Knights (3 page)

Edward caught up just as she was urging the pony through the narrow passage.

“Blast it,” he fumed, “this gate should have been sealed
years
ago. Suppose our enemies were to learn of it!” ’

“They would surely pass through,” Gloriana said, in a tone full of dark and dire portent, “and skewer us all with their swords!” Leaving Edward to close the postern, she crossed the overgrown garden where she had played so happily as a little girl, when she and Edwenna were down from London Town, and hurried through the village proper. As she mounted the drawbridge, the first of Kenbrook’s men were arriving at the inn, abandoning their horses in the dooryard and brawling among themselves as they made for that establishment, where passable wine and ale could be had.

“No control over his own men,” grumbled Edward, who had caught up with Gloriana by then. “That’s Dane for you.”

Intent on a bath and fresh clothing, Gloriana ignored the comment and galloped past smiling guards into the third and outermost bailey. At last, at last, Kenbrook was home. Gloriana, now twenty, had begun to fear, secretly of course, that she would be too old to bear children by the time her husband returned from his travels. She’d had nightmares in which she was a shriveled crone, grown over with warts like a garden taken by weeds, when Dane St. Gregory finally came back to England to claim his bride.

Her heart hammering with a mingling of panic and glorious anticipation, Gloriana crossed the middle and innermost baileys and was off her horse and running
toward a side entrance to Hadleigh Castle in almost the same motion. She streaked across the great hall—the stone floor was bare of rushes and servants were sweeping and scrubbing—and along the broad passage leading to her private quarters, a sumptuous apartment that had once belonged to Lady Elaina, the absent mistress of the household.

Along the way, Gloriana collided with Gareth, her elder brother-in-law and master of Hadleigh Castle, for his private chambers lay in that direction. He laughed and grasped her upper arms to steady her.

“Does the devil pursue you?” he teased. “You flee as if he does.”

“Dane has come back!” Gloriana sputtered. Beyond, Edward could be heard, bursting into the great hall. There was a clatter, and one of the servants berated him good-naturedly for overturning her scrubbing pail. “I can’t let Lord Kenbrook see me like this!”

Gareth’s blue eyes twinkled. He resembled Dane in some ways, even though he was almost twenty years older and neither so tall nor so broad in the shoulders, and his hair, while thick and fair, had darkened to a butternut color. “Dane has come home at last? A surfeit of good news. No doubt my brother is hungry for the sight of his bride—as well he should be after so much time has passed. My guess is, he will not care overmuch if said wife looks rather more like a wood nymph than a baroness.”

Gloriana pulled free of Gareth’s grasp, with a murmured and quite incoherent apology, and fled down the passage and into her own apartments. There, she flung herself into the process of hasty transformation.

* * *

In the courtyard of Hadleigh Castle, Dane dismounted and then helped Mariette down from her horse. His hands nearly spanned her waist, and it seemed that she weighed no more than the goose he’d bought at Christmas as a gift for his men. For a moment it troubled him that she was so small; even stout women ofttimes perished while giving birth to a child; the last Lady Hadleigh had died whilst bearing Edward. What chance had a creature as fragile as Mariette, when St. Gregory sons were known for their great size?

It seemed, just briefly, that a cloud passed over the sun, blotting out its light.

Dane spoke to Fabrienne, in French, but his gaze still rested upon Mariette’s face, with its translucent, milk-white flesh and delicate bones. “Take your mistress inside,” he said. “There, the servants will do your bidding.’”

Fabrienne, despite her lovely name, was a plain and halting creature, with pale, lashless eyes, protruding teeth, and hair the color of a mouse’s pelt. Nevertheless, she was obedient and uncomplaining—for the moment, at least.

“Yes, my lord,” she replied, with a slight curtsy. Then she took Mariette’s arm and squired her carefully up the stone steps that led to the gallery. Beyond was the great hall.

Lingering in the courtyard, Dane watched the women out of sight, absorbed in thought.

Maxen, still mounted on his squat Welsh pony as he bent to claim the reins of Dane’s prized stallion, interrupted. “I do not envy you, my friend,” he said. “To put aside a wife for the love of another is an undertaking fraught with danger.”

Dane scowled at Maxen, the only man on earth he
would have trusted so unhesitatingly with his temperamental horse. “What,” he asked, “makes an ugly knave like yourself an authority on the fair and fragile sex?”

Maxen countered Dane’s expression with a placid smile. “Experience,” he answered, reining his mount toward the second bailey, where the stables were. “I’ll see that the stallion is fed and groomed. If you want sympathy later, or balm for scratches and tooth marks, look for me in the tavern.”

“Scratches and tooth marks, indeed,” Dane muttered, turning his back on the Welshman and starting, with resolve and a certain well-concealed trepidation, for the stone steps. Gloriana would be
happy
to be set at liberty, he promised himself. She was twenty by now, and well past her prime. Such women often welcomed the peace and solace of the convent, where they might read and sew and reflect upon seemly subjects, untroubled by the attentions of a husband.

The great hall was in a state of chaos—the floor had been cleared of rushes and swept. All around, servants knelt, scouring the ancient stone as though to rid it of some deep-settled stain. Clearly, a celebration was planned, but Dane knew he was not to be the guest of honor—he had not announced his return to Hadleigh Castle, having made the decision to come home in some haste.

A youthful, arrogant voice echoed from the musicians’ gallery, high overhead, causing Dane to pause in mid-stride and look up.

“And so the hero has at last bestowed himself upon us. Pray—will you tarry?”

Resting his hands on his hips, Dane assessed the speaker, a lad of tender years, and recognized Edward by his resemblance to their lost mother. The boy had
been a small lad when Dane had seen him last, eager to take up the duties of a squire and forever underfoot. Letting the first comment pass, he addressed his reply to the question. “Yes,” he said, “I mean to restore Kenbrook Hall and live there.”

Even from that distance, the flush that suffused Edward’s patrician features was clearly visible. “With your wife.”

“Yes,” Dane said. He would ignore his young brother’s disdain; boys of that age had contentious humors in their blood and were ofttimes testy and sullen.

“And this mistress you’ve brought home from the Continent? Where shall she be kept?”

Dane did not reveal his irritation, which was instant and intense. He was damned if he would explain his personal affairs to a stripling calling out impudent questions from a minstrel’s perch. “Go and have a swim in the lake, Edward,” he counseled evenly. “Perhaps the waters will cool your overheated disposition.” With that, Kenbrook dismissed the boy and started for the stairs. Fatigue had settled deep into his bones, like an aching chill, and he required strong ale, food, and an hour of solitude.

Edward said nothing, but by the time Dane had gained the second floor and found his way to his own chambers, the boy was waiting in the passageway, leaning against a wall.

Dane hid a smile and reached for the latch. So, he was tenacious, as well as swift, this young brother of his. That was surely a good omen. “What is it?” Dane inquired, as smoothly as if they had not had an exchange only moments before.

Fresh color surged into Edward’s face, and his expression was sulky as he thrust himself away from the
wall. He still had a few spots on his face, the marks of tempestuous youth, but he was altogether a finelooking, stalwart lad, and though willful, he would no doubt make a good soldier. “I will not permit you to humiliate Gloriana this way,” he said, after an audible swallow. “She deserves only good things.”

“Yes,” he said. Dane had no doubt that his erstwhile wife deserved better than him, though whether the improvement would come through entering a convent or taking another husband remained to be seen. Personally, he thought the nunnery an excellent choice.

He pushed the towering door open, and the smells of mice and mildew filled his nose. As he stepped over the threshold, Edward was directly on his heels.

The place was dank and swathed in a musty net of shadows and cobwebs. Evidently, he thought, with a rueful half-smile, his esteemed elder brother, Gareth, had not expected him to return to Hadleigh Castle at all.

“She’s been waiting for you, Gloriana has,” Edward babbled on, and Dane was glad of the gloom in that vast chamber, for it allowed him time to absorb the implications of what his brother was saying without revealing his reactions. Dane had not been expecting to hear that his wife had looked forward to his arrival—she’d been a mere infant when they were bound to each other and probably didn’t even remember him.

He wrenched down one of the tattered tapestries that had been draped over the windows, then another. “Nonsense,” he said, as welcome light and fresh air streamed into the room. Flecks of dust sparkled in the great shafts of sunshine. “My ’wife’ has not laid eyes on me more than once or twice in all her days, and that from a distance. God’s teeth, will you look at my
bed? It appears to have been a nest for every rat in the realm.”

Edward had calmed down a bit, but anger still emanated from him like heat from a brazier. He’d hoisted himself onto the broad sill of one of the windows, his knees drawn up. “I will spare you the obvious retort,” the boy said.

“Thank you,” Dane replied, yanking down the last of the tapestries. “I suppose it would be a waste of my time to ask you to go and fetch a handful of servants to put this place to rights?”

Surprisingly. Edward levered himself down from the sill, making a royal ceremony of dusting off his leggings and tunic. “Not at all,” he answered. “I shall be happy to take my leave of you, my lord.” Green and tender stalk though he was, he crossed the room with the dignity of a much older man, and then he paused in the doorway. “Be gentle in your dealings with Gloriana,” he warned in parting. “You are my brother, blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh, but if you do milady injury of any sort, I shall see you dead for it.”

With that, Edward went out.

Dane stood in the center of that time-ravaged room, staring after Edward. He was not afraid of his younger brother or any other mortal soul, and he certainly intended to deal kindly and justly with the current Lady Kenbrook, but he had been forced to take note of something important. Edward was not the boy he remembered, but a man, and one to be reckoned with.

He smiled, then crossed the room to his bed, pulled off the feather ticking, no doubt infested with fleas as well as mice, and flung it aside. Exhausted, he stretched out on the rope netting beneath and sank
into the brief and vigilant but profound sleep of a soldier.

There was a tiny courtyard off Gloriana’s chamber, with an arbor of yellow roses on one side and a stone bench on the other. By her order—and she did feel a little guilty, since the servants were so frightfully busy—her tub was carried outside and set beneath the canopy of flowers. Warm water was brought, and Gloriana herself added lavender before shedding her clothes and stepping into the bath.

As she soaked, dreaming of her reunion with her husband, a breeze caressed the courtyard and a rainfall of golden petals descended in a scented cloud. They covered the surface of the water, like a blanket of gossamer velvet, and Gloriana told herself this was a good omen, a blessing from the Fates. This night, she would go to Kenbrook’s chambers as his wife, and he would find her pleasing.

Gloriana dozed despite her excitement, lulled by the buzzing of the bees and the comforting clamor of daily life at Hadleigh Castle, a mingling of many sounds—birds chirping, horses neighing, shouts and the clanking of swords as the men-at-arms practiced their art, servants going about their business and calling out to each other.

The water was cold when Gloriana awakened; perhaps that was why her senses were instantly and acutely attuned, rather than languorous from what must have been a long nap. She knew almost before opening her eyes that she was not alone in thecourtyard.

He was sitting on the stone bench, watching her, his broad shoulders slightly stooped, his hands loosely clasped and dangling between his knees. His fair hair
gleamed in the changing light, and his eyes, troubled, were a fierce Nordic blue. They were, she thought as something sharp and warm pierced her heart, the eyes of a Viking.

“My lord,” she said shyly, with an inclination of her head. Her hair was wet through, clammy against her cheeks and her neck.

She swallowed hard. Over the years of their marriage, she had rehearsed this meeting a hundred times, nay a thousand, but now, when it mattered, all the pretty words had fled. In her imaginings, Kenbrook had been the grandest of men, full of valor, handsome beyond bearing, strong as the proud warhorse he managed so easily. And her imaginings paled before the vital reality of the man himself.

The girlish adulation she had always felt for him was quite real, however, and now it had doubled and redoubled just since she had opened her eyes and found him there, watching her.

“You are Gloriana?” he asked, almost as if he hoped she would say she was someone else. His voice sounded hoarse, and he looked quite stunned, perhaps even feverish as he studied her,

“Yes, my lord,” she said meekly.

“We must talk.” There was no anger in the way he spoke, but she sensed reluctance in him and a sort of troubled resolution. Lord Kenbrook cleared his throat. “Not while you are in a state of near nakedness, of course.”

Gloriana flushed with a combination of indignation and despair. Some men, she thought, would be pleased to come upon their wives in such a condition. No doubt he found her wanting, and it was unfair of him to judge her so swiftly. He had not seen her dressed in green, after all, with her hair brushed and braided
through with ribbon. “We did not expect you, my lord,” she said moderately. “If you had written, or sent a courier, preparations might have been made.”