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“If you will pardon me, Lady Phillipa. . .”
Haydn was so surprised by her hand on his arm as he moved past her that he froze. They stood close enough that he could smell the faint scent of lavender. One he’d never particularly cared for. Until now, apparently.
“My lord, if you would not mind, but a moment.”
“A moment,” he replied. “Your father is waiting.”
“Of course.” She dropped her hand. “I wished to say only that. . . well. . .”
Haydn resisted the urge to tell the woman to speak her mind. She would be his wife in name only. Her timidness was of no concern to him.
“If you learned of this union as I did, very recently and without preamble, I just wish to say. . . ” She looked him straight in the eyes. “I wish to say that I am sorry.”
His heart lurched at her words. When she looked at him, so earnestly and openly, her deep brown eyes imploring some measure of kindness in him, Haydn nearly softened. Told her he was sorry as well. But if the woman was not a conniving sycophant like her father, it would be all the more difficult to leave her at Hillstone Manor.
It was better this way.
“It is but the way of things,” he said instead. “Pardon me, my lady.”
When she inclined her head, Lady Phillipa’s eyes closed briefly, and he noticed her long lashes daintily touching the soft cheeks in deference to him. When her eyes opened again, he caught them, knowing it was past time for him to leave. Haydn was surprised her father hadn’t already come looking for him.
He’d been taught, trained, to do better. To make her feel at ease. To take her hand and tell her how lovely she looked, which would have been an easy truth to say. Explain that she would find in him, in his extended family, a tight-knit brotherhood.
He would tell her that, even if he’d not asked for this marriage, he would never resent her for it, knowing how little choice she had in the matter. And instead, like his aunt and uncle who were also forced to marry due to circumstances beyond either of their wills, as many nobles did, they might find compatibility in time. Perhaps, even love.
Instead, he tore his gaze from hers with a shiver that began in his shoulders and settled in his chest as he hurt the lady for the first, but not the last, time. He would say all of that, Haydn thought as he pulled the door to his grim future back open, but he was no liar.
Chapter Six
“I, Sir Haydn Waryn, take thee, Lady Phillipa, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for fairer, for fouler, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us depart, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereunto I plight thee my troth.”
With as much emotion as he’d shown during their last meeting—the stilted exchange days earlier, just before the contract for this marriage had been signed—her betrothed said the words that would bind them together forever.
With fewer than twenty people their witnesses in the chapel at Westminster Palace, Phillipa repeated the priest’s words back to him. And to her husband. Because now, for better or worse as their vows clearly stated, she was a married woman. No longer the ward of her father but of this stranger, one she’d learned much about these past three days.
As they left the chapel, her father approached but halted in front of them suddenly. When she looked at her husband—the very thought of it, she was now a wife—Phillipa realized the reason for her father’s abrupt halt. Lord Waryn’s expression.
Forbidding. Unforgiving.
“I would offer my congratulations,” her father said, “but you appear less than amicable to them.”
Indeed, there was no doubt her husband did not care for her father by the way he looked at the man now. Did his animosity extend to her? It seemed, based on their brief interactions, it did. And to be fair, Phillipa could not blame him.
“We leave immediately.” Waryn nodded past him, which was when she spied the brother mounted on a massive destrier, only eclipsed in size and beauty by the one next to it. As she watched the scene unfold, her own Spanish jennet, Lady, was being brought forward by a footman.
Her father’s panic was palpable. “Surely you do not mean to miss your own wedding feast?”
She awaited her husband’s answer but knew it before he offered a response. Lord Waryn’s lips were pursed, his handsome face like a stone carving. No emotion. Precisely what she’d told Amice last eve. The man was more warrior and very little courtier. Just what she’d expected from a borderer.
“The king, I’m told,” her husband replied, “has left for Wales.”
“He has,” her father replied.
In response, Waryn waited, clearly ready to be on his way.
“My belongings,” she said, thinking of the trunks she’d meticulously packed. “And my lady’s maid.” Phillipa had seen Amice during the ceremony, but she was nowhere to be found now.
“She will meet you at Hillstone Manor.”
