Free The Longing by Tamara Leigh Page A

Elias.”
    He looked momentarily away, gave a short chuckle. “I do. But then, I am a man without a sword.” He spread his hands, looked pointedly at his belt. “Alas, not even a dagger.”
    “They shall be returned to you on the morrow upon your departure.
    The knight nodded. “As told, Lady Susanna’s circumstances have been most desperate.”
    “When I knew the lady, her circumstances and prospects were desirable.”
    “How long has that been?”
    “Eleven years.”
    “Ah.” Sir Elias’s eyes went up to the side. “‘Twould be about the time her brother wed Lady Judith, a woman I am told was most beautiful.”
    Once again, they were back to a place Everard did not wish to be. And, doubtless, this knight also suspected him of having fathered Judas.
    “What has desperation done to Lady Susanna?” Everard clipped.
    The man pressed the back of a hand to his cut lip, drew a sharp breath, and grimaced. “Though I am tempted to speak false, Lord Wulfrith—and with good cause, hmm?—I will tell you that I was promised far more than a kiss to deliver Lady Susanna and her nephew to Wulfen.”
    Everard felt all of his being go still as his mind reached back to the unanswered question of those other things the knight had said the lady did for Judas’s sake, then farther back to her desperate plea—that she would do anything he asked of her. He had not wanted to believe it was as it had sounded, but it fit. She was in the habit of bargaining with her body and this knight—
    Feeling his knuckles again, Everard moved toward Sir Elias who quickly descended a step and thrust a hand forward as if that might ward off another beating. “I did not intend to collect on it,” he said. “This I vow.”
    A burst of laughter brought Everard back to himself, and he silently thanked Sir Rowan whose tale had prevented him from behavior most unbecoming—at least, in this setting.
    He drew a deep breath. “What did you intend to collect, Sir Elias?”
    The knight slowly lowered his hand.
    “You said it was as much in your best interest as the lady’s to speak of such things,” Everard pressed. “If not greater intimacy with the lady, what, Sir Elias? What is in this for you?”
    The man sniffed up a thin line of blood. “Once Judas is acknowledged as de Balliol’s heir—and you seem of no mind to claim him as your own son—I am to be elevated to the head of household knights. That I very much want, Lord Wulfrith.”
    There—the measure of the man. And yet, Everard could not say his motivation was entirely dishonorable. He inclined his head. “Then make ready to depart Wulfen on the morrow ere first light. I wish you—and Lady Susanna—Godspeed on the journey ahead.” He stepped past him and began the descent of the final steps to the hall.
    “After all I have told,” Sir Elias said, “still you will not aid her?”
    Everard looked over his shoulder. “I am mostly inclined to believe you speak true—that ’tis not merely a ploy to gain my cooperation—but it changes naught. My duty is to Wulfen and the young men I am charged with growing into knights, and here I shall remain. Good eve, Sir Elias.”
    He turned forward and, as he struck out across the hall, called, “Seek your beds!”
    As expected, the young men stood and hastened toward the piles of pallets upon which they would gain their night’s sleep—excepting Judas de Balliol who moved stealthily along the walls toward the stairs and over whom Everard grudgingly acknowledged regret. If the boy was not already ruined by the desperately debased Susanna de Balliol, he soon would be.
     
     
    He thinks me a wanton, a trollop, a harlot. And I do not care.
    That last was a lie, and one should never lie to one’s self. Susanna did not want to care, for there was no way to take back the words with which she had offered herself to him even more easily than she had agreed to what she had believed Sir Elias required of her. Such a fool she was, for only