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Abbot John stared pointedly at them. “Well?”
Who were they? Edlyn didn’t like the way they seemed to be of one mind. And when they responded to an unseen signal and moved suddenly out of the square, she liked it even less. They were like birds who flew in formation behind their leader and swerved when he swerved.
She glanced around. But who was their leader?
Abbot John seemed not at all concerned. Probably he’d already inquired about their purpose, and for that reason Edlyn quieted her curiosity. After all, she had more pressing problems than the rumors these travelers would carry with them.
“You two,” Abbot John said, indicating his own personal manservants, “carry Lady Corliss’s chair inside.”
Moving swiftly, the servants obeyed, leaving Edlyn, Hugh, Wharton, and Lady Corliss alone in the square.
With a graceful wave of the hand, Lady Corliss summoned both Edlyn and Hugh, and without waiting to see if they followed, she proceeded toward her office inside the church.
Edlyn hesitated only an instant, then walked after Lady Corliss. She heard Hugh speak to Wharton, telling him to meet the men and go back to the tent, and she wondered briefly at that. What tent? When had he acquired a tent and for what purpose?
Then she stifled her inquisitiveness. She didn’t care anything about Hugh. If he had a tent, perhaps that meant he would pack it up and leave.
Gathering a handful of her skirt in her hand, she lifted it to climb the church steps. She squeezed the material into a wad of damp wool and thought, Hugh leave? If only she would be that lucky.
His boots sounded behind her, the expensive leather soles thumping on the stone, and she half hoped he would try to take her arm. Not because she needed the assistance, but because she wanted to ram her elbow right into his stomach.
He didn’t touch her.
The quiet of the church only fractionally calmed her turmoil. No matter how Lady Corliss decided this case, Edlyn knew a great change had ripped her life apart. As Lady Corliss seated herself behind the rough-hewn table, Edlyn slipped into one of the chairs opposite and tried to take comfort in the fact she belonged here. Hugh did not.
But when he sat in the other chair, she could discern no discomfort in his expression or his pose. The wretched man was at ease anywhere, and that provided her with one more reason to dislike him.
From the way Lady Corliss gazed at him, Edlyn thought perhaps she didn’t like him either. “Who are you?” Lady Corliss asked.
“My name is Hugh de Florisoun,” he answered readily enough. “I have won a barony and an earldom, with lands enough to support a wife and family, and therefore I beg you for the hand of Lady Edlyn.”
He was so smug, sitting there protected by his wealth and his titles, that Edlyn couldn’t bear to look at him. With her gaze fixed rigidly on Lady Corliss, Edlyn snapped, “She doesn’t have the right to give my hand in marriage.”
“Lady Edlyn is right.” Lady Corliss sat straight in her chair, her spine not touching the back.
“Did she not, when coming to live in the abbey, vow to obey your dictates?”
How had he known that? Edlyn shot him a glare and saw him relax with a smile. He hadn’t known it. Not until she’d confirmed it with her fulminating glance. She had better learn to watch herself around him, or her life with him would be—
Nay. The battle wasn’t over yet. She wouldn’t admit defeat so soon.
“What her vow means, my lord, is that Lady Edlyn must obey my dictates or be thrown from the abbey. It does not mean I have the right to give her hand in marriage.”
“Only that should you command her to and she refuses, she will have to leave.” Hugh nodded in satisfaction. “I see.”
“That is why I have brought you here to speak to me in private.” Lady Corliss obviously disapproved of his confidence. “To see if it’s necessary to take such a drastic measure.”
“She is compromised,” he said implacably.
“I will do what I believe to be the will of the Lord God. It is He whom we must please this day, Lord Hugh, not you and not convention.”
Clearly thunderstruck, Hugh watched Lady Corliss from beneath lowered brows. Without a doubt, he had believed he had enforced his will, and he hadn’t expected to hear that the situation remained in God’s hands.
Mollified by his silence, Lady Corliss said, “Lady Edlyn, tell me everything that has happened starting with the moment you found Lord Hugh in the dispensary.”
Edlyn obliged. From the moment she’d seen the broken lock to this morning when she’d been discovered rolling in the dirt with Hugh, she told everything.
Well, not quite everything. She didn’t tell about the dragon’s blood and how she’d thanked the fairies for their cure. She didn’t confess she’d reminisced about the sights and sounds of the barn at George’s Cross. She didn’t tell about the heat of Hugh’s kiss and how much she’d enjoyed it, and she didn’t tell how his arrival had awakened something in her, something she thought was dead.
