Alinor Read Free Page B

me."
    Alinor opened her mouth, shut it firmly for a moment, and then said, "Oh, go to sleep! If you do not, I will be at you, and you are too tired now to be of the least help to me."
    "Alinor—" He reached for her hand.
    "No, Ian. Let me be. Let me go."
    He watched her run from the room and, after staring some time at the empty doorway, lay down again. The task he had set himself grew harder and harder. Somehow he had expected Alinor to be less affected, more like Adam. He had never known her to carry a burden of woe for long. Even when she lost children— You fool, he told himself, she would not make a parade of her grief for you. There was Simon to comfort her.
    "It is too soon," he muttered, but there was no way around that part of the problem.
    Although Ian had craved leave to attend Simon's funeral, when that had been refused he had not, as he implied to Alinor, come as soon as he could. In fact, he had delayed as long as he thought it safe, until the terms of the truce between John and Philip were fixed and it was apparent that the king intended to sign and return to England. Simon had told Ian, not long before he died, that King John had some long-standing grudge against Alinor, which for Alinor's sake he could not explain further. The years of John's reign had been too troubled, even from the first, to permit him to vent his spite on so powerful a vassal as Simon, but now Simon was dead. Until now, the king had had more important things to think about, but if he returned to England and someone drew Alinor's defenseless state to his attention, he would work off that grudge in the most vicious way. John never forgot a grudge, and he was a vicious man.
    One could not kill a woman outright or challenge her to mortal combat with a proven champion, but imprisonment and death by starvation was one of John's favorite methods of dealing with helpless prey. Ian would not give a pin for Adam's life either, and Joanna would be sold to the highest and vilest bidder, probably after the king had used her himself.
    Ian groaned softly. It was hell to serve such a man, yet his faith was given. Even if he had been willing to besmirch his honor by violating his oath of fealty—and John had driven many otherwise honorable men to that pass—who else was there? Arthur of Brittany was dead. John had disposed of him, some said with his own hands. Alinor of Brittany, Arthur's sister, was kept tighter in the king's hand than his own wife, and in any case she was not like her grandmother, not a woman men would obey. The male line of Plantagenets was finished, unless John's wife bore a son. There was no one else except French Philip and his son Louis. Ian sighed. Not again. Not ever again a king who loved France better than England. There had been enough of that in Richard's day. Whatever John was as a man, he was king of England and his interest lay first with that realm.
    There was no one else and Ian could not rebel, but he could keep Simon's wife and Simon's children safe from John's vengeance. He started to turn onto his back, and hissed softly with pain. Alinor was right. The sores troubled him so little now that he had forgotten them. Alinor— Would she hate him when he told her what he had planned and had arranged? That would be unendurable, yet he must endure it for Simon's sake.
    Simon was not Ian's father in the flesh, but in a more essential way he was the author of his being. Ian could remember his real father only dimly, and even that was too much. Simon had saved him from the hell of that dimly remembered existence, had taught him honor and pride and gentleness. It was a debt that could never be repaid, until now.
    If only debt and desire were not so intermingled. Ian's trouble was that he wanted Alinor for herself. He had worshiped her from the day he had first seen her, almost 20 years ago, kneeling in the road to greet King Richard's mother. But one could not worship Alinor for long. She was far too real, far too much of