The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  He pulled off his shirt, baring his smooth, muscular chest to her fascinated gaze. “I wonder if she'll still feel that way on her wedding night, when she finds herself spreading her naked legs beneath him.”

  The crudeness of his words conjured up shudderingly vivid images of the one aspect of her betrothal Attica rarely allowed herself to dwell on. Once, shortly after she'd been sent to Salers to prepare to become Fulk's bride, she had come upon him swimming in the river with a couple of his father's squires. She had gazed in a kind of sick despair at his white, sagging chest, his grossly distended stomach, his quivering buttocks. And for one hideous, disloyal moment, she had looked into her woman's heart and thought, I cannot do this. I cannot. She could imagine moving through her days at his side. She could imagine helping guide him as he grew and matured into a man. But she could not imagine laying herself down and taking his naked, rutting body into hers.

  “It is a woman's duty to bear her lord's heirs,” Attica said, her throat so tight, she could scarcely push out the words. “Her duty and her honor.”

  “You d'Alérions take great pride in your devotion to duty and honor, do you?” The words came out smooth as silk, but his eyes had turned brittle. She could scarcely bear to look at him.

  Her chin came up. “Do you doubt it?”

  His lips curled away from his teeth. “Is there a reason why I should?”

  The uneasiness she'd felt earlier came rushing back in full force, threatening to swamp her. For the length of one burning, endless moment, they stared at each other, Attica and this brutal, frightening man she had asked—no, God save her, bribed and begged—to accompany her. And now he knew—what?

  With an abruptness that caught her by surprise, he swung away to stand with one arm braced against the wall, his head thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut. “I should like to retire some time before dawn,” he said, his voice sounding suddenly tired. “If you could see your way to finish your preparations?”

  Attica dropped her gaze to the boot she still held in her hand. She had considered suggesting she make up a pallet so that she might sleep on the floor, then dismissed the idea as impossible. If de Jarnac did indeed suspect her sex, such an action would only confirm his speculations. Yet what was the alternative? She could hardly strip off her clothes and crawl into bed naked, the way a lad would do.

  Slowly, she unlaced her blue velvet surcoat and pulled it over her head. With trembling fingers, she reached beneath her wool tunic and linen shirt to fumble with the points that held up her chausses. The air felt cool against her bare legs as she pushed the hose down and she shivered. Still clad in tunic, shirt, and braies, she leapt for the bed and quickly pulled the linen sheets and coverlet up under her chin. Not daring to look at de Jarnac, she resolutely squeezed her eyes shut.

  An ominous silence descended upon the room. She felt rather than saw him shift his position to stare down at her.

  “Do you normally go to bed in all your dirt, lordling?” he asked, still in that smooth voice she did not trust. “Or are you concerned, perhaps, that I might have designs on your virtue?”

  Attica's eyes flew open wide to discover him standing with one shoulder propped against the far bedpost, a hand resting on his lean hip in an intensely masculine pose she found intimidating. He gave her a smile that showed his teeth. “Would it reassure you to know that I only ravish females?”

  She felt her heart crack up against her ribs with a resounding thump. “I … I was raised in a monastery. We …” She tried to swallow the tremble in her voice. “We do not disrobe for bed.”

  He pushed away from the post to come around the great bed toward her. “Indeed,” he said, his voice lightly mocking, his eyes hard. “And do they wear silk and velvet at your monastery?”

  She felt her muscles tighten up, ready to fight him off if she had to. But she realized he walked not toward her but to the flickering torch. He reached up to extinguish it, and the room suddenly plunged into darkness.

  She listened to the rustle and crunch of the rushes beneath his feet as he crossed back to his own side of the bed. Her breath eased out of her in a long sigh, then caught again when she felt the straw mattress give beneath his weight and heard the creak of the leather supporting braces as he lay down beside her.

  The room was suddenly so quiet, she imagined she could hear her own pounding heartbeat. Even the wind seemed to have died. She lay beside him in the darkness, afraid to move, afraid even to breathe. Every sense seemed achingly alert, every nerve on end. She had never been so intensely aware of her own body, of her bare legs against the sheets and her swelling breasts, pressing painfully against their bindings.

  She did not know how long she lay there, tense and waiting in the darkness, quiveringly aware of the man beside her. But gradually she began to realize that he was no threat to her. That she had done him an injustice by fearing him tonight, just as she had wronged him by lying to him today. True, he had been angry with her and suspicious of her— but justifiably so. And she had never even apologized.

  She cleared her throat. “Monsieur le chevalier?” she said softly.

  She heard a whisper of movement, as if he turned his head to stare at her. “Yes?”

  “I am most heartily sorry for having deceived you.”

  She held her breath, listening, waiting for his response. After a long moment, he said, his voice unexpectedly tight, “It's late, lordling. Save your confession for the morning and go to sleep.”

  His words had an ominous ring to them that worried her. Exhaustion pulled at her. She fought hard to stay awake, to force her sluggish mind to think. But the bed was soft and warm, her body sore, the night dark and quiet.

  Oblivion rolled over her, and she slept.

  Damion lay beside her in the darkness, his body tense, his mind alert and wakeful. He listened to her breathing drift into the unmistakable rhythms of sleep, and still he held himself rigid, waiting. Waiting for his eyes to adjust gradually to the dim glow of mingling starlight and moonlight that shone around the closed shutters. Waiting for her to sink so deeply into sleep that he would not risk waking her.

  Gently, he propped himself up on his elbow and gazed down at the still figure beside him. Sensitive lips, too soft and feminine ever to belong to any boy, parted with the soft breath of sleep. He saw a high, smooth forehead, a thin, delicate nose, soft cheeks. A woman's face, belied by its strong cleft chin.

  His exhalation stirred the hair beside her ear as he let his gaze drift lower, over the neck and shoulders of a woman. A woman built tall and slender like a boy. But a woman, nonetheless.

  A woman.

  Yet he hadn't seen it. Not when he'd ridden beside her through the long and danger-filled day. Not when he'd held his sword to her breast in an obviously unsuccessful attempt to intimidate the truth out of her. Not until tonight, when he'd turned, lute in hand, and found her watching him across the length of the common room.

  One moment he had looked back at a boy, Atticus. Then something had shifted. Even now he could not say what had caused it—a trick of the torchlight, some unconsciously feminine gesture that she'd made. He didn't know.

  Perhaps it had been none of those things, only something in the way she looked at him, something in the way he had responded to her. But he had known, in one blinding flash of revelation, that he beheld not a lad destined for the church but a girl. A woman. Unbelievably brave and strong, but a woman nonetheless.

  And in that moment it had all made sense. All the subtle inconsistencies, the nagging doubts that had bothered him throughout the day. Everything that had not quite fit, fell suddenly into place. And he had known an anger so intense, so gut-deep and blood-boiling, it had taken his breath away.

  Part of it, doubtless, was injured pride. She had deceived him. She had lied to him. She had used him. And he had let her do it. Yet he also felt betrayed on another, more personal level. For he had actually come to like that brave, sensitive, funny youth, Atticus. A youth who did not exist.


  He was still angry, although his anger had cooled now to a kind of controlled, lethal purposefulness. Yet when he gazed down at her, lying asleep so close beside him in the still of the night, what he felt was desire. Unbidden and unwanted, but desire, nonetheless, swelling his body, heating his blood.

  With a muttered curse, he pushed himself away from her and flung back the covers. Crossing the room with long, swift strides, he cracked open the shutters and windows and let the coolness of the night soothe his hot, naked body.

  The wind had almost died. Their chamber overlooked the courtyard, so that he stared down on the dark shifting shadows of a chestnut tree and an expanse of cobbles that gleamed silent and deserted in the blue-gray light of night. A bell tolled in the distance, then another, calling the observant to matins and counting out the passage of the night for those too restless to sleep.

  He swung his head to look back at the woman in his bed. She lay still and unmoving, lost in exhaustion. He wondered who she was. Elise d'Alérion? He supposed it could be possible, for she doubtless rode Elise's chestnut gelding. But when he tried to imagine a lady as gently reared and sheltered as the comte d'Alérion's daughter cutting her hair and dressing as a boy to ride bravely into the dangers this woman had faced, he knew it could not be.

  Doubtless Elise herself had sought shelter at some convent and sent one of her servants—this woman—instead.

  But to what purpose? To what purpose, he wondered, tapping his fingertips on the wood of the windowsill. He remembered the girl's eyes, so huge and dark with terror when he held his sword to her breast. She had told him part of the truth, he was sure. But obviously not all of it.

  Pushing away from the window, he moved softly to the side of the bed. He had a vivid image of Atticus hovering just inside the door of their chamber, the saddlebags clutched against his chest—no, her chest, Damion reminded himself with a private, fierce smile that boded no good for the slim figure sleeping so peacefully in the faint shaft of moonlight.

  He crouched down beside her. Whatever this unknown woman carried for her mistress, he thought, she doubtless bore it secreted either about her person or in her saddlebags. Tomorrow, when he had her in some isolated place where no one could hear her screams, he fully intended to search the woman herself. Now he carefully lifted the leather satchels from where she'd left them on the bench.

  He subjected the bags to a quick, thorough search. One side yielded a woman's dress, stockings, and chemise, all made of exquisitely fine material. The other side contained a change of male clothing, a scattering of items for personal cleanliness, and a book.

  His breath caught, for he knew what he held the instant his hand closed around the soft leather binding. He drew the book out slowly. In the dim light from the half-opened window, the deep forest green cover looked almost black, the incised lettering too small to read.

  But he did not need to flip through the pages to know it for a simple breviary, copied diligently by the nuns of the convent of Sainte-Foy-la-Petite, near Saint-Denis, and sold in vast numbers to the students who came from all over to study at the University of Paris. A common book— so common that for years now, books such as this one had been used by the courtiers of King Philip of France to transport those official documents their royal master wished kept secret.

  Using the unknown woman's own dagger, he carefully slit the edge of the leather covering the board that faced the manuscript, then slipped the blade tip beneath to catch the white edge of a sheet of velum that crackled softly as he eased it out and unfolded it. “My God,” he whispered, staring unbelievingly at the document in his hand.

  Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. Quickly refolding the document, Damion slipped it back beneath the binding, just as the breeze gusted, swinging the open window against the wall with a creaking bang. Damion's head jerked up. In the bed beside him, the girl murmured something, her head shifting restlessly against the pillow. Then she fell silent.

  He stayed where he was, every muscle in his body tense as he gazed down at her. The moonlight etched the tumble of her hair and emphasized the dusky curve of her lashes lying against her cheek. She looked so young and inexperienced and yet oddly, fiercely brave. And he felt it again, that strange twist of confusion, that unfamiliar sensation composed of equal parts anger and loss and hot desire.

  He wanted to dig his hands into her shoulders and shake her awake. He wanted to make her tell him who she was— not tomorrow but now. He wanted to know why she carried one of King Philip's treacherous documents in her saddlebags. He wanted to crush her to him and cover her soft, lying mouth with his own. He wanted to rip away the lie of that man's tunic and hose and reveal the slim woman's body they hid. He wanted to pin her to the bed and feel her laying naked beneath him.

  God help him, he thought, reeling away from the bed. He knew nothing of this woman, only that she was involved in treason against the lord he served. And still he wanted her with a fierceness that left him aching and sleepless for most of the night.

  The late afternoon sunlight filtered down through the high branches of the forest, casting dappled shadows over the girl's slim, straight shoulders.

  “Why do we stop?” she asked when Damion reined in and waited for her to come up abreast of him. He rode the bay today to rest the Arab. Unfortunately, he'd had to mount her on his roan again, because whatever her real reason for wanting to keep the chestnut from the sight of the riders from Salers, there was no denying that the horse, while a splendid animal, had been pampered of late and was in no shape for the kind of relentless journey she had subjected it to.

  He watched her thoughtfully as her alert gaze scanned the birch and poplars that pressed in on both sides of the track. “Is something wrong?” she asked. Her face looked pale and vulnerable in the gloom. Strain etched her features sharply, and exhaustion had lain dark smudges beneath her eyes, for dawn had been little more than a pale promise on the horizon when he'd dragged her out of bed and out onto the road that morning. He'd wanted to be certain they would reach Laval before nightfall and still have time for this.

  “Nothing's wrong,” he said, pressing the heels of his palms against the pommel to give a deceptively lazy stretch.

  “But it's hot, and I would rid myself of the dust of the journey before we reach Laval. There is a pond”— he nodded toward the base of the hill that fell away steeply to their right— “just out of sight of the road.”

  “I do not wish to bathe.” He heard the nervousness she normally managed to keep out of her voice, saw the muscles in her throat work as she swallowed.

  He gathered his reins and touched his spurs to the bay's sides. “Then guard my back while I do,” he said, and swung away from her.

  After a moment of hesitation, the bay struck through the brush that grew thick at the side of the track. A shower of dirt and small stones tumbled downhill as the horse picked its way down the slope toward the vale below. He was aware of Sergei, ambling along behind, leading the spare horses toward the water. He did not look back to see if the girl followed.

  A warm breeze wafted around him, sweet with the scents of grass and scattered white daisies. From deep in the forest came the repetitive call of a cuckoo and a distant, muffled snort that might have been a wild boar but was more likely just a pig, wandered from some isolated hamlet. He was aware of the woman, hanging back another moment. Then he heard the crash of the roan hurtling through the underbrush behind him, and he smiled to himself.

  “Surely this is unnecessary,” she called after him.

  “You may have an aversion to cleanliness, lordling,” he said, lifting his voice so that it would carry back to her. “But I am considered quite fastidious.”

  “I do not have an aversion to cleanliness,” he heard her mutter beneath her breath.

  Grinning, he drew rein beside a small pool formed by a fall of rock that had caused the stream to back up behind it.

  He threw his leg over the cantle and slid to the ground but caught Sergei's eye before the
boy dismounted, too. Sergei paused and sank back into the saddle.

  “I want you to go ahead,” Damion said, his voice low as he walked up to his squire. “Find someplace to stable the horses on the road to Le Mans, on the far side of Laval.” He glanced behind him. The girl had reined in some distance beyond his bay. She had not dismounted but simply sat, her horse shifting restlessly beneath her as she stared at the pond.

  He continued, “Then I want you to ride Atticus's chestnut back to Laval and wait for me there, at the fountain near the castle gates. Do you understand?”

  Sergei's dark, exotic eyes searched his face. “You're expecting trouble?”

  Damion shrugged. “No, but it's better to play it safe.” He glanced at the girl again. She had dismounted now and gone to stand on a large, flat shelf of rock that jutted out over the pond.

  He wondered how he had ever mistaken her for a boy, for she moved with a grace that was all woman, long-legged, slim-hipped, and sinuous. Beneath their bindings, her breasts would be small, he decided. Small and high and round. He watched as the wind ruffled the surface of the pond, the gentle waves catching the sun to throw sparkling flashes of light across her face. She had a boyish face, for a woman, with that strong chin and straight nose. But her mouth …

  Her mouth was all woman. Not the mouth of a lady like Elise d'Alérion, born to silks and feather beds and passionless, arranged marriages, but the kind of lush, full-lipped mouth that made a man think of laying a woman down in a sun-kissed meadow and taking her with swift, hot lust, all sweat and moans and naked, panting bodies entwined in raw, violent passion.

  “Messire?”

  He jerked his attention back to the squire. “I'm not certain what to expect,” Damion said again, his voice rough. “I should have a better idea after I've had a private conversation with Monsieur le Batard d'Alérion there.”