The Velvet Promise (Montgomery/Taggert 2)

“Judith,” Gavin said, half-pleading.

“Do I disappoint you that I’m not dead? As my child is now dead?” Her eyes blinked back tears. “Go to her. You wanted her so badly, and you are welcome to her!”

“Judith—” Gavin began, but Queen Elizabeth took his arm.

“Perhaps you should go.”

“Yes,” he agreed as Judith refused to look at him. Stephen waited outside the door for him, his brows raised in question. “The child is lost and I don’t know yet if Judith will live.”

“Come below,” Stephen said. “They won’t allow you to stay with her?”

“Judith wouldn’t allow it,” Gavin said flatly.

Stephen didn’t speak again until they were outside the manor house. The sun was just beginning to rise, the sky gray. The commotion caused by Judith’s fall made the castlefolk rise earlier than usual. The brothers sat on a bench by the castle wall. “Why was she walking about the hall at night?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t know. When you and I parted, I fell into a bed—the nearest one at the top of the stairs.”

“Perhaps she woke and found you were gone and came to search for you.”

Gavin didn’t answer.

“There is more to this that you aren’t telling me.”

“Yes. When Judith saw me, I was in bed with Alice.”

Never before had Stephen offered a judgment of

his brother. Now his face blackened. “You may have killed Judith! And for what? That bitch—” He broke off when he saw Gavin’s bleak profile. “You were too drunk to want a woman. Or if you wanted one, Judith waited above for you.”

Gavin stared across the courtyard. “I didn’t take her to bed,” he said quietly. “I was asleep and I heard a noise which woke me. Alice lay beside me. I wasn’t so drunk last night that I would have taken her to my bed and not remembered.”

“Then how?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do!” Stephen said through clenched teeth. “You are a sensible man except when it comes to that witch!”

For the first time, Gavin didn’t defend Alice.

Stephen continued. “You have never been able to see her for what she is. Don’t you know she sleeps with half the men at the court?”

Gavin turned and stared at him.

“You may look at me in disbelief, but she is the jest of all the men—and I’m sure most of the women. From stableboy to earl, she doesn’t care, so long as they have the equipment to pleasure her.”

“If she’s like that, then I have made her that way. She was a virgin when I first took her.”

“Virgin, hah! The Earl of Lancashire swears he had her when she was only twelve years old.”

Gavin’s expression was one of disbelief.

“Look at what she has done to you. She has controlled you and used you—and you have allowed it. No, you have begged for more. Tell me, what method did she use to keep you from loving Judith straightaway?”

Gavin stared with sightless eyes. He was reliving the scene in the garden on his wedding day. “She vowed to kill herself if I loved my wife.”

Stephen leaned his head back against the stone wall. “God’s wounds! And you believed her? That woman would willingly kill thousands before she would endanger one hair on her own head.”

“But I asked her to marry me,” Gavin persisted. “Before I ever heard of Judith, I asked her to marry me.”