Heart of a Knight (29 page)

She ached to touch him again, but restrained herself, content for the moment to let him sleep while she admired him. No man on earth had been more beautifully made than Thomas of Roxburgh. What cruel thing had God planned in making him a peasant? How could the angels have given him that wicked laughter and resonant voice and eyes of sapphire, then bid him die too young from too much work and too little joy?

And it was not only the shell of the man, for one day, he would age, and mayhap lose his hair, and grow wrinkled. His teeth would not always be so white in his flashing grin, but she would wager her life that even then he would find cause to laugh.

His heart was as big as the sky, as warm as the sun, and true honor dwelt in his soul.

Here was a knight worthy of a troubadour's song, a man both strong and warm, a man who did not kick dogs, but saved them special treats. A man who did not take offense at the ill-tempered comments of a boy, but won him over with equal parts discipline and good humor.

A man who did not treat a woman as if she were some article to be used and tossed aside, but unlocked the secrets of pleasure for her.

She ached with love for him, and in that moment, understood why she had so fought against this. Her heart had known the truth of it. As long as she could keep him an arm's length from her, with the barriers of clothes and class between them, she would have been able to pretend she had no more than simple lust for him.

But they had removed those barriers and pressed their flesh together, and bound each other closer with each kiss, with each brush of a hand, and with each joining, until there was now, this soft morning, no hope they would ever be unbound.

She loved him. And there would be no other in her heart no matter how many husbands she outlived. This peasant with jeweled eyes had hostaged her soul.

The knowledge burned her so deeply that she cried out softly against it, wondering if any pleasure they found together, any joy, could make their eventual pain worthwhile.

And then, Thomas opened his eyes, and saw her gazing at him. Surprise and remembrance crossed his face. He reached for her, pulling her close, and kissing her with a low, happy growl. "I feared 'twas a dream," he said, and hugged her with true joy. "My Lyssa, my love, let me have you again."

Gladly did Lyssa give herself, and partook, and knew that even if she were drawn and quartered for her part in this deception, 'twould be worth dying for.

 16

The heat grew daily worse
as August wore on, and Isobel despised it. The days passed in cloying stickiness, each the same as the one before, a round of numbing chores and witless tasks. She bit her tongue near to bleeding more times than she could count, knowing she had to restrain herself whilst Stephen lingered at Woodell.

Stephen. For a time, she'd thought she might find in her some kindness or attraction to the knight, but he bored her to distraction, following her hither and yon, ridiculously earnest in both speech and manner until her only urge when he appeared was to give him a sound cuff.

But if the days were wearing, the nights were worse. Next to her in the bed, Nurse snorted and sweated, and Isobel would awaken to find her arm pressed against the hot skin of the woman and want to blanch. It seemed nary a breath of wind ever stirred, nor ever would again. She thought she would go mad.

The first time she'd gone wandering, it had been innocent. Nurse had been snorting in her sleep, and Isobel wakened with a snap to a pool of intoxicating moonlight spilling over her body. She lifted her eyes to see an enormous full moon washing the sky clean of stars, and it seemed, suddenly, to be calling her. From some distance, she heard the sound of drums and a faint pipe, and Isobel rose to see if she might glimpse the fire of the villagers.

Dressed only in her thin shift, she wandered to the embrasure and leaned on it, and looked out. Here it was cooler. The night air kissed her skin and the moonlight caressed her, and without thinking, Isobel donned a tunic and wandered down the steps, keeping close to the shadows on the south wall when she discovered a handful of soldiers playing dice in the great hall. Her bare feet made no sound against the cool stone floor, and she slipped through the buttery into the yard.

In the thin, dry, night air, she halted and breathed in deep, filling her lungs with the scent of cow and fire and some herb she couldn't name, on air as cool as the river. Her restlessness eased a little, and she walked to the orchard, where she would be hidden.

The soft laughter of a woman startled her, and Isobel ducked behind a tree, waiting until she knew from whence the sound came. A low, warm male sound followed the laughter, and a rustling, as if there was some game of chase being played through the orchard. Isobel made herself small in the shadows, thinking it was some guard and his leman. She did not wish to be sent back to her chamber, nor—even worse—to have Stephen called to keep her company.

The sounds halted close by, and Isobel chanced peeking through a crotch of branches to see if she might spy the pair. They stood in a pool of moonlight, lit as brilliantly as day, and Isobel's heart dropped to her feet.

For there stood Thomas, naked as the day of his birth, gathering close the small body of an also naked woman. Lyssa, her hair scattering over her body like a fairy cloak that only enhanced her allure. Isobel stared as Thomas's hands moved over Lyssa's body, such giant, beautiful hands, so gentle as they traced the line of her back and the swell of her hips with a tenderness that made Isobel want to weep.

Then he lifted his head, and his face showed clearly in the illuminated night, that high brow and sensual mouth framed with black hair, beautiful enough without the expression that crossed it. Isobel's eyes filled with tears as Thomas lifted his hands to Lyssa's face, and touched her cheeks with his thumbs, and gazed down upon her, his face a work of art in its wonder and joy and yearning.

And love. Tears ran down Isobel's cheeks as she watched him bend and kiss Lyssa—oh, so sweetly!

A wave of such emotion rose in Isobel that she turned, covering her mouth with her hands to keep the sounds from spilling out as she ran from the scene, her mind playing over and over that sober, joyous expression, that depth of feeling, that love.

Oh, to be so loved!

Swiftly, she took shelter in the empty kitchen, and there on the rushes, threw herself into her weeping. To be so loved, so revered. To have Thomas look upon her that way, she would have done anything.

Instead, she was burdened with a lovesick calf who only wanted her for her beauty, because he could strut her about his friends, and they would be envious of his good fortune in bedding such a wife, and never would he know there burned in her breast a soul hungry for all it could not claim because she was a woman and not free to make her own choices. In six weeks hence, she would be wed to him and Lyssa would be here at Woodell, claiming what should have belonged to Isobel.

When the storm of weeping passed, Isobel lay on the bench in misery, trying to think of some plan. When it came to her, so simple and clean, she wiped her face and sat up.

If Lyssa had a husband, she would be forced to send Thomas away. In Stephen's ear, Isobel would plant the obvious need, and let him think he had come up with the idea himself, and let him run off to the king and tell tales.

Isobel would still be forced to marry, but at least she would not suffer alone, nor would she have to think of Thomas gazing that way upon her noble stepmother, for he would be gone.

The raw wool Lyssa had dyed to several shades of blue had been spun, and she wove it now into her tapestry, the woad for sky and a woman's gown, the meadowsweet for small flowers littering the ground beneath the horses' hooves and gradations of sky. The deep cobalt she stitched into jewels along a sleeve, and gave to the eyes of a proud knight atop a great black destrier.

As she worked, she hummed along with Nurse, who sang a ballad of lost love. Alice had a deep rich alto that ran as counterpoint, and Isobel, ever vain about her voice, sang the melody in a voice as light and sweet as a blackbird.

Into the high solar spilled the deep light of late summer, richened to a dark gold with the dust of harvest, proceeding even now in the fields visible from where Lyssa sat.

In spite of the dearth of rain mid-season, the harvest was the richest in years. A fact for which they could all thank Thomas, who'd seen to the planting in her absence. She wondered how many of them realized that simple fact.

The peasants, like as not, did know whence the harvest came. She could see the small figures in their dun and white and blue, bent into round shapes as they wielded their tools against a backdrop of ripe yellow grain. The swinging scythes caught the sun on the upward swing, sending brilliant flashes of light dancing across the solar walls. The colors and shapes appealed to her eye, and as she wove blues through her tapestry, she was already planning the next. Hunt scenes offered drama and beauty and a chance to dye the deepest hues, but something about the subtle colors of harvest tugged at her now.

She found herself wondering why she'd never noticed that simple, clean beauty before this—and thinking on what a pleasant challenge it would present. That clean, unbroken sky could perhaps be done with meadowsweet blue. Silk, perhaps. But not silk for the fields. Wool, spun very fine, dyed in ragwort and black oak and mayhap even a little onion skin, a good strong orange to give the eye a sense of that richness.

Forgetting the work before her, she narrowed her eyes to blur the scene in order to better see the colors of the trees. There would be a lovely challenge. She might weave a little heavier twine there—or better yet, softest wool, dyed black and grayish green with blackthorn and mother-wort.

"Can ye see him, even at this distance, m'lady?" Alice said, raising the blue eyes that were so much like her son's.

Lyssa ducked her head to her work. "I am only plotting my next tapestry," she said, knowing Alice saw through her ruse. In truth, Lyssa
could
pick out Thomas, towering above the others in the fields. Twas a poor view, to be sure, but enough to fan the low fire of happiness burning deep in her heart.