Knights (12 page)

Dane turned to his brother, annoyed with him and,
at the same time, unaccountably glad of his company. “I vow, you are wont to gossip, in your old age,” he replied, with a slap to Gareth’s shoulder and a bright grin. “I paid her to go away and leave me alone—a bargain at twice the price—she has no hold on me.”

Gareth nodded then said, “Where is your first wife?”

Dane held his grin steady, although it was difficult. “The lady Gloriana has gone traipsing off somewhere, in Edward’s company. And I didn’t even have to pay her. Is Elaina here today, Gareth, or did you bring your mistress instead?”

“God’s blood,” Gareth rasped, reddening again and wiping his brow with a linen kerchief, “but you are an insolent cur. Elaina has no desire to watch the tilting, and so will join us for vespers and supper. And Annabel, as if you deserved to know, is far too discreet to attend me in public. She offers quite another kind of solace.”

Kenbrook was reminded of his own desperate straits, where the sort of “solace” Gareth spoke of was concerned, and felt a grinding ache in his groin. Gloriana was his wife, but he could not bed her. Nor would he turn to Mariette, for it was not his practice to deflower virgins without marrying them first.

It would be easy enough to find a willing woman—several had already offered their services, in fact—but he’d lost his taste for wenching. Two females were quite troublesome enough, without throwing a servant or a whore from the village tavern into the mix.

“I am envious,” Dane confessed, and received a wolfish grin for his trouble. “Tell me, wise brother, how you manage to bed one woman when you so plainly worship another?”

The grin faded, replaced by a shadow of pain that caused Dane to regret his glib words. “There comes
a time,” Gareth said, in a low and somewhat wistful voice, “when the loneliness becomes intolerable.”

“I’m sorry,” Dane said, and he meant it. “I had no right.”

The grin was back. “I shall have a pint of ale for your penance,” Gareth said, and slapped Dane hard on the back. “Nay, two. Edward did passing well last night at keeping up with you and that hollow-legged Welshman, did he not?”

“He did indeed,” Dane agreed, with a laugh. “I will join you shortly.”

Gareth nodded, and Dane watched as his brother set out toward the outer bailey, joining a brilliantly colorful stream of chattering celebrants.

“Do you like it?” Gloriana asked as Edward ran his hand over the sleek leather seat of the saddle she had given him. They were in her small, private courtyard, and the air was heavy with the perfume of the yellow roses that grew in profusion over the arbor.

His eyes glistened as he looked at her. “Oh, Glory—it is the finest saddle any man has ever owned.”

“Any
knight,”
Gloriana corrected, for even though she feared for Edward, she was also fiercely proud of him. She knew better than anyone how true was his heart, how noble his soul. “You will have a steed after today, and armor, and a fine sword and shield and lance. But what shall become of poor Odin?”

Edward smiled at the mention of his dun-colored gelding, the horse of his boyhood, as beloved as his favorite hound. “He’ll carry nothing heavier than my squire after this day, and dine henceforth on sweet grass,” the boy-turned-man replied, hoisting the saddle from the bench, where Gloriana had set it. A blush brightened his cheeks. “Thank you, Glory.”

Gloriana bit her lower lip. She wanted to weep, so poignant and sweet was her affection for him. “You are most welcome, Sir Edward,” she answered, with a little curtsy. “Come—you must claim your sword and lance and prove that you are an able knight. You will be careful, won’t you?”

He was standing very close. Reverently, he kissed her forehead. “If I should slay dragons and drive back the Turk and perform great feats of valor, like Artos, the warrior king,” he said, “would you find cause then to love me?”

She looked up at him, wishing she possessed the power to change her own heart and care, in the way of women and men, for Edward instead of his brother. “I shall always love you, you know that,” she said, and felt the tickle of a tear streaking down her cheek.

Edward sighed. “In the same way you love Gareth.”

Gloriana bit her lower lip, then nodded. “Yes.”

He touched her cheek, brushing the tear away with the side of his thumb. “I am bound by honor to warn you, here and now, Lady Gloriana. It is not in me to give up gracefully. I yearn to possess you, soul and body, and that will never change.”

“It
will
change,” Gloriana insisted. “Someday, very soon, you’ll meet a fetching maiden—”

“It is more likely,” Edward interrupted dolefully, “that a suitable marriage will be arranged for me.” He offered a flimsy and faintly bitter smile.

“Perhaps,” Gloriana agreed. “Whatever happens, you mustn’t waste your fine heart pining for me.”

He had taken her hand, and he raised it to his mouth and brushed the knuckles lightly with his lips.

“If you kiss her,” Dane’s voice interceded coolly from the gate, which had moved silently upon its
hinges, “I shall run you through where you stand, brother or no brother.”

Gloriana stepped back from Edward and instantly regretted the impulse. After all, she had done nothing wrong and had no just cause to feel guilty.

Edward assessed his brother with a frown, but did not release his hold on Gloriana’s hand. “Make up your mind, Kenbrook,” he said. “Which woman will you protect?”

Gloriana suppressed an urge to hush her friend; Edward’s dubbing had apparently conferred more upon him than the right to be called Sir. He had changed, in some fundamental way, in what amounted to a twinkling.

“Let her go,” Dane commanded.

Edward seemed unruffled, as before, and in no hurry to comply. Gloriana, however, took a strange chill at her husband’s words and pulled her hand free.

“I asked you a question,” Edward said to his brother.

“And I will not answer it,” Dane replied. “Gareth awaits, with your steed and your armor and your sword. Go, Sir Edward, and show all the whores and maidens and serving girls that you have at last become a man.”

Edward went pale, but not with fear. The stains on his shirt from the obligatory buffet he’d suffered at Gareth’s hand seemed more vivid than before. He took a step toward Dane, and Gloriana caught his arm and held fast with all her strength.

Her gaze, however, was fixed on Kenbrook, and she could not have hidden her fury even if she’d tried. “We have a truce, you and I,” she said, to the tall Viking in the gateway. “As of tomorrow morning, however, I shall tell you exactly what I think of you.”

Kenbrook threw back his head and laughed, which served to heighten Gloriana’s rage and caused Edward
to tear himself free of her grasp. Instead of pouncing on his brother, who was older, bigger, and much more experienced in the ways of battle, Edward rolled his shoulders beneath the blood-spattered tunic and drew a deep breath. He seemed to grow taller, deeper of chest, and broader of back before Gloriana’s very eyes.

“Mayhap, I must prove to you, as well as to the ’whores and maidens and serving girls,’ as you so coarsely put it, that I am indeed a man.”

Time seemed to stop for a moment, but maybe it was only Gloriana’s heart. The silence was awful, a pulsing void shutting out every other sound. If Edward challenged Kenbrook to a contest of arms, there could be only one outcome, and Gloriana would have died to prevent that. Although she did not love the youngest St. Gregory brother in the fashion he desired, her regard for him was rooted in her very soul. She cast a pleading look at Dane.

“No,” Dane said at last, meeting his young brother’s blazing stare. “You don’t need to prove anything to me, Edward, least of all that. I will not apologize for objecting to your handling of my wife, but I do concede that you are right on one account: I must choose between Mariette and Gloriana or forfeit my honor.”

There was nothing for Edward to say. He had, in many respects, prevailed in the encounter. For Gloriana’s part, she was still reeling from Kenbrook’s statement. She had not thought there was a choice to be made—his commitment to Mariette had seemed unshakable. For all that he drove her insane with his arrogance and his commands, she felt a stir of hope so sweet that she raised her hand to her heart, that place where her fondest dreams were stored.

Sir Edward, whose colleagues and admirers awaited him on the tilting field, hoisted his newly acquired
saddle from the bench and looked back at Gloriana over one shoulder. He did not need to speak to ask if she wanted to stay, for one quality of their friendship was a means of communication that required no words. He simply raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll be along in a few minutes,” she said.

Dane stepped back to allow Edward to pass through the gate and into the hedge-lined walkway that led back to the main courtyard. “I do believe he would have fought me with any weapon I cared to name,” he reflected, turning back to Gloriana.

She had taken a seat on the marble bench, having had one too many surprises in the last little while. “I should never have forgiven you,” Gloriana said.

“Do you love him?”

“Wildly,” Gloriana said with a smile. She had, after all, sworn to a truce. “But not in the way you mean.”

“I sometimes think he would be better suited to Mariette than I am,” Kenbrook confessed, again catching Gloriana off guard. Her delight was tempered by the distinct possibility that her husband was not warming toward her, but merely being fickle—not to mention possessive.

“You may be right,” Gloriana said carefully, lowering her eyes to hide her unseemly feelings.

Kenbrook stood now at the end of the bench, one foot braced against it, forearms resting lightly on his raised knee. Gloriana felt his grin as surely as she felt the sunlight and the breeze from the lake, and was not in the least surprised when she looked up and saw it.

“I had not thought to hear those words from your lips, milady,” he teased.

Gloriana stood, disturbed by Kenbrook’s nearness in a way she did not clearly understand. “Is there
something you wish to say to me?” she asked, keeping her distance. “While I do not relish the prospect of watching Edward and his friends ride at each other with lances raised, I am expected to attend. No doubt the barbaric festivities will begin at any moment, if they haven’t already commenced.”

Kenbrook reached out and pulled the gate closed when she would have dashed through the opening, and Gloriana found herself pressed against it, effectively caged by her husband’s arms. “Yes,” he said. “There is something I wish to say to you, Lady Kenbrook. You are to kiss no other man but me.”

His mouth was a fraction of an inch from Gloriana’s, and her whole body trembled in anticipation of contact. “That is an unreasonable mandate,” she protested, but shakily. “I shall not agree, unless you make the same promise.”

Kenbrook’s chuckle was like a caress, and her lips seemed to swell beneath it. “Very well,” he said. “I promise I shall not kiss another man.” In the next instant, he was taking her mouth, gently at first, and then with a thoroughness that weakened her knees. Her heart was like imprisoned thunder in her bosom, her groin ached, and her breasts grew full and heavy.

And still he mastered her, with his lips and his tongue, burning his image into her very soul.

Gloriana sagged against the courtyard gate when it was over, struggling to breathe.

Kenbrook stared down at her in apparent consternation and traced the outline of her flushed face with the tip of one finger. “God help me,” he said, in a hoarse undertone, “for I am surely cursed.”

T
hroughout that long and eventful afternoon of games and mock battles—during which all who were present sweated, spectators and knights ranged upon the tilting field alike—Gareth’s glance did oft find his prodigal brother, Dane, and the beauty ever at his side. Gloriana seemed changed, as though she were only now her true self and had held her splendor in check throughout preceding years, awaiting Kenbrook’s triumphal return.

They seemed to be in uncommon accord, these two, now absorbed in the many and varied contests of the field, now talking earnestly as though there were no one else but they two in all of Creation. It was Gareth’s fondest hope that they would reconcile and go forward with their marriage—indeed, it was vital.

Alas, Hadleigh was a pragmatic man, and he was certain the armistice was a temporary one, inspired by the grandeur and high emotion of the day. Once they had all gone back to their ordinary lives, with the French girl Mariette there to complicate matters, Gloriana and Dane would surely find themselves once again at odds.

After the last trumpet had signaled the end of the afternoon’s final game, Gareth plucked his kerchief from inside his tunic and blotted his wet, gritty face. For all the vast affection he bore them both, his reasons for wanting peace between Gloriana and Dane were not altogether sentimental. If Kenbrook denied the marriage, the hefty percentage of profits from Gloriana’s father’s still-thriving trade company would be forfeit. Lands and estates and cargo-bearing ships would revert to Gloriana’s sole control, with the guidance of her managers and agents, of course, and the holdings of both Hadleigh and Kenbrook would then perish.

Gareth swabbed the back of his neck and murmured a mild curse. He could not allow such a thing to happen. He must take drastic action, however much he hated to interfere between his much-beloved ward, Gloriana, and his brother.

With a gesture, Gareth summoned the most trusted of his men-at-arms and, in a low voice, gave the necessary orders.

The knights had raised clouds of dust in their valiant displays of skill upon the field, and Gloriana’s person, like that of everyone else’s, was covered with the grit. Before evening prayers, when Edward and the others would dedicate their shiny new swords to the service of God, before the supper and merriments to follow, she meant to slip into her chamber to wash and change her gown.

Dane, who had been attentive throughout the afternoon and made the whole thing bearable with his commentary, escorted her as far as the great hall. Things had altered between them since that kiss against the courtyard gate, but Gloriana was afraid to
put too much store by a few hours of happiness. There was still Mariette, after all, and the looming prospect of a lifetime spent behind cloister walls.