The Princess Spy (37 page)

“I am thankful you did.” She entwined her fingers in his and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek.

He had to take a deep breath to refill his lungs before going on. “Duke Theodemar supplied me with a horse, and my father had brought my own mail hauberk and sword from home. While traveling here, we received word of where to join forces with Duke Wilhelm and his men.”

She had been staring into his eyes with a sleepy, content expression, when her eyes went wide with horror and she screamed. Colin turned as a raised sword came straight at his head.

He ducked and the sword struck his shoulder. Colin raised his own sword and hit Claybrook’s wrist, for it was Claybrook who had struck him. The sword fell from Claybrook’s hand. He lunged for it, but Colin placed his booted foot on Claybrook’s shoulder and pushed with all his might. The kick sent Claybrook sprawling backward.

Claybrook’s sword slid across the floor. Colin glanced behind him as Margaretha snatched up the weapon.

“Stay back,” he told her.

Claybrook was slow getting up and Colin thrust his sword against his chest. He could easily kill the villain, and he had fantasized many times of doing just that, of running Claybrook through. But somehow, his thirst for Claybrook’s blood had melted away, replaced by a much diff erent desire — for Margaretha’s respect.

“I will not kill you,” Colin said, “even though you don’t deserve mercy. But as a wise person lately reminded me, I need to leave room for God’s vengeance.”

Claybrook was not wearing armor, and the tip of Colin’s sword was pricking his skin through his shirt. He yelped like the coward he was, then lay back on the floor. His face was gray and he was breathing hard. “Who poisoned me?” He kept his eyes closed as he spoke. “If not for the poison, I would not have been so easily defeated.”

“But you still would have been. Good always conquers evil in the end.” God had decreed it to be so since before time.

“What will you do to me?” Claybrook opened his eyes and gazed up at him.

“That is up to Duke Wilhelm. I am done with you. Duke Wilhelm can take you to his king and have you punished. There are certainly more witnesses to the crimes you have committed here. But if you ever again set foot in England, I shall make sure you are given the welcome you deserve.”

Colin shouted for Duke Wilhelm. Within moments, he was striding down the corridor with one of his men. “Good work,” Duke Wilhelm said. They hauled Claybrook to his feet and dragged him, none too gently, down the stone steps toward the dungeon.

Steffan and Wolfgang were staring, their mouths open, at Colin and his sword. He winked at them as he put the sword back in its sheath.

Shouts resounded from the courtyard and Margaretha ran to the window to look out.

“Father’s knights are returning with prisoners. We have won!” She turned to him, her face lit with a big smile.

He came over to the window to join her, stepping around Adela and Kirstyn, who were still sitting on the floor. The men outside were shouting jovially and celebrating.

“It is over, then.”

“Which one is your father?” Margaretha asked him.

“That one there,” Colin said. “He’s wearing a black surcoat with the red and yellow chevron from our coat of arms.”

“Oh yes, I see him. And there is my father greeting him. Isn’t it wonderful that they are friends? Things seem to have worked out so perfectly in the end, didn’t they? Even though they started out so badly.”

“Very true.” Things had not started out well, but now . . .

Margaretha’s gaze shifted to his shoulder. “Did Claybrook’s sword hurt you?”

“I barely felt it. The chain mail protected me.” He used his fingers to brush back a curl that had worked out of her braid and dangled by her temple. Her hair was as soft as silk. His heart started to speed up.

One of Duke Wilhelm’s knights appeared at the top of the steps. Margaretha’s little brothers spoke to him in excited tones.

“They’re asking,” Margaretha explained, “if it is safe for us to come out now.”

The knight must have affirmed that it was, because the boys bolted out the door, whooping, and Margaretha’s two sisters also left.

Suddenly, he was alone with Margaretha.

Margaretha was thankful Colin was only wearing the long mail tunic and not the hard metal plates of armor like Valten wore in jousting tournaments. She could snuggle close to him. But did she dare? They were alone, but anyone might come into the solar at any time, as the door was open. She smiled up into his blue eyes. “You said you had more to say to me. How long do you think we have before we are discovered?”

“Not long, no doubt.” He stared at her lips. “We should make the most of it.”

A delicious shiver went through her stomach at his words, hoping he meant to kiss her, but he frowned.

“Margaretha.” His hands gently wrapped around her shoulders as he leaned toward her. “We get along reasonably well, don’t you think?”

“Yes, of course.” Her heart sank.

“We were vastly good friends on the way to Marienberg, weren’t we?” There was a sharpness in his eyes as he seemed to delve into her thoughts.

“After you stopped trying to get rid of me.”

He looked sad.

“But I understand why, so it is all well.” Margaretha’s breath shallowed as she focused on his lips. “You became the best friend I’ve ever had. You were sweet and kind and courageous and . . .”

“Remember when we were in the tunnel and I said I loved you? Well, I didn’t mean I love you as a friend, Margaretha.”

Their kiss came even more sharply into her memory and she whispered, “I didn’t think you did.” She placed her palms against his chest, against the hard texture of his chain mail, imagining she could feel his heart beating under her right hand.

“I know you love your family. They are wonderful people, and it’s perfectly understandable that you wouldn’t want to leave them.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “But I can’t leave here without you. I want to marry you and have children with you and take you back with me to England.” His expression was almost fierce as he said, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.” Oh, why didn’t he just kiss her? “I understand.”

“Will you marry me? Will you leave your family and come with me? Or must I stay here and work in the stable until your father either sends me away or takes pity on me and makes me one of his knights, so that I’ll be worthy enough to marry you?”

“I don’t want you to have to work in the stable. You aren’t very good at it, and it isn’t a worthy goal for a man who will someday be an English earl.” She lifted a finger to rub the delightfully prickly whiskers on the side of his face. “You could become one of father’s knights, since you do look very good in mail and armor and with a sword in your hand.” She smiled teasingly, leaning her forearms against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her back. “But I love you so much, I don’t feel any fear at the thought of going with you to your home in England. I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.”

“You do?” His brows went up, and his breath seemed to catch in his throat.

“I do. I know I’ll miss my family, but I would miss you too much to let you go. I want you to be my family now, for us to be a family together.”

He closed the gap between them and kissed her, more intensely this time, stealing her breath and turning her knees to mush.

He ended the kiss and she pressed her cheek against his chest, feeling the tiny circles of the chain mail. “You asked me once why I never married any of my suitors. I knew I didn’t want to live without love and passion and goodness. And you have all those things. You are what I wanted all along. The more I understood you, the more I fell in love with you. Only I didn’t even realize I was in love with you until . . . I’m not sure when, exactly.”

She leaned away to look into his eyes.

He touched her hair, and said softly, “I think I fell in love with you when you refused to let me leave you with Anne. Or maybe it was when you came and freed me from the dungeon, then fearlessly led the way through that secret tunnel.”

“You say the sweetest things.” Margaretha might have laughed if she hadn’t felt so warm and comfortable, and if she hadn’t been thinking about kissing him again. “Perhaps I fell in love with you when I saw how you took care of Toby and never complained about taking him with us. And when you held me in your arms and let me cry about how much I missed my mother. You didn’t try to take advantage of me. You didn’t scold me or get annoyed with me. You just . . . loved me.”

She kissed him. “I love you,” she whispered against his lips.

“I am sorry you must leave your family,” he whispered back.

“As long as you love me, and I am not alone, I will be happy.”

He kissed her, and she was lost in Colin again.

Someone cleared his throat. Loudly.

She looked up. Colin’s father, and her own father, were standing at the door.

Margaretha’s cheeks went hot. Colin slipped his hand in hers.

“Father,” Margaretha began, “I — ”

“I already know. Lord le Wyse wishes to marry you.”

Lord le Wyse. How noble that sounded. Had he already asked her father if he could marry her?

“We shall speak of this later,” her father said, not looking surprised, but Colin’s father’s eyes were wide and questioning as he stared at his son. “Now, let us go to the Great Hall. Cook has prepared food for us all.”

She searched her father’s face again, but he did not appear angry. He didn’t even scowl at Colin, only frowned a little.

As she passed out of the door, she heard her father say to Colin behind her, “She said yes?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Colin replied.

It seemed her father knew a bit of English. Colin had apparently discussed his marrying her, and her father had not refused. That thought set her heart to soaring. She squeezed Colin’s hand, and he squeezed back.

“I just remembered,” Margaretha said, as they sat down at the trestle tables in the Great Hall at Hagenheim Castle. “I haven’t eaten since my wedding feast last night.”

Colin nearly choked on the sip he had just taken from his goblet. He met Duke Wilhelm’s eye at the head of the table.

“Father, I’m not truly married to Claybrook, am I?” Margaretha asked. “I heard the priest say we were man and wife, but I did not give my consent, and I escaped him before I was forced to fight him off. Besides, everyone knows that he was heaving his stomach’s contents all night.”

“Nevertheless,” Duke Wilhelm said, “I shall write the archbishop immediately and have him annul your marriage to Claybrook.”

“How long will that take?” she asked, echoing his own thoughts.

“Perhaps no more than a month. Perhaps two.”

A month seemed like a long time to Colin. Two months was an eternity.

“Margaretha,” Duke Wilhelm said, as he pinned her with a serious stare. “I want to know if you have accepted Colin le Wyse’s suit to marry you.”

“Yes, Father, I have.”

She clasped Colin’s hand under the table.

“Do you understand that your responsibility will be to your husband? That your home will be England, not Hagenheim?”

“Yes, Father, I understand.”

“And that you will not be able to visit Hagenheim whenever you wish?”

“Yes, Father.”

Colin’s heart sank as he thought he detected a note of sadness in Margaretha’s voice. Was he wrong to take her away from her family, a family who loved her? She loved him, but did she love him enough not to resent, after a while, having to live away from her family and the only home she had ever known? She had said she would be happy with him, but would she regret her decision, maybe even regret it already?

She smiled up at him, then attacked her food like a person who was thinking only joyful thoughts. Perhaps she hadn’t realized yet the homesickness she would feel, the loneliness for her family, living in a foreign place with only a husband to love her. He must speak to her, to make her understand what her father had been asking her.

With much still to do to restore order after Claybrook’s seizure of Hagenheim, the town and the castle, their meal was rather quick. Even so, while they ate, Margaretha managed to charm Colin’s father into smiling and laughing. His father even promised to help Colin build her a house bigger than le Wyse House, and to her specifications.