Maggie must be exhausted if she uses questions as a distraction. Yet, it was a handy inquiry, and one he himself had wondered at. “Years ago, with our father.” The gilded pair had made a progress of the family’s lands, son and heir together. Feeling the old bitterness rise up, Conrad said a prayer against his envy of Richard and concentrated instead on the delicious sensation of his wife’s rump pressed against his groin. “In the summer,” he added, clicking his tongue to ease Gog past a patch of black ice.
Maggie briefly clasped his arm and he knew she understood. What was an easy path in summer was not the same in winter.
“Did your brother not remember how deep the snow can lie?”
“Richard as a chevalier does not care.” He rides well and he has no pillion to consider. Or did Richard plan to travel this way because I ride with Maggie?
Even as Conrad told himself not to be stupid—his brother was neither so devious nor so malicious—a whoop rang out from the head of their column.
“Woo! Better than a bishop skating! Excellent fun!”
Conrad stood on his stirrups to see Richard waving and smirking at the bottom of the long, descending slope, now narrowed down as slim as a sword and with frosted snow funnelled high on either side. Richard spotted him and hollered again.
“The Roman road is here, brother, am I not right? I knew I was right!”
“That path will be glass-smooth soon,” murmured Maggie, anticipating the same danger as her husband. Her fingers were hidden by her mittens, but Conrad knew it was no bet that her hands would be fisted into Gog’s thick mane.
“We shall dismount,” he began, through clenched teeth, before Richard brayed again.
“Come on, no cowardice! Ride it!”
There again, why should we? The snow slope had become a challenge, one Conrad was determined to win. He coaxed the big bay into an ambling canter, aware that Gog’s longer gait would mean that the stallion stepped onto pristine snows. He felt Maggie shudder but she only hissed in a breath as they began the descent.
• ♥ •
Why are men such idiots? The question drummed in Maggie’s head. Caged by her husband’s iron arms, she closed her eyes, then snapped them open, aware of the bitter air slicing through her lungs. Perched on this huge barrel of a horse, guided by a brute of a warrior, she lurched helplessly in the saddle and saw the icicles, hanging from the branches, then the looming, skidding ground. Desperate not to be sick, she endured the steepling dive, the nightmare sense of uncontrolled falling, the roar of blood and racing hooves in her ears, and then it was over.
“You fool!” she almost snarled. Part of her wanted to say that, and more. Are you so careless of me? Is your rivalry with your brother more important than my safety? Must everything be a challenge?
She patted the steaming Gog, instead. She had seen, as Conrad must surely have seen, the fleeting, satisfied expression on Richard’s handsome face toward her when she seemed about to scold her husband—which would make me a nag and Conrad hen-pecked, at least in the eyes of all these men, never mind that none of them are riding pillion, so none of them have the same danger.
Just in time, she reined her anger back. Richard wants to divide us. He will not find it so easy.
“Odd ride.” Nothing would compel her to say it was good, but she ignored her queasy stomach, sore from the horse pommel, twisted about in the saddle and smiled at her man. She offered her lips to be kissed and Conrad obliged, a sweet moment which helped to stifle her fears.
Yet, still a taint of worry remained. Am I always to come second to Conrad’s rivalry with his brother? She could only hope that one day, she would not.
Chapter 18
Will Conrad give me a ring of gold today?
The thought hovered in Maggie’s mind, beautiful as a dragonfly. She had caught it several times throughout the past two days, no matter how she remonstrated with herself. Her husband was too busy, checking his men and horses, speaking with Sir David, his second, discussing affairs of the world with Earl John, keeping a close eye on Richard, his golden brother. She was selfish, mercenary, greedy.
“I should require no proof of his feelings. I am Conrad’s wife,” she whispered, touching the tiny plait of her hair he had made her as a wedding band. Ashamed and exasperated, she wished that Elfrida the witch had not said anything of rings, be it in a dream or no.
She and her husband and their party had reached castle Kirkbybank three nights ago, where Maggie had been swept in a rush of furs and cloaks to be presented to its chatelaine, the Lady Petronilla. Where at Ormingham Lady Ygraine had been stern, stately, and remote, Petronilla, small and dainty, with deep chestnut hair and flashing dark brown eyes, was sixteen, the same age as Michael. Indulged by her widowed father, Rufus, worshipped by the squires and young knights, Petronilla was the pet of the keep, and the girl knew it.
Maggie wished her well of it, only Petronilla had chosen to make her a rival, particularly in the matter of knightly favours.
“I have dozens,” she would say, tossing her chestnut curls, “Where some have scarcely any,” and she and her maids would glance at Maggie and laugh behind their hands.
At Kirkbybank, as Earl John had said, there were many jousts, each morning and afternoon of the winter fair. These were not a battle mêlée, fought between groups of knights on horseback, but two men in single combat, fighting on foot within a ring, with a fine palfrey as the prize. Such contents attracted great interest, including, Maggie discovered, from her own husband, who studied the fighters as intently as she herself would stare at a church wall before beginning to paint it. When she said as much to Conrad, he grunted agreement.
“’Tis the same in a way,” he said, flicking his eyes away from her as another clash of arms rang out from the circle. “You look to understand what pictures you wish and need to paint, I scout here in jousts like these for fresh warriors. I am still steward and sheriff, and good fighting men are always needed.”
“I know,” Maggie said softly. She understood Conrad’s argument, even if she wished it did not need to be so. “Davie treats me with perfect courtesy,” she added, for she did not wish to cause trouble for the man. In truth, Sir David was strangely stiff and formal with her these days and they hardly spoke as they stood or sat together, witnessing the jousts while Conrad mingled with the fighters.
Conrad had given Maggie several pieces of parchment and quills, along with a small clay pot of ink, all bought from the winter fair. “I wondered if you can use such for your drawings,” he explained, a faint blush darkening his tanned, hawkish face and turning his grey eyes into glints of steel.
“I can! Thank you!” She had gladly used them since, sketching Conrad amidst the knights and with his horse, Gog. She drew baby Peter, too, missing the laughing little boy whom she had been sorry to bid farewell to in Ormingham.
Petronilla, when she saw Maggie busy with her drawing, laughed at her. “Of course Lady Margaret must scribble,” she told her ladies in a loud aside. “She has no knights fighting for her favours, and needs to entertain herself.”
That morning, as David came to join Maggie in sitting on the stands beside the jousting ring, she asked the older man if he ever entered the fray.
“It has been known, now and then,” came the response. He was less taciturn, Maggie had learned, if she spoke to him on war-craft.
“And have you sported a woman’s sleeve, or other favour?” she asked, hoping to draw him out a little more. This careful David was a far cry from the loose-lipped man she had first encountered, when she had sought out Conrad’s help with the bandits. Although, you still have not seen Michael, so what use is his help? a tiny treacherous part of her mind questioned. Swiftly, she returned her attention to the delights of the joust. “Would you fight for a lady’s token?”
She had asked merely for interest, but David stared at her as if she were mad and his reply showed that he thought she was asking something else altogether. “My Lady, do you think I want to go against Co
nrad in a joust showing your favour? How long do you think I would last?”
His earnestness and spate of words startled her. “But it is merely courtesy—”
“Not to your lord! At least, I would not stake my life on it, and that would be what it would be, if Conrad took the matter that way. Remember his fight with his brother?”
Maggie recalled all too well.
“Surely you are mistaken.” Such possessiveness was both flattering and disturbing—who did Conrad think he was? Although perhaps this explains why David is so quiet with me now, not for reasons of snobbery as I feared, but because he dreads to anger his lord. A phrase of Petronilla came to her. “A lady may grant her favour where she will.”
“That is as may be, but none of the knights here will thank you if you offer any scraps of cloth to them,” said David bluntly. “You, my lord would forgive—another man, never.”
“But Conrad does not enter these jousts. He is here to watch.”
“Do you think such a trifle as entering would stop him if he believed himself insulted, or your honour threatened?”
She must have looked utterly bewildered at that, for in his urgency to convince her, David actually gave her arm a shake. “Would you have a young knight’s injuries on your conscience? Have him maimed, possibly permanently? I have seen your man fight in a rage and it is no gentle spectacle! And would you hurt him so, my lady? Simply to make him jealous? Merely for a game of courtesy and gathering favours?”
“No,” Maggie replied at once, unhappy at her companion for making her feel guilty. “How can I win his love?” she burst out. “I have no lands, no wealth, or none that are truly mine by heritage and not by any future grant and gift by Earl John, if it pleases him to do so! What can I give our lord that is mine to give?”
David turned on the bench to face her fully, his cheerful face solemn. “Bear him a son,” he said, straight and piercing as a new blade. “He loved his first wife, Lady Joan, but she gave him no little ones.”
“A son.” Maggie thought of a child with her eyes and Conrad’s lustrous dark hair, the blue and the jet. She thought of the warmth and smiles of baby Peter, and her husband’s indulgent, loving way with him. All women, she knew, if they were not nuns, were meant to bring heirs for their menfolk into the world. Would a son be enough? He could not put me aside if I had a son, the selfish part of her mind reminded her, and Maggie started at the thought. Thoroughly ill at ease she bent to her drawings, her scribbles, again and vowed to say no more on the matter.
I shall not beg for Conrad’s love, nor bribe him with children. Even if a son by him would be the greatest blessing...
Though for all his supposed jealousy, he still has given me no ring.
• ♥ •
Conrad kicked the snow off his boots and hoped his expression did not record his supreme frustration as he stalked from the jousting camp. Yes, he had found two young knights to add to his forces, but only if he was confirmed as steward and sheriff. He was neither, yet, as the lords frequenting this castle were fascinated by the snow, praising the spoilt Lady Petronilla, arguing with the smiths and farriers to demand free horse-shoeing, and gambling on the jousts.
Let me return to my own small manor and tower, with Maggie by my side. He was sick of politics, of smiling at fools, of waiting for decisions. Richard shadowed him in a parody of brotherly love, constantly clapping him on the shoulder, bumping into him at the jousting area, offering unwanted advice. It had taken most of the day to shake him off. Worse, the mysterious assassin was still unknown, and possibly still a threat to his wife. Michael, another wretched brother, seemed to him a stubborn, ungrateful brat, and he was not looking forward to meeting him. Earl John, revealed as Maggie’s father, was mercurial, quicksilver in mood and nature, and as dangerous. The lord of Kirkbybank, Rufus, was decent enough, he supposed—
Teeth of Hell, I am thinking just like Granddad, all verjuice and sour!
Conrad stamped his boots again, for good measure, and looked about for a mulled wine seller in the bustling press of traders gathered by the church. A cup for him and Maggie would do nicely, and he would tempt his wife to dance a carol with one of the great circling groups capering slowly over the green. It had snowed again, never truly stopped, and the mud tracks and cart skids on the common were blanketed in fresh white, sparkling in the torches that people were beginning to light. It was not yet dark, but traders had set them and small fires near to their stalls, to draw folk. A scent of roasting chestnuts and pork made his stomach growl and he bought a fistful of peeled chestnuts for Maggie, with a tiny twist of salt.
There! He spotted her white furry mittens first, darting like geese as she expressed a point to David. Next, he saw the bundles of parchment rolled up in a battered quiver tied about her narrow waist, a different way of carrying her drawings, for sure, but one that kept her hands free. He smiled at her and she sped forward, her hood down to show her pretty face, one mitten already off and her bare fingers reaching out to him.
By God and His saints—I love you!
His inner shout was so great Conrad was convinced she must have heard it. Another heart-pumping moment, and he swept her into his arms. Whatever Davie was chattering about was lost as he sank his heated face into her mass of hair. She smelled of lavender and sun and her wiry arms wound as tight about him as his were round her.
This is love, this gladness and jubilation, this caring and kindness, the smile of greeting, the lift of the heart when I see her.
Maggie was his. He whirled her about, her laughter like bells.
“What a greeting!” she exclaimed, when he finally, reluctantly, set her on her feet. He gave her the bag of chestnuts, delighting in how she untied the strings of the ragged cloth and peered inside.
“To share?” she asked, her eyes like the clear twilit sky overhead, deep and dark.
“As you wish,” he answered, having thought only of her.
She murmured thanks and instantly offered one to David, who immediately dropped the twist of salt. Mellow in love, Conrad could only shrug while Davie scrambled and Maggie said softly, “No matter, they taste well as is.”
She tucked the mitten she had just pulled off into her cloak and gave Conrad her hand. They stood silent a moment, and Conrad’s earlier declaration was on the very edge of his tongue—
“Conrad, well met! Where is your brother?”
His father, big and bluff and dragon loud, stepped out of the silvered gloom, looking straight past Maggie for Richard.
“Mother?” Conrad asked, his tongue abruptly feeling too big in his mouth.
“With the Lady Petronilla, my good man.”
I hate that epithet! I have told father many times I dislike the term, and still he uses it.
His father ignored Maggie and David and waved to a tall, bronze-haired figure dancing in a small circle of nobles. “There is my boy! He sent word to us of this winter fair, and of course, we came.” His father frowned, snapping his fingers at Conrad. “Why did you not send a herald? Richard tells me you know Earl John and Lord Gerald.”
“Only of late,” replied Conrad grimly, “by way of my wife.” Who is standing beside me and holding my hand and who you have yet to acknowledge.
Shockingly, his father said nothing, did not even glance at Maggie. He clapped his hands once, spun round in a flurry of snow and set off for the tall keep, calling over a shoulder, “Hurry up, my good man!”
“I am sorry,” Conrad said, in the sudden silence, after his father had gone.
Maggie shook her head. “You have nothing to be forgiven for,” she replied, and coloured slightly. “It might be helpful to know their names.”
Teeth of Hell, I have not even told her that! “All I do is amiss today! It is Lord Walter and Lady Galfrida.”
Wondering what else Richard had told their parents, Conrad tucked his wife’s arm through his, squeezing her fingers once in an attempt at reassurance, and prepared to find out.
Chapter 19
Another badly painted, cramped chamber, in this case an ancient solar, now used as a store-room. Another group of nobles, Conrad’s parents and brother, staring at her as if she had grown demon horns. For an instant, Maggie wished she had a devil’s tail, to flick in her irritation, but fought the impulse down. Conrad was arguing for her, fighting for her, and that warmed her more than the flickering braziers in this chamber of old couches, faded tapestries, and broken chests.
“The priest at Ormingham witnessed our swearing of marriage vows, Mother. There will be no annulment.”
“Son, I said no such thing.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Pax, little brother, we have started on the wrong track.”
Conrad surged to his feet. “Do not talk to me, Richard. You have already done enough.”
“You should not speak to your elder brother that way,” remonstrated the Lady Galfrida. A tall, thin woman with greying blonde hair, robed in bright purple and blue, she rubbed distractedly at her pale eyebrows, her seated body hunched and clearly weary.
This lady has a headache. Why does Conrad not offer to massage her shoulders, as he did for me? For a moment, Maggie was back on the battlements with her husband. Recalling their tender closeness, she abruptly understood why Conrad remained standing like a stag at bay, his dark eyes watchful. He does not trust his mother, his own flesh and blood. She almost offered such help herself, but considering the likely reactions, the disgust in which Lady Galfrida regarded her, Maggie chose to do nothing, yet.
“Where are Lord Rufus, Earl John, and Lord Gerald?” demanded their father. Sprawled on the dusty couch beside his wife, compelling her to settle into a small gap by the arm-rest, he yawned openly and stretched his arms above his head. Clearly feeling he had no need to stand on any ceremony with her, Lord Walter frankly appraised Maggie, his pale blue eyes lingering on her flat stomach.
Time to remind these three of my connections. Maggie sat up a little straighter on her own antique couch, crossed her legs at the ankles and began.
Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure Page 10