A Timeless Romance Anthology: Winter Collection Page 13

  Other Works by Annette Lyon

  Lost Without You

  http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Without-You-ebook/dp/B003VIX1IG/

  At the Water’s Edge

  http://www.amazon.com/At-the-Waters-Edge-ebook/dp/B004NIFOEC/

  House on the Hill

  http://www.amazon.com/House-on-the-Hill-ebook/dp/B005LJYZNI/

  At the Journey’s End

  http://www.amazon.com/At-The-Journeys-End-ebook/dp/B005LJYZRO/

  Spires of Stone

  http://www.amazon.com/Spires-of-Stone-ebook/dp/B005LKE870/

  Tower of Strength

  http://www.amazon.com/Tower-of-Strength-ebook/dp/B005LKE8IO/

  Band of Sisters

  http://www.amazon.com/Band-of-Sisters-ebook/dp/B005LKE8MA/

  The Newport Ladies Book Club: Paige

  http://www.amazon.com/Paige-ebook/dp/B008SFPMSY/

  Chocolate Never Faileth

  http://www.amazon.com/Chocolate-Never-Faileth-Annette-Lyon/dp/1608610470/

  There, Their, They’re: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd

  http://www.amazon.com/There-Their-Theyre-No-Tears-ebook/dp/B004HO5G86/

  The Golden Cup of Kardak

  http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Cup-Kardak-ebook/dp/B005FH2JJI/

  Visit Annette Lyon’s Amazon Author Page

  http://www.amazon.com/Annette-Lyon/e/B001K8ET9O/

  Caroles on the Green

  by Joyce DiPastena

  The Ring

  England, December 24, 1151

  “Father, must we feast like this every night? I shall be quite fat by Epiphany.”

  Lord Stephen answered his daughter with barely a glance. He swirled the mulled wine in his goblet and mumbled around a mouth full of roast capon. “Ask Isabel. We will do what your sister thinks best.”

  Isabel sat between her father and younger sister at the high table on the dais of the great hall of Weldon Castle. She smiled at Agnes, but beneath a white tablecloth stained with grease and sauces from their meal, she tapped her toe impatiently in response to her sister’s question.

  “Had you eaten more than three bites of tonight’s feast,” Isabel said to Agnes, “I might feel myself reproved by your complaint. I have spent a month planning these festivities and a good fortnight laboring over the menus for our guests. You were too busy flittering about like a bird to help me, and now you peck at your food like one. A willow reed would have to double its width to compete with your slender figure.”

  “I would not flitter so if you would give me something more amusing to do than embroider more shirts for Father,” Agnes said with a pout on her pretty fifteen-year-old lips.

  “Like what?” Isabel asked, though she already knew how Agnes would answer.

  “Like do sums. I am ever so much more clever with numbers than you are, but you will not let me near the household accounts, even when you have added the columns so many times that your eyes grow red and it gives you a headache.”

  “Sweetness, your husband will have clerks to add sums for you, as we did before Edmund Clark retired to the abbey.”

  Agnes twisted a lock of golden hair about her finger as she did when she was vexed. “That was four years ago, and every time Father wishes to engage a new clerk, you say that Edmund mismanaged the spice accounts, and you will not let us be cheated again by dishonest or incompetent servants. So you add and add and add, double and triple checking, when I would be sure of the correct sums on the very first try.”

  “I let Edmund teach you to read,” Isabel said. “I assure you, reading is vastly more enjoyable than adding numbers. Come, Agnes, let us not quarrel about this now. Father has agreed to let us dance some caroles after dinner. You will like that.”

  Isabel had flirted before with the idea of dancing the lively circle songs, which were frowned on by the Church, but she had respected their father’s hesitance until this year. Once she had made up her mind to find a husband for Agnes, she had firmly factored dancing into the Christmas celebrations, winning their father’s consent by promising to keep the dancing circumspect and private—as though she would be caught doing anything as undignified as dancing on the village green like her father’s serfs, even were the green not covered with snow. Carole dancing would be the perfect opportunity to watch Agnes interact with prospective suitors.

  The soft strains of recorder, rebec, and viol floated down from the musicians’ gallery, weaving their melodies in and out of the steady patter of conversation rumbling through the hall. Isabel nibbled on a mushroom pasty, savoring the smooth richness of the cheese that flowed over her tongue as she studied by turns the knights who ate at the sideboards below the dais. She had made certain to sprinkle a fair sampling of handsome young men among the graying men and women of her father’s generation. Perforce many of them had brought their sisters, but Isabel held little fear of any of them posing a serious threat to Agnes’s delicate beauty. She had invited a few knights on her own behalf as well: Sir Theo of the shy smiles, who had sent her that pretty posy of periwinkles and white violets at the end of last summer; Sir Eustace of the smoldering eye and flattering tongue, who had made her feel desirable again after the debacle of her courtship with—

  “You do not mind that I asked Sir Lucian to join us, do you?” Agnes asked, apparently following Isabel’s gaze to the broad-shouldered knight wearing an acorn-shaped cap atop his dark blond curls. The exotic embroidery worked around its brim bespoke of an Oriental influence favored by many knights returned from the last Crusade. He would have been the most handsome knight at the feast had it not been for his slightly off-kilter nose. A stir of guilt squirmed in Isabel, but she tamped it firmly down.

  It was your own fault, Lucian de Warrene.

  “I only invited him because Ronwen begged me to,” Agnes said, nudging Isabel’s gaze away from Lucian to the flaxen-haired woman who sat on Lord Stephen’s left. “And because you told me you were at quits with him. Are you truly? Because I would never, ever have agreed to it otherwise.” Agnes drew Isabel’s hand beneath the tablecloth and squeezed it fiercely, whispering, “It frightened me, Bel, to see you weep so. Did I do wrong?”

  Isabel felt her smile become more strained as she met her sister’s anxious eyes, but she kept the corners of her lips relentlessly turned up. “Nonsense, dearest. They were tears of relief that I came to my senses before it was too late. Sir Lucian and I should never have suited each other in the least.”

  She made no effort to lower her voice to match her sister’s. Lord Stephen thumped down his goblet and turned to his eldest daughter with rare sternness. “You may do as you will with Sir Lucian, Isabel, but you have given me your word—”

  “Yes, yes, Father, I know. I told you I would choose a husband by Epiphany, and I will.”

  Lord Stephen grunted and returned to his roast capon.

  Isabel saw her cousin Ronwen smirk. This marriage mischief had been her doing. Lord Stephen had been perfectly content to let Isabel walk in her mother’s slippers after the Lady Felicia’s death four years ago, directing the affairs of their family, until Ronwen had come to live with them. Lord Stephen had made a few half-hearted suggestions for marriage partners for his eldest daughter through the years, but he accepted Isabel’s rejection of each, allowing her to reach the age of nineteen still unwed. Isabel suspected he had actually been pleased when a promising courtship by their neighbor’s son, Sir Lucian de Warrene, had unraveled, for she knew her father was far too indolent to go through the trouble of finding himself a new wife when he had a perfectly capable daughter to maintain the tranquil flow of his life.

  Isabel and Lucian had grown up together as little more than casual friends, but had reunited with a fresh perception of each other after Lucian returned from the Crusade with his father. The formerly rawboned squire had become a bronzed, muscular young knight who carried himself with a compelling self-assurance. Ronwen, sent to join her uncle’s daughters by a disinterested brother when her parents died, had strutted and simpered
and fluttered her flaxen lashes in vain, trying to win Lucian’s attentions away from Isabel. But time had accomplished what Ronwen’s flirtations had not. Provoked beyond bearing by Lucian’s high-handed manners, Isabel had at last declared him intolerable and banished him from the castle and her sorely tried affections.

  It had not surprised Isabel that Ronwen had swooped in to pick up the shattered pieces of Lucian’s heart. It had appalled her, however, to discover Ronwen to be so insecure in the knight’s budding devotion as to feel as if the only way to secure him safely and permanently was to see Isabel married to another man.

  “You really mean to do it, Bel?” Agnes whispered, clearly wishing not to draw Lord Stephen’s attention again. “Marry one of these men?”

  “Any one but that one,” Isabel murmured, nodding her head in Lucian’s direction. This time she kept her voice soft as well.

  “I thought you would talk Father out of it again.”

  “I tried. But Ronwen told him he was selfish to make me a spinster merely for the sake of his own comfort. She was right, of course, about Father being selfish, but when she added that men would think he had sired a termagant whom he could not marry off, her words stung his pride as well as his conscience. Just because he is lazy does not mean that he wishes to admit it. He cares for the world’s opinion enough that he will no longer listen to me, especially when he thinks he has another daughter to take my place when I am gone.”

  “Does he not?”

  “Of course not, sweetness. You are much too beautiful to let Father turn you into a drudge. Why do you suppose I am determined to see you betrothed before I wed? But I cannot leave Father miserable, so I must find him a wife as well.”

  “You have always been extremely efficient, Bel, even if you struggle at sums. Will you please choose me a man who is stupid with numbers, so perhaps he will let me help with his accounts?”

  Isabel laughed, winning a suspicious look from Lord Stephen and, to the dismay of her suddenly tripping heart, a quick glance from Lucian’s cornflower blue eyes.

  A servant appeared with a tray of apple tarts baked in small, individual shells for each guest. Isabel turned her gaze away from the side tables and reached out to take one.

  “If it please you, my lady,” the servant said, “Marjory Cook prepared you one with extra apples. She marked it there, with that little cross on the top.”

  Isabel plucked the indicated tart from the platter and set it on her trencher. “Pray, thank Marjory Cook for me.”

  The servant bowed and offered a tart to Agnes. Although she took one and cut it open with her little dining knife, Isabel knew she meant to do no more than spread the filling around a bit. Isabel’s own mouth watered for the treat. She had given explicit instructions that it be baked with minced apples, rather than ground, and that the filling be firmed with crushed almonds. With her knife, she cut a small hole in the upper crust, as was her habit, and employed her spoon in fishing out the raisins. Isabel could rule everyone in the castle except Marjory Cook. Neither blandishments nor threats had ever convinced Marjory to leave raisins out of Isabel’s apple tart. “They simply belong there, my lady,” Marjory always said.

  Agnes reached her own spoon over, scooped up a few raisins from Isabel’s growing discard pile and slid them into her mouth. “Mmm.”

  Isabel’s tongue recoiled from the tiny wrinkled fruit, but she was pleased to see that they tempted her sister into delving for the raisins in her own tart.

  “Do you think they will suit better than you?” Agnes asked after she’d nibbled the raisins in silence for a few minutes.

  “Who, sweetness?”

  “Ronwen and Sir Lucian.”

  Isabel resisted the impulse to glance down at the sideboards again. Instead, she stole another look past Lord Stephen at their cousin. Ronwen had plaited her flaxen hair with red holly berries. Isabel could not deny that the sixteen-year-old girl was lovely, though her insistence on wearing pale shades, such as the honey-colored gown she had donned for tonight, washed some of the bloom out of her cheeks. Isabel had sense enough to select rich greens and reds for herself, knowing they set off her black braids to their best advantage. Men called Isabel elegant and graceful, and since her father’s ultimatum—“Choose, or I’ll choose for you!”—she had not wanted for eager suitors of her own.

  She saw Ronwen smile like a satisfied cat and tilt her head coyly while gazing steadfastly at someone sitting below the dais. Isabel need not look to know who the recipient of her cousin’s coquettish approval might be.

  “I am sure they will suit each other splendidly,” Isabel said to her sister’s query.

  She plunged her spoon more vigorously into her tart, seeking a raisin that threatened to swim away then heard a tiny clink. Alarm flickered through her. Oh, she hoped a careless scullery maid had not spilled some broken pottery into the filling. Why, one of their guests might break a tooth! She must be sure before she sprang to her feet and shouted an embarrassing warning. She swished her spoon beneath the suspicious lump and lifted it free of the tart.

  It took only two heartbeats to recognize the lump. It was no pottery shard. Quickly, she lowered the spoon nearly to her lap, bunched a wad of tablecloth into her free hand, and wiped the object clean of the rich apple-gold filling. A ring with a yellow topaz carved in the shape of a heart winked up at her, set in a band clearly cut small for a woman’s finger.

  She heard the hiss of Agnes’s breath. “Is that from one of your suitors?”

  Isabel detested the little flutter in her breast that drove her eyes first to Lucian. He had removed his cap and was showing it to the gray-bearded man on his left, no doubt explaining how he had come by the style in the East. Ignoring an emotion she refused to name—he had always said that if he had the means, he would drape her in rubies, anyway—she quickly surveyed the rest of the company. Sir Theo smiled up at her shyly. Sir Eustace grinned his rakish grin. Without doubt, one of them had sent the ring and waited to see what she would do.

  A movement from the corner of her eye tricked her into turning her head. Sir Lucian redonned his hat, then smiled warmly at Ronwen.

  Isabel drew a sharp breath and slid the ring onto her finger.

  “Isabel, what are you doing?”

  “Father bade me choose, but I have not been able to make up my mind. I shall let this ring choose for me.”

  The Carole

  Sir Theo was the first to reach Isabel when the sideboards had been cleared from the floor and the first carole was announced. Isabel had been careful to don the ring behind the drapery of the tablecloth so that none, not even the man who sent it, would see it on her finger before she wished him to. She knew that by accepting the gift, she had as good as plighted her troth to the giver. Some women might be avaricious enough to encourage men to shower them with expensive trinkets, but Isabel was not one of them. She had seen such behavior raise expectations in men’s minds, which often led to slanderous rumors, even if one remained as virtuous as a nun. No, once Isabel stopped hiding her hand in the flowing folds of her crimson skirt, there would be no turning away the man who claimed the prize on her finger.

  “Shall you dance with me, my lady?” Sir Theo asked.

  She wondered if the blush on his fair cheeks betokened his usual bashfulness or a hopeful anticipation that she had found and accepted his ring and all that it implied. His sandy hair fell over his eyes as he bowed, and then he shook his head like a shaggy hound to clear his sight when he straightened.

  I shall clip his hair into order when I am his wife, she thought—assuming, of course, that he had sent her the ring.

  She swept him one of her graceful curtsies. “’Twill be my honor, Sir Theo.”

  She knew her words might carry a double meaning. Tension jittered through her in spite of her determination to surrender meekly to fate’s decision. One man is very like another, she had told Agnes with a philosophical shrug when Agnes had protested Isabel’s uncharacteristic rashness. Certainly none of them
could be as obnoxious as Lucian de Warrene.

  It could not possibly matter if none of them kissed as well as Lucian either.

  She banished the thought and drew her right hand out of her skirt’s folds. Her wide sleeve with its gold embroidered cuff belled out from her elbow, sweeping just short of the rushes on the floor. She disdained the extreme of fashion Ronwen followed, with sleeves so long they must be knotted to avoid treading on them. She extended her hand so that Sir Theo might kiss it and hence see the ring. She had placed it on her third finger... time enough to change hands once she had confirmed its owner... but he startled her by reaching his left hand across to catch her left fingers instead. He blushed, as though realizing some mistake, and shifted her hand into his right as he pulled her to the head of the circle.

  She had forgotten that he was left-handed, and having never danced a carole before, he apparently expected the circle to turn to his left. Isabel had watched the serfs dance enough times on the village green to know his mistake. The other couples had seemed to instinctively reach the same conclusion as the serfs. The men had set their chosen partners to their left, but Isabel was the chatelaine of the castle, so if she chose to dance to the right of her partner, everyone else must follow. Several minutes of disorder ensued while all the men rearranged themselves around the women.

  She glanced at Sir Theo. Perhaps he merely wished to wait for a moment of privacy to speak of the ring.