Knights (5 page)

Dane narrowed his eyes. “The dowry?”

Gareth leaned against the windowsill, his still-muscular arms folded. “Have you forgotten, Dane? We were given gold when the marriage contract was made, a great deal of it. Gloriana is rich in her own rightshe inherited considerable land, jewels, the house in the village, and several properties in London. Perhaps you are ready to part with your wife’s legacy, but that still leaves the question of the gold. It has gone, Dane, and long since—we spent it, on debts and soldiers, bribes and taxes. If you spurn Gloriana, we must return every penny, in full measure, with interest.”

Dane sat on the stool again. Gloriana’s fortune was not a consideration and had never been, but the dowry was something else. No honorable man squandered a woman’s bride-price and then put her aside, even when she had other means, both financial and physical, of attracting another husband. The money had to be repaid, and that might take years.

Gareth came to stand beside Dane, and slapped him on the shoulder. “There’s no sense in worrying about it now,” he said. “You have come home, after too long an absence. Tomorrow, our young brother becomes a knight. There will be time enough later to undo this coil and set matters aright.”

At length, Dane let out a rough sigh and then nodded. “To the tavern,” he said.

Gareth grinned and headed for the door. After only a moment’s hesitation, Dane followed.

Alone in her chamber, Gloriana considered her situation. She had refused Edward’s marriage proposal gently, reminding him that, for all Lord Kenbrook’s obvious shortcomings, the man was her legal husband and that she, like everyone else in Christendom, was
allowed but one spouse at a time. She did
not
say that she could never offer him any greater love than that which a sister held for a brother.

Edward had sighed and planted a tender kiss on Gloriana’s forehead. Then, without another word, he had left her.

Now, more than an hour later, she was fully dressed, in a gown of apple-green wool, and her heavy, waistlength tresses, though quite damp, were neatly combed. Her scalp still stung a little from working out the snarls, but that was nothing compared to the smarting in her heart. Kenbrook had brought a mistress to Hadleigh Castle—it was unbelievable. Had her indignation not been greater than her pain, Gloriana might have thrown herself down on the bed and wept. As it was, fury sustained her.

It wasn’t as though she were naive, Gloriana insisted silently, turning away from the large oval of polished silver that served as her mirror. Men did take mistresses—her foster father, Cyrus, had been a devoted husband to Edwenna, and yet the servants at the London house had whispered about a woman in Flanders. Her own brother-in-law, Gareth St. Gregory, who was, by Gloriana’s reckoning, among the finest men in England, adored his poor Elaina, would see her want for nothing, in fact. For all his devotion, though, Gareth kept a lover, a dark-haired Irish beauty called Annabel, in a cottage beside the lake.

It was wrong, Gloriana reflected, for a man or a woman to break their wedding vows, but the reality was that good people went astray sometimes, for a thousand different reasons. She had never thought, even in her most sentimental moments, that Dane would keep himself chaste while he traveled the world, waiting for a seven-year-old bride to grow up. All Gloriana
had truly expected of her husband was a chance to prove herself a spirited, attentive, and entertaining wife, and now she had been denied that opportunity, out of hand.

It was unfair treatment, that’s what it was, Gloriana raged to herself, opening the largest of her three chests and surveying the wimples and headdresses inside. No proper woman went about with her hair uncovered, according to conventional standards, but Gloriana found veils cumbersome and wore them as seldom as possible. Biting her lip, she slammed the chest lid down on the whole array and walked resolutely to the door.

Supper was about to be served, and she was hungry.

Fresh rushes had been laid in the great hall, and Gloriana caught the distinctive scents of lavender and sage, dittany and mint and rue, scattered on the damp stone floor. Oil lamps, suspended from the crossbeams overhead by lengths of iron chain, glowed with costly light, and the long table, lined with guests and menat-arms, was scoured pale. Trenchers of roast venison, capon, and rabbit were interspersed with bowls of boiled turnips and beets. On the dais was another, smaller table, where Gareth normally dined—along with Elaina, during her rare, brief visits to the castle. The steward, a Scot called Hamilton Eigg, had a place there, too, as did Cradoc, the friar, and any honored guest. Edward also generally sat with his eldest brother, and so did Gloriana.

For the moment, only Eigg and Cradoc were in evidence, but Gareth often came late to the table and tonight Kenbrook would surely be in his company. While Gloriana had no objection to dining in the company of her husband, she wasn’t quite ready to break bread with his mistress.

Gloriana was standing in the middle of the great hall, wondering whether to stay or flee, when Edward came up beside her, caught her elbow in his hand, and guided her toward the steps of the dais.

“Have no fear,” he whispered, for he was good at divining her thoughts. “My brothers are in the village, quaffing ale, and are not likely to join us. The woman has a headache, I’m told, and will keep to her roomwhich, it may console you to learn, is some distance from Kenbrook’s chambers.”

For tonight, at least, Gloriana thought with despairing relief, she was to be spared a public introduction to her husband’s lover. The reprieve was temporary, of course, but she was grateful all the same. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to find out her name,” she whispered back as they stepped together onto the dais.

“She is called Mariette,” Edward answered.

Eigg and the priest rose out of deference to Gloriana, and she offered a faltering smile and joined them on the bench.

“You have forgotten your headdress, Lady Kenbrook,” Cradoc pointed out mildly, between spoonfuls of savory stew. The friar was a pleasant middle-aged man with silver in his tonsured hair and a long, crooked scar beneath his right eye.

Gloriana lowered her head to murmur a quick prayer and, using the point of her knife, helped herself to a steaming turnip and a slice of venison. She seldom thought of the Time Before, in that place Edwenna said she had only imagined, but at odd moments she remembered things. Just then, she recalled a pronged implement, called a fork, and longed for one.

“She didn’t forget,” Eigg commented wryly, tearing a hunk of brown bread from the loaf. He was younger than Cradoc by a decade, a handsome man with dark
hair and eyes and a good head for figures. “Her ladyship, it would seem, is wont to defy religious convention.”

Normally, Gloriana did not mind the steward’s teasing and even took a harmless pleasure in it. That evening, however, she was on the prickly side. “You’ll get me burned for a heretic if you keep up that kind of talk,” she said, in a stiff tone. “May I remind you, sir, that I attend mass every morning, as faithfully as anyone else?”

“If it’s sin that intrigues you,” Edward put in, bending to look around Gloriana to Eigg, “look to the lady’s husband.”

Eigg wiped his trencher methodically with his portion of bread, while Cradoc snatched a roast pigeon from a tray borne by a passing servant.

“And now,” said the priest, chewing, “we shall suffer a discourse on virtue—from none other than Edward St. Gregory, who has done more penance than any lad between here and London.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Gloriana saw Edward’s color rise, and she allowed herself a smile. It was true that Edward had an uncommon gift for mischief, and no one knew that better than the friar, who had tutored them both, in their turns.

Before the youngest St. Gregory could offer a retort, there was a stir at the entrance to the hall, and Gloriana forgot her fleeting amusement.

It seemed that Gareth had come to supper after all, and Dane was beside him.

Gloriana started to rise, her first instinct being an unworthy desire to escape, but even as she changed her mind, Eigg grasped her wrist to prevent her from bolting.

“Things will be too easy for his lordship if you go,”
he said quietly, in a tone pitched to reach Gloriana’s ears and no other’s. “Stay, Lady Kenbrook, for it is your right to dine at this table.”

Gloriana watched her husband stride through the hall, flushed with drink, a comradely arm around his elder brother’s shoulders. They were surrounded by members of Kenbrook’s seedy army, all of them bellowing a discordant version of some bawdy tavern song, and the men at the lower table joined the singing.

Gareth’s hounds, waiting placidly beneath the trestle for table scraps, wriggled out from under and scattered, whining, in all directions. This phenomenon produced a swell of raucous laughter, for these were hunting dogs who had faced wild boars and dodged the spiked antlers of cornered stags.

Gloriana sat stiffly, her chin raised and her shoulders straight, watching her husband’s approach. When Kenbrook drew closer, she saw that he was not so drunk as she had thought, but the knowledge was cold comfort. His eyes, blue as a stormy northern sea, were bright with merry defiance and a certain mockery.

Her hand tightened around the wooden wine goblet she shared with Edward, but she overcame the urge to fling it at her husband’s head. As Dane mounted the dais and came to stand behind her, Gloriana forced her fingers to go limp, to lie flat on the tabletop.

She felt the warmth of his body against her back, even though they weren’t touching, and a strange, powerful sensation surged through her, wicked and primitive. His breath brushed her neck as he bent to speak quietly into her ear, and goose bumps raced down her arms and chest, hardening her nipples where
they pressed against her chemise and fostering an ache in her most personal parts.

“Go at once,” Kenbrook commented evenly, “and cover your hair.”

Gloriana turned on the hard bench and looked up into his face. Although he smelled of ale, his eyes were clear and he had not slurred his words. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again, but not because she was afraid of this stranger she had wed. She simply had no wish to provide an evening’s entertainment for everyone else in the great hall.

Edward initiated a protest, but before he’d stammered out more than a few words, one of Dane’s battlehardened hands moved from Gloriana’s shoulder, where it had come to rest lightly, to the boy’s. It was plain by Edward’s indrawn breath and pale cheeks that Dane’s hold was less than gentle.

“Hold your tongue, pup,” Kenbrook warned. “I will not suffer your interference.”

Gloriana felt her temper slipping. “Unhand him,” she hissed. “Now.”

Dane chuckled and released his brother, and Gloriana imagined the bruise Edward would surely have by morning. And all because he had sought to defend her.

Slowly, and with the regal dignity she had spent years perfecting, Gloriana rose from the bench. Cheeks burning, she nonetheless offered a slight nod to Kenbrook, that being the closest thing to the accustomed curtsy she could manage at the moment, and swept past him, holding her skirts, to descend the steps of the dais.

Instead of taking a seat beside Gareth, Kenbrook followed Gloriana into the passageway outside the great hall, there to catch her elbow in a grasp so gentle
that she barely felt it and, at the same time, so firm that she couldn’t have escaped. Seeing no point in wasting energy only to make a fool of herself, Gloriana did not attempt to break free.

She glared up at Dane, wishing she had never learned to love him, and waited in silence.

In the light of the torches burning in the passage, Kenbrook looked more, like a Viking than ever. He seemed impossibly tall, and his body exuded heat and strength. Gloriana did not need to touch him to know he would feel like a statue clothed in flesh, and his eyes, as he stared down at her in seeming consternation, were cold.

A flood of unseemly warmth rushed through her.

“Will you be returning to the great hall?” The question was odd, and there was no expression at all in Kenbrook’s voice when he uttered it. “After you’ve covered your hair, I mean?”

“No, my lord,” Gloriana said, staring pointedly at his hand until he released her. He need never know that he’d set her senses aflame, just by touching her. “I find the company most tedious, and in any case, I have no intention of covering my hair.”

For a long moment, Kenbrook was silent, and plainly stunned, as though she had struck him with the flat side of a broadsword. Evidently insubordination, even in so mild a form, was almost incomprehensible to him. Or perhaps he was simply stupid.

Gloriana knew better, of course. He was known to be brilliant, especially in matters involving strategy, but she was angry enough, hurt enough, to indulge herself in purposeful misconception for a few moments.

When he spoke, his voice was calm, even pleasant. Gloriana sensed that, while Dane was not the sort to
harm a woman physically, he was dangerous all the same, for he could break her heart in a thousand different ways. Her body throbbed with dark, primal desires she could not begin to define.

“As long as you are my wife, Gloriana,” he said, “you will obey me.”

She was tired, and Kenbrook’s homecoming, however enlightening, had been a bitter disappointment. All her pretty dreams were melting away, like spring snow, and she had exhausted her store of restraint by holding her tongue in the great hall. “If you are not bound by our sacred vows, my lord,” Gloriana replied, “neither am I.”

“Exactly what do you mean by that?”

“I think you know,” she said.

“Mariette.” The name was followed by a weighted sigh.

“Your mistress,” Gloriana said, in a tone of tremulous triumph. What she felt, of course, was something quite different.

“Mariette is not my mistress,” Kenbrook hissed, resting his hands on his lean hips now. The light of the torches glimmered in his hair and in the beginnings of a golden beard. “I assure you, my association with the mademoiselle has been of the purest nature.”