have comfort in your presence, though just knowing you are near is a comfort to me.”
Mildred squeezed her hand. “Do not despair, my lamb. I do not think he is as mean-spirited as he would like us to think. I have heard much about the events that have shaped him into the man he is today, and I hesitate to admit this to you, but I find myself feeling sorry for him.”
“Sorry for him?” Rowena said incredulously. “Did he bash you on the head, Mildred, ere he brought you here?”
Mildred chuckled. “Nay, he dragged me about the countryside with his army in search of his missing betrothed, but I swear he thought little of Lady Isabella the while he looked for her. Never did he seem disappointed when each place he inquired at turned out to have no word of her passing. But you should have seen him when the messenger who came from Fulkhurst each day was even a little late in arriving. Lord Warrick would send out dozens of men to find him, and when the newsbearer did arrive, woe betide him if he had no word from John Giffard.”
Rowena stiffened upon hearing that name. “John? But I thought he was only the jailer here. What news could Warrick want from him?”
Mildred gave her a look that said plainly, Do not play dense. “What else?”
“But Warrick did not know John had the care of me in the dungeon.”
“How could he not know when he ordered it?”
“Hedid? But I thought Sir Robert…”
