Free No Dark Place by Joan Wolf Page B

wished him to come to the cloister.
    The girl was wearing high wooden pattens to protect her feet from the mud, and Philip followed her across the yard and around to the cloister at the back of the church.
    The Worcester Abbey cloister formed a perfect square of stone arches around an open courtyard. Sitting in the middle of the courtyard upon a stone bench were a man and a woman.
    The evening sun slanted over the west archways of the cloister and fell on the grass of the courtyard, which still sparkled with drops from the rain that had fallen earlier. The air smelled fresh and clean. Philip crossed the courtyard and came to a halt in front of the two on the bench.
    “You wished to see me, my lord?” he asked respectfully.
    “Aye,” Simon returned. He turned to the woman beside him on the bench and said, “This is the knight I told you about, Isabel.”
    For the first time Philip turned his eyes to look at Simon’s sister.
    He saw a face that, while no longer young, was still heartbreakingly beautiful. Isabel’s veil concealed the color of her hair, but her perfectly arched eyebrows were a glossy black. Her eyes were dark dark blue. The merciless light from the setting sun exposed fine lines at the corners of those eyes, but nothing would ever detract from the perfect bone structure that lay beneath her delicate fair skin.
    Her eyes were regarding him searchingly, and there was a definite look of strain in their dark blue depths. He met her gaze squarely and tried not to look as dazzled as he felt.
    She turned back to her brother and said a little doubtfully, “He is very young, Simon.”
    “He is a very competent young man, Isabel,” Simon replied.
    Philip stood in front of them and waited.
    After a minute she said, “I had hoped you could go yourself.”
    “It is impossible.” Simon sounded grim. “I expect to hear from Earl Robert any day now. I cannot be away from Evesham.”
    A faint frown dented the skin between her perfect eyebrows.
    “Are you absolutely certain that you want to do this, Isabel?” Simon asked. “Frankly, I think Nigel Haslin is so desperate to replace Guy with a new earl that he is seeing in this boy only what he wishes to see. There is small likelihood that Hugh is still alive after all these years.”
    “Nigel would not have sent to tell me about this boy if he was not certain that he is my son,” Isabel said. Her voice was quiet, but Philip could hear the emotion that she was trying to keep in check. “He is a kind man, Nigel Haslin. He would not seek to torment me with a pretender.”
    “Isabel…” Simon said wearily.
    “I have never believed that Hugh was dead,” Isabel said. “They never found his body.”
    “If he was alive, he would have tried to reach you,” Simon said.
    “Perhaps not.” Isabel’s voice was full of pain. “I was not a good mother to him, Simon. It is quite possible that he did not trust me to take care of him.” She looked down at the tips of the brown leather shoes that peered out from beneath herbrown wool skirt. “I did not take very good care of him when he was a child.”
    “You did the best that you could,” Simon said gruffly.
    She shook her head.
    Simon sighed. “I suppose you will not rest easy until we have sent someone to identify this boy.”
    She swallowed. Philip had to restrain himself from reaching out a hand to comfort her. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”
    “Very well,” Simon said resignedly. He looked at Philip. “The situation is thus. Thirteen years ago my sister’s husband, the Earl of Wiltshire, was killed in the chapel at Chippenham. That very same day, her son, the heir to the earldom, disappeared. We believe he was kidnapped by the man who killed the earl. Several days later, the body of the kidnapper was returned to Chippenham, the apparent victim of outlaws on the road, but nothing has ever been heard of Hugh.”
    Philip had always known that there were strange circumstances surrounding the death of the