Chapter Twenty-One #2
“Alex returned yesterday with over three thousand men,” he said.
“I have what I returned to England for. I have men to support Edward’s war in France.
There is no longer any reason for me to remain here.
I would be happy to send you back to Erith to stay with your mother and grandmother, but I must return to France. ”
Ellowyn stared at him. “Just like that?” she asked. “With everything that has happened and everything we have said to each other, you would leave me behind without a second thought?”
He turned to look at her. “It is not how you make it seem,” he said, rather perplexed that she should seem so emotional when they’d had the same conversation a dozen times. “Of course I do not want to leave you, but I certainly cannot take you with me. I….”
“Why not?”
He shook his head firmly, leaning up against the windowsill. “We have been over this subject, Wynny,” he said. “You know why I cannot take you.”
“But I do not want to go to Erith. I want to go with you.”
“You cannot.”
Emotional, exhausted, and wounded, she burst into angry tears, falling over on the bed and sobbing into the pillows that surrounded her.
Then she screeched somewhat when her wound pained her from the sudden movement.
Brandt came away from the window and went to the bed, trying to soothe her.
She was lying awkwardly and he carefully gathered her up and tried to move her, but she cried out in pain when he tried, so he simply left her. His big hand stroked her hair.
“Please do not do this,” he begged softly. “Please do not upset yourself so. You know I must go and you cannot go with me. Why do you torment yourself so?”
She wept pitifully. “My father is dead,” she sobbed. “Now you would leave me. I will be all alone.”
“You will not be alone if you return to Erith,” he reminded her gently. “You will be with your mother and grandmother.”
“Please do not leave me,” she cried, acting as if she had not heard him.
“I am afraid that this heaven that we have known, this bliss that has become everything to me, will cease to exist once you are gone and will never be the same. When you return again, we will be as strangers and perhaps things will be different, and if you do not return at all, I do not want the news of your death to be delivered by cold and unfeeling men who have no regard for the love you and I share. Please, Brandt… I beg you… take me with you.”
He sighed sadly. Unfortunately, he was feeling himself relent.
He had been now for some time. It was true that he had many properties in France and it was true that she could live there and he could see her far more often than if she remained behind in England.
Aye, he wanted her with him. He wanted her more than he would admit.
He struggled to make one last stand against the pleading that was breaking down his walls like a battering ram.
“Wynny, I cannot,” he whispered. “All of France is in turmoil. It is no place for you.”
She covered her face with her hands. “Then it is true,” she wept. “What my father said is true. War is your mistress and Edward is more important than I am.”
“That is not true.”
“Aye, it is,” she nearly screamed at him.
“If it were not true, you would ensure that we were never apart. But your prince and your wars are by far more important than I am. What a fool I was to think a declaration of love would change all of that. You are a warrior, Brandt, and a husband second. That pains me more than you will ever know and if I mean no more to you than that, I may as well return to Erith.”
He looked like a beaten dog. “You told your father that you would stay here and administer my lands,” he reminded her softly.
The hand flew away from her face, the pale eyes blazing.
“I will not stay here and be reminded of my loneliness at every turn,” she snapped.
“I will go home to my mother and grandmother, and try not to think of my husband who thinks less of me than his horse. At least his horse gets to go to France.”
It would have been a comical and petulant statement had he allowed himself to think so, but he couldn’t because Ellowyn was off on a crying tangent.
Brandt gazed down at her, feeling incredible sadness and guilt.
He just stood there, looking at her, listening to her sobs and feeling more turmoil than he had ever felt in his life.
He was a man of strong decisions and a firm mind, never one to be swayed by another and certainly never one to be swayed by a woman.
But this wasn’t just a woman. This was his wife whom he loved with all his heart. He didn’t want to leave her, either.
As Ellowyn eventually cried herself to sleep, Brandt stood over the bed, lost in thought. He was coming to think that somehow, someway, his battles with Edward were no longer the most important thing to him. It was more that the prince’s warfare was all he knew. It was his life, his vocation.
King Edward had personally asked Brandt to control and manage young Edward’s wars in France because he knew that Brandt de Russe was a lord of war from a long line of warlords.
The de Russe family was well known for breeding the biggest and the meanest and the best. The Prince of Wales was young and rash at times, and de Russe was the perfect balance with his wisdom and strength.
It had been a perfect partnership until the moment Brandt knocked Ellowyn into the water trough outside of Grey’s Inn.
After that, everything changed.
*
“My lady, I must state quite clearly that the duke will be furious if he discovers you have left the castle,” Brennan said. “More than that, he will be furious with me for enabling such a thing. I beg you to reconsider.”
Five days after her encounter with a sword, Ellowyn was on her feet.
She was moving very stiffly, but at least she was moving.
Dressed in a mustard-colored silk surcoat with an eggshell-colored shift beneath, she looked radiant except for the smudge of dark circles beneath her eyes.
It was the only outward appearance that she had suffered a brush with violence.
As Brennan spoke the words, she eyed the stiff young knight. “He is off doing things that are more important to him,” she said briskly. “I had the servants help me pack this morning. I am going to Erith today and I want you to take me.”
Brennan was in over his head. He knew that already. “Lady de Russe, I have many pressing duties to attend to today,” he told her. “Although it would be a great privilege, I cannot escort you to Erith.”
Ellowyn looked at him as if he had just grievously insulted her.
Her emotions, aggravated by her injury, had been raging over the past couple of days since Brandt had told her he planned to return to France right away and refused to take her with him.
She had convinced herself that he had lied to her when he told her that he loved her.
A man couldn’t love his wife and then leave her behind as far as she was concerned.
Her father had been correct. She would always be second to Brandt’s ambition and devotion to the Prince of Wales.
She felt demeaned, humiliated, and terribly hurt.
She just wanted to go home to the people who truly loved her.
She needed to tell her father, who would surely be in his grave by then, how sorry she was for everything.
Perhaps that was the crux of the entire situation.
Had she not run away with Brandt, Deston would more than likely still be alive so, in a sense, she killed her father.
Her guilt was great, perhaps great enough to taint her views on Brandt.
He had expressed fear once that she would change her mind about him if he had killed her father and she assured him that nothing would change.
Perhaps she had been wrong, about a lot of things.
“Very well,” she snapped. “If you cannot do it, then I will ask you to find someone who can. If you cannot find anyone by the nooning meal, I will leave on my own. Do you understand?”
Brennan was quite aware that he was being bullied. “Aye, my lady, but I must tell your husband what you have asked of me.”
She shook finger at him “If you tell him, I shall never forgive you or trust you again, Brennan St. Hèver. You will promise me that you will not say anything to him at all.”
He shook his head but took a step towards the door as he did so. “I regret that I cannot make that promise, my lady.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you would violate my trust in you?”
“I mean to tell you that I am sworn to your husband, my lady, and it is Lord de Russe that I answer to. If he found out that I aided you on a flight from Guildford, he would have my head.”
Furious, Ellowyn pointed imperiously at the door. “Out!” she commanded. “I will find someone else I can trust!”
Brennan moved swiftly for the door, a rather comical sight because it looked as if the man were truly afraid of the very angry lady. Once outside the door, he breathed a sigh of relief but made haste to locate Brandt.
A perusal of the entire castle had not turned him up.
Dylan was missing, too. Le Bec, who had the watch upon the wall, could only tell him that de Russe and de Lara had ridden off towards the town but he didn’t know any more than that.
He suspected that the duke had ridden south to Godalming to a smaller castle inhabited by the wealthy and refined Lady Catteshall, because the woman was wildly wealthy.
Part of his mission for the prince was to seek monetary support, and the knights suspected he was doing just that.
Surprisingly, Lady Catteshall had a damn good army of three hundred men and owned a great deal of land, and she ruled the province perhaps more than Brandt did.
She was very respected and very generous.
Nervous about Lady de Russe, Brennan remained upon the wall, watching anxiously for Brandt’s return.