In the King's Service (43 page)

“Oh, well done, son!” Richeldis cried, waving her kerchief and bouncing up and down on her feet. “Donal, he has
never
done that well before! Wasn’t it a brilliant run?”

The king sat back down, tugging at her to sit as well, but he was smiling.

“He did well,” the king admitted. “Did you not think so, Lady Alyce?”

Alyce, who had also come to her feet, likewise sank back to her seat beside the king, still reeling from the queen’s announcement. Surely they could not be referring to Prince Brion.

“You have chosen me a husband, Sire?” she managed to murmur.

“I have. He was riding earlier. In fact, you commented on his horsemanship, and his skill with the lance.”

Numbly Alyce made herself review the last few hours, but no one came immediately to mind. If the man had been riding at the tilt earlier, it was not likely that he was one of the much older men at court—for which she was grateful—but who?1

“Alyce,” the queen murmured, leaning across the king conspiratorially, “he’s referring to Sir Kenneth Morgan. Did you not remark that he rode prettily? And I know that the two of you got on well, while he was convalescing.”

Alyce sat back in her chair, somewhat stunned. Though she had much enjoyed his company, it had never occurred to her to think of him as a potential husband.

“You needn’t look so surprised,” the king said. “I owe Kenneth Morgan my life, more than once—and I must be certain that Corwyn is in safe hands. When I am gone, I will lie easier in my grave, knowing that his sons—and yours—will follow on the ducal throne.”

“Oh, pish!” the queen said, with some feeling. “That isn’t what a young maid wants to hear about her future husband. Besides, that’s years away. Have a care for the child’s feelings. It’s she who must marry him, after all.”

“Hmmm, so she must. But I’m sure he’ll make you a fine husband, my dear. You’ve seen him ride today—and you know that he can carry on an intelligent conversation. What more could a woman want?”

 
 
THAT night, lying sleepless in her bed, Alyce reflected that, though her own wishes had little to do with her eventual fate, she was, in fact, quite content with the king’s choice for her—especially when she considered how differently it might have gone. Though he might, indeed, be more than twice her age, Sir Kenneth was kind, intelligent, better read than most—and the difference in their ages would become increasingly less apparent as the years passed. Furthermore, unlike many of the gentlemen of the court, he could converse on a wide variety of subjects besides battles and coursers and hounds.

But he did not converse with her of anything the next day, or even the next—though she watched for an opportunity to speak with him. In truth, the king seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in sending him off on obscure errands, as the feasts of Christmas approached. Indeed, just before Christmas itself, he disappeared altogether for several days.

She wondered whether he might have gone to Morganhall, to visit Zoë and his other daughters and sisters. She wondered whether Zoë yet knew—darling Zoë, who briefly had been her sister and now, it appeared, was to be her stepdaughter as well. Though she longed to write and tell her friend, she had refrained, knowing it was Kenneth’s place to tell his daughter first. Neither could she write to Vera, not until the betrothal was announced.

Christmas Eve came and went, with no word, and Christmas itself. Nor was Kenneth present on Saint Stephen’s Day morning, when the king and his family usually made a public appearance, processing down to the cathedral in their festive attire.

After Mass, if the weather was not too bad, it was the king’s custom to hold informal audience on the cathedral steps, where citizens of Rhemuth might approach with petitions. To one side, the queen and her children always distributed largesse to the poor: clothing, and parcels of food, and a silver penny to each mother who approached with a babe in arms.

That Stephen’s Day morning, Alyce was among the ladies attending the queen, helping distribute the gifts to the poor. The day was bright and sunny, if very cold. It was toward noon, when the largesse had nearly been exhausted and the servants were beginning to pack up to leave, that she glanced down into the square, at the bottom of the cathedral steps, and noticed Sir Kenneth and Zoë sitting on a fine pair of red-bay R’Kassan barbs.

She straightened to look more closely. Kenneth was wearing a sumptuous cloak of fine black wool lined with sable, the edges gold-embroidered with a double bordure of flory-counterflory, and had a velvet cap well pulled down on his sandy hair. He was fiddling with the ends of his reins, but Zoë was looking right at her, and lifted a gloved hand to wave furiously when she saw she had caught Alyce’s eye.

Alyce waved back, and started down the stairs toward them, but it was Kenneth who dismounted and hurried up the stairs to meet her, offering her a tentative smile as he doffed his cap and inclined his head in greeting.

“Good morrow, my lady,” he murmured. “Alleluia, the Son is born.”

“He is born indeed, alleluia,” Alyce replied, with the ritual response.

“My apologies for being absent without word,” Kenneth said quickly. “I had urgent business with my daughters.” He glanced around them, then gestured awkwardly toward the cathedral door. “May we speak inside?”

She inclined her head nervously and preceded him up the steps and through the postern door, her heart pounding in her breast. She had known this moment must come. Faced with it now, she was not certain how she felt.

Not speaking, Kenneth led her through the narthex and into the nave, glancing around and then guiding her toward a side chapel that appeared to be unoccupied. When they had entered, he pulled shut the barred gate of wrought iron, not looking at her, then went to the rack of votive lights before the statue of a saint. Cocking her head, Alyce realized that it was Saint Albadore, a patron of lost things. As she drifted closer to the little altar to join him, she saw that he was lighting one of the candles stuck into a pan of fine sand.

“Have you lost something, Sir Kenneth?” she asked softly.

“I have,” he admitted. He lifted his wax spill from the lighted candle to blow it out. “I have lost my heart to one of the queen’s ladies.” He carefully set the spill back into a pot of them, still not looking at her. “Fortunately, she is also one of the king’s wards. And to my utter amazement, he has given me leave to ask for her hand in marriage.”

“To ask?” she repeated neutrally, though unaccountably, her heart had begun to flutter in her breast. “And suppose that she were not to agree?”

He looked at her then, unreadable emotion flickering across his calm, earnest face, and lowered his eyes. “A less honest man would say that it did not matter,” he said softly, “for she would be bound to accept the king’s wishes in this regard, and to marry where he chooses.”

“And what would
you
say, Sir Kenneth?” she said very quietly. “For I know that you are an honest man.”

He turned his face toward the statue of Saint Albadore, biting at his lower lip.

“I would say that I hope she
would
agree. I would say that I have come to regard her with great tenderness and respect, and that I would cherish her all the remaining days of my life.” He turned his gaze to her longingly. “I would say that I know I am old enough to be her father, and that I have little to recommend myself so far as fame or fortune are concerned. Nor am I the dashing young swain she might have dreamed of. But if she were to accept my suit, she would find me a kind and loving father to our eventual children, and she would never want for loyalty or compassion.”

She had been Reading him as he spoke, and knew that he believed what he was telling her. She had prepared herself for this moment since her conversation with the king, for she knew that he desired this match. She had not expected to be so touched by Sir Kenneth’s words.

“These are all commendable virtues in any man,” she said. “Indeed, I should think that any woman courted by such a man would regard herself as extremely fortunate.”

“Would she?” he murmured, hope lighting his sea-gray eyes. “Would
you?
”

She ventured him a tiny, nervous smile.

“Sir Kenneth, we are both aware of the king’s wishes in this matter—and you know full well that, if he has decided to give you my hand, then I am obliged to abide by his decision.” Seeing him start to turn away, she reached out to take one of his hands in hers, clasping it between her two.

“Having said that, however, I want you to know that, though I have dreaded this moment since the day my father died—knowing that my marriage would be arranged to best suit the needs of the Crown—I find that, now that it is here, I am both relieved and content that it should be you, asking for my hand.”

“Truly?” he managed to whisper.

She gave him a demure glance from under lowered lashes, along with a dimpled smile. “Truly. I must confess that, in my worst nightmares, I feared the king might give me to some horrible, elderly curmudgeon residing in the wilds of Meara or the Connait. But you are hardly such a man.”

Still disbelieving, he dared to take both her hands in his, searching her blue eyes with his grayer ones as a faint smile began to lift the corners of his mouth.

“You did not find me a difficult patient, while I was recovering from my wound?” he asked.

“No more difficult than anyone in discomfort, and impatient to be healed and off about his life. In truth, our hours together were a welcome diversion from my usual duties in the schoolroom, dealing constantly with children under the age of ten—and I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to delve deeper into the king’s library, in my quest to keep your mind occupied while your body healed.

“Or—no, that is only partially true,” she amended. “It was not my pleasure alone, for I do believe you were as eager as I to browse in the old accounts. I came to admire and respect your mind in those weeks of your convalescence. To be courted by you now—and to have the king bless your aspiration—is a development I could not have dared to hope for.”

“You truly do not mind that I am so much older than you?” he asked.

She laughed gently, shaking her head. “Truly I do not, my lord—though it
has
crossed my mind that your daughters may find it passing strange, to be acquiring a stepmother who is hardly older than they. I assume that will have been the reason for your recent absence, to inform them.”

He allowed himself an easy smile. “Zoë is delighted, as you must have gathered from her greeting outside. Geill and Alazais are unperturbed—and look forward to meeting you in due course. They are fifteen and thirteen,” he added, “and quite certain that they are very grown up, indeed.”

He flushed slightly in embarrassment and ducked his head briefly, then bent to kiss the back of her hand before he released it. “We’d best join the others, before they begin to talk.”

“Do you think they will not talk anyway, when they learn that we are to wed?” she said teasingly. “Oh, they will, my lord—and hardly kindly, some of them. It is one thing for a Deryni heiress to reside quietly in the king’s household, under his protection, and even to make discreet use of her powers in the king’s service. It is quite another for her to take a husband, and to bear others of her kind. There are some who will resent this match.”

Kenneth allowed himself a faint smile. “If they resent it, it will also be because they envy me,” he said. “You must wed
someone,
Alyce. Mayhap, if you marry me, there will be less resentment against our eventual sons.”

“Or daughters,” Alyce murmured, thinking of Zoë and the sisters she had not yet met. “You could sire more daughters.”

A flicker of pain came briefly over Kenneth’s face. “I have fathered sons,” he said quietly. “Sadly, none of them survived. Zoë’s mother . . . was not strong.”

“I’m sorry,” Alyce whispered, Reading his pain as she lightly touched his hand. “I shall try to do a better job. Sons are important to me as well—and to the king. He
will
expect us to produce a proper heir for Corwyn, you know.”

He smiled faintly and covered her hand with his, lifting it to press it tenderly to his lips. “Dear, gentle Alyce, you are a brave young woman, to take me on.”

She laughed gently and shook her head. “No,
you
are brave, my lord, to take on a Deryni wife. Whatever else may befall, I think it very unlikely that we shall ever find life together boring.”

He, too, laughed at that, still half disbelieving his good fortune, and the two of them made their way back out to the cathedral steps, where the royal party were mounting up, preparing to depart. Zoë had dismounted during their absence, and came flying up the steps to throw herself into Alyce’s arms with a glad cry.

“Can it really be true?” she whispered.

Laughing, Alyce returned her embrace, as Sir Kenneth looked on indulgently.

“More true than either of us could have dreamed,” she replied. “And right glad am I of it. Will you mind that we shall be mother and daughter as well as sisters?”

Laughing, Zoë shook her head. “You shall always be my sister, darling Alyce. And I shall be happy and honored to own you as my stepmother as well. Papa, we are truly blest,” she added, shifting her embrace to her father. “I hope you may be even half as happy as you have made me.”

“Well, with that for a recommendation, we can hardly go wrong, can we?” Kenneth replied, bestowing a kiss on the cheek first of Zoë and then Alyce.

Chapter 26

—PROVERBS 4:3

 
 
 
 
 
 
IT had been a foregone conclusion that the betrothal of Sir Kenneth Morgan and Lady Alyce de Corwyn at that Twelfth Night court of 1090 would meet with less than universal approval—not because of any failing on Sir Kenneth’s part, but because his affianced bride was Deryni. But no one could have predicted the terrible unfolding of other hatreds, as the day progressed.