Page 73 of Bold Angel
Beside her Ral frowned.
“Did you enjoy the hunt?” she asked Francois de Balmain. She smiled at him more warmly than she should have, and noticed a muscle bunch in Ral’s jaw.
“’Twas a day to remember, my lady. Your husband was fierce. He brought down a stag with his sword.”
She turned in his direction. “Is that so, my lord? After last night’s… revelry… I had feared a little for your strength.” Ignoring the dark look he tossed her, she spoke again to de Balmain, then to Lady Eliana.
“I hope you’re enjoying your visit.”
The black-haired beauty smiled. “I intend to spend the summer at Malvern. Mayhap you could join me for a time.”
“My wife will be busy—” Ral broke in.
“’Twould please me greatly to see some of the country,” Caryn countered. “I am certain that my husband can survive for a few days without me.”
“We will discuss it when the time comes,” Ral said with a dark look of warning, then he changed the subject. “There is someone I would have you meet.”
For the first time, Caryn noticed the dark-skinned man who sat at a far end of the table. He stood as Ral looked toward him, and graced her with a bow of his head. It was covered by a flowing length of cloth that reached his shoulders and kept in place by a small circular band.
“Hassan is a surgeon,” Ral said. “He once served King William. At the battle of Senlac, he was the man who saved my life.”
Caryn had noticed the sword scar between Ral’s ribs. It was long but fairly even and not particularly obtrusive. She smiled thinly at the lean dark-skinned man.
“Then I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude, Hassan. For ’tis certain we would all miss him sorely.” She looked down at the trestle tables below the dais and saw the blond-haired head of Lynette. “Some of us far more than others.”
“Hassan will be returning to Braxston a few weeks hence,” Ral said, ignoring the bite in her words. “Mayhap he can teach you the use of some of his herbs.”
“I shall bribe him to do so.” She smiled dryly. “Who knows what sort of potions one might learn to brew.”
Ral’s eyes met hers and he read the bitter taunt there.Though he muttered an oath beneath his breath, she thought she might have caught a flash of admiration.
The evening progressed and through it they enjoyed the entertainment. At least Caryn prayed that she looked as though she did. She laughed and smiled, and spoke gaily with Lady Eliana. Which in itself, she discovered, was no easy task.
Stephen’s sister was different, unsettling in some way, and there was a darkness about her. It shrouded her like a thick night mist, making Caryn even more uneasy, though she did her best to hide it.
Just as she hid her feelings for Ral. But everytime he looked at her, something squeezed inside her. It was all she could do to sit there beside him, all she could do to smile and call him by name.
She didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to see his handsome face, didn’t want to see the smiling face of his whore. She wanted to run from the table, to return to her room and never come out. She wanted to call him every vile name she could think of, to weep and wail and pound her fists against the wall to vent her fury.
Instead she smiled sweetly and laughed at the jester’s fare. Remembering their brief meeting out on the parapet, she wondered again about the strangely compelling, fair-haired boy. On the floor below the platform, the lad did his cute little jig, ringing the bells on his hat and around his neck, then began to recite his verses.
A lover of old in fair Mort
Had arms that were strong but too short
When for wenches he reached,
He was forced to choose each
From the narrow and spanable sort
The men laughed good-naturedly and called out for more, and the jester readily complied, his face breaking into a half-black, half-white smile.
A wicked young lad from Travatt
With maids would enjoy this and that
A touch and a kiss
