“With a stop off at the tavern, George.” Valentine frowned. “We need to sober you up so that you can tell me about Von Hautt.”
The process took time. Morris was woken and dragged from his warm bed to make some of his special coffee—a brew he’d perfected when Valentine was young and prone to experimenting with the family wine cellar.
“This takes me back,” Valentine said, holding George?
?s nose while Morris poured the coffee into his unwilling mouth. “Remember the days before the inestimable Mrs. Beaumaris came to cook for us permanently?”
Morris shuddered, his jowls trembling. “I never claimed to be a cook, my lord.”
“You did your best, Morris. And you were rather better than some of those who declared they were food experts.”
Morris looked pleased with his praise.
“Morrish has been with us for…for years…” George spluttered. “Time he retired to a nice lil’ place and put hish feet up.”
“I suppose that day is coming, sir,” Morris admitted, “and sooner than I like to think.”
“Oh.” Valentine looked surprised. “I do hope not yet, Morris.”
“So do I, my lord. Now come on, Mr. George, drink up,” Morris said heartily, pouring more coffee into the protesting George. Valentine turned back to the task at hand.
Eventually, between the two of them, they sobered George sufficiently so that he was able to tell Valentine what Von Hautt had said to him in Magna Midcombe.
“But that makes no sense,” Valentine said crossly.
“Made no sense to me, but that was what he said.”
“I know nothing of his family, and as for his mother…how could we turn our backs on a woman we don’t even know?”
“The man is clearly loopy.” George shrugged, then gave a jaw-breaking yawn.
Valentine stared into space, considering the puzzle his brother had presented to him. The trouble was that Von Hautt, while clearly mentally unstable, believed that what he said to George was the truth. The truth as he saw it. And if Von Hautt thought Valentine or his father had caused some ill to befall his mother, then it just might explain his obsession to be the first to find the Crusader’s Rose.
“Revenge? Is that what this is all about?” Valentine said. “Von Hautt wants to hurt me because he thinks I hurt his mother?”
“There was something else.” George looked uncomfortable.
Valentine sighed. “What else?”
“He said something about you searching for the rose beneath Marissa’s…well, her skirts.” Swiftly he glanced at Valentine and away again. “I don’t think we need to talk about that.”
“No, I don’t think we do,” Valentine said, his face taut with anger.
George thought a minute more, then seemed to remember something else. “I was meaning to ask you: What is it you’ve given up for the rose? Von Hautt told me I was a weakling for taking an ale or two, and that I should be keeping myself pure for the rose. I should give up ale for the rose, like you have. Or some such guff. What did he mean by that, Valentine?”
Valentine considered the question. “I think he’s drawing allusions to the knights of old, King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.”
“Lancelot and so on? What have they got to do with anything?”
“When they went on a quest they believed that to be worthy of the prize they must be pure. Pure of heart and mind and body. They would make vows to forgo worldly things until their quest was complete.”
George thought about that, and then his eyes narrowed. “Bloody hell, Valentine, please tell me you’re not trying to be Lancelot?”
“Don’t be stupid, George. I’m no Lancelot. I don’t know if that’s what Von Hautt is talking about and from the sound of it you probably don’t, either.”
They made their way to bed at last, and Valentine found himself in a far more optimistic mood than he’d been in earlier, when he stood outside in the courtyard and listened to the owl. Determination and confidence buoyed him up, as he strode along the corridor to his bedchamber. He was on a quest to find his rose and he would not fail. He could not fail.
At least when it came to this he was confident and sure of his abilities. A pity he could not feel the same way about Marissa.