Chapter 15
Fifteen
GEOFFREY
Snow began before dawn and did not stop. By midday the roads north of Rochester had vanished beneath white drifts and churned mud frozen hard enough to lame the horses. Geoffrey rode through it, cloak stiff with ice, gloved hands aching around the reins as wind tore across the open fields.
England no longer felt like a kingdom. Three villages had been burned along the road between Rochester and Canterbury.
Geoffrey had passed one just after sunrise.
Smoke still curled upward through the snow while villagers picked silently through blackened beams searching for what remained.
A child stood barefoot in the ashes holding half a wooden spoon.
John’s work. Retaliation had become the king’s preferred language.
The siege at Rochester had broken more than walls. It had broken whatever fragile illusion remained that reconciliation was still possible. Men who once argued over charters and taxes now fortified keeps, hired mercenaries, and watched neighboring banners with suspicion.
Every road carried rumor. Every hall carried fear.
And Geoffrey was tired unto his bones of all of it. His horse stumbled slightly descending an icy slope as he steadied the gelding automatically before swearing beneath his breath. Snow clung thickly to the animal’s mane. Both of them were exhausted.
Beside him, Martin pulled his cloak tighter against the wind. “We should stop before dark.”
“We stopped four hours ago.”
“We stopped long enough to drink ale standing in a stable.”
“That still counts as stopping.”
Martin muttered something in Norman French that sounded deeply insulting.
The wind shifted sharply as they reached higher ground. Through the falling snow Geoffrey finally saw the Thames Castle in the distance. Stone walls softened white beneath winter. Smoke rising from chimneys. Lanternlight faint against the storm-dark afternoon.
Home.
Merde. He had not consciously decided to ride there but some instinct deeper than reason had simply turned his horse south the moment negotiations collapsed in Canterbury two days earlier.
Geoffrey told himself he needed to speak with Aldwin regarding troop movements before spring campaigning resumed.
A transparent lie. The truth sat far less comfortably beneath his ribs. He wanted to see Harper. Not because she understood history or because the psalter remained unpredictable, but because the thought of another freezing night without hearing her laugh had become intolerably bleak.
Geoffrey exhaled slowly through the cold. This was precisely why men should avoid emotional attachments during civil wars. Ahead of him the gates of Thames began to open through the falling snow.
And despite the exhaustion grinding through his body, despite the reports of burned villages and fractured loyalties and England collapsing one betrayal at a time, Geoffrey smiled.
* * *
HARPER
By December, the war had settled into the bones of the household like the cold.
Not the charming kind sold on Christmas cards beside sleigh bells, quaint villages, and cheerful mugs of cocoa.
This was medieval winter. Wet wool that never fully dried.
Stone corridors that trapped damp beneath the rushes.
Fingers cracked raw from icy water. Smoke lingering permanently in the rafters because every fire in England seemed to burn green wood now.
The household at Thames had grown quieter in recent weeks.
The Baron spent more time reading correspondence beside the hearth with a deepening line between his brows. Servants lowered their voices instinctively when new riders arrived. Men-at-arms came and went at irregular hours carrying snow across the floors and rumors through the keep.
Rochester had fallen.
King John’s siege had become the kind of story people repeated carefully beside fires after dark. Starvation. Collapsed walls. Mercenaries. Executions. Entire villages burned afterward in retaliation against barons suspected of disloyalty.
The history books had never properly conveyed how exhausting civil war must have been for ordinary people. Not the battles, but the waiting.
Waiting for news.
Waiting for riders.
Waiting to discover which lord had changed sides this week.
Waiting to see whether the next army marching across England belonged to allies or enemies.
I spent most mornings now helping the steward inventory the grain stores and dried meats while the Baron dictated letters nearby. Somewhere along the way, without either of us consciously discussing it, I had become part of the rhythm of the household.
A servant handed me keys one afternoon without hesitation when the cook requested additional honey from storage. Another asked my opinion regarding winter cloth purchases from London.
And three days earlier, the Baron himself had looked up from a dispatch and absently asked whether I thought Geoffrey would prefer more men stationed along the southern crossing before seeming to remember I technically should not know military strategy.
I had somehow become normal here. The thought should have terrified me more than it did.
Outside, snow fell steadily against the narrow windows of the solar.
I sat near the fire mending the sleeve of one of my gowns badly enough that every medieval woman who had ever lived would probably rise from the grave specifically to judge me.
Maud had attempted repeatedly to improve my sewing skills over the past month with limited success, but I was determined to learn the medieval skills a noblewoman of this time should know.
“You hold the needle like it insulted your family,” she informed me regularly.
Across from me, the Baron read silently beside the hearth in a dark blue wool tunic lined with fur at the collar. His hair had gone more silver than gold in the weeks since autumn. Grief and war seemed to age men quickly here.
“Another village burned near Canterbury,” he said at last without looking up from the parchment.
I set the sleeve down slowly. “John?”
“Who else?”
The fire cracked softly between us. The Baron rubbed one hand across his face with visible exhaustion. “This cannot continue through spring.”
But we both knew it would. I looked back toward my ruined sewing project before speaking carefully. “Do you think Geoffrey’s safe?”
The question escaped before I could stop it.
The Baron’s eyes lifted immediately.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Though increasingly reckless.”
Something tightened painfully beneath my ribs.
I had not seen Geoffrey in nearly three weeks.
Three weeks back in my modern life meant unanswered emails, rescheduled dinners, and pretending everyone was too busy to notice emotional distance widening like cracks in ice.
Three weeks here felt entirely different. Here, the absence felt like I could run my hand through it.
I noticed it at supper when conversations stalled without his dry observations slipping unexpectedly through them.
I noticed it crossing the bailey when I caught myself listening automatically for approaching horses.
I noticed it every evening when I looked up at footsteps in the corridor before remembering they belonged to someone else. Which was deeply inconvenient.
Outside, wind struck the keep hard enough to rattle the shutters.
The Baron glanced toward the sound. “Storm’s worsening.”
Almost immediately, voices rose below in the courtyard. The Baron stood at once as I followed him toward the narrow window overlooking the bailey just as the gates opened through the snow.
Horsemen rode into the courtyard half-buried beneath winter. My pulse betrayed me instantly. Even at a distance I recognized Geoffrey.
He swung stiffly from the saddle while snow blew sideways across the courtyard. Martin said something beside him that earned no visible response. Geoffrey removed one glove with obvious difficulty before passing the reins toward a stableboy.
And even from above, even through snowfall and gathering dusk, I could see the exhaustion dragging at him.
The Baron exhaled slowly beside me. “God help England,” he muttered. “My son looks like diplomacy finally murdered him.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. Relief hit me so suddenly it almost hurt.
Down below, Geoffrey looked upward toward the keep as though sensing movement at the window. For one suspended moment across the falling snow, our eyes met.
By the time Geoffrey entered the great hall, the storm had swallowed the world entirely.
Snow struck the narrow windows in soft relentless waves while servants hurried between trestle tables carrying trenchers of pottage and fresh bread still steaming from the ovens belowstairs. Wet cloaks hung near the hearth giving off the sharp scent of snowmelt, horse, and woodsmoke.
And Geoffrey looked exhausted enough to break my heart.
He had changed clothes while I stood with the Baron reviewing supply inventories in the solar. The dark green wool tunic he wore now fit closely across his shoulders. Freshly washed perhaps an hour ago, his dark hair curled slightly at the ends.
But exhaustion lingered everywhere else. In the roughness shadowing his jaw and in the hollows beneath his eyes. He looked older than he had three weeks ago.
His father noticed it too.
“Ale first,” he ordered before Geoffrey had fully crossed the hall. “Politics after.”
Geoffrey accepted the cup from a servant as I caught sight of his hands that were raw from the cold, the knuckles split in two places. There was a shallow cut crossing the heel of his palm.
Something unpleasant twisted beneath my ribs. I had spent most of my adult life around men whose hardships involved delayed flights and annoying email chains.
Geoffrey drank half the ale without speaking before finally exhaling slowly. “I had forgotten how much I hate winter campaigning.”
“God created winter campaigning specifically to punish the English,” the Baron replied.
Despite everything, despite the exhaustion dragging visibly at him, Geoffrey’s gaze shifted toward me as he sat beside the hearth.