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He held her when she would have scrambled up. Just held her.

“Hugh.” She tried to extract her fists. “Hugh, you—”

Wharton’s voice suddenly boomed out. “There they are!”

And Lady Blanche said, “I told you, Lady Corliss!”

Still held tight against Hugh, Edlyn twisted around. A great mass of eyes stared at her in shock, horror, and ill-concealed glee from the garden gate. Half the nuns. Some of the monks. Lady Blanche and Wharton. Baron Sadynton. And the abbess, who stood fingering her beads.

7

“I did nothing wrong.” Edlyn sat on a bench in the middle of the square and repeated what she’d said many times since this mockery of an inquisition had begun. Every nun in the abbey, every monk in the monastery, every servant, every peasant, and every patient who could hobble stood assembled in a circle around Edlyn and her accusers, and Edlyn imagined the circle was closing.

“Then why do you have mud and straw and green marks on your back?” Lady Blanche looked around, her mouth pinched in triumphant disapproval. “That looks like evidence of wrong to me.”

“Because he”—Edlyn pointed at the decorous Hugh sitting across from her—“tried to make it look as if we’d been fornicating in the dirt, that’s why. But I tell you, we haven’t!”

Lady Corliss sat in the high-backed, cushioned chair that the servants had brought from her room. The abbot stood at her shoulder, lending his authority to the proceedings and his advice should Lady Corliss ask for it. She didn’t. She said nothing. Not that she believed Edlyn, not that she didn’t; just nothing. She let Lady Blanche and her wretched servant weave tales of Edlyn’s misbehavior without changing expression.

Lady Blanche giggled, high and long. “Why would this man go to such lengths to ruin your reputation?”

It was going to sound stupid, but Edlyn had sworn to tell the truth. “Because he wants to wed me.”

From the front of the circle, Baron Sadynton called, “Why would he buy the cow if he’s getting the milk for free?”

A gust of jeering laughter from the crowd almost blew Edlyn off her bench, and she struggled with her mortification. She hated the lord. She’d deprived him of his syrup of poppies, and now he took his revenge, relishing it.

A group of men—warriors, for Edlyn recognized the breed—stood back and to one side, watching the proceedings wrapped in a grim, intent silence. Had word spread across the countryside that entertainment was to be had at Eastbury Abbey? Was she to be so disgraced that all of England knew of it? Had she done so badly here that no one would speak for her?

Hugh rose to his feet, and the group of strange men moved closer. “I have begged Lady Edlyn to marry me, and what she says is true. We have never known each other as man and wife. Always have I honored her.”

Was his measured testimony supposed to remedy her anguish? He’d destroyed the new life she’d worked to build from the ashes of the old. He’d deliberately put her in the position of having to depend on him, a man and a warrior, to rescue her.

“Who are you?” Lady Blanche asked. “How did you come to our abbey?”

“I was wounded, and the battle still raged. My men fought valiantly still, so my servant brought me.” Hugh pointed at Wharton.

Why didn’t anyone ask why Wharton had led her pack of accusers to find her in Hugh’s arms? No one jeered Hugh. They all respected him—because if they didn’t, he had the ability to thrash them. They respected him because he had dishonored her and was still willing to marry her. She’d always known life wasn’t fair, but right now, the inequity of it struck her across the face.

Hugh continued. “Fearing for my life, he hid me in the dispensary and forced Lady Edlyn to keep silent and care for me.”

“How could he make her keep silent?” Apparently, Lady Blanche wasn’t afraid of him, for she smirked at him in disbelief.

Hugh looked at her. Just looked at her.

Until she grew afraid. Until she developed the same frightened respect the others afforded him.

Then he said, “Wharton, tell the lady what you did to Lady Edlyn.”

Wharton stepped out of the crowd and into the focus of attention. For the first time since Edlyn had met him, gone was his bravado. As she glared at him, he shuddered as if she’d given him elderberry to clear his bowels. “I held a dagger t’ her throat.”

“While she remained in the dispensary,” Lady Blanche chirped. She might have momentarily let Hugh intimidate her, but she had no such compunction about Wharton. “But when she left the dispensary, she could have told one of us.”

“I woulda hunted her down an’ killed her.”

Lady Blanche tittered. “As if she believed that.”

Wharton swung his head toward her and bared his black and broken teeth until Lady Blanche lost both color and audacity.