Page 232 of Historical Hotties
There was information that she was as elusive with the king as she was with her own uncle. Caledonia had always been something of a free spirit, even a wanderer, who wasn’t content to remain at home. There was news that she was spending a good deal of her time in the taverns and gambling dens of London. A serving wench at a tavern on the eastern side of London had even told him that the lady was a devoted visitor to the most notorious guild in all of London, Gomorrah.
Rotri didn’t find that hard to believe.
He knew a little something about his niece. He knew that she had virtually been ignored as a child because her father and mother focused all of their attention on her older brother. Constantine de Wylde had been a stellar young man who received the finest education available. By all accounts, he was of good character and would have made an excellent earl, but an ailment that settled in his lungs one winter destroyed all of that and he died before he’d had a chance to fulfill his destiny. The loss had devastated his parents and both of them had passed away within a year of their son’s death. That left their sole surviving child as the heiress to the great Tamworth empire.
The daughter that was an afterthought.
Caledonia had been formally educated and followed the path that all noble young women follow in their life. She had been taught to dance, to paint, to speak more than one language, andeverything else that a fine young lady should know. But everyone knew that Caledonia de Wylde lived up to her name because she had a wild streak in her that no one could seem to tame. Not the nuns who tutored her nor the fine households where she fostered. Caledonia was bright and beautiful, but as wild as an untamed stallion. She’d always had a penchant for parties and doing any number of things that well-bred young women simply did not do. Her father, a strict and humorless man, had married her at a very early age to Robert de Tosni, hoping that her much older husband would be able to tame that wild streak.
Robert tried at first, but soon lost interest.
The Earl of Tamworth had been a good man, at least in the beginning. He tried politeness and understanding with his young wife. But his patience wasn’t endless, and within the first couple of years of their marriage, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to control Caledonia, a woman full of life and vigor who liked to escape the castle to prowl the taverns in the surrounding villages. He’d caught her gambling with his soldiers more than once, but the final straw was after the birth of their eldest daughter when she went into town, not even a week after the birth, to celebrate at one of the taverns without him.
After that, Robert decided that she was not to be trusted. The young woman who had been ignored all of her young life went back to being ignored by her husband. They had two more daughters, which was a miracle in itself because Caledonia didn’t particularly like to be bedded by her older husband, but he very much wanted a son and, surprisingly, she knew it was her duty to produce one. Additionally, childbirth had proven very easy for her. But two more daughters came, and no sons, and Robert was at his wits’ end.
His final stroke was perhaps the cruelest.
Robert employed his former nurse as a caretaker for his own children, and the woman had final say on how his daughterswere raised. Not even their own mother had any control. Everything was given over to Madam Madonna and Caledonia was pushed out from the lives of her own children by that woman, whom Robert fully supported. He had told Caledonia once that he would rather have his daughters raised by a nun than by a wild hare of a mother. Rather than fight with him about it, Caledonia returned to her taverns and her gambling dens while her daughters were raised by a strict and loveless woman.
Aye, Rotri knew all of this because in order to gain a papal dispensation, he’d had to investigate every aspect of his niece’s life. Most of the information had come from her father before he died, while some of it was just rumor. Still, the Bishop of Oxford told him that if he could produce proof that Caledonia was reckless and sacrilegious, it might be possible for such a marriage on the grounds that the lady was incapable of managing her own affairs and therefore incapable of managing an entire earldom. Rotri had even forged a document from a servant who used to serve the Earl of Tamworth, a servant who had never existed, declaring that Lady Tamworth was irresponsible and godless, so irresponsible that her own husband charged the raising of their children to someone else.
Now, all Rotri had to do was gain an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury and produce his forged document. He had been waiting for almost four months for the opportunity and, quite frankly, was becoming impatient. As he stood at the window in the small solar of his apartment, gazing over the smoke-hazed skyline of London, he began to think that perhaps he needed to simply appear at the archbishop’s door every single morning until the man finally agreed to see him. He was growing weary of waiting because he knew Henry wasn’t waiting.
And that was what he was hoping for right now.
News about Henry.
Domnall, his son, had been trying to infiltrate the servants at Westminster Palace. Rotri was cunning, but Domnall was clever with a conscience. That meant he didn’t exactly agree with his father’s methods sometimes, but he was convinced that he deserved to be the next Earl of Tamworth because he carried the same noble blood that Caledonia did. Their fathers were brothers, after all. The only difference was that his mother was from a minor noble family, no one of note, and the only reason his father had married her was because they had met at a feast and he managed to compromise her during a tryst in the darkness. What Rotri thought would be a simple conquest of a daughter of an unremarkable family turned into an unexpected pregnancy, and he was forced to marry her.
Domnall was the result.
Even now, his son was over at Westminster because he was convinced there would be a breakthrough today. He’d had it on good authority that a servant he’d been paying well for the past several weeks was about to come forth with information because Henry had several nobles in town and there was to be a great meeting. Great meetings usually covered a variety of subjects and it was possible that Lady de Tosni and her rudderless earldom might be one of them. The same servant had mentioned that Henry had spoken of Lady de Tosni before, with frustration because she seemed to be good at eluding him. The hope was that she would be discussed again. If she was, Rotri needed to know about it.
So he waited.
It was nearing the nooning hour when he finally heard the door to the apartment open. He heard voices, including those of his son, as the young man removed his cloak and handed it off to a hovering servant. Footsteps approached the small solar where Rotri was pretending to wait casually when the truth was that he was on pins and needles. When Domnall’s bushy red head finallycame through the door, it was all Rotri could do not to run at the man.
“Well?” he demanded. “Is there any news?”
So much for being composed. His anxiety was written all over him. Domnall cast his father a long glance on his way to a wooden pitcher of wine. He didn’t bother with a cup, but rather drank it straight from the neck. Some trickled down his chin, leaving a purple streak, before he finally lowered the pitcher and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Plenty,” Domnall said, struggling to catch his breath. “The servant I met at the marketplace those months ago serves in the halls of Westminster. You remember the one? One of our own servants knew him and knew he served at the palace. He serves the king personally. The man has cost me a fortune but today, it has finally come to fruition.”
Rotri’s eyes widened in anticipation. “What has happened?”
Domnall sighed heavily, wiping at his mouth again. “Callie has been found.”
Rotri had expected more than that. “I see,” he said impatiently. “So she has been found. We know she is in London. She has been residing at the Tamworth townhome, so that is not news. Why do you think I am in London? When Canterbury agrees to seek a papal dispensation, we know where she is and we will immediately collect her and force her to remain here, with us, until the dispensation is received. Canterbury will support this action.”
Domnall cocked an eyebrow. “Will he?” he said. “Papa, you know I want Tamworth more than you do, but holding Callie hostage until we receive word from the pope… She will not be a submissive hostage. You know that.”
Rotri waved him off. “We’ll chain her to the wall if we have to,” he said. “What else have you discovered?”
“That she is to be married to Thor de Reyne.”
That brought a big reaction from Rotri. “What?” he gasped, eyes wide. “Henry has found her a husband?”
“Aye.”
