The Velvet Promise (Montgomery/Taggert 2)

Alice laughed. “I imagine we feel the same about those two men. I have heard that her father was even more despicable than my late beloved husband.”

“Don’t speak so of the dead.”

“And don’t you reprimand me, or I will see you go to someone else.” It was a familiar threat—one Ela no longer paid any attention to. The worst punishment Alice could imagine was to deny a person her company.

Alice stood and smoothed her gown. All the colors and textures flashed and competed with one another. “Do you think he will notice me?” she asked breathlessly.

“Who could not?”

“Yes,” Alice agreed. “Who could not?”

Judith stood silently by her husband’s side, overawed by the king’s many guests. Gavin seemed at ease with them all, a man respected, his word valued. It was good to see him in another setting besides a highly personal one. For all their quarrels and disputes, he took care of her, protected her. He knew she was not used to crowds, so he kept her close to him, not forcing her to go to the women, where she would be among strangers. He took much ribbing about this but he smiled good-naturedly with no embarrassment, as most men would have shown.

The long trestle tables were being set for supper, the troubadors organizing their musicians, the jongleurs, the acrobats rehearsing their stunts.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Gavin asked, smiling down at her.

“Yes. It’s all so noisy and active, though.”

He laughed. “It will get worse. Let me know if you get tired, and we’ll leave.”

“You don’t mind that I stay so near you?”

“I would mind if you didn’t. I wouldn’t like you to be free amid these people. Too many young men—and old men, for that matter—look at you.”

“They do?” Judith asked innocently. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Judith, don’t tease these men. The morals at court are very loose, and I wouldn’t like for you to be trapped in some web of your own innocent making. Stay by me or Stephen. Don’t venture too far away alone. Unless”—his eyes hardened in memory of Walter Demari,—“you wish to encourage someone.”

She started to speak, to tell him what she thought of his insinuations, but an earl of somewhere—she could never keep them straight—came to talk to Gavin. “I will go to Stephen,” she said and walked along the edge of the enormous room to where her brother-in-law leaned against the tapestried wall.

He, like Gavin, was dressed in a rich garment of dark wool, Stephen’s brown, Gavin’s gray. The form-fitting doublets were also of finely woven dark wool. Judith couldn’t help but feel a shiver of pride at being associated with such magnificent men.

Judith noticed a pretty, freckle-faced young woman with a turned-up nose who kept looking at Stephen from around her father’s back. “She seems to like you,” Judith said.

Stephen didn’t look up. “Yes,” he said dejectedly. “But my days are numbered, aren’t they? A few weeks from now, and I’ll have a bit of brown woman on my arm, screeching at my every movement.”

“Stephen!” Judith laughed. “She surely couldn’t be as bad as you think she is. No woman co

uld be. Look at me. Gavin hadn’t seen me before our marriage. Do you think he also worried that I was ugly?”

He looked down at her. “You don’t know how much I envy my brother. You are not only beautiful, but wise and kind as well. Gavin is the most fortunate of men.”

Judith felt her cheeks turning pink. “You flatter me, but I like to hear it.”

“I am no flatterer,” Stephen said bluntly.

Suddenly the congenial atmosphere in the hall changed, and both Stephen and Judith looked toward the people around them, feeling that some of the tension was directed toward them. Many people looked at Judith—some in apprehension, some smiling snidely, others in bewilderment—not understanding what the current carried.

“Judith,” Stephen said, “have you seen the garden? Queen Elizabeth has some beautiful lilies, and her roses are magnificent.”

Judith frowned at him, knowing he wanted her out of the hall for some reason. Several people moved aside and she saw the reason for the tension. Alice Chatworth walked regally into the hall, her head high, a smile of great warmth on her face. And the smile was for one person alone—Gavin.

Judith stared at Alice, her gown seeming gaudy and ill-matched. Alice’s pale skin, her obviously artificially darkened eyes did not seem at all beautiful to Judith.

The crowd grew quieter as the “secret” of Alice and Gavin was whispered from one person to the next. Judith turned from the woman to look at her husband. Gavin regarded Alice with an intensity that was almost tangible. His eyes were mesmerized by hers, and nothing seemed likely to break the contact. He watched her make her way slowly toward him and when she was close, she held out her hand. He took it and kissed it lingeringly.

The king’s laughter was heard above the small sounds of the hall. “You two seem to know each other.”