A Knight In Her Arms (Knights of Passion) (4 page)

Isabella found herself wondering if they could make a child, the child she’d longed for and never had.

She snuggled into his arms and it was only when he moved slightly and winced that she remembered his injured leg.

“Alric, your leg!”
she cried guiltily.

He gave a deep chuckle.
“I beg you will not bind it too tightly, lady.”

She smiled, and then she laughed, and for a time she laughed and wept against him. When she was quiet again she felt as if she had been stripped of a burden, lighter and freer.

“I could not bear it if Freemantle took Godestone,” she whispered in the dawn light. “And I could not marry him.”

“He will not
have either of you,” Alric said confidently. “If he tries, Isabella, I will kill him. I swear upon my life and my honour that he shall not have you.”

Isabella woke, yawning, to the sound of weapons clashing outside in the bailey. She had returned to her bed barely before the servants were rising, and slept deeply for an hour or two. Her body ached but the knowledge that it was Alric who had taken her so tenderly and passionately made the ache pleasurable and she smiled.

Alric, the husband she should have had, was here at Godestone. He would help her fight Freemantle, and together they would be victorious. To imagine anything else was impossible.

Rising she went to her window and peered out. Her men were training under Alric’s direction. She could see him in his chainmail, swinging his sword, ignoring his injured leg.

They practised for hours, and
Isabella, who came down to the bailey to watch them, could see that her men were novices in comparison to Alric and his men. These were true warriors, trained to kill, and time and time again they showed up weaknesses in her garrison. And then they set about rectifying them.

If they were not ready for Freemantle when he came then it wouldn’t be Alric’s fault.

A murmuring among her men sharpened her gaze, and she watched as Simon, a giant of a man and her best swordsman, came forward. “We did well enough before you came here,” he growled. “You’re trying to show us up before Lady Isabella, strutting about like a cock in front of her. I know your game.”

Isabella was tempted to call a halt. Simon was loyal, but his words made her uneasy.
Was that what all the men were thinking? She caught Alric’s glance and stopped herself. Almost as if she read his mind, she knew he would handle this better than her.

As the fight commenced though she found her loyalties torn—of course she wanted her man to win, didn’t she? But a small voice in her head reminded her it was not Simon she was hoping would find his way to her bed that night! Both men were skilful and it did seem a fairly even match but it wasn’t long before it became clear that Alric had been playing with his opponent
. When he grew bored he quickly stepped in and had Simon on the ground with a sword at his throat. He looked over at Isabella and smiled and she admitted to herself that she was not sorry her man had lost. Simon took Alric’s outstretched hand and stood to his feet, looking bewildered but unhurt.

“We both fight for Lady Isabella,” Alric declared. “She is the lady of Godestone and always will be.”

The men gave a ragged cheer, and Isabella stepped forward and called for ale for them all, though she murmured to Hugo, not too much. The seneschal nodded and went to do her bidding, and if she noticed his backwards glance toward Alric and the strange expression on his face then it was soon forgotten in the preparations for Freemantle’s arrival.

***

They didn’t have long to wait after all. Freemantle came in the night, beating at the gates and shouting for entry. Isabella, lying in her bed with Alric’s arms about her, her body warm and tingling from their lovemaking, jumped up and ran to the window. Torches blazed along the road to Godestone, illuminating a large army. Behind her, Alric rested a hand on her shoulder, and she glanced up into his face.

He seemed calm and controlled, and if he had the same nervous flutter in his stomach as Isabella, then he wasn’t showing it.

“I will speak with him,” he said, “and he may go away.”

Isabella shook her head. Freemantle would not go away. “How far away are Stephen’s men, Alric?”

“A day. More. We cannot rely upon them, my love.”

Freemantle’s army, being denied entry, camped outside the castle. Isabella felt their menace, and wondered, like Alric, why they did not attack. They must have ladders and siege engines, what were they waiting for
? But they found out that too, soon enough.

“Lady, this cur was trying to get outside the gates.”

Simon, her soldier, dragged the hapless Hugo before her where she sat on the dais in the great hall. The seneschal looked the worse for wear, his clothes torn, and he had a black eye.

“What have you to say, Hugo?” she demanded.

The seneschal grimaced as Simon thrust him away, stumbling and regaining his feet with difficulty. “You do not know what is best for you, lady,” he muttered. “When Lord Hamon ruled Godestone all was well, but now . . . It is time for a man to rule again.”

“You oaf,” Simon burst out. “Hamon was a monster.”

Isabella held up her hand. “Put him in the dungeon, Simon, and let him consider where his loyalties lie.”

“Wait!” Alric came striding into the great hall, his hand on his sword, “What is Freemantle planning? You must know.
Tell us!”

It took a while, and once Isabella had to turn away, but eventually Hugo told them
what he knew. He was planning to show them the way in through the cellars, unlocking the doors that ran under the castle walls to a hidden entrance that was known only by a few. Alric decided this might be the way to capture Freemantle, and sent one of his own men in Hugo’s place, to set the trap. Then he sent men at once to guard the door to the hidden tunnel and to wait.

It wasn’t long before Freemantle himself was captured and brought before them.
When she saw him Isabella trembled inside. She had never been so glad that Alric was here. Freemantle had not long been locked up with Hugo in the dungeon when there was another call from the gates that many more men had arrived. Without Freemantle, and faced with a much larger force, his men melted away.

Alric smiled. “Stephen’s men,” he said.

“There is a man with a scarred face who demands entry. He says his name is Lord Wulfrich.”

“My friend!” Alric clasped the knight’s hand when they
met in the bailey. Wolf, as he was known, a dark haired man with a badly scarred face, smiled back.

“I thought you might need a hand,” Lord Wulfrich spoke in a husky voice. “I’m on my way to Kendall Castle to reclaim my inheritance and I thought I might stop by.”

Alric chuckled. “Well you have my thanks, friend.”

“And mine,” Isabella declared, coming to meet him with her head held high. “I am Lady Isabella and Godestone belongs to me.”

“
Ah, the beautiful Lady Isabella,” Wolf said with a surprised lift of his eyebrows. “I have heard your name so many times, lady, I admit to being heartily tired of it. But I see now why Alric could not forget you.”

Isabella, reminded again of her lapse of memory, felt stricken. But there was no time to say anything, with the army to house and feed, and Freemantle to send in chains to Stephen. It was much later when finally she and Alric were once more alone in her chamber.

She’d forced him to sit down in her carved chair, a stool under his foot to elevate his swollen leg, and now she knelt at his side and took his hands in hers. Gazing up anxiously into his handsome face she could see no ill feeling, nothing but warm tenderness in his blue eyes.

“When Hamon married me I was in a terribly dark place, Alric. I could not think of anything but surviving, and I think if I’d thought of you and how happy I could have been . . . I think I would have thrown myself from the tower. When he died there was only the rulin
g of Godestone to keep me going and I never looked back. Do you understand why I did not recognise you now?”

“
My love,” he whispered, and pulled her up onto his lap, wrapping his arms tight about her. “If I’d known what was happening I would have come to your rescue.”

Isabella gave a laugh that was almost a sob. “You were too young then, but you’ve come now. You are here now.”

He tilted up her chin. “I don’t want to leave you. Do you think we can find some way of ruling both Godestone and Wenton, without living so far apart? I know how determined you are to remain the Lady of Godestone but I don’t want to lose you again, Isabella.”

“Nor me
you, Alric.”

He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps we can have two sons, one for Godestone and one for Wenton.”

“Or two daughters,” Isabella retorted.

“Two Ice Maidens,” he murmured softly, and
, when she shot him an anxious glance, grinned. Isabella, realising he was teasing, stretched up to kiss his mouth. Instantly her body was on fire, aching for his touch, and she wrapped her arms about him, kissing him passionately.

Alric forgot his leg, his arms full of Isabella. As he untied her braid, letting her long hair cloak them, she began to unlace his breeches with a wicked glance
. “I am a changed woman,” she murmured, stroking his cock. “You have changed me, Alric. You have made me realise how wonderful lovemaking can be.”

He
was lifting up her skirts and finding the hot moist core of her, before arranging her thighs either side of his hips on the chair and sliding into her with a deep groan. “You haven’t changed, beloved,” he murmured against her mouth, as they settled into a slow, deep rhythm. “You are still my sweet Isabella, the girl I was betrothed to when I was fifteen and you were eleven.”

Isabella felt her body clenching, her climax getting closer, but she tried to hold on, to wait for him. And then he was pumping deep inside her, and with a cry he moved jerkily against her, and Isabella let herself come with him, the walls of her core contracting about him, milking his seed.

They would have children, she thought drowsily, as she lay in his arms, and they would wed and live at Godestone some of the year and Wenton the rest of the year, and whatever happened in this war they would be together.