He hesitated. “He passed away last night.”
Her face fell. “Oh,” she whispered, looking pained. “I had hoped… you said that you thought he would….”
Stephen moved towards her, wiping his hands off on a rag. “I said that he would survive provided that poison did not set in. Unfortunately, it did. It took him very quickly.”
Toby nodded, realizing that she was blinking tears away. But she couldn’t stop them. “He was so young,” she wept softly. “He was only sixteen years old. He was just a boy.”
Stephen stood next to her, wanting to comfort her but knowing that he should leave that to Tate. It had been made clear to him that Toby was the property of his liege. Still, she was upset and he put his big hand on her back in a comforting gesture.
“Do not weep for him,” he said quietly. “He is no longer in agony. He is with God.”
“But he was so young.”
“I know,” he patted her back and took his hand away. “But that is the way of war. It does not take young or old into consideration.”
Toby wiped at her eyes and turned away, heading for the keep entry. Stephen watched her go, his cornflower eyes lingering on her slender beauty. He found himself once again regretting that he had not been successful in his wooing attempt. But he could not linger on regrets; if his discussion with Tate earlier that day was any indication, the man was in love with a woman he once thought dreadful. Stephen was glad that, at least, she was in good hands. Tate didn’t view her as a contest won. With a final glance at her shapely backside, he turned back to his patients.
The weak morning sun was bright and Toby dried the last of her tears, shielding her eyes from the glare. The new keep stairs were braced up against the stone edifice and Toby took the stairs gingerly; they seemed to sway a bit, which made her nervous. When she reached the bottom, she looked back up the stairs to see just how precarious the stairs really were. Shaking her head at the rickety steps, she turned around and almost ran headlong into Wallace.
His hair was wild and he smelled like manure. Toby took a step back from the man just so she wouldn’t be so close to him.
“Good day, my lady,” he greeted. “I see that you are looking well this morn.”
It was as much as the man had said to her since they had been introduced. She nodded. “It is a fine morning,” she said. “Do you know where Sir Tate is?”
Wallace raised an eyebrow. “Ah, he is more than a ‘sir’, my lady,” he corrected her. “He is an earl and addressed accordingly.”
She nodded quickly. “Of course, I’d forgotten,” she corrected herself. “Have you seen him this morning?”
“He is outside the walls, my lady. They are having trouble fitting the new gates and he is supervising the installation. I will take you to him if you wish.”
Toby looked to the gaping hole in the wall where the great wooden gates use to be. “I do not wish to distract him,” she said, although it wasn’t the truth. She wanted to see him very much. “It can wait.”
With her gaze lingering on the open gates and the activity surrounding it, she turned for the kitchens that were to the rear of the keep. It took her a moment to realize that Wallace was following her. She looked up at him, a mildly friendly-but-puzzled look on her face. He clasped his hands behind his back and pretended not to notice her curious stare.
“It is a fine day today,” he said, looking up to the billowing clouds above. “A good day for rebuilding.”
It was odd conversation from a man who had thus far gone out of his way to make her feel unwelcome. She was wary of his company.
“I am sure it is,” she didn’t know what else to say. In her arms, the kitten squirmed so she set him down and watched him hop away. “At least it is not raining.”
“Ah, but it will,” Wallace sniffled loudly and continued to look up at the sky. “Come the nooning hour, it will pour. It always does.”
Toby simply nodded, unsure what to say to that. She was increasingly wondering why the man was tailing her. When she went to collect the kitten so he would not get trampled by some nearby horses, she noticed that Wallace continued to follow.
She stopped beating around the bush and faced him. “Is there something you wished to say to me?”
“Say to you? What do you mean?”
“I mean that you have not said more than five words to me since my arrival. Now you are making conversation so I assumed there was something more that you wished to say to me.”
His bushy gray eyebrows lifted, as if surprised by the frankness of her statement. Then he shook his head. “I have nothing to say to you, lady,” he said, but just as swiftly corrected himself. “But I suppose if I was going to say something, it would be to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For your help with the wounded during the siege the other day,” he shrugged his big shoulders. “With the recent loss of your sister… well, you surprised me with your courage. That is rare in a woman and I would congratulate you.”
Toby stared at him. He seemed quite gruff with the praise and she couldn’t decide if she was offended or flattered. So she nodded unsteadily and turned away, leaving Wallace standing there, watching her, with a puzzled expression on his face. After a moment, he shrugged again and walked back the way he had come. He still didn’t understand women, not after all these years. He probably never would. He’d given the woman a compliment and she had not seemed pleased with it.
