“That is all right as long as it gives you pleasure, Warrick. Think you I will not make sure that you see to me after?”
He groaned, yanked her skirts up and her braies down, and plunged into her. And she did make sure he brought her to the same pleasure after.
Warrick did not leave his tent that afternoon, nor that night. The next morning when Rowena awoke, she was told Sir Thomas was waiting to take her back to Fulkhurst Castle. ’Twas Warrick’s squire who told her. Of Warrick there was no sign at all.
She was bemused, then annoyed. To be brought all this way just for one day of loving? She did not see why she could not stay longer.
She demanded to be taken to Warrick as soon as she dressed and stepped outside his tent, where Bernard was waiting to escort her to Sir Thomas. The boy shook his head but frowned, trying to remember the message he had been instructed to give her on such a request.
“He said to tell you, Mistress, that if he sees you again, he is likely to keep you here. Yet is this no place for you to be, so you are to go.”
Rowena opened her mouth to argue with Bernard, but just as quickly closed it. God’s mercy, how could she have forgottenwhereshe was?
She turned to look at the castle and the tower rising above its fortifications. Her mother was in there somewhere, so close but impossible to reach—now. But soon Anne would be freed from the place that had been her prison these three years. Warrick would do it. He would not leave here until he did.
Some of the outer walls had suffered damage from a mangonel, though not enough to bring them down or open a small breach for entry. Rowena knew where the postern gate was located, though. She had been taken through it the first time she had left here, when she and her mother were separated. But to tell Warrick about it would tell him she knew Ambray, knew Gilbert, and she could not do that.
But did she dare risk trying to stay here so she could see her mother once the castle was opened? She could refuse to go. If she could just speak with Warrick, she knew she could convince him to let her stay or at least remain near. But how could she then get to her mother without Warrick being present to witness it? She could not, and Anne would not think to pretend she did not know Rowena.
’Twas best she did leave, though ’twas maddening to know that she could do naught to help her mother escape that place any sooner than Warrick could—at least not without detriment to herself. And as her help was in no wise guaranteed to work, ’twas best left unoffered.
But soon Annewouldbe freed. And Warrick would either send her to her dower lands, which she could hold closed to Gilbert—though he was unlikely to bother to try and get her back when he no longer needed her for a hold against Rowena or aught else—or Warrick would send Anne to Fulkhurst until this war was over. There Rowena would have a better opportunity to warn her mother not to know her—at least not in Warrick’s presence. And they would be together again, finally.
Chapter 44
Warrick castigated himself for the hundredth time for giving in to his needs and sending for Rowena. It did not make it better, his seeing her. It had been sweet, so sweet, but his craving was now worse, for now he wanted to be with her more than ever—and she had been gone only two days.
What the brief visit did, however, was make him determined to end this siege in a more aggressive manner. He increased the work on the two towers so they would be ready for the morn, and started work on two others. He sent out patrols to find him more boulders and heavy missiles for the mangonel. From the village were rounded up all large cauldrons to be packed with dirt and small stones for improvised boulders. He laid plans for a tunnel to be started if the attack on the morrow failed, though he had no miners in his ranks to oversee that last resort.
That evening he inspected the finished wooden tower he would ride in himself. He meant to be on the top platform when it was pushed to the moat and tilted until it spanned the water and settled against the walls. ’Twould be on fire by then, for flamed arrows would be shot at it as soon as it was in range, so the whole process had to be accomplished with the greatest speed ere it became a fiery grave for those concealed within. But in being a shielded ladder, it still offered the most protection for those men he had picked to take the walls, then fight their way down to open the gates for the rest of the army. And he meant to be one of them, in on the first fighting, not the last.
He was giving orders to have the two towers doused again with water when Sheldon found him. “This ought to amuse you, Warrick,” he said as he dragged forth a very frightened, very wet woman. “She claims she and her lady have caused half the castle garrison to sicken. This was done so that we can take the castle this very night, with little to no effort.”
“Is that so?” Warrick’s tone matched Sheldon’s for dryness. “And when we leap on this unexpected though naturally welcome aid, I am certain to lose halfmyarmy in the trap.” His voice had turned to a growl ere he finished, and continued so. “Do they think me a lackwit, to fall for such a common trick? And to use a woman! Get the truth from her, I care not how.”
The woman burst into tears upon hearing that. “Nay, please! ’Tis true what I claim. My lady bears no love for the new lord, and did despise his father. Ambray has been a prison to us. We want only to leave!”
“Youfound your way out, wench,” Sheldon pointed out. “So could your lady. Why did you both not just go, instead of concocting—”
“Because I need an escort to my dower property if I am to arrive there safely,” Anne said as she was brought up behind Sheldon. “I thought to assist you in getting what you want, which appears to be Ambray, in exchange for that escort.”
“My lady, ye should have waited!” the servant wailed. “Ye should not—”
“Be quiet, Helvise!” the lady snapped. “I had no patience to wait when that gate stood unguarded. And I would rather be here than in there, whether we are believed or not.”
She was as soaked as her servant from having crossed the moat without the aid of a bridge, but she held herself regally despite the guard, who still clasped her arm in his rough grip. Sheldon stared at her in bemused attraction, for she was a comely woman, apparent even in her bedraggled state. Warrick stared at her just as bemused, for she seemed familiar to him, though he had never met her.
“So we are to believe you, lady, merely because you say ’tis so?” Warrick asked skeptically.
Then Sheldon inquired, “Who are you, lady?”
“Anne Belleme.”
Warrick snorted. “Belleme now d’Ambray.”
“Nay, I do not recognize that name as mine, since the priest did not hear a yea from me to consent to that forced marriage. ’Twas a farce that has kept me prisoner here for three years.”
“Then if you had the means to aid us to put an end to your imprisonment, why did you wait this long?” Warrick demanded. “We did not only just come, lady. We have been camped here for thirty-three days.”
