CHAPTER 8

How could he have lost it? He had kept the chain tucked in his clothing since the day she had hurled the ring back into his hands, yet chain and ring had both undeniably vanished. At first, Sir Balduin assumed the clasp must have broken during a change of clothing, but he had spent the entire night searching his bedchamber. Ransacking it had been more like it, for as his alarm at its disappearance increased, he had upended every object in the chamber, great and small, and even crawled under the bed when dawn had allowed enough gray light through the window for him to see murkily beneath it. He had discovered a missing shoe, a bent spoon, a bronze brooch he’d misplaced more than a month ago, three copper coins, a broken chess piece he’d meant to mend, and a great deal of lint that made him sneeze. But there had been no sign of his grandmother’s ring.

Bad enough that he had lost the only heirloom handed down to him from his family, but Lucianna had worn it long enough upon her finger for him to forget about his grandmother and think entirely of the woman he had grown to love and hoped to marry when he gazed on it. It would always say Lucianna to him now. He had intended to cherish it as though her very memory dwelt in the fiery green depths that glowed like her eyes when she kissed him. Without it, what would he have to remember her by when she had gone?

Having come up fruitless in his chamber, he had spent today tracing and retracing his steps from yesterday. He had passed the morning searching the hall where he had made that humiliating spectacle of himself, before they set the table afresh for another dinner. Lucianna had kept her vow not to attend, and Sir Balduin had sat through a miserable meal without her, too occupied with mentally flailing himself for yesterday’s stupidity to care for the snickers and smirks that still occasionally broke from those household members who had witnessed the debacle.

Sir Balduin had questioned every servant he could find, including each one who brought a platter of food onto the dais, but none of them had seen the chain or ring. As soon as the meal was over he headed for the garden. He did not know how he could have lost it there during his exchange with Serafino, but it had fallen off sometime between yestermorn and yesternight, and Sir Balduin would leave no stone or rosebush unturned in his determined hunt.

Once again when he reached the garden, he found Perrin there before him. This time the boy sat cross-legged in the flowery mead, with a wax tablet in his lap and a stylus in his hand. An autumn wind tossed his dark curls about his face so that he had to push the hair out of his eyes as he looked up at Sir Balduin’s footstep.

“Father Michel said I could practice tracing my Latin lines out here today,” the boy said quickly, as though to preempt another scolding.

Sir Balduin waved a distracted hand. “Have you seen my emerald ring?”

“The one you gave to Lady Lucianna?”

“Aye. The chain broke yesterday. I thought it might have done so while I was here with her brother.”

Sir Balduin walked around the edges of the garden while Perrin laid his tablet aside and scampered through the mead on his hands and knees, searching through the low growing flowers. Sir Baldin bent over to lift the lower branches of the rose bush Perrin had beheaded the previous day, then winced and bit off a gasp as his knees popped and the muscles of his back protested, reminding him that a man his age had had no business to be scrambling around underneath beds, no matter how urgent the quest.

“Shall I look there for you?” Perrin asked.

Sir Balduin flushed slightly. It made him feel an old man to nod, but he feared if he dropped to his knees again, he might never regain his feet.

Perrin dove under the rose bush. “Are you going to give it back to Lady Lucianna if you find it?” his voice floated from beneath the leaves.

Sir Balduin dropped gloomily down on the wattle wall. “She has made it clear she has no use for it or me.” He cursed the gruffness of his voice when Perrin peeked out at him, then disappeared under the bush again.

“I heard Siri tell Papa that she cried so hard for you it frightened her. I mean Lady Lucianna cried, not Siri. Siri likes you very much, but I do not think she would cry over you. Did you do something to break Lady Lucianna’s heart?”

“I mangled her Italian and offended her with a gift and made a fool of myself and her at dinner.” Sir Balduin sighed. “And apparently I am also inconsiderate and refuse to confide in her. And she thinks I called her fat.”

“Here it is!”

Despite his aching muscles, Sir Balduin leapt up from the wall.

“Oh, bah. It is just a rock.” A stone roughly the size of the ring but otherwise bearing no resemblance to an emerald came spinning out from beneath the bush. A moment later, Perrin came out, too. “It’s not under there.” He sat down and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Did you really call Lady Lucianna fat? She’s not nearly as fat as Siri is now.”

“Lady Siri is expecting a baby,” Sir Balduin said.

“Oh, I know. I’m to have a brother or sister. Papa says it will do me good, though I can’t see how it will.” Perrin shrugged. “One day Papa suggested that Siri was eating too many sweets and Siri burst into tears and said, ‘I am not fat, I am having a baby,’ and Papa said, ‘That is not what I meant—’, but I never found out what he did mean because he just started apologizing until Siri quit crying, and then she apologized too, and then they looked at each other all goggly eyed—you know, the way you and Lady Lucianna used to look at each other—and the next thing I knew they were kissing, so I left the room.”

Perrin fixed a gaze on Sir Balduin that was almost unnerving for its directness. “I thought it was all very silly, but I learned that women don’t like to be called fat, so maybe you should apologize to Lady Lucianna and kiss her.” He spoiled this sage advice by slightly wrinkling his nose.

”I have apologized,” Sir Balduin muttered, sitting back down. Well, not for the song. Lucianna had not given him a chance, and he did not suppose there was an apology large enough for that fiasco anyway.

“And she did not forgive you?” Perrin asked. “Maybe it only works with a kiss. Bah,” he repeated, causing Sir Balduin to wonder where the boy had picked up the exclamation. Perrin’s nose wrinkled again. “Women seem to like it. Kissing, I mean. I say bah and bah!”

“You are beginning to sound like a sheep,” Sir Balduin said.

Perrin’s vivid blue eyes danced wickedly. “I heard Gille the goose girl say it. Father Michel said it is not refined for a baron’s son, but he won’t let me swear, either. I have to say something when I am vexed. So I say bah.”

“And kissing vexes you?”

“I don’t understand it. Papa says I will when I am older, but . . . ”

“But ‘bah?’” Sir Balduin inquired, amused in spite of himself as the boy trailed off.

Perrin nodded. “You are old, though, and so is Lady Lucianna, so you probably understand already. Why don’t you kiss her and apologize again? It worked for Papa and Siri.”

“Some things cannot be solved with a kiss, Perrin.” Or could they? It could not possibly be that simple. Sir Balduin’s heart jolted slightly. Could it?”

Perrin crawled over to his tablet and set it in his lap again. “Well, I think maybe she wants to make up, because I saw her letting herself into your chamber when I came out from my lessons with Father Michel.”

“You what?” Sir Balduin spoke so sharply that Perrin jumped. He quickly moderated his tone. “The chapel is nowhere near my chamber. You could not have seen any such thing.”

“I did,” the boy insisted. “I met Lord Serafino at the head of the stairs—I suppose he must be a lord if Lady Lucianna is a lady. He was grinning and chuckling, and he tousled my hair when he saw me. I hate it when grownups do that. He asked me if I were leaving the castle and invited me to come with him, but Siri does not like him, so I said no.”

Perrin picked up the stylus and began writing in the wax.

“I decided to wander around inside until he was gone,” the boy continued. “Then I saw Lady Lucianna and I thought she looked sad. I was worried that she had been crying again and I knew that would make Siri unhappy, so I decided to try to think of something to cheer her up and I followed her. But then she let herself into your chamber. I thought maybe you were in there and she was going to make up with you and then Siri would be happy again, so I came out here to leave you alone. But you were at dinner instead.” He glanced up to catch Sir Balduin’s surprise. “You have gravy on your tunic.”

Sir Balduin brushed at the stain, thankful it had dried too much to smear.

Perrin held up the tablet to Sir Balduin. “Does that look right?”

“A-U-D-I-E-N-S—”Sir Balduin sounded out the letters. “Ah-oo-dee-ehns . . . Bah, lad, how should I know? I do not read Latin. What is it supposed to say?”

“Audiens, sapiens sapientior erit.” The strange words rolled effortlessly off the boy’s tongue, bearing no resemblance to Sir Balduin’s attempted pronunciation. “‘By listening, the wise will become wiser.’ Or something like that. Father Michel says it comes from the Bible. I think he made me write it because I said geography was dull.”

“Has Lady Siri taught you any Italian?” Sir Balduin asked, curious.

“Oh, si. It is not that different from French, really. ‘Listen’ is ascolatare—well, I suppose that is different from how we say it. But ‘wise’ is nearly the same. Look.” He rubbed out his Latin lines and wrote saggio next to the French sage.”

It seemed simple when Sir Balduin saw the words side by side like that. “But they are not all so easy,” he protested. “You admitted that ‘listen’ is different.”

“That’s true.” Perrin wrote ascolatare next to the familiar écouter. “Is that why you called Lady Lucianna fat? Because you mixed it up with something else? Siri hasn’t taught me how to say fat yet.”

Sir Balduin grunted. He wished heartily that Lucianna had never tried to teach him a single Italian syllable. And then he remembered what they had been discussing before Perrin had distracted him with Latin.

“You are certain you saw her near my chamber?”

“I saw her open the door and go in.” Sir Balduin was fairly certain the boy was not supposed to use his sleeve to rub out the Italian and French he had scratched into the wax.

Perrin had surely been mistaken. Lucianna clung far too fast to propriety to enter a man’s chambers. Heaven knew she had guarded Siri with the ferociousness of a lioness her cub when they had first come to Vere—although Sir Balduin knew his own attempts to woo Lucianna had allowed Siri to elude her guardian’s stern eye sufficiently often for her to win Triston’s heart. Sir Balduin still treasured a particularly satisfying memory of a moonlit night in this garden after a banquet Siri had held for their neighbors, an enchanted night that had melted Lucianna unexpectedly into his arms for the first time and warmed her lips like lucisous honey beneath his mouth.

He glanced up at the sun, wondering how long it had been since Perrin saw Lucianna at his door. A pity Sir Balduin had not known. He might have intercepted her. Now it was too late. Or was it? He slapped his hands against his knees. She had come to his door for a reason. Even if it had been an ominous one, to rebuke him for his lamentable song yesterday, he would have rejoiced just to gaze into her lovely, wrathful face. And if there had been some slim, unlikely chance that she had come to “make up with him,” as Perrin had speculated—Oh, that would be impossible. And yet the infinitesimal hope launched Sir Balduin again to his feet.

Perrin looked up. “Are you going to find her?”

Sir Balduin nodded. “Thank you, Perrin. Dinner has been over for some time now, so don’t linger in the garden much longer. Father Michel will be expecting you back at your lessons.”

“Bah,” the boy said, but added, “very well.”

Sir Balduin strode to the garden’s gate, but as he swung it open, Perrin’s voice sailed after him, “Don’t forget to kiss her!”

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Sir Balduin passed Siri and Serafino on the stairs. Serafino appeared to be trying to charm her with one of his angelic smiles and some words that flowed from his lips in those same enchanting accents that Lucianna spoke in, an accent that disappeared in Siri’s voice when she spoke French. The Italian lilt in Serafino’s voice made Sir Balduin’s heart trip excitedly for the encounter he prayed lay ahead for him. Siri was listening to Serafino with a tapping toe that hinted of impatience which she only checked when Sir Balduin paused to briefly greet them.

Sir Balduin excused his failure to linger politely. “Forgive me, but I soiled my tunic/surcote at dinner. I am off to change.”

He heard the bright cheerfulness in his voice and tried to rebuke himself as he swept on up the stairs. He ought not to allow his hopes to soar. But while Lucianna might rebuke him roundly to his face at the moment of his offense, she was not a vindictive wench, as he had observed some poor men possessed. Upon reflection, he knew she would not have come seeking him in his own chamber merely to rub salt into his wounds. Something else had brought her there. Even if it had only been a desire to cry truce, that would indicate a degree of softening that perhaps—just perhaps he could reignite into something more fervent.(?)

He heard Siri’s voice chime rather sharply behind him and wondered what Serafino might have said to provoke her, but Sir Balduin was too eager in his quest to pay any heed to the words of their exchange. He could not seek Lucianna out with gravy on his surcote. He would change it for the blue one that she had once remarked brought out a hint of that shade in his gray eyes. And that girdle she had embroidered for him with the golden acorns, the symbol of his house which he had long ago abandoned in service to Triston’s family—he would wear that, too. The symbol had suddenly become dear to him again on the day he had asked Lucianna to be his wife. As he had let out his anxiously suspended breath at her blushing assent, the obscure future he had grown to envision for himself suddenly took on vibrant meaning at his anticipation of sharing his life with her. He had intended to ask her to embroider a pair of twin girdles, interweaving the acorn with her own symbol of the grapevine for them to wear together upon their wedding day.

The acorn—strength, independence and antiquity. The grapevine—strength and lasting friendship. Lasting love. At their age, that should have been easy to achieve. But instead, they had quarreled—no, he would not say foolishly. That would be to disrespect her feelings, as baffling as most of her complaints remained to him. But he supposed if women were not so utterly bewildering, they would not be so wonderfully intriguing.

Sir Balduin reached his door and pushed it open. He froze for a moment on viewing the disarray he had left his chamber in. He had tumbled his clothes out of their chests, lest his ring had somehow fallen inside one of them. Garments lay everywhere, strewn across the floor, tossed across the bed. He had scattered his shoes and boots, his belts and girdles, what little other jewelry he owned, mostly items of brass, a few of glass, some of brightly colored wooden beads. The broken chess piece lay just inside the threshold where he had flung it from beneath the bed in frustration. He groaned silently. Had his blue surcote, wherever it was, lain long enough in a heap to set creases in the cloth beyond the power of his hand to smooth out? What if it was covered with piles of lint he had dragged out from under the bed with him? Lucianna admired cleanliness and neatness, two virtues he had spent a great deal of time cultivating since the day she had arrived at Vere Castle.

Then a movement caught the corner of his eye at the same instant a small, gasping squeal struck his ear. He turned his head and met an emerald gaze more lustrous than any jewel he might have misplaced. Lucianna? In his chamber? What was she doing here?

The question blinked out as he realized he did not give two snaps for the answer. She had come looking for him and he was not about to let her leave before he had made it blazingly clear to her what she meant to him. Perrin’s words rang in his ears, and drove him across the floor, heedless of the tunics and hose and surcotes his feet crushed to reach her. He pulled away the hand that had flown over her mouth, dragged her into his arms, and kissed her.

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