One Enchanted Evening (6 page)

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Robin said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, as if he actually gave serious thought to the matter. “He looks like a boy to me.”

“He’s taller than you are, Rob,” Nicholas said, apparently struggling not to laugh. “I’d tread carefully.”

“But he’s weak in his limbs,” Robin said, reaching for his sword belt and unbuckling it. He poked Montgomery in the arm with his sheathed sword, hard enough that Montgomery would have flinched if he’d been made of less stern stuff. “That comes, I understand, from too much time spent at court, delighting the ladies with his rapier wit and lovely eyes. It certainly doesn’t do anything for the strength of arm or skill with a blade.”

Nicholas laughed and walked away. Jake only lifted a shoulder in a half shrug and turned to follow him. Kendrick accepted his father’s sword with wide eyes and a slackened jaw.

“I’ll take your sword, Uncle,” Phillip said, with only the slightest quaver in his voice. “You won’t need it. Will you?”

“I wouldn’t want to do any more damage to your sire than my fists will accomplish,” Montgomery said, handing his sword to his would-be squire. He managed it in the heartbeat before that squire’s father launched himself forward to prove his doubters wrong.

It had been, he decided as he landed flat on his back and lost his wind, too long since he had engaged his brother in a friendly contest of strength. Robin might have been rumored to have gone to fat, but he had certainly not gone to seed, and he was nothing if not wily. And strong. And full of insults that would have earned him a brisk slap to the back of his head had their grandmother been anywhere within earshot.

“Don’t wear yourself out, Rob,” Jake said dryly after an appropriate amount of time had passed. “You don’t want to be too tired to enjoy a decent supper.”

“ ’ Tis just a bit of light exerci—”

Montgomery slammed his forehead into Robin’s mouth to shut him up. It earned him an instant increase in ill will from his sibling, as well as quite a bit of his brother’s blood dripping onto his face. He finally shoved his brother off him, then staggered to his feet.

“Enough, damn you,” Montgomery said, his chest heaving.

“I’ve other things to do besides school you in manners.”

Nicholas hauled Robin to his feet, then kept hold of his arm. “Aye, enough,” he agreed with a half laugh. “He still has a castle to lay siege to.”

Robin stood there, breathing more easily than he should have. He dragged his sleeve across his mouth, scowled at the blood left there, then looked at Nicholas. “I think his peasants have made off with great chunks of the foundation. As long as he doesn’t mind slithering through one of the leftover holes, he’ll be fine.”

Montgomery brushed the leaves from his hair and declined to point out that he had been conserving his strength for the possibility of just such an assault. “A rematch, when my floor is clean.”

“Let’s just hope your floor is flat,” Robin said with a snort, “and not sporting a dozen holes the size of your horse.”

Montgomery hoped not as well, though he supposed that was more optimistic than perhaps he should have been. He allowed his brothers to gather up their sons and turned to face his own future.

Sedgwick, of all places.

What in the hell had he done to deserve
that
?

He could speculate on several things readily enough, though he knew he should put that speculation off until he’d gained his own supper table where he could think at his leisure.

Unfortunately, now that he was faced with the sight of his father’s generosity, he couldn’t keep himself from it. Sedgwick was, as Robin had rightly said, a rat-infested hole, but it had the potential to be a quite spectacular rat-infested hole. That his father had given it to him, the youngest of all, instead of to whom it rightly belong—

Robin slapped him—rather gently all things considered—on the back of the head, startling him.

“You think too much.”

Montgomery shot his eldest brother a dark look. “How would you know?”

“Because I recognize the symptoms,” Robin said, lifting an eyebrow. “My life now is nothing but easy movement from one moment of bliss to the next, but it wasn’t always so.”

Montgomery studied the castle for another moment or two, then looked at his brother. “Why do you think Father gave this to me?”

“Because you are the only one of us desperate enough to take it,” Robin said solemnly. “Or stupid enough. I’m not sure which it is.”

Nicholas laughed and pushed Robin out of the way so he could sling his arm around Montgomery’s neck. “Ignore him. We’ll discuss the vagaries of Fate and inheritances given by Rhys de Piaget after we’ve managed to get past your gate guards and see what’s left of your keep. I have my own thoughts on the matter, as you might imagine.”

Montgomery didn’t doubt it, given that their father had gifted Nicholas a keep that had been missing most of its roof when Nicholas had taken possession of it. At least Sedgwick’s roof looked to be intact.

With that cheery thought to keep him company, he put on his grimmest expression, then went to give his commands to the trio of guardsmen he’d brought with him.

And he ignored the fact that Robin had advised him to bring more. He would manage with the men who had served him freely, or not at all. It likely would have taken a king’s ransom to convince anyone else to darken Sedgwick’s unsteady gates. Unfortunately, given the condition of his new home, he suspected he was going to need most all of his gold to repair his foundations.

Besides, ’twas his own castle he faced. Why would he need more lads than he had there already?

 

 

It
took less time than he’d hoped to reach the keep and even less time to realize that he was indeed expected. The guardsmen leaning negligently over the barbican gate managed lethargic wigglings of their fingers as he rode under the walls. Montgomery ignored the insult partly because there was no sense in beginning his life there with a battle and partly because he was too distracted by the depth and quantity of horse droppings and other refuse layered over his inner courtyard to work up any anger. The layer of muck finally became too thick and his horse—not a beast in the slightest bit inclined to balking—balked in front of the great hall door.

It swung open with creaks that could have been heard leagues away and out tumbled a ragtag group of souls he honestly couldn’t begin to identify. Garrison knights? Servants? Cousins? It was difficult to tell given that they were all equally filthy and unrelentingly bad mannered.

Montgomery glanced at his brothers. All three were wearing expressions befitting the battle-hardened warriors they were. Even the young lads were frowning severely, stealing looks now and again at their fathers to no doubt make sure they were getting it right. His own guardsmen were looking terribly unimpressed, as if they would require a tripling of the castle’s occupants rushing at them to force them to even yawn.

Montgomery would have smiled if he’d had it in him, but he didn’t, so he refrained.

He was grateful that Robin was keeping his bloody mouth shut, though he supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything else now that the battle was upon them. His brother might have been impossibly arrogant and endlessly annoying, but he was the future lord of Artane and well aware of how to act that part. And whilst Sedgwick was, from all outward appearances, not much more than an open cesspit with a keep placed strategically nearby, Montgomery was lord of it and as such deserved respect.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t earned a bit of it. He’d spent the last nine years with spurs on his heels either making his fortune in tourneys on the continent or building alliances at supper wherever court was being held. When he hadn’t been at home being insulted by his brothers, he had been moving about in the world of Henry’s nobles without misstep. That had brought him renown for his skill in battle and no small number of women wanting to see if he was capable of the same sort of exploits in the bedchamber. He supposed he had become just as famous for the number of offers he’d turned down.

He was perhaps too much a romantic in some ways and not nearly enough of one in others.

He looked back at the souls who peopled his new home and decided he would introduce himself, and then see if he couldn’t encourage at least a few of them to brave an encounter with the water in the horse trough. He couldn’t determine who came with his new home until he could determine what—and who—they were.

He anticipated that the day would drag on endlessly, and he wasn’t disappointed.

An hour later he had counted a score-and-four surly garrison knights and a kitchen staff comprised of five maids, three scrawny lads under the age of eight, and a portly, unpleasant-looking cook who seemingly did more eating than cooking. The rest of his household included three obviously overworked serving gels, a clutch of randy serving lads, and a trio of sullen, disagreeable cousins who didn’t bother to either stand or offer greeting when he approached. The only bright spot was his new steward, who was seemingly impervious to the unpleasant looks sent his way by not only those Sedgwick cousins but their mother as well.

He supposed he could understand his cousins’ irritation. They had had the run of the keep for the whole of their lives whilst their father Denys had held Sedgwick in trust for Montgomery’s father. When Denys had died and the keep returned to Rhys’s possession, it had been well within Rhys’s rights to do with it as he saw fit.

Montgomery still wasn’t sure if it had been a very unpleasant joke on his father’s part or something else, but he supposed the time for thinking on that was not now. He had a household to see to.

A long day? He suddenly realized it was going to be a very long life.

 

 

At
sunset he climbed the stairs of one of the four guard towers and walked out onto the battlements. The two guards there glanced briefly his way, then went back to talking about the apparent bounty of ripe serving wenches in the village over the hill.

Montgomery leaned his hip against the wall—after making sure he wouldn’t go through it and fall into the cesspit—and folded his arms over his chest. He watched the men steadily until they finally turned and looked at him.

“What d’ye want?” the first asked disdainfully.

That the other didn’t catch his breath at the arrogance was telling enough. Montgomery didn’t suppose it would serve him to kill off his entire garrison and start afresh, especially when some of the lads no doubt had families and he would be robbing wives and children of their husbands and fathers, but he also couldn’t have any about him but men loyal to him and obedient to his commands.

He looked at the closest of the two men.

“I’ll see you in the lists first thing,” he said with absolutely no inflection in his voice. “Your friend will have his turn immediately thereafter.”

“And if I says ye nay?” the first asked with a sneer.

Montgomery shrugged. “Try it and see.”

The man put his shoulders back and spat at Montgomery’s feet. “Then, na—”

Montgomery took hold of him before he could squeak, then heaved him up and over the wall. There was a splash, then silence. The second man looked at Montgomery with wide eyes.

“ ’E can’t swim.”

“Can you?”

“Nay, milord,” the second said quickly. “I beg ye, don’t heave me over to follow ’im.”

“Then go down to what seems to pass for the moat by more pedestrian means,” Montgomery said calmly, “and fetch your mate. After you’ve cleaned him up a bit, I suggest you noise about the garrison that I’ll see them all in the morning, one by one, until we’ve come to a right understanding about who is lord here.”

The man nodded, bowed, then rushed toward the tower door. He stopped suddenly, then turned back.

“Who’ll man the walls, then, my lord?”

“I’ll see to this watch,” Montgomery said, “then I’ll have one of my own men take the rest of the night. And so it will continue until I’ve determined whom I can trust.”

The man nodded uneasily, then walked swiftly away.

Montgomery watched him go, then turned to look over the countryside. The castle might have been an absolute wreck, but the surrounding countryside, dressed as it was in the first hints of its fall finery, was quite lovely. It was the same view he’d had from the bluff at dawn, but somehow, seeing it from the roof of his own keep lent it a more personal air. He wouldn’t be at all displeased to look at it for the rest of his life. He loved the sea, true, and he’d lived on its edge quite happily for his youth, but he could easily be content with gentle hills, lush fields, and thick forests.

He put his hands on what was left of the wall, not because he needed to hold himself up, but because he didn’t want anyone to possibly see their shaking. It was one thing to be the youngest son of the most powerful lord in the north of England and have the extent of his tasks be to arrive on time in the lists and show well. It was also one thing to take that sword skill and cut a swath through the continent where all he had to manage was vanquishing all challengers and being witty at supper. Even the task of inheriting a castle that was intact, with a useful garrison, a well-stocked larder, and all his enemies confined to the area outside the gates would have been one thing.

But this . . . this was something else entirely.

The creak of the door opening to his left had him turning with his sword half out of its sheath before he realized it was only Robin. He resheathed his sword with a sigh as his brother held up his hands in surrender and came to stand next to him without comment. Montgomery knew that couldn’t possibly last, so he decided to have the sermon over with sooner rather than later.

“Well?” he asked, looking at his brother darkly.

Robin blinked. “Well, what?”

“I assume you came to bestow your vast wisdom upon my poor, hapless self. Please be quick about it.”