Dark Deceptions: A Regency and Medieval Collection of Dark Romances(126)

Keller was listening to her story with interest. More than that, he was particularly interested in her honeyed voice. She had a delicate timber with a slight lisp, which he found charming. He was quickly coming to realize that he liked to hear her speak in gentle dulcet tones. He’d known it from the beginning but now it was coming to have more impact. The walls he had built up around himself, or at least tried to, since the woman had lied about her injuries were inevitably crumbling. It was evident that he couldn’t maintain his indifference to her for long. There was something about her that softened him whether or not he wanted to.

“Then you do not call the castle Nether?” he asked. “What do you call it?”

Chrystobel shook her head. “We do indeed call it Nether Castle,” she said. “My grandfather called it by that name and so do we.”

Keller’s gaze was thoughtfully on his feet as they crossed the middle of the muddy bailey. “Nether means far away or well behind,” he said, glancing up to the tall, imposing walls that enclosed them. “This place is indeed far removed from most civilization. I understand why the Normans who first came to Wales gave it that name.”

Chrystobel glanced up at him, seeing that the man was still looking thoughtfully at his feet. She couldn’t tell if his cold mood was easing but she continued nonetheless. “When you arrived, you passed over a drawbridge that covers our moat,” she said, then cocked her head thoughtfully. “It is really more of a pit than a moat, and it bears the name the Gorge of the Dead because back when the castle was first built, bodies of enemies were tossed in it. They were left there to rot.”

Keller wriggled his eyebrows in an understanding gesture. “It makes perfect sense, then, to call it the Gorge of the Dead,” he said. “Go on.”

Chrystobel did. “You have already been in the keep, which has six big rooms to it,” she went on, pointing at the big, square structure looming in front of them. “There are three floors to it and two rooms to each floor. We also have three big towers, as I am sure you have noticed.”

Keller came to a halt and Chrystobel along with him. He paused to look at the three enormous towers that were built into the southeast, southwest, and northwest corners of the curtain wall. The towers were nearly as large as the keep itself, “D” shaped in structure, and built from the same dark-veined, gray stone that comprised the rest of the castle.

“These towers could be seen from miles away,” he said. “When we were approaching from the valley to the south, they were the first things we saw.”

Chrystobel nodded as she pointed to the southeast tower. “That is Tower Twilight,” she said. “It is houses the married soldiers and servants. The tower next to it, the southwest tower, is called Tower Night and it houses the armor and weapons. The northeast tower is Tower Day, and it houses our unmarried men or any visitors we may have. Your men will be housed there.”

Keller turned to look at her. “I have five hundred men with me and as big as that tower is, it will not be able to house all of them,” he said. “My knights will be rearranging the accommodations to suit us. I would assume your people have been told to cooperate.”

Chrystobel wasn’t so sure she liked that statement. It sounded as if the Welsh occupants were beneath the English who were here to take control. But the truth was that they were beneath the English. Nether belonged to them now, and everyone within her, including Chrystobel. She nodded in response to his statement.

“Aye, my lord,” she said. “They will be compliant.”

Keller’s eyes glittered at her in the weak moonlight. “Including you?”

“It is my duty to be compliant.”

“You were not earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I asked you who had left you bloodied. You lied to me.”

Chrystobel abruptly lowered her gaze, her manner suddenly nervous. She had been quite calm until Keller brought up the incident in her bower. Now, she didn’t know what to say. She had sincerely hoped that subject wouldn’t come up but Keller had cleverly introduced it into their conversation. Off-guard, his sly action both irritated and embarrassed her. She didn’t like being embarrassed.

“It is not polite to accuse a lady of lying,” she told him with more boldness than she had exhibited since their introduction. “A man of courtesy and tact would not question a lady’s answer in any fashion.”

Even as she said it, she cringed. It was an instinctive reaction, waiting for a hand to come flying out at her. That was what usually happened when she showed any amount of insolence, at least when Gryffyn was around. The flinching reaction was drilled into her brain, the result of too many slaps from a man who was full of them.

But Keller didn’t react as Gryffyn often did. In fact, he did exactly the opposite. He stared at her a moment as if surprised by her response before actually cracking a smile.

“I have never been a tactful man but I have been known to be a courteous one,” he said as he popped his knuckles in a fidgeting gesture. “I should not have called you a liar.”

“How would you have reacted had someone called you a liar?”

“Not very well, to be sure. You were far more gracious in the face of slander than I would have been.”

Chrystobel eyed him, curious at his change in manner, especially the knuckle-popping. Suddenly, he didn’t look like the cold, imposing English knight. Now, there was a measure of humanity to him, a real man with human ticks. His guard, somehow, had gone down with the course of the conversation and it was an unexpected twist. Her gaze lingered on him.