Fairest Of Them All (7 page)

She started toward her father, but his frigid demeanor stopped her in her tracks. He disappeared through the curtain in a flash of saffron.

She had assumed he would cancel the joust. Now her lovely plan was going awry. All because some Welsh clod was too stubborn to admit defeat

She pivoted to shoot the knight a baleful glare only to find the flagstones before the dais empty. It seemed her champion had gone skulking off with the rest of them. She had little time to savor her disdain before her papa’s arm shot back through the curtain, seized her by the wrist, and jerked her after him.

Holly stumbled along behind her papa, her rump already stinging in anticipation. He had never so much as lifted a fist to box her ears, but she suspected this hoax had earned her a full-fledged thrashing. Ah, well, she thought philosophically, ‘twas best to have the unpleasantness done with so she could concentrate on wriggling her way back into his favor.

But when he dragged her behind the relative privacy of a carved screen and whirled to face her, ‘twas not the ruddy flush of anger that tinged his face, but the sallow pallor of fear. “Have you any idea what manner of man you’ve provoked?”

“Now, Papa, I know you fancy yourself possessed of a fearsome temper, but I’ve never been the least bit afraid—”

“I’m not talking about me,” he bit off between clenched teeth. “I’m talking about Gavenmore.”

Holly knew more about what manner of man Gavenmore was than she cared to reveal. She forced an airy laugh. “He’s naught but a lowly knight. A boorish Welshman with appalling taste in verse.”

Her papa tilted his head back to thrust his face next to hers. “Sir Austyn of Gavenmore is one of the most dangerous and powerful warriors in all of Wales. And one of the most unpredictable. If I dare to slight his honor or incite his rage, it might very well cause a renewal of the hostilities between England and Wales. If Gavenmore doesn’t claim my head, then the king most surely will.” Groaning, he spun around to pace the confined area. “I should have snatched you off the dais the moment you appeared in that ridiculous costume. It never occurred to me that some fool would actually offer for you. Now ‘tis too late.”

Holly could weather her papa’s blustering better than his despair. “Shall I confess my deceit?” she offered in a small voice. “Issue a public apology?”

“And disgrace yourself before all of England? What decent man would want a shameless liar for a bride? You might as well shave off what little hair you’ve got left and doom yourself to a nunnery.” He ruffled his own hair until it stood on end in a manner almost identical to Holly’s and muttered, “I suppose even Gavenmore would be better than no husband at all.”

Holly could not fully convey the violent depths of her disagreement so she simply smoothed her father’s disheveled locks beneath her fingertips. “You needn’t fret, Papa. The arrogant knave is probably halfway back to Wales by now. Twas but a momentary twinge of madness that prompted him to declare himself for me.”

He batted her hand away, pinning her with an icy glare that chilled her to the marrow. “You’d best pray that you’re right, girl, because Gavenmore has taken every purse in every joust he’s entered in the past five years. If you’re wrong, you may very well be his most extravagant prize.”

The queen of Love and Beauty reigned over the tournament from her throne atop the wooden gallery, the irony of her title not wasted on her.

Holly wiggled on the hard seat to avoid the rolls of cloth Elspeth had crafted to pad her skirt. Her breasts were beginning to ache from being bound so tightly and the urge to claw at her freshly cropped head was becoming impossible to resist. The midday sun beat down on her tender skin. She licked the sweat from her upper lip only to get a mouthful of the soot she had used to darken the imperceptible hairs there to the shadow of a mustache.

Half of the challengers had already fled. Remaining were those lords and knights who had pledged fealty to her father and a stubborn handful reluctant to forfeit their honor to rumors of cowardice. They clustered at each end of the list, making half-hearted gestures toward donning their armor and outfitting their mounts for a joust they knew would never take place.

A parade of curious gawkers had also joined the crowd: peasants from the village, scampering children, castle servants, slatterns who’d emerged from the hillside encampment with tangled hair and eyes slitted from too little sleep and a dizzying variety of masculine attentions.

Their shrill laughter was echoed by the more subtle, but no less malicious, giggles of the ladies seated with Holly on the gallery. Her aunts and cousins huddled on benches at her back, giving her a broad berth lest her affliction be contagious and they should awake in the morn to discover their own eyelashes and hair lying in clumps upon their pillows.

She stole a glance at her papa’s stony profile. He perched on the throne next to hers, his feet dangling a good six inches from the floor of the gallery. He had snubbed all of her feeble attempts at conversation since their earlier confrontation. Given no choice but to sit slumped miserably in her chair, Holly was beginning to wish this grim farce over and done with.

As the heralds took the field, gleaming trumpets in hand, she suspected she was about to get her wish. When not a single challenger accepted their brassy invitation to battle, she would be free to retire to her chamber and face her father’s well-deserved wrath. She shifted in a vain attempt to relieve an unpleasant tingle in her bottom.

The heralds lifted the golden bells of their trumpets. A flourish of notes trilled through the hazy air.

Holly yawned and scratched her head, anticipating a lazy afternoon nap.

A lone rider materialized at the far end of the list. Before she even realized it, Holly was on her feet, gripping the gallery rail in her damp palms.

As the Welsh knight muscled his broad-flanked bay destrier through the scattering mob, her father muttered, “Can’t say much for his taste in verse or women, but the lad has a hell of a head for horseflesh.”

If Holly could have choked a word past her shuttered throat, she might have agreed. There was no question that Gavenmore cut a majestic figure on a horse. He sat the saddle as if he’d been born to it. The armor beneath his quilted surcoat was modest, simple chain mail enhanced by steel plates at his elbows and shins. A silver helm obscured his features, making him look even more forbidding.

Praying he hadn’t seen her rise, Holly sank back into her seat, fighting an involuntary thrill of excitement. “I don’t know why he troubles with a helm. It seems his head is hard enough to deflect any blow he might receive.”

As the destrier pranced down the list toward the gallery, its rippling drape mirroring the dusky greens and crimsons of its master’s surcoat, the agitated snatches of gossip from Holly’s aunts and cousins became impossible to ignore.

“Aye, Gavenmore ... so arrogant he brought only a single man-at-arms to the contest, but ‘tis rumored there are a thousand Welshmen crouched in the forest awaiting his signal to attack.”

Holly felt her papa stiffen.

“. . . little more than a savage . . .”

“. . . once incredibly wealthy . . .”

“. . . stripped of their earldom when his father murdered his own wife.”

“Murdered her? I heard he ate her!”

A muffled rejoinder, too low for even Holly’s ears to catch, provoked a round of naughty titters from the women.

An icy ball of dread hardened in Holly’s chest. Dear God, she thought, what manner of man had she provoked? She had precious little time to contemplate her recklessness, for horse and rider had reached the gallery.

Steadying the restless beast between his powerful thighs, Gavenmore raised a gauntleted fist, displaying the baleful length of his lance for her perusal.

Holly might have ducked had she not been paralyzed by trepidation. She gazed at the thick staff until her eyes crossed. She briefly considered throwing herself on it, but its deadly tip was blunted by a ceremonial coronal.

Her papa dug a less than paternal elbow into her ribs. “As your champion, he wishes a tribute. Have you no favor to offer him?”

“Um ... uh ... well . . .” Holly shot her costume a panicked look, knowing that if she tugged the wrong thing, her entire disguise was likely to unravel before their eyes.

The knight shifted impatiently in his stirrups. Perhaps ‘twas not too late to discourage this brash suitor, Holly thought. She reached beneath the skirts of her cotehardie to peel off one of the stockings she’d pilfered from Elspeth. Sensing the downward shift of the knight’s gaze beneath his slitted helm, she quickly dropped her skirt. There was little she could do to mask her slender ankles.

She tied the dingy, hole-pocked stocking around his lance in a pretty bow. Fluttering her pruned lashes at him, she lowered her voice to a provocative croak. “Fare thee well in the joust, sir. My heart rides with you.”

His answering mutter was blessedly muffled by the helm. As he wheeled the horse around, Holly fully expected him to go cantering off toward Wales, or perhaps Baghdad. Instead, he halted at the edge of the gallery and shoved back the faceplate of his helm. His narrowed gaze deliberately glanced off of her, but searched the faces of the women behind her with peculiar intensity. A chorus of nervous twitters greeted his perusal.

Holly swiveled around, stabbed by an unfamiliar pang. Surely his garden assignation hadn’t been with one of her sniveling Tewksbury cousins?

He slammed the faceplate shut with a clang of finality, leaving her to wonder if he had found what he sought.

As he trotted to the end of the sand- and straw-sprinkled list, the earl’s marshal took the field, bellowing, “Challengers, take your places!”

Amid much ribbing and jibes from his cohorts, a blushing Lord Fairfax took up lance and shield and drove his dappled mount to the opposite end of the list from Gavenmore. Holly noted that he’d rescued his scorched plume from his hat and affixed it to his helm.

The earl stood and lifted both arms. His familiar benediction lacked its usual heartiness. “Fight with honor, gentlemen, and show mercy to your opponent.”

Robust cheers and cries of excitement went up as the horses roared toward their inevitable confrontation. Gavenmore rode low over his mount’s back, at one with the speed and thunder of the magnificent beast. Holly clenched the gallery rail, her heart racing in her parched throat with involuntary suspense.

Gavenmore lifted his lance. Lord Fairfax went tumbling head over heels off the back of his mount.

Holly squinted in confusion. As Fairfax clambered sheepishly to his feet, dusting off the plume of his fallen helm, the chorus of jeers and boos that greeted him confirmed her suspicions. Gavenmore’s lance had never touched him. She doubted he’d even remained mounted long enough to feel its wind whistle past.

Dispatching the next challenger required even less of the knight’s effort. Sir Henry of Sovermoth launched himself off his horse before Gavenmore could so much as raise his lance. Holly’s horror mounted as she realized that not a single one of her former admirers was willing to risk his neck to rescue her from the Welshman’s clutches now that her legendary beauty appeared to have deserted her.

Gavenmore was more exasperated by their cowardice than she was. After his third opponent managed to fall off his horse before the heralds could even sound the call to battle, he hurled his shield, tore off his helm, and plunged down from his own mount Shaking off the restraining hand of his man-at-arms, he strode toward the center of the list, no less threatening without destrier or lance.

A terse silence fell over the crowd, broken only by the snap of his dark hair whipping in the wind. He slammed back the faceplate of his helm, condemning them all with his unflinching gaze.

Drawing his broadsword, he hefted it in the air with both hands. “English curs! Is there not one among you man enough to offer me a fair fight?”

As her papa slowly rose, Holly resisted the urge to jerk him back down. The shameful proceedings seemed to have sapped him of his ability to feign even feeble enthusiasm. “If there are no other challengers, I am forced to pronounce Sir Austyn the vie—”

An imperious voice rang out. “Stay your hand, my lord. I’m more than prepared to offer this Welsh savage a fair fight for the lady’s hand.”

A cloaked figure at the edge of the crowd eased back his elegant damask-trimmed hood. His mocking gaze was not fixed on Sir Austyn or her father, but on Holly. She rose, blinking the sunlight out of her eyes to find herself staring into the dark, malevolent eyes of Eugene de Legget, baron of Montfort.

Eugene wove his way through the muttering crowd, his serpentine grace a jarring contrast to the leashed power of Gavenmore’s stance. Betrayed by her trembling knees, Holly sank into her chair as Eugene climbed the steps to the gallery. Unlike every other man in the assembly, he looked her full in the face as he dropped to one knee at her feet and brought her icy hand to his lips.

“You sly little minx,” he murmured beneath the guise of kissing her hand. “You might have fooled these dunderheads with your mummery, but I’ll not be duped so easily. You’ve made my task all the easier. After I best this Welsh whelp, you shall have only the role of my bride to play and only the stage of my bed for your performance.”

His tongue flicked out to lash her knuckles. Holly snatched her hand back, wiping it on her skirt in deliberate insult “ Twould be a performance indeed, my lord, for I’d be unable to summon even a trace of genuine sentiment for the duty.”

Eugene’s smile grew frigid, sending a chill of foreboding down her spine. As he backed away, bowing with each step, she thought it ironic that she had never before been more in need of a champion.

Her desperate gaze was drawn back to Gaven-more. He had been watching the odd exchange through narrowed eyes, his sword still held ready in his hands.

She almost jumped out of her skin when her father reached over to give her hand a benevolent pat. “Should have known Montfort would deliver us from this disaster. He’ll make you a fine husband, child, see if he doesn’t.”