The Recruit (41 page)

She spun around on her heel to insist that they leave, accidentally bumping into the
man next to her. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been of any circumstance,
but at that moment something happened in the pit that caused everyone to lurch forward.
Unbalanced, as much from the movement as from her pregnant stomach, Mary cried out
and started to fall.

She would have fallen backward into the pit a dozen feet below if Sir John hadn’t
caught her.

She was still leaning toward the pit, her arms latched around his neck, when their
eyes met.

His were stunned. “You’re pregnant!”

Something was off tonight. For nearly a month Kenneth had fought twice—sometimes three
times—a week in the Pits of Hell, as the secret combat tourney was called. He knew
it was risky to fight in the illegal tournaments, but Felton’s taunts had only worsened
as the weeks passed, and his control where his wife was concerned was stretched to
the breaking point. The fighting had provided both the outlet he needed to take the
edge off his anger and a means of preparing himself for the upcoming war and his place
in the Guard. Ironically, it was MacKay’s hidden-identity appearance in the Highland
Games that had inspired him.

He was undefeated. A champion and a crowd favorite. Normally, the shouts of Ice—the
war name he’d jestingly given himself as a reminder of why he was here—invigorated
him. Got his blood rushing and made his muscles flare with anticipation.

But not tonight. Tonight he felt none of his usual excitement and bloodlust. He exchanged
punishing blow after blow with his opponent, more with an eye to ending the fight
as soon as possible than to savoring victory.

His thoughts weren’t on the fight but on the conversation earlier with Mary. She’d
been trying to tell him something, but he’d been too focused on what he needed to
do to listen. Time was running out, and he had to get her to safety. Removing her
from the castle would be the first step. But of course, she hadn’t understood. How
could she, when she didn’t know the truth?

Distracted, his head snapped back when his opponent’s meaty fist connected with his
jaw. A swing of his mace followed. Narrowly evading the sharp points in his ribs,
Kenneth realized he’d better focus on the thick-necked brute doing his best to kill
him.

He’d just landed a rib-crushing blow of his hammer on his opponent’s side and followed
it with a leaping kick that sent him careening to the ground, when a cry pricked his
senses. A woman’s cry.

His gaze shot in the direction of the sound. He saw a flash of movement—a woman lurched
toward the pit before being pulled back by a man.

Not just any woman. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t possible. But every flared
nerve ending in his body told him it was
his
woman.

He didn’t know whether it was the delayed panic of almost seeing her tumble into the
pit, knowing that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop it, that made
him snap or the fact that the man who
did
stop it—and who now held her in his bloody arms too tightly and for too long—was
Felton.

He looked as if he were about to kiss her, damn it.

Catapulting out of the pit by stepping on a piece of the broken wall, he launched
himself at Felton. “Get your hands off her!”

Felton looked up at him in shocked recognition.

“Kenneth, no!” Mary cried, extracting herself from the other man’s embrace.

But he was too far gone to heed her plea. His frustration. His heart-knotting confusion
of feelings for his wife. His fear that he might lose her. Seeing the man who’d been
taunting him for weeks with his hands on her. All came together in one mind-numbing
rage.

The bastard was going to have the fight he’d begged for. One fist connected with the
steel of Felton’s helm, the other with his mail-clad gut.

Felton’s men would have rushed forward to the knight’s aid, but someone in the crowd
shouted “soldiers” and the crowd surged toward the wynd. Thinking they meant to
attack, Felton’s men drew their swords, and then did find themselves under attack
as the crowd reacted to the threat.

Felton tried to grab his sword as well, but Kenneth anticipated his movement and knocked
it from his hand.

Felton was fully armored in chain mail and Kenneth was naked to the waist, protected
only by the steel of his helm. But it didn’t matter. There was nothing knightly about
the way Kenneth fought. He used his fists, elbows, legs, feet—whatever he need to
win. Felton used his shield—until Kenneth wrenched it from his hands—his dirk, whatever
he could get his hands on, but his weapons were no match for Kenneth’s fierce skill
and brutish strength. He’d been hit so many times the past few weeks that his body
had become almost immune to pain. In less than a minute, Kenneth had the victory he’d
been craving for months. He had Felton on his back, pinning him to the ground with
his foot pressed against his throat.

“Put your hands on my wife again and I’ll kill you.”

Felton’s eyes burned hatred through the steel of his helm. He wanted to say something,
but Kenneth’s foot prevented it.

The crowd had given them a wide circle, but he was aware of only one gaze on him.
Mary stared at him in wide-eyed shock, looking at him as if seeing him for the first
time.

“Please,” she said, her soft voice soothing him like a balm. “I’m fine. It’s over.
He was helping me.”

Kenneth clenched his jaw, primitive instincts warring with honor. He wanted to kill
Felton, but just enough rationality penetrated the haze. The bastard might have been
holding her too long and too close, but he’d saved her. Kenneth had plenty of reasons
for killing the man, but this wasn’t one of them.

He lifted his foot off Felton’s neck and stepped back. Heedless of the blood and grime,
Mary raced into his
arms, burying her face against his chest. His arms automatically closed around her.
It felt so perfect, so right, that at that moment he recognized the truth.

Concentrating on soothing his sobbing wife, he watched while Felton struggled to his
feet.

“I’ll see you thrown in the pit prison for this,” Felton seethed, rubbing his neck.

Kenneth’s gaze narrowed. “If you value your place as Percy’s champion, you won’t say
a bloody thing.”

“Clandestine combat is illegal.”

“With war coming, do you think Edward will imprison one of his best knights for long?
Especially after it becomes known that I bested Percy’s champion? Perhaps I shall
choose to have my trial by challenging you to a wager of battle and we can let the
entire castle witness your dethroning.”

Felton’s face was livid with rage. “You bastard! What happened to your arm injury?
Why are you fighting here but not at practice? What are you hiding?”

Kenneth swore inwardly but appeared nonchalant. “This is part of my recovery. I was
ensuring that I was back to full strength before we met in the yard.” He smiled. “But
I guess we’ve established that I’m ready. This is a different type of fighting experience,
one you can’t get on the lists with knights.”

Felton swore again, but Kenneth was finished with him. They both knew he would keep
what happened to himself. “Find your men and return to the castle.”

Mary had lifted her head from his chest and was blinking back tears as she watched
the verbal duel between the two men.

Felton held out his hand. “Lady Mary.”

Kenneth stiffened, but before he could reply, she shook her head and tightened her
hold around his waist.

His chest swelled. “I will see my wife safely returned.”

With a look hard enough to cut steel, Felton turned on his heel and left.

Kenneth knew he’d made a mistake. His loss of temper had given Felton even more reason
to want to discredit him. But he didn’t care. Mary had chosen him.

Twenty-two
 

Kenneth would have been content to hold her here forever, but the crowd was too unruly.
He cupped her chin, tipping her face to his. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, and the emotion swimming in her big greenish-blue eyes made his chest
squeeze.

It seemed to take an interminable amount of time to fetch his belongings, change his
clothes, and locate his horse, which he’d given a coin to a lad to watch. But eventually,
he and Mary rode in silence back to the castle, her safely seated before him. When
he thought about how close she’d come to falling …

What the hell was she doing there? And why was she with Felton? The questions kept
pounding through his head on the ride back to the castle.

Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a guard to greet them as they rode through the gate.
Felton prized his place as champion too much to risk losing it when he couldn’t be
certain of the outcome. But Kenneth knew like a cornered dog that Felton would be
looking and waiting for his chance to strike back.

Despite his victory, Kenneth did not delude himself; by losing his temper, he’d given
Felton an axe to hang over his head.

But it was the questions about Mary’s role that ate at him. By the time they reached
the solitude of their chamber, he was fighting an ugly bout of jealousy and suspicion.

The door had barely closed behind them when he took her by the shoulders and turned
her to face him. His heart clenched to see her tear-ravaged face, but he steeled himself.
“Why, Mary? Why were you in town with him?”

She drew back in shock. “You can’t be accusing me of something?”

His mouth fell in a hard line, the muscle below his jaw ticking. “Do I not have a
right to be suspicious when I find my wife with another man in the middle of a damned
melee, where she could have fallen to her death? Were you following me, or is there
another reason you and Felton traveled to town together?”

The spark returned to her eye. “
Your
suspicions? What of mine? You knew what I thought you were doing every night in town.
But you let me believe you were with other women, when instead you were fighting in
an illegal tourney that could get you killed or imprisoned.”

His eyes burned into hers. “I thought you didn’t care.”

She pursed her mouth. “Well, I do. I care very much, and I’m afraid you are going
to have to accept that.”

He was so surprised by her admission that it took him a moment to reply. What did
she mean? He was slightly dumfounded. “You do?”

She nodded. “I wasn’t following you, and it is your fault I was with Sir John in the
first place.”

“My fault? I believe my instructions were for you never to leave the castle without
my permission.”

She gave him a look that told him just how seriously she’d taken that particular order.
“I assumed you didn’t mean that, of course. You spoke in anger.”

He’d meant every bloody word of it. If he had his way, he’d lock her in a high tower
on some remote western isle until this war was over.

But he listened as she explained how she’d received a note from the monk about the
nun who had looked like
her. She’d come to him to accompany her, but when he turned her down, she’d accepted
Sir John’s offer instead.

Ah hell
. He hadn’t realized. Guilt pricked him. For the first time, she’d come to him for
help, and he’d turned her away.

“On the way back,” she continued, “we heard the commotion, and Sir John decided to
investigate.”

“He should never have taken you with him.” When he thought of what could have happened
to her—what had almost happened—that sick, helpless feeling knifed through him again.
“My God, you could have been killed!”

She studied his face as if trying to discern the sentiment behind the words. “It was
an accident. In my effort to leave before Sir John recognized you, I stumbled. I know
you might not like to hear it, but Sir John did me a service.”

She was right on both counts. He gritted his teeth. “I may have overreacted—”

“May have?”

Kenneth continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “But don’t tell me he didn’t take
advantage of the situation. He was holding you too damned long. He looked like he
was going to kiss you.”

The fact that she looked like she was fighting a smile didn’t help his rationality
any. “I think he was shocked more than anything.” She put her hand on her stomach,
smoothing the fabric over the swell. His chest swelled, seeing how much she’d changed
in the past month. “He realized I was with child.”

Kenneth felt the urge to smile himself. “Good. Maybe that will make him see that you
aren’t going to change your mind.”

Their eyes held. “There was never a danger of that.” Before he could ponder what she
meant, she added, “Why were you there, Kenneth? Why are you fighting like a common
ruffian in an illegal combat tourney and not in the yard with the other knights?”

“It’s as I told Felton, I’ve been trying to build my strength back up in preparation
for giving him the challenge that he’s been clamoring for.”

It was a poor excuse, and he could see that she didn’t fully believe him, but what
else could he say? His mission wasn’t over. He couldn’t tell her the truth. Not until
she was safely in Scotland. He couldn’t risk it. Not when he’d begun to realize just
how much of a betrayal this was going to seem to her.