Hellion (Seven Brides for Seven Bastards, 7) (2 page)

Bloody minstrels.

He never could understand the need for
that caterwauling while he ate his supper.

As for other needs, when he required
exercise for his cock he found it with his brothers' wives and that
kept him content, all his parts functioning well.

Everything else that came with the
wives was, in his opinion, superfluous and likely to cause more
trouble than good. Even the children they'd produced so far were
noisy, naughty, ill-disciplined brats.

"They're only babes," first wife
Princesa had laughed at him. "You expect too much of them
yet."

"They're rude and insolent and
impertinent," he'd grumbled in reply. "And that one just threw food
at me."

"He's not even two yet,
Salvador."

So? Sal was quite
certain
he
knew
how to behave at any age. If he hadn't he would have received a
swift slap from his mother to correct him. Apparently children
these days were allowed to run wild.

Like certain women.

Yes, that was another
thing, he thought morosely as he watched his brothers fooling
around on the exercise field. Women were getting far too loud these
days and opinionated. And not just the women
they'd
married. But argumentative,
annoying women who were widowed and thought they could still manage
property, could still run a manor. Could keep moving fences around,
stealing animals and playing sly tricks on him the minute his back
was turned.

He removed his helmet and with eyes
narrowed against the sweat that trickled slowly in fat rivulets
down his brow, Sal glanced over in the direction of his own
half-built fortress. Again he thought of the infuriating woman
living on the other side of it. No doubt she'd been up to something
sneaky again while he visited his father.

With a woman like her around he needed
eyes in the back of his head. Mayhap he'd been away long enough.
Time to go home.

Chapter
Two

"He's back, my lady." The look-out had
come all the way across the yard to tell her, but cognizant of his
failure to bring good news, the poor man's steps dragged and his
demeanor drooped accordingly.

She sighed. There, once again, went
her hopes of Salvador d'Anzeray's demise.

"I just sighted him over the hill, my
lady. Heading this way."

"Let joy be unconfined," she replied
flatly.

Whenever her ill-tempered neighbor
rode off to visit his father in the next castellany, she held onto
a thin sliver of hope that he might not return. Something might
occur to keep him away longer so she could live in peace for a
while.

Alas. He kept coming back.

Bad enough that she was a widow, a
woman struggling alone to maintain property most people thought she
had no right to manage without a man, but Helene de Leon Calledaux
had to share a border with that uncivil beast.

She nodded to the guard and finished
drawing well water, determined to go on with her day and her chores
as if Salvador d'Anzeray did not exist. He must take her as he
found her; she would make no special effort for that
bastard.

A lady might usually be expected to
face her neighbor in a clean gown with nothing more strenuous than
sewing in her hand, or a bunch of stupid flowers, but putting on
airs and graces to greet this man would mean granting him more
respect than he deserved. Whenever he turned up at her gate, intent
on berating her for something he thought she'd done, she was always
in a state of most disarray— up to her elbows in pig slop, or
covered in soot from putting out a barn fire. Helene was a woman
who liked to get her hands dirty. She did not believe in asking
others to do a task she would not do herself. Primarily because she
was too damned impatient.

And she'd long since given up trying
to remain tidy for anyone.

She turned the pulley with both arms
and an angry force, throwing in a loud grunt for good measure. Why
couldn't her wretched neighbor meet a grisly end, as her husband
had predicted he would?

"Fret not, Helene," Robert had said to
her many times, "the d'Anzeray have countless enemies and his
occupancy of that piece of land is temporary. Someone is bound to
do away with him eventually."

Eventually
was a long time coming.

She'd been tempted, several times, to
ask Robert why he did not take matters into his own hands and
dispatch the pest himself. But that would have been impertinent and
unladylike. It might have suggested her husband lacked courage, or
was too lazy to act. God forbid.

"Right will prevail," Robert would say
calmly. "This venison is very well seasoned, is it not?"

Now her husband was dead and she must
suffer their grim-faced neighbor's constant complaints about walls
and boundaries he claimed kept moving, or sheep that disappeared
from his fields. Or even a peregrine he accused her of
stealing.

For six months she'd put up with his
stern, forbidding frowns whenever he rode by to deliver another
churlish comment about how a woman should never be left to manage
such a large property. Twice, within her hearing, he'd threatened
to petition the king and have her shut away in a nunnery. It was
well known that the d'Anzeray had no sense of humor so he could not
be speaking in jest.

When he first claimed that land
adjoining his own father's, about five years ago, and started
building a fortress, Helene's husband had complained to the king.
Some of those fields Salvador d'Anzeray boldly took for his
property had belonged to Helene's father, Arnoul de Leon, and so
they were part of her dowry. At least, they were supposed to
be.

Arnoul had not lived long enough after
the Battle of Hastings to enjoy his war prize from King William—not
to lay more than one bloodied eye upon it— but when the Calledaux
family negotiated a marriage to the dying warrior's only child,
they were sage enough to make certain that the parcel of land, in
its entirety, was included in the arrangement. Helene, therefore,
was "sold" as part of the property.

Thinking of it now as she turned that
pulley with increasing passion, it felt like a hundred and one
years ago, not merely eleven, since she was that plump, plain
little girl standing in a drafty, mud-spattered tent. There, in the
midst of an encampment of soldiers, she was told two life-altering
things in the same sentence: her father was dead, and she was
getting married.

They had sent Arnoul's scribe, a
short, harried fellow, to tell her, "I have bad news, Lady Helene,
but I also have good."

After he'd relayed his message briskly
and ducked out of the tent again, thirteen-year old Helene was left
to wonder which news was meant to be which.

Her father had been a stern,
uncompromising, impatient man who barely spoke to her, except to
mutter occasionally that he wished he had a son. They were
strangers in many ways, but that was typical of her family.
Affection was considered a weakness, and she had learned not to
seek, or want it. So she was not surprised that her father's
scribe, rather than a relative, was the one who brought her this
news. It was fitting really. She was only surprised they bothered
to tell her at all.

Thus she was wed, there and then, to
Robert Calledaux— by proxy, as he was still in Normandy and too
sick to travel at the time. It was a few years later when they
finally met and consummated the union. Robert's first words spoken
upon seeing his young bride for the first time were, "The land
deeds are in safe-keeping, are they not? My father told me I must
be sure."

He was dutifully assured they were
indeed safe. And he relied upon those words, while his father had
quite probably meant for him to check with his own eyes.

But somebody, somewhere, got it
wrong.

The parchments granting that land to
Arnoul de Leon had mysteriously "disappeared", and when, a few
years later, Robert protested to King William about Salvador
d'Anzeray stealing some land that should be his, he got short
shrift for his trouble. The king, struggling to subdue the newly
conquered land, needed those ruthless and mercenary d'Anzerays on
his side and let them get away with a great deal. Their thieving
behavior went unchecked.

Like so many others, Helene's husband
had given up and given in. It annoyed her, frustrated her that
those upstart bastards got away with so much. No one, it seemed,
dare stand up to them. Especially not Robert. After his formal
protest to the king fell on deaf ears, he made no further attempt.
Oh, he complained plenty to anyone who would listen, but he did not
act.

Even worse, Helene knew
d'Anzeray had looked with scorn at her husband and thought him
weak. That man's sneering looks had been more humiliating to her
than the fact that it was true; Robert
had
been weak, but he couldn't help
that, could he? Robert was used to being spoiled and pampered, for
he came from grand, well-landed family in Normandy and had never
needed to lift a finger to help himself. Life in this adopted,
savage land of England after the conquest had come as a bitter
shock to the poor fellow. No longer surrounded by familiar
comforts, or having a father at hand to fight his battles, he'd
floundered. Poor Robert. He'd relied on Helene a great deal and
she'd liked having someone to watch over, someone who needed
her.

But she did not like the way Salvador
d'Anzeray had looked at her husband and then at her with a darkly
knowing smirk. As if he was biding his time.

Well, d'Anzeray was
possibly thinking he could simply step in and take the rest of that
land from Helene de Leon Calledaux, now that her husband was dead.
But it would be over
her
corpse!

She heard the ruckus as he
galloped to the gate in a cloud of dust and called out for the
"
Lady of the manor
." Even the way he said it showed no respect, only disdain
and sarcasm.

Helene set down her heavy buckets of
water and strode to the gate. "What makes your arse sore today,
d'Anzeray?" she called out, wiping her hands on her
skirt.

From his saddle he glared down at her,
dark eyes full of heat, narrowed and merciless. "You've been moving
fences again, woman." She felt his gaze roaming over her figure.
"Or one of your men did it for you."

Hands on her hips, she replied, "I
know not of any fences being moved. And I can assure you that if I
wanted such work done I would do it myself. " She wanted him to
know she was not afraid of him, even if her husband might have
been.

"Then how can you account for the
fence around the far field on your side being two feet closer to my
stream?"

"Two feet?"

"Aye. I just measured it with my own
paces, woman. Did you think I'd never notice?"

Actually that was exactly what she had
thought. But she laughed, squinting up at him. "It amazes me that
you have nothing more pressing to do with your time than measure
silly fences with your stupid great feet. I, however, do." Turning
away, she began to walk back to her well, but he shouted after her
through the gate.

"I'll move the fence back to where it
was. Touch it again if you dare and you'll be touching my
blade."

Head high she kept walking.

He raised his voice again. "Each time
I'm gone that wretched fence moves, woman! Next time it moves will
be the last."

Damn the man. Why did he have to come
back again? Why couldn't he just fall down a long, long
hole?

"Do you hear me, woman?"

She stopped, swiveled on her heels and
marched back to the gate. The two guards standing there moved
swiftly aside, stumbling over their own boots. "The name is Lady de
Leon," she spoke slowly, as if to an idiot. "Perhaps you have
forgot the name? I know you're an uncivilized, loutish brute and I
don't expect you to remember manners since you never had any, but
surely you can manage a name."

His horse shifted uneasily, shaking
its tail and its mane, but the other, dumber beast astride its back
stared down at her with his usual sneer, his hard eyes taking in
every stain and tear in her garments. Finally he said, "For how
long do you think you can keep this up?"

"Keep what up?" she snapped. She'd
move the damnable fence as many times as he kept moving it back
again.

"Trying to run the manor alone. 'Tis
no place for a woman."

"I'll manage my affairs.
You manage your own. Should I
need
your opinion I would ask for it. Hold your breath
until I do."

Again his gaze strayed across her
bosom, lingering on a tear that stretched from under her arm to
just below the upward swell of her left breast. Not only did she
see where he looked, she felt it too. Worse than an uninvited
caress.

Well, it should have been
unwelcome.

But Helene suffered a sudden heat
between her thighs and prayed to God she wasn't flushing. Oh, she
should have mended her gown by now, but there was so much to be
done and her appearance was the item of least concern. Now, what
was once a hole no larger than her fingertip, had been pulled into
a larger rip, thanks to her violent turning of the well pulley. And
because of the heat she wasn't wearing a shift beneath her
gown.