Read Return of the Warrior Online
Authors: Kinley MacGregor
Return of the Warrior
R
ETURN
OF THE
W
ARRIOR
To my fans, who have been so incredibly wonderful and supportive. You guys are the best! For the RBL women, who are always there when I need a pick-me-up. To my loop members, who fill my life with laughter and caring. God bless you all.
For May, Lyssa and Nancy, who work so tirelessly to make every book the best it can be. I don’t know what I’d do without you guys and I never want to find out. To my husband and boys, for filling my life with love and for making it complete.
But most of all for my mother, who really wanted to read Christian’s story. I’m only sorry I didn’t get it done sooner, Mom. I miss you more than I would have ever thought possible and I hope that you were right and that heaven is filled to the brim with all the books you loved so much.
“Well?” Queen Adara asked in nervous anticipation as her senior…
Christian of Acre sat in the aleroom of the town’s…
The men paused in the doorway as they surveyed her…
Adara stared at the man who held her. “I’m not…
Adara’s heart returned to its frantic beating while she scanned…
Phantom choked on the porridge. Brother Thomas pounded him on…
Christian woke up to the harsh morning light. For an…
The marriage was now consummated. Adara should feel elated and…
It was late when Adara went to find Phantom in…
Christian sat in his wooden chair, staring at Adara, who…
Adara sat alone at a table eating her supper of…
While Christian and Dagger settled Agbert, Adara returned to the…
By the time they reached Venice, the weather was freezing,…
“Adara?”
Her miracle didn’t come right away. Adara wasn’t sure how…
With Phantom’s words ringing in his head, Christian paused as…
Adara and Christian settled into an easy camaraderie as they…
“Something’s amiss,” Christian said as he surveyed the rising mountains…
“The imposter’s dead.”
The last two months had moved far too swiftly for…
There are three acts in a man’s life which no one should advise him either to do or not to do. The first is to get married, the second is to go to the wars and the third is to go to the Holy Land. These things are all good in themselves, but they may turn out ill, in which case he who gave the advice will be blamed as if he were the cause of it.
—E
BERHARD OF
W
ÜRTTEMBERG
B
ROTHERHOOD OF THE
S
WORD
Withernsea, England
Christian of Acre sat in the aleroom of the town’s only inn, finishing his supper in solitude while the rest of the inn’s occupants ate and drank noisily around him. It was dark inside, with most of the light coming from the fireplace, on the hearth, where a portly stout woman roasted venison and pork.
He’d been here for the last four days, waiting for Pagan and Lochlan MacAllister to meet him. The plan was for them to join forces.
They were all on the trail of a friend’s murderer who was said to have headed this way with his brothers. If Lysander’s killer was anywhere nearby, Christian would find him and make him pay for what he had taken from them. And if Lochlan happened to learn anything helpful about his missing brother Kieran MacAllister, then Christian would rejoice even more.
But at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered to him was putting Lysander’s soul to rest. The man had been a good one, and as a member of the Brotherhood he had been invaluable. His murder sat ill with all of them. The Brotherhood members hadn’t survived hell to return home and be slain over nothing more than sheer meanness.
Drinking the last of his ale, Christian left money on the table, then got up to go to his rented room.
Times like this, he almost hated that he traveled alone. Especially since Nassir and Zenobia were newly departed from his company. They had left just the day before, on their way back to Outremer.
But then, Christian had chosen of his own free will to live his life alone.
It was better this way.
He had lived for almost six years sequestered in a monastery cell where the brothers forbade any chatter at all. They had used their hands to speak to each other. Never their mouths. So silence and solitude were nothing new to him.
After living with the monks, Christian had spent another six years imprisoned in the squalid twenty-foot cell of his enemies. He had no desire to ever again be chained down by anyone or anything.
For the first time in his life he was free, and he fully intended to stay that way.
If solitude and loneliness were the price of his freedom, so be it. It was only a trifle compared to the blood and bone he’d paid for far lesser things.
Christian reached his room at the end of the
hallway and pushed open the door. He pulled up short as he caught sight of the lone figure waiting there beside a small table where an oil lamp flickered brightly.
Slight of stature, the unknown person was robed in a long black cloak that gave him no indication of gender or nationality.
“Did you perchance enter the wrong room?” he asked, thinking maybe it was another traveler who had lost his way.
The figure turned toward him.
“That depends,” she said, her voice smooth and erotic, and tinged with an accent he couldn’t place. “Are you Christian of Acre?”
He stiffened at the question, especially since he had recently come from Hexham, where assassins looking for him and his brothers-in-arms had abounded.
And some of those assassins had been female…
“Who seeks him?”
The woman moved forward and boldly pulled at the thin gold chain around Christian’s neck where his mother’s royal emblem had rested since the hour of his birth. She turned it over to see on the back another engraving of a crest of a kingdom he’d only visited once as a small child.
“Aye,” she said, letting it fall back to his chest on the outside of his black monk’s robes. “You are indeed the one I seek.”
“And you are?”
Her elegant hands came out of the dark folds of
her cloak to unclasp the catch. Before he could even draw a breath, she let the whole of it fall to the floor with a rush of wind and a heavy thud.
Christian’s jaw went slack as he saw her standing there with not a single stitch adorning her dark beauty. Long black hair cascaded over her shoulders, obscuring her breasts as the ends of it tickled the dark triangle at the juncture of her thighs.
She was beautiful and his body reacted wildly to her brash nudity.
“Who am I?” she asked in that wickedly erotic voice. “I’m your wife and I’m here to claim you.”
Completely stunned by the unexpected words, Christian felt his jaw go slack as she reached for him.
He stepped back immediately. “I beg your pardon. I have no wife.”
She stared up at him with dark soulful eyes from under her long black lashes. “How I wish it true, but alas, my lord, you most certainly do, and I have no intention of leaving your side.”
Christian forced himself to close his gaping mouth. ’Twas obvious the woman was mad. He retrieved her cloak from the floor and quickly wrapped it around her nude body, even though part of him screamed out that he was an utter fool to turn her away.
How often did a man find a woman like this offering herself to him in such a bold manner?
It definitely wasn’t often enough.
“My lady, you ap—”
”Adara,” she said, interrupting him. “Remember me now?”
Christian opened his mouth to deny it, but before he could, an image went through his mind of a young girl from his childhood. All he remembered of her were two large brown eyes that had reminded him of a gentle fawn as they studied him with great curiosity. She’d been shy and quiet, certainly not the type who as a woman would bare herself to a complete stranger.
But those large brown eyes…
They were the same and every bit as enchanting now as they had been then. More so, point of fact.
“I can see that you do.” Her exotic voice whipped through him with power. “And I remember you as well.”
Adara grew quiet as the memory of the boy Christian went through her. The first time she had seen him, she had been entranced by his fair coloring. In her kingdom, blondes were exceedingly rare. Handsome ones even more so.
He’d come to their palace on their wedding day wearing the finest of silk, which had floated around his body like a dark blue cloud. Barely seven years of age, she had stared at him from her window, curious about the fairness of the eight-year-old boy who was to be her husband.
Now she was enthralled by the man before her. Extremely tall and handsome, he was well muscled and had the bearing of a man well used to commanding everyone around him. He was ex
actly what she sought. A man who could send his usurper scurrying away from their kingdoms with his tail tucked firmly between his legs.
Not to mention he was far kinder on her eyes than she had ever dared to hope.
His long golden hair hung just past his shoulders and he had a small, well-trimmed goatee that added a fierce air of masculinity to him. His blue eyes were searing and intelligent. He held the kind of face that was compelling in its manly beauty, the kind of face that a woman couldn’t help but stare at in awe and with desire.
“We were only betrothed,” he said in a deep, resonating voice that somehow managed to send a small shiver through her every time he spoke.
“Nay, Christian, we were married that day. I have the papers to prove it.”
“Show me.”
Ignoring the challenge of his tone, Adara refastened her cloak to her before she moved to the corner where she had left her small parcel that contained two simple gowns and enough gold to see her safely home again. In the bottom was the leather pouch that held the proof she needed.
She pulled it out, then handed it to the doubting man whose regal presence seemed to fill the entire room. This was not going the way she’d planned at all. Lutian had assured her that the instant she bared herself to her husband he would fall down on his knees in gratitude, then consummate their marriage immediately.
As she watched Christian, she doubted anything on this earth could make a man this proud fall down onto his knees.
It would certainly take more than a mere woman’s nudity.
Christian’s eyes narrowed as he opened, then read the document he could barely recall from his childhood. It had been a warm summer day not long before his parents’ deaths. Adara hadn’t spoken a single word to him as her father had led her into the throne room so that the two of them could meet before they signed the betrothal contract.
She had merely glanced up at him, blushed, then signed the vellum document and ran away, not to be seen again during his two-day stay at her palace.
Now, as he scanned the Latin words and their childish handwriting, his vision turned dark. Deadly. The queen was right. This was no betrothal. It was indeed a contract for marriage.
“I was duped,” he snarled. Nay, not entirely true. Had he studied Latin more strenuously as a child and been more attentive, he would have been able to read it then and protest its contents.
Even as a child, he should have known better than to trust another human being with his future.
No one could ever be trusted.
Sadness and confusion mixed on her brow, gifting her face with a somber expression that was somehow no less lovely. “I see,” she said quietly. “But that changes nothing. We are legally married
and I need you to come home with me and be crowned king.”
He shook his head in denial. “I will have this contract dissolved immediately.”
“Nay,” she snarled at him. “You will not.”
He scowled at her insistence on the impossible. “Are you mad, woman? I have no intention of going to Elgedera. Ever.”
She straightened. Her dark eyes snapped fire at him as her cheeks mottled in anger. “And I have no intention of allowing you your freedom while I need you to be husband. I am virgin still, but if you walk from this room, I shall find myself the nearest willing male and swear by all that is holy that you were the only man I have ever known and I will drag you home in chains if need be.”
He saw red at her threat. Truly her audacity knew no limits. “You would jeopardize your immortal soul to keep me bound to you?”
“Nay, but I will sell my soul to the devil himself to keep my people free from the cloying hands of your cousin, and if bearing false witness is the only way to save my kingdom, then aye. I shall do whatever is necessary.”
Christian couldn’t breathe as he stared at her. She was unbelievable. “You don’t even know me.”
“Since when are men so discriminating? Can you honestly say that you have never taken a woman to your bed that you barely knew? I am your wife and our union needs to be consummated.”
Christian didn’t answer her question. He refused to.
Her gaze drifted over his body and the robes of a Benedictine monk that he wore. Her face turned completely pale. “Have you taken holy vows? Oh, please tell me that I didn’t just bare my body to a monk! I’ll burn in eternal torment for it, surely.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say aye, but he couldn’t bear to lie. He had suffered the lies of others far too many times in his life to ever deal that to another human being.
Even an insane one.
“Nay. I have not.”
Her face and tone softened and a smile played at the edge of her well-shaped lips. “You are indeed a good man, Christian of Acre, not to lie to me about this.”
He narrowed his gaze at her. “Make no mistake, my lady, I am never a good man and I have no intention of seeing this marriage met.”
His words cut through her. Nay, this was not what she’d planned. She’d expected her husband to be more cooperative.
And deep inside, in a place where she dare not look, was disappointment that he hadn’t remembered her at all, while there had never been a day since their marriage that she hadn’t thought of him and wondered where he’d been, fretted for his welfare.
But that was something she would never let him
know. A pining, sentimental buffoon she might be inwardly, but outwardly she was still queen with a heavy burden to bear. She might not have much, but she did have her dignity.
“It is not a marriage I want from you, either. I only want a few weeks of your time to secure my borders. After that, you shall be free to live out your life in any manner you choose.”
He cocked his head at her untoward words. “What say you?”
She took a deep breath before she spoke to him in a calm, even tone that belied the maelstrom of anger, desire, and fear she felt. “I have no need of a husband to rule my lands. I am more than capable of seeing to my people. I need only your presence so as to appease your people so that your usurper cannot force himself upon me any longer.”
“My usurper?”
“Aye. Basilli. Do you remember him at all?”
He shook his head. “I know no one by that name.”
“Do you at least recall his father Selwyn, then?”
Christian recalled the man’s hawkish features quite well. A cold, unfeeling man, Selwyn had been the one to tell him about the death of his parents when he was a boy. Selwyn had been callous and vicious as he told him to stop crying and be a man.
Life is tragedy, boy, you might as well accept it and grow accustomed to it.
Little had Christian known at the time just how true those words were.
“Aye, I remember him.”
“Then you might want to know that he is a snake out to claim not just your throne, but mine as well. He and his son must be stopped at any and all costs.”
Christian frowned. “If that is true and his son wishes to marry you, then why has Selwyn been writing to me to come home and see our betrothal met?”
She scoffed at that. “Begging you home to murder you, most like, my lord. As they would murder me if I were ever foolish enough to wed Basilli.”
“You lie.”
She gave him an arch look. “Think you so? Tell me, have you ever once thought about how odd it is that your parents died together in a fire while you were safely tucked away? That they hid you so as to save you from their fate?”
Christian struggled to breathe as her accusation ran through his mind. Could there possibly be any truth to it?
As a child, he’d been too torn apart by grief to think of it. As a man, he’d done his best never to dwell on the past at all.
“For that matter, haven’t you ever wondered why your inconsequential monastery in Acre was attacked and destroyed by thieves, and why no one from your own family ever came to see if you lived? You’re the sole heir to an important throne and yet they left you to rot. Why would no one ever try to find you? Could it be because you were
supposed to have died with the rest of the monks and that is what they told everyone?”