Free The Longing by Tamara Leigh Page B

minutes earlier Everard Wulfrith had forcefully declared he had not come for what Sir Elias had.
    Not that. Never that. She was not and never would be a Judith. Did not and never would possess power capable of bending a man to her will. Could not and should not have hoped there.
    “Oh, Judas,” she whispered, “forgive me for not being more worthy to gain the Lord’s blessings for you.” The breath of a sob, but one of many over the hours she had knelt amid the rushes, fleetingly warmed her knees through the material of her skirt. That bit of heat in a chamber grown cool was so welcome that she let another sob escape. But that was all, for having long ago spent her tears upon God, she had finally lost the strength to hold her body together while it strove to shake itself apart. She was done with such expressions of misery. It was time to do something.
    But what? There was nothing to be done that she had not already attempted. With dawn’s approach, they would be put out of Wulfen Castle. In air colder than that which now clamped itself around her shoulders and clung to her back, they would ride to…
    “I do not know,” she whispered, though it would have to be wherever Queen Eleanor could be found. London? Southampton? Dorset? What if when they found her, she would not grant an audience? What if she had already recognized Lady Blanche’s son as heir?
    She groaned, a sound so pitiful she thought she might retch.
    What good has wallowing ever done, Susanna? Do something!
    “Naught to be done,” she muttered.
    Arise!
    Slowly, she uncurled her hunched back that had stiffened so deeply that the sound of her unfolding did not require silence in which to be heard. And the ache… Not only in her muscles and joints but crowding her head and stabbing at the backs of her eyes.
    Tightening her throat against a whimper, she settled back on her heels and peered at the darkened chamber through thinly narrowed lids.
    Arise! Now!
    She edged around to the left, reached to the bed, and pressed nearly numb hands to the mattress. It was pathetic how difficult it was to raise herself to standing—as if she were four score and five years of age. Breathing hard, shivering harder, she braced herself a long moment and swallowed against the parched tissues lining her throat.
    If only she had not subjected the wine to her fit of temper. But there was water.
    Moved by a desperate fear that she would dry up and be of no use to Judas, she patted her way around the foot of the bed, took what she hoped would require only one step but required two to reach the long table against the wall, and groped for the wash basin. She nearly upended it, causing the water with which she had earlier set herself to rights to splash her hands.
    Teeth chattering, she slid her fingers into the cold depths, scooped up a handful, and put her mouth to it. She did not taste the dross. She tasted blessed wet. And thrice more before she returned to the bed and eased down upon it.
    She hurt—so deeply she longed to let fatigue drag her away from here. But the respite would be brief, and Judas would be no better for it. Thus, despite the seeming hopelessness of gaining God’s intervention, she would pray.
    “If only there was one more worthy of seeking blessings for Judas,” she whispered.
    But there was only the sinful Susanna de Balliol. Even at Cheverel, she had mostly been alone in praying for him, for Alan had refused the local priest admittance to the manor house following Judith’s death. From that time forward, spiritual guidance was found exclusively at the little church in the nearby village, and visits there were limited to the attendance of services in the presence of guests of high rank and those rare occasions when Alan was away from the demesne. For that, Susanna had come to rely upon personal prayer rather than the intercessory prayer of a priest. Though she believed God did attend to her prayers for Judas, ever she was aware they suffered from the