Heart of the Flame (8 page)

"Little Gwen's mother passed away in childbed nigh on two years ago, leaving her husband to raise the girl on his own. He is a good man, and he tries his best, but Gwen needs a mother." Ariana glanced to Haven with a sage look in her eye. "And just as badly, Sir Thomas needs a wife."

"Why does he not take one, then?"

"He is endeavoring to do so, I think, but the silly girl doesn't know what he's about," Ariana divulged in a hushed voice. "She works in the kitchens--a quiet maid named Enid. Sir Thomas bargained hard for his post at the postern door, and though he would never admit as much, I knew 'twas all so he could be standing nearby as shy young Enid makes her thrice daily rounds from kitchen to keep."

Just then, ahead of them on the path, a slender woman came around the corner of the keep and began a mincing walk toward the kitchens. She kept her head low, the elongated sides of her linen mop cap all but hiding her face. Ariana put her hand out to still Haven on the path, her gaze meaningful as the girl approached.

"Why, Enid. Good day," she called brightly.

The maid glanced up at once, seeming startled to be noticed, let alone directly addressed. She froze and bobbed a quick curtsy. "Oh! Good morrow, milady. And...miss."

"This is Haven," Ariana said, making introductions as the maid meekly drew close. "She is staying with us for a while as our guest, mending from a wound she took some days ago."

Enid nodded and politely offered her greetings. "My lady."

"I am glad I found you, Enid," Ariana interjected, her tone light and casually well-meaning. "We just passed the loyal knight on watch at the postern door, and I couldn't help but notice that the poor man has not been relieved from his post for some hours."

The maid's cheeks went pink with a sudden shy blush. "Sir Thomas, milady?"

"Yes," Ariana said, smiling now. "That's right, Sir Thomas. With the sun so hot today, he must be parched for refreshment. Would you mind fetching him a cup of ale?"

"Aye, of course." She looked mortified at the prospect, but immediately began smoothing her plainspun skirts and patting at her floppy head covering. "Aye. I'll fetch it at once, milady."

When the girl had hastened away, Haven arched her brows at Ariana's crafty intervention. "You are wicked."

"I am," she readily agreed, laughing as she hooked her arm through Haven's and began strolling with her once more along the path. "But I have a notion about the two of them, and I wouldn't presume to meddle where I wasn't sure it would be helpful. Besides, I only want everyone to be as happily matched as I am with my husband."

It was not the first mention of her marriage that Lady Ariana had made in the time she and Haven had been getting to know one another. The mere thought of her husband seemed to light Ariana's features with an inner, luminescent glow. Her devotion was plain for anyone to see.

"Have you been long wed?" Haven asked, curious to know more about the man who had so captivated the heart of her new friend.

"Only a scant couple of months, though it seems we've been together always. Braedon and I were married at Clairmont soon after we brought Kenrick back from France this past February. He had run into some...trouble there."

Haven thought back to what Kenrick had told her the last time she had seen him, when he had come to her and informed her that he would not keep her against her will. He had admitted, much to her surprise, that he knew what it was like to be imprisoned.

"The trouble he encountered in France," Haven said. "Was that where he was held hostage?"

Ariana pivoted, nearly gaping. "You know about that?"

"Your brother told me he had once been a prisoner to a madman's torture. He said he spent half a year there."

"Yes," Ariana replied. The remembrance put a note of regret in her otherwise happy gaze. "He endured so much at the hand of Silas de Mortaine. Although he was beaten and tortured, my brother's scars are born on the inside. I doubt we will ever know the whole of it, for Kenrick keeps his feelings close. He is not one to open himself to others, or to admit his emotions. It has ever been the way with him, from the time he was a boy."

In some inexplicable way, Haven felt she understood what it was to conceal one's feelings. It seemed dangerous to her somehow, forbidden, in a manner she had not the words--or the memory--to explain.

She was less eager to admit that she might have anything in common with Kenrick of Clairmont. Nor did she expect he required a bit of sympathy or tender regard, least of all from her. If he shielded any part of himself from others, Haven guessed it was likely by his own design, for it seemed to her that the careful, remote knight did little without a calculated purpose behind it.

"Braedon helped me deliver my brother from his captors," Ariana was saying as they approached a bend in the path that led around the side of the large fortress, toward the front of the inner courtyard. "It turned out I was quite over my head, thinking that I could negotiate alone for Kenrick's release. I had no idea what I'd gotten involved in, only that my beloved brother--my one true hero in all the world--was in harm's way and I had to save him."

"'Twas brave of you to try."

Ariana dismissed the praise with a vague wave of her hand. "I can claim no such thing, merely that I was desperate to see Kenrick released. Braedon's courage is what truly saved him...and me as well. In order to rescue my brother, Braedon had to face Silas de Mortaine, and Draec le Nantres, a man who had been Braedon's friend until greed and his allegiance to de Mortaine persuaded him to betray that bond."

"What happened?"

"Before I knew him, Braedon made his living as a tracker for hire. He was called The Hunter, for that was what he did: retrieve outlaws or missing loved ones for a price. He was paid well, but it was not always the noblest of professions," Ariana confided. "Through his work, he ran across more than a few dangerous men--on both sides of the arrangement. One of those treacherous few turned out to be Silas de Mortaine."

They paused on the path, and Ariana lowered her voice as though reluctant to speak of the villain in anything more than a whisper.

"De Mortaine hired Braedon to locate and apprehend a thief who had stolen something of great value from him. Braedon completed the task, unaware that it was a trap. Silas de Mortaine intended to kill him from the start, a fact that was well known by one of Braedon's own men, Draec le Nantres. It ended in a ruthless slaughter. Braedon survived, barely, but he lost many of his friends that day. He never went back to the life he once knew." Ariana's expression was grave as she held Haven's unblinking gaze. "These same men later took Kenrick prisoner. And they are also responsible for the raid you alone survived at Greycliff."

"Faith," Haven breathed, a shiver of black dread worming its way up her spine as her own murky recollection mingled with the horror Ariana had just described.

"I'm sorry, Haven. I hope I haven't upset you in telling you all of this."

"Nay. You haven't upset me," she replied. "These are things I need to know if I am to remember what I have lost to my fever."

"We are here to help you in any way we can." Ariana laid her hand atop Haven's in a gentle show of friendship. "But we need your help as well."

Haven nodded, accepting the kind gesture with a smile. She wanted to ask more questions, despite her fear of the answers, but a sound from the bailey drew Ariana's attention. There was the grating sound of clashing steel, then the mingled hoot of men's voices going up from an apparent gathered crowd.

"What is this about?" Ariana mused, frowning in curious speculation. Another metallic crash sounded, followed by a collective gasp of interest and awe. "Come, Haven. It sounds like Braedon is training the guards this morn. Let's go and have a look. I'll introduce you to my lord husband."

She led Haven around the side of the tower keep, to the inner bailey where a large group of knights had assembled. It quickly became apparent that the training involved only two men, the pair of them sparring in the center of the gathering. Above the heads and shoulders of the more than two-score spectating guards, Haven caught the occasional flash of sun-kissed steel and the good-natured goading of the pair of opponents as their blades struck and grated in mock battle in the yard.

"This is an unusual event," Ariana remarked with a look of surprise. "That's my brother's voice I hear."

Haven had already concluded the same, her ear immediately discerning Kenrick's deep, rolling timbre from the rest of the shouts and murmurs of the other men. She walked with Ariana toward the center of the yard, weaving her way through the circle of men in armor who parted slightly to permit the ladies a better look.

Haven's gaze rooted at once on the sight of Clairmont's golden lord, sparring before the crowd of gathered knights and castle folk. Like his opponent, he wore only breeches and boots, his tunic having evidently been stripped off earlier and now held for him by one of the attending squires. Bare-chested, his bronzed skin gleaming under the brilliant rays of the noonday sun, Kenrick was a fascinating vision of flawless masculine form and disciplined athletic strength.

Haven stared in silent awe at the concert of well-honed muscles that bulged and stretched as he raised his sword above his head, then swung it in a practiced arc toward his opponent. The strike was met with like agility from the man who sparred with Kenrick, a tall, dark-haired warrior who himself seemed built of steel and unerring, deadly skill.

The blades clashed together and held, grating force against force, neither man eager to give quarter, even in mock combat. The dark knight grinned through the spiky hanks of his raven hair that drooped into his face as he pressed against Kenrick's blow.

"I thought you said you were out of practice, brother."

Kenrick's answering chuckle held not so much as a trace of fatigue.

"I am," he replied, but then he flicked his wrist and lunged forward with his blade, putting the other man immediately on the defense of another well-placed thrust.

The raven-haired knight parried the blow and came around again, relentless. This time Kenrick deflected the oncoming blade, drawing a startled gasp from a trio of young maids who had since joined the crowd of spectators. The girls tittered behind their hands to one another, three pairs of eyes fixed on the skirmish in unabashed interest.

Haven suddenly felt no better than the fawning girls, for when Kenrick glanced over and saw her standing there with Ariana, she warmed with the onslaught of an instant, feverish blush. She quickly looked down, feigning interest in the patch of sparse grass at her feet.

"Shall we call a draw?" she heard him say to his opponent.

"Very well. If you wish a draw, brother, then call it."

"Nay, my stubborn lords. I will call the draw," Ariana interjected from where she stood at Haven's side.

Her arch command was softened by the jesting look in her eyes, and in the wry tilt of her mouth. Haven glanced up in time to see the two men lower their blades, both grinning like boys and sweating like field hands. One of the squires rushed forth with a towel for each man, obediently waiting as they swabbed off then took their tunics from another of the attending youths.

"Haven," Ariana said as the dark knight strode forward, shrugging into his simple shirt, "I would like you to meet my husband, Braedon."

As he drew near and the tunic settled over his head and shoulders, Haven caught an unhindered glimpse of his face. She took an instinctive step backward, struck by the presence of a terrible scar that slashed a jagged line down the full length of his left cheek.

"Lady Haven," he murmured in greeting, his deep voice rumbling like banked thunder.

"M-my lord."

Haven covered her rude reaction with a quick bow of her head, hoping neither he or Ariana had noticed her surprise.

But there was something more than merely the scar that set her pulse into a lurch, she realized the longer she stood before him. There was something lethal in him. Something that raised her instincts on alert, warning of a danger she could not fully comprehend.

Ariana seemed to know no such wariness around the man who was her husband. She embraced him lovingly, petting his glossy black hair and raising herself onto her toes to place a kiss on his stern mouth.

Haven brushed aside her unsettled feeling and smiled as Ariana recounted her morning to her husband. She was telling him of her plans to visit Sir Thomas's little daughter when Kenrick strode up, still mopping his short golden hair with the length of toweling.

"Good morrow, Lady Haven," he greeted her with a nod.

"My lord."

"I am pleased to see you up and about. How fares your shoulder?"

She glanced down, affected, just to be near him. "'Tis healing well enough."

"We are trying to restore Haven's strength," Ariana offered, clinging to her husband's arm as her gaze volleyed thoughtfully between Haven and her stoic kin. One fine tawny brow began to arch in a manner Haven had observed not a short while ago, when Ariana had run into Enid on the garden path and lit upon a wicked plan. "Actually, Kenrick, I wonder if you might step in for me and finish the walk with Haven. My head is beginning to pound in this heat, and I have promised to look in on one of the knights' children who's taken ill."