Page 231 of Historical Hotties
… or was it?
She wasn’t going down without a fight.
She wasn’t ready for this!
“May… may I be excused?” she asked, feeling an overwhelming need to break free of the oppressive atmosphere, one that was forcing her into something she wasn’t ready to be forced into. “I should like to find the garderobe.”
Thor looked at Henry, who shrugged and moved away, leaving the decision to Thor. Being a polite man and always willing to agree to a lady’s polite request, he nodded and silently indicated for her to follow him. Caledonia stood up, following him through a smaller door and into a corridor.
As soon as they entered the long, dim walkway, she could smell the garderobe even though the servants had tried to mask the smell with vinegar. There was no way to mask a smell of that magnitude. Thor took her down the corridor, made a turn, and then went all the way to the end. The garderobe was little more than a small chamber with three open holes carved into stone seats set into the wall. There was a curtain for privacy from the corridor outside, but that was all. Most people attending the garderobe would have had their servants stand in the doorway to keep others away, but she had no servants. Only that damn curtain. When she stepped in, Thor thankfully closed the curtain and moved away from the opening to give her some privacy to do her business. But the question was whether or not he’d moved far enough away for her to do what she must do.
She didn’t want him to hear her.
Because they were on the ground level, the windows that allowed light and ventilation into the garderobe were high on the wall behind the stone seats. All Caledonia had to do was stand on the seats to gain access to the window. It was simply a matterof pulling herself through and leaping to the opening. Down below, she could see the sewage canal that ran to the Thames, which was right next to the palace. She knew exactly where she was and, with little effort, leapt through the window and into the small area below.
Once her feet hit the ground, she began to run.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was anapartment near Aldgate, adjacent to St. Botolph, comprising of the entire top floor of a three-storied manor home that had once belonged to the Earl of Lincoln. The family lost the home to a debt they’d owed to the church, who turned around and sold it to a man from Paris who broke it up into apartments and sold each one for a princely sum.
Rotri de Wylde, Baron Dordon, had been given the apartment by his brother. His older brother, Rhun, had inherited everything else, including the castles and the title and the vast army, but Rotri had come away with a small garrison castle, Dordon, and a dingy little apartment in London because his brother hadn’t wanted it. At least that was what Rotri believed, even though his brother had insisted he simply wanted Rotri to have something that belonged to him.
But Rotri deserved so much more.
In his opinion, anyway.
He was an ambitious man, an intelligent man, and one that believed himself to be an astute political player even though the past several years had seen him support Simon de Montfort, who had been defeated in the battle for the English throne. Rotri tried to make himself indispensable to Simon, more loyal thanany of his other followers, but Simon seemed to think that Rotri wasn’t a man of integrity. He seemed to think that all he was working toward were the rewards that could be given to him by a new king. Simon had even gone so far as to voice that concern, but Rotri had denied it vehemently. He only wanted to serve, he’d said, and he tried to make it sound as if he would be loyal no matter what the cost.
No matter if he never received any reward for his loyalty.
Rotri thought he’d been convincing enough, but Simon didn’t seem to think so and Rotri never received any gifts from Simon. Once de Montfort had been killed, Rotri knew that was the end. He would still have his small outpost castle at Dordon and he would still have his dingy apartment in London, although the apartment wasn’t entirely dingy. It did have lovely, big windows that let in the light, but any fine furnishings had long been sold to keep Rotri and his son living in the manner to which they were accustomed.
The truth was that Rotri wasn’t completely destitute. In his barony, there were several villages that he collected taxes from. The land was good and the crops were usually abundant, so the money he received was a decent amount of coin. The unfortunate fact was that both Rotri and his son simply liked to spend money and live well. They spent it on fine wine or fine horses or even women. Rotri’s wife died long ago and Rotri hadn’t seen a need to remarry considering he already had an heir, but he very much wanted that heir to marry well.
That was where his niece came in.
That was exactly why he was in London.
His lovely, intelligent niece was the heiress to one of the wealthiest earldoms in all of England. The Tamworth earldom had made its money from mining coal and lead deposits because the entire area around Tamworth was full of valuable minerals. In addition to the ore, there were also great forests ofgood English oak on Tamworth lands, and the wood had been harvested for decades for furniture and other things.
More money coming in.
But that was simply for the last few generations. Before that, no one was quite sure where the earldom got its vast wealth—but there were rumors that a few ancestors were nothing short of pirates. Since the de Wylde ancestors were descendent from Mercian kings, some thought that those kings had plundered other kingdoms and stolen their wealth, so there were many theories as to how and why the Tamworth earldom had become so wealthy.
Wealth that one solitary woman controlled.
Rotri had never seen such a travesty in his life. A woman with that kind of money and that kind of control was an abomination. That was the argument that Rotri used to several bishops, princes of the church that he hoped would see his point. The Bishop of Nuneaton didn’t. The Bishop of Birmingham actually ordered him away. However, the Bishop of Oxford took him seriously enough to send him to London with a letter of introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but that meeting hadn’t happened yet.
And Rotri was going to remain in London until it did.
It never did any good to speak to the lesser priests, the ones who had no real power in this matter. Since his son and Lady de Tosni were first cousins, Rotri needed a papal dispensation for a marriage with bloodlines that were this close. The truth was that he was racing against the clock when it came to a marriage between his son and his niece because Rotri was a cunning man. He knew that his niece was a hot commodity, and he further knew that the king thought so as well.
Henry had entered into the situation shortly after Robert de Tosni died.
That was when Rotri realized he would be fighting an uphill battle. The king wanted Lady de Tosni, and Rotri had to know of the king’s plans so he could make his own. He wasn’t beyond paying for information and certainly wasn’t beyond paying for a few spies. There were always those close to men of power willing to divulge what they knew for a few coins, and Rotri had paid dearly for information from Westminster that told him Henry was trying to find Caledonia a strategic marriage.
But Caledonia, evidently, wasn’t so eager.
