“My weaver?”
“Nay. I would be your steward.”
“Graelam would burst his bladder laughing at that notion. No, you can be my mistress. You begin to look passable again, so that would not strain his credulity. Does that please you, wench?”
“Doesn’t it worry you that I might beg Lord Graelam to return me to my father? That I might tell him you’re naught but a miserable scoundrel and thief?”
“Why should it worry me? You’ll not do that. You have no wish to return to your father. Don’t forget that that toad William de Bridgport awaits you with widespread fat arms and foul breath.”
That was true, damn him. She chewed on her lower lips. “I could ask him to send me to his vassal, Sir Walter, since I am his cousin and since that is where I was bound in the first place.”
“Aye, you could do that, but it would displease me mightily. You know, Philippa, Sir Walter wouldn’t treat you well. He is not the man you think him.”
“Of course he would treat me well! I’m his cousin, his kin. I won’t be your mistress.”
He raised his hand and lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. “You’re a snare, Philippa. Of the devil? I wonder.”
He said nothing more, merely turned on his bare heel and strode away from her. He should have looked ridiculous, walking barefoot and wrapped in an ugly brown blanket, but he didn’t.
Philippa followed more slowly, and she saw faces and heard laughter and knew that she and Dienwald had been observed whilst they bathed. Was there nothing private in this wretched castle? She knew the answer was no, just as it had been at Beauchamp.
How could Dienwald ask her to meet Kassia, the woman who was the most precious of all God’s female flock? The woman who’d saved his life, the woman who was so lavishly guileless, the essence of purity and perfection?
Philippa wanted to be sick.
Instead, she walked up the solar stairs, the blanket wrapped close like a shroud, and locked herself in Dienwald’s chamber. He’d already come and gone. His blanket was a heap on the rushes. She fretted about what he was wearing, wishing she’d given him the tunic she’d made for him. It looked every bit as fine as the one Lord Graelam was wearing, the one the beautiful Kassia had sewn for him.
In the great hall, Dienwald, garbed in a tunic and hose that were tattered and faded from their original gray to a dirty bile green, finally greeted his guests.
Graelam and Kassia were speaking with Northbert and Crooky, drinking ale and tasting the new St. Erth cheese that Dienwald had directed made from his own recipe, passed to him by his great-aunt Margarie, now long dead.
“Where is my wine, you whoreson?” Graelam asked without preamble upon Dienwald’s appearance.
Dienwald looked at him blankly. “Your wine? What wine? That’s not wine, it’s ale, and made from my own recipe. I would have offered you wine had I some, but I don’t. I have naught but ale, and no coin to purchase wine. God’s bones, Graelam, I always bring myself to Wolffeton when I wish to reward my innards.”
Graelam’s dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re a convincing liar when it pleases you to be so.”
“What cursed wine?” Dienwald nearly shouted, flinging his arms wide.
Kassia laughed and placed her hand on his forearm. “You don’t remember the wager between you and my lord? The Aquitaine wine my father was shipping to us? The ship was wrecked on the rocks and all the cargo disappeared. You didn’t do it? You didn’t steal the wine?”
Dienwald just shook his head. “Of course not. Are you sure, Kassia, that your wondrous lord didn’t do it? He feared losing the wager to me, you know, and was at his wits’ ends to find a way out of humiliating himself.”
“Nay, don’t try to win her to your side, you sly-lipped cockscomb.”
Kassia laughed. “The both of you be still. ’Tis obvious that another rogue stole the wine, my lord. Drink your ale and forget your wager.”
“But who?” Dienwald said as he accepted a flagon from Margot.
“Roland is in Cornwall,” Graelam said.
“I don’t believe it! Roland de Tournay! He’s really here?”
“Aye, he’s here. I heard it from a tinker who’d traveled the breadth of Cornwall.”
“Aye, the tinker was here not long ago, but I was not.” More’s the pity, he thought, that the fellow hadn’t as yet returned. He was seeing that strip of dirty leather tying Philippa’s hair back. A narrow ribbon of pale yellow would be beautiful with her hair color. “He told you of Roland?”
“It seems that Roland stopped him, brought him to his camp in the forest of Fentonladock, and instructed him to tell me of his coming—not the why of it, but just that he would be at Wolffeton. I do wonder what he wants. You and Roland were boys fostering together, were you not? At Bauderleigh Castle with Earl Charles Massey?”