The Velvet Promise Read online

  Blanche and Gladys hurried off to their duties in far parts of the house.

  Jocelin was unperturbed. “You missed me, my lady?” he smiled, taking her hand and kissing it after making sure no one was about.

  “No, I did not,” Alice said honestly. “Not as you mean. Were you out with those hussies this afternoon while I sat here alone?”

  Jocelin was immediately concerned. “You have been lonely?”

  “Oh, yes, I have been lonely!” Alice said as she sank into a cushioned window seat. She was as gently lovely as when he’d first seen her at the Montgomery wedding; but now she had a finer-drawn look to her, as if she’d lost weight, and her eyes moved nervously from one point to another. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I am lonely. I have no one here who is my friend.”

  “How can that be? Surely your husband must love one as beautiful as you.”

  “Love!” she laughed. “Edmund loves nobody. He keeps me as if I were a bird in a cage. I see no one, talk to no one.” She turned to look at a shadow in the room, her beautiful face twisted with hatred. “Except her!” she snarled.

  Jocelin looked toward the shadow, unaware anyone was near them.

  “Come out, you little slut,” Alice sneered. “Let him see you. Don’t hide away like some eater of carrion. Be proud of what you do.”

  Jocelin strained his eyes until he saw a young woman step forward, her figure slight, her shoulders bowed forward, her head lowered.

  “Look up, you whore!” Alice commanded.

  Jocelin’s breath stopped when he looked into the young woman’s eyes. She was pretty—not of the beauty of Alice or the woman he’d seen as a bride, Judith Revedoune, but lovely nonetheless. It was her eyes that made him stare. They were violet pools filled with all the troubles of the world. He had never seen such agony and despair.

  “He sets her on me like a dog,” Alice said, regaining Jocelin’s attention. “I cannot move without her following me. I tried to kill her once, but Edmund revived her. If I hurt her again, he threatened to lock me away for a month. I—” Just then Alice noticed her husband coming toward her.

  He was a short, fat man with large jowls and a sleepy heavy-eyed look. No one would guess that any mind except the simplest existed behind that face. But Alice had learned too well of his cunning intelligence.

  “Come to me,” she whispered to Jocelin before he nodded briefly to Edmund and left the hall.

  “Your taste has changed,” Edmund observed. “That one doesn’t look at all like Gavin Montgomery.”

  Alice only stared at him. She knew there was no use talking to him. She’d been married only a month, and every time she looked at her husband, she remembered the morning after her wedding. She had spent her wedding night alone.

  In the morning, Edmund had called her to him. He was a changed man from the one Alice had first met.

  “I trust you slept well,” Edmund had said quietly, his little eyes in his too-fleshy face watching her.

  Alice lowered her lashes prettily. “I was…lonely, my lord.”

  “You can stop your acting now!” Edmund ordered as he rose from his chair. “So! You think you can rule me and my estates, do you?”

  “I…I have no idea what you mean,” Alice stammered, her blue eyes meeting his.

  “You—all of you, all of England—think I am a fool. Those muscled knights you thrash about with call me a coward because I refuse to risk my life fighting the king’s battles. What do I care for anyone’s battles except my own?”

  Alice was stunned speechless.

  “Ah, my dear, where is that simpering little look you wear for the men, those who drool over your beauty?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Edmund walked across the room to a tall cabinet and poured himself some wine. It was a large, airy room set on the top floor of the lovely manor house of the Chatworth estate. All the furniture was of oak or walnut, finely carved, with wolf and squirrel pelts flung over the backs of the chairs. The glass he now drank from was made of rock crystal with little gold feet.

  He held the crystal up to the sunlight. There were Latin words at the base of the vessel promising good fortune to the owner. “Do you have any idea why I married you?” He didn’t give Alice a chance to answer. “I’m sure you must be the most vain woman in England. You probably thought I was as blind as that love-sick Gavin Montgomery. I know at least that you never even asked yourself why an earl would want to marry a penniless chit who slept with any man who had the equipment to please her.”

  Alice stood up. “I won’t listen to this!”

  Roughly, Edmund shoved her back into the chair. “Who do you think you are that you can tell me what you will do? I want you to understand one thing. I did not marry you for any love of you or because I was in awe of your so-called beauty.”

  He turned away from her and poured himself another glass of wine. “Your beauty!” he sneered. “I can’t see what that Montgomery would want with a boy like you when he has that Revedoune woman. Now, there’s a woman to stir a man’s blood.”

  Alice tried to attack Edmund with her hands made into claws, but he easily knocked her aside.

  “I’m tired of these games. Your father owns two hundred acres in the middle of my estates. The filthy old man was about to sell it to the Earl of Weston, who has been my enemy and my father’s enemy for years. Do you know what would have happened to my estates if Weston owned land in the middle of them? A stream runs through there. If he dammed it, I’d lose hundreds of acres of crops as well as my serfs dying of thirst. Your father was too stupid to realize I only wanted you to get the land.”

  Alice could only stare. Why hadn’t he spoken to her about the land Weston wanted? “But, Edmund….” she said in her softest voice.

  “Don’t speak to me! For the last months I have had you watched. I know every man you’ve taken to your bed. And that Montgomery! Even at his wedding you threw yourself at him. I know about the time in the garden with him. Suicide! You? Ha! Did you know his wife saw your little play? No, I thought not. I drank myself into a stupor so that I wouldn’t hear the laughter aimed at me.”

  “But, Edmund—”

  “I told you not to speak to me. I went ahead with the marriage because I couldn’t bear the land going to Weston. Your father has promised the deed to me when you produce a grandchild for him.”

  Alice leaned back against the chair. A grandchild! She almost smiled. When she’d been fourteen, she’d found herself pregnant and had gone to a filthy old woman in the village. The hag had removed the fetus. Alice had nearly died from the bleeding, but she’d been glad to get rid of the brat. She’d never destroy her slim figure for some man’s bastard. In the years since, through all the men, she had never gotten pregnant again. She had always been glad that the operation had damaged her so she couldn’t have children. Now, Alice knew her life had become hell.

  It was an hour later, after Jocelin had finished playing for a group of kitchen wenches, that he walked along the wall of the great hall. The tension in the Chatworth castle was nearly unbearable. The servants were disorderly and dishonest. They seemed to be terrified of both the master and the mistress and did not waste time in telling Jocelin of the horrors of life in the castle. The first weeks after their marriage, Edmund and Alice had fought violently. Until, one of the servants laughed, the master discovered the Lady Alice liked a hand taken to her. Then Lord Edmund locked her away from everyone, kept her from all amusements and, most of all, kept her from enjoying any of his wealth.

  Whenever Jocelin asked the reason for Edmund’s punishments, the servants shrugged. It had something to do with the wedding of the Revedoune heiress and Gavin Montgomery. It started then, and they often heard Lord Edmund screaming that he would not be made a fool of. Already Edmund had had three men killed who were supposedly Alice’s lovers.

  Everyone laughed when Jocelin’s face turned parchment-white. Now, as he walked away from the servants, he vowed to leave the Chatworth castle tomor