Page 20 of My Hero
“I don’t know. I was only a child. But at the time, I surely wished to marry him.”
Elspeth seemed like to burst with excitement. “Well, tell me, lass. Whatever became of the lad?”
Cynthia almost wished she hadn’t shared the tale, for it certainly didn’t have a happy ending. She picked a crumb from her lap.
“He’s here, El,” she whispered.
“Here?” Elspeth scanned the great hall, her eyes aglow. “In the castle?”
“Aye.” She flashed Elspeth a bittersweet smile. “I’d forgotten all about him. It was the day my mother died, you see. But then the bee sting today reminded me—”
“Bee sting?”
“Aye,” she said, frowning thoughtfully at her trencher. “I was stung by a bee in the chapel. And when I turned round, there he was.”
“The bee?”
“Nay,” she replied, chuckling. “The boy from the garden.”
“In the chapel?”
“Aye.” She peered at Garth over her chalice’s edge. She would never forget how he’d looked storming in through the chapel door, all dark and wild and gallant.
“But how did he come to be here, my lady?” Elspeth asked.
“Hmm?” Garth’s hand looked massive as he wrapped it around his cup of wine. Massive but gentle. She wondered if it was rough or smooth. “Oh. The Abbot brought him.” She took a small sip of her wine, which might have been goat piss, for all the attention she paid it.
Elspeth took a long drink, then screwed up her forehead in puzzlement. “But, my lady, the Abbot brought only…” Her eyes widened. It was her turn to gag on the wine.
Cynthia gave her maidservant a few hearty whacks on the back, which seemed only to aggravate her condition, before Elspeth waved her away.
The old woman spoke again after a moment, strangling the words under her breath. “Not our new chaplain?”
“El?” Cynthia frowned. What the devil was wrong with Elspeth? “Are you all right, El?”
“Nay!” Elspeth hissed, setting the wine cup down so hard on the table it splattered onto the white linen. She whispered frantically into Cynthia’s ear. “Don’t even think of it, lass! Are you daft?”
“Think of what, El?”
“He’s not the same lad at all, my lady. For St. Agnes’s sake,” she murmured, crossing herself, “the man’s a priest, not some child’s knight-errant. Choose another, lass. Don’t be setting your eye on a man of the cloth.”
“Elspeth!” Cynthia gasped, truly shocked. “What gave you the idea… I told you before…” She glanced uneasily about and lowered her voice. “I’m not looking to wed…anyone.” She lifted her cup to her lips, staring down at its quivering contents. The wine reflected the candlelight like a polished carnelian, and for just an instant, she wondered if she was telling the truth. “Besides, only a fool would try to tempt a man from the church. One might as well court the devil.”
“Aye, that’s right,” Elspeth chimed in all too emphatically. Then she muttered under her breath, “Seducing a man of God, well, it’s like flirting with Lucifer himself.”
Though Lucifer couldn’t be half as handsome, Cynthia thought, immediately washing down that blasphemy with another swallow of wine.
But aye, Elspeth was right. Garth de Ware belonged to the church. And besides, he was a grown man now. There was no telling what he’d grown into. He’d sprung up tall, that was certain, and his features had ripened well into masculine maturity. The faint stubble of a shaved beard shadowed his chin. His dark tawny hair, though shorter, still curled carelessly about his face, but now it served to soften the hard edges of his jaw and cheekbones, lending him a reckless air. His mouth was still wide and expressive. And his eyes, when they weren’t lowered beneath heavy brows, shone like polished jade, just as they had in that garden long ago.
But Garth was no longer the lad from the garden. As a youth, his eyes had sparkled in conspiracy, and his jaunty one-sided grin had promised reckless adventure. Little of that daring remained in him now. His spirit seemed harnessed, humbled. And yet, there was something unnatural about that submissiveness. In fact, he looked about as docile as an exotic lion from the East, stolen from its wild land to be tamed.
Surely Garth de Ware was not a man to be subdued. His monk’s robes were an ill fit. And he certainly didn’t belong shut up behind monastery walls. He was like a field of wild heather someone had witlessly trimmed into a box hedge. Or maybe, she reconsidered, he was more like twining ivy that—
Elspeth shrieked suddenly, interrupting Cynthia’s analogies. “Look out!” She sprang up from the table. “Shandy fool!”
Cynthia followed her gaze. Alton, the cockiest of the kitchen lads, swaggered across the flagstones on his way to the high table, wrestling with an over-large platter of roast meat and vegetables perched precariously atop one skinny shoulder. As they all watched in horror, the roast slid to and fro from one end of the plate to the other, dripping juice down the lad’s arm each time the platter tipped. Grinning obliviously, the boy tottered about on his bandy legs to compensate for the shift in weight. But disaster was inevitable. He finally slipped on the rushes, and the platter flipped with amazing acrobatics, loosing its burden everywhere.
Turnips splashed in a wide swath, half among the rushes, half across the high table. Drippings sprayed through the air like foul rain. Onions splattered to the floor. The roast bowled forward across the white linen tablecloth, leaving a trail of juice and knocking aside a row of chalices on its determined journey toward Cynthia’s lap.
