Offered by the king as the prize at a tournament, Lady Eloise Gerrard was far from gaining the freedom she so ardently desired. Shocked to discover the king had every intention of winning the prize for himself, Eloise turned in desperation to the challenger, Sir Owain of Whitecliffe, the man who had once awoken all her youthful passions…only to desert her. Could she now wish to see him the victor—the conqueror laying claim to his prize?
“You will win tomorrow, won’t you?”
Owain tipped her into the crook of his arm and studied her face. “I shall win. Don’t doubt it.”
“Shall you wear my favor?” Releasing herself from his arms, Eloise tied the cloth around his upper arm. “There,” she said, trying to smile. “If I have to accept someone, it had best be you.”
His kiss was intended to be gentle, but Eloise had only memories to feed on for days and, despite her reservations, her need of him was wild and undisciplined. There, in a quiet haven in the center of Westminster’s thronging palace, his lips and hands reminded her of their night together, and predicted those to come….
The Knight’s Conquest
Harlequin Historical #673
Harlequin Historicals is delighted
to present author Juliet Landon
and her magnetic medieval novel
THE KNIGHT’S CONQUEST
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THE KNIGHT’S CONQUEST
JULIET LANDON
Available from Harlequin Historicals and
JULIET LANDON
The Knight’s Conquest #673
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter One
The announcement of intent to marry, though softly spoken, provoked more or less the reaction expected by the lovely young woman from her elegant white-haired father, Sir Crispin de Molyns, Deputy Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe.
‘Well,’ he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, ‘I’ve heard of killing two birds with one stone, Eloise, but this is ridiculous. A lady of your standing doesn’t marry her steward, for heaven’s sake. You don’t have to marry the man to retain him for another period of office, you know. I’ve never had to marry mine so far.’
His attempt at flippancy went unnoticed by Lady Eloise Gerrard whose defences had been rehearsed almost constantly during the two-day journey from her manor in Staffordshire to her father’s home in Derbyshire. Even so, her retort was not as well chosen as it might have been. ‘I don’t have to marry anyone, Father.’
Predictably, Sir Crispin recognised the blunder and studied her from beneath snowy eyebrows. ‘You do, Eloise. You must know that,’ he said, gently.
‘Well…all right…I do.’ Eloise began to pace the large sunlit solar of Handes Castle as if to recall her lines, a phrase for each step. ‘I’ve been widowed for a year…and the king has sent for me…we all know what for…and I mean to tell him…that I’ve decided on a husband…thank you very much.’
Her father was unimpressed, knowing the king as well as he did. ‘Well, if you think he’ll allow you to marry your steward, my lass, widowed or not, you’d better think again. He won’t. You’re a tenant-in-chief, Eloise, and he doesn’t allow wealthy widows in his gift to give themselves away to nobodies. There’s many a knight who’ll pay him handsomely for the privilege of marrying a de Molyns woman who’s just inherited Gerrard’s property, too. He’ll not allow all that to be passed on to the progeny of a mere steward, however well born he may be.’
‘There won’t be any progeny, Father.’ That was something else she had rehearsed, but somehow it had emerged too soon in the scene.
‘Oh, lass! Now you are talking nonsense! You’re far too young to be embarking on a marriage of convenience, if that’s what you have in mind.’ He could have said ‘too beautiful’ also. As the elder of his two daughters, Eloise had a regal loveliness that made men fall silent and follow her with their eyes, weaving her into their daydreams. He had seen them.
At almost twenty-three years old, she had reached a tall willowiness that had bypassed the clumsy phases of adolescence and filled out into the ripeness of womanhood with a natural grace that set her apart. Her abundant deep auburn hair was plaited loosely into a thick rope that hung well down past her waist, the last two days of uncomfortable travel having given her little opportunity to do more than keep it out of the way. But even the casual adoption of a maiden’s hairstyle, which had earned a frown of disapproval from her waspish sister-in-law, could not disguise the fact that here was a woman who knew her own mind and was not afraid to fly in the face of convention.
Her eyes, some said, were her best feature, being a changeable hazel, green in some lights, brown in others, but rimmed with thick dark lashes that made each blink an enchantment. Some insisted that her mouth excelled, wide and gently curving over white pearly teeth. Others said it was her skin, honey-toned and flawless. She herself said that whatever good points she had had so far done little for her, with a string of disasters to her credit and a widowhood after only three months of marriage. The cynicism that had accumulated over the past few years could sometimes be seen as a fleeting expression by those who loved her, and they at least were in agreement that it was hardly surprising, after all she’d been through.
Eloise had hoped that, of all her family, her father would have understood her reasons for choosing to marry her steward rather than accept a man of the king’s choosing. ‘Other widows have done it, Father,’ she said, knowing that he would not allow that to pass unchallenged.
‘Yes, old dowagers well past breeding age,’ he retorted. ‘Of course they have, in the past, but not in the king’s reign. Edward the Third doesn’t release his property without expecting a good return on it, and you are his property, like it or not.’
Eloise disliked the label. As a tenant-in-chief, her estate belonged to the king, obliging her to keep it in good and profitable order and to supply him with a specified number of men to fight in his army each year. She would not be allowed to remain unmarried for long while heirs were required, or while men queued for the honour of adding everything she held, and was likely to inherit, to their own estates. For this, they would be expected to pay the king generously. For permission to remain unmarried, Eloise would have to pay the king a heavy fine which would undoubtedly be so great that she would find it impossible to survive. Either way, the king would gain and she would lose. The alternative was to remove herself entirely from the degrading marriage-market and return to the sisters at Fairwell Priory who had done their best to educate her.
The notion of marrying her own loyal steward had seemed like a good one only a week ago, but now she felt an uncomfortable shift of the ground beneath her feet at her father’s lack of understanding. ‘If I’d known I was going to be left in this position quite so soon, Father, I’d not have…’
Sir Crispin studied her, watching her flounder. ‘You were in plenty of hurry to marry Sir Piers, lass,’ he said. ‘Regretting it now, are you?’
She was silent, affirming what he already suspected.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I know. It was the other one you’d have had if pride had not got in your way. And now you’re set to do the same again, even before you have to meet each other once more.�
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‘I don’t have to meet him, Father. And you’re mistaken: I care nothing for the man. I’m marrying Stephen atte Welle because we both need the security of marriage and because we have what each other needs.’
‘Except the need for bairns.’
‘I don’t need bairns.’
‘Don’t expect me to believe that, lass. And you do have to meet him.’
‘Who?’ Eloise turned to her father in alarm.
The hand that she laid on the plum-coloured velvet sleeve of her father’s gown was taken and clasped warmly, comfortingly, then she was drawn towards the great curtained bed at the far end of the chamber where they sat side by side on the low step of the surrounding platform as they had so often done before in rare moments of privacy.
‘Sir Owain of Whitecliffe is staying here during your sister’s betrothal celebrations, Eloise.’
‘Here? Now? In the castle? You cannot mean it, Father.’ Eloise stared in astonishment at the elegant white-haired man whose calm announcement sent dual shocks of anger and excitement through her which not even she could tell apart.
‘I do mean it.’
‘And you gave me no warning because you and Mother knew I’d not have come if I’d known. Is that it?’
‘We did hope, dear,’ replied Sir Crispin, patiently, ‘that you’d have put old resentments behind you by now. After all, Jolita doesn’t celebrate a betrothal every day, does she?’ He could have bitten his tongue at the gaffe.
‘Nor every few months, Father. Indeed no.’
‘Eloise—’ he took her hand again and sandwiched it upon his knee ‘—this new cynicism doesn’t become you, you know. Nor does it do to bear grudges as long as that.’
She left her hand where it was, but on the subject of grudges she was less at ease. ‘That was no small slight, Father. How can you expect me to be civil to a man who offered marriage and then disappeared from the scene, and who then had a hand in my husband’s death? I was not cynical until then, but no woman could be expected to ignore those facts, surely?’
Sir Crispin was not inclined to agree, having hoped to sing Sir Owain’s praises to her once more. ‘He’s my neighbour, my dear, a man of substance and wealth, property and—’
‘And notoriety.’
‘Well, yes. Some notoriety, but all jousters are tagged with that, whether it’s deserved or not. It goes with the profession.’
‘I know. I was married to one.’
He held back a sigh of disappointment which he knew would not be appreciated. Her three-month marriage to Sir Piers Gerrard had shown all the signs of early neglect, and perhaps this was not the best time to revive old antagonisms with mention of his distinguished neighbour. He would speak of matters closer to his daughter’s interest.
But he was mistaken. His neighbour, Sir Owain of Whitecliffe, was closer to her interest than he had thought.
‘It will give me great pleasure,’ Eloise said, ‘to find every reason to avoid him, Father. It’s going to be difficult enough having to be sociable on the anniversary of Sir Piers’s death without coming face to face with the one responsible for it.’
‘How can you say that, Eloise? Sir Owain was not responsible; it was Sir Phillip Cotterell who accidentally struck the fatal blow. You knew that.’
‘They’re friends, Sir Phillip and your fainthearted neighbour.’
‘And they enter the same tournaments, but jousting is fought in pairs, one against one, not in trios and quartets.’
‘Nevertheless, he was involved, one way or the other.’
‘The tragedy was investigated to the king’s satisfaction, Eloise.’
‘But not to mine. I was told very little of what actually happened on that day at Windsor, only that Sir Phillip was distraught, as if he could be any more distraught than I was. Not even Sir Phillip’s closest friend could bring himself to explain to me in person.’
‘Perhaps he thought you’d not receive him, my dear.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ Eloise said. ‘But he might have made the effort.’
Sir Crispin had hoped that things might be a little less complicated for him, this time, being caught uncomfortably between his remarkably spirited daughter and his distinguished neighbour, Sir Owain of Whitecliffe, though he was far too honest to deny that he himself was partly to blame for this state of affairs.
It was true that the young couple’s first meeting had been brief, but both he and Lady Francesca had agreed that their instant attraction was one of those rare events it was worth a life to witness. The chemistry between Eloise and Sir Owain had been enough to send shockwaves through those who stood nearby, a palpable frisson of tension that Sir Crispin himself in his younger uncouth days would have called lust but which his lady wife referred to as ‘a definite warmth’, bless her. It was not that the two of them had had any time together to explore this phenomenon. Quite the contrary. Little had been said on that occasion except the usual mannered interchange which was chaperoned by the rest of the family, hardly the climate in which to liberate one’s deepest feelings. He saw that now. Perhaps he should have given them time to be alone to come to some more definite agreement, but time had been at a premium before his own return to Westminster, and somehow it had seemed more important for he and Lady Francesca to talk to Sir Owain, rather than for Eloise to talk to him. That was, after all, the way of things, especially in the light of her previous contracts.
At the time, he had been sure that this view was the correct one to take, for Eloise had given him the distinct impression that her liking of Sir Owain matched his own, though on reflection she had said very little on the subject. He supposed it was the look of her, her unusual preoccupation and his wife’s insistence that Eloise’s silence was positively charged, rather than negative. Women were supposed to know about these things.
The problem had arisen when Sir Owain had been called to attend the king on some mission or other. No warning, no time to take things further except to send Sir Crispin a hurried note making an offer for her hand and hoping that Eloise would wait for his return in due course. Except that none of them knew how long that due course was likely to be, not even Sir Owain himself and, when all was said and done, his offer was only one of several received in recent months. There was no point in replying with an acceptance, for Sir Owain had departed from Whitecliffe at the same time as his letter arrived, and he himself was bound the next day for Westminster for another spell of duty. He could not delay it any longer. He had things to do, people to see, events to organise. Moreover, Sir Owain must have known that no offer was binding, even when accepted, any more than a betrothal was until it had been fully consummated and sanctified by marriage. Indeed, pre-puberty betrothals took place all the time, and often came to nothing after all that.
With hindsight, he himself should have attended to the business more assiduously, with firmer instructions to Sir Rolph, his son. Instead of that, he had believed that her heart was set at last upon a man who looked as if he could stay the course longer than the previous two, and that Eloise’s matrimonial problems were all but solved. Rolph’s deputising in domestic matters had been a godsend in the past, even if it meant housing his wife Griselle and their brood for several months of the year. A capable young man was Rolph, though in retrospect perhaps not experienced enough yet to handle his sister’s future with the necessary shrewdness.
He, Sir Crispin, had gone to Westminster as planned, feeling no sense of alarm when Lady Francesca’s letters told him of the constant visits of one of Rolph’s neighbours, Sir Piers Gerrard, of the man’s gifts to Eloise, of his charming attentions, of Rolph’s opinion that he would be a far more suitable match for Eloise since he was there and Sir Owain was not. Since her last two betrothals, both he and her mother had found it increasingly difficult to make Eloise’s mind up for her, so he had no fears that Rolph, her half-brother, would be any better at it.
How far he was wrong in that assumption he was never quite able to tell, but by the time he retu
rned home at the end of summer, Sir Piers had become the front runner in the marriage stakes. Eloise’s determination to have him had set in as firmly as her scorn for Sir Owain, and his own hopes of having Sir Owain as a son-in-law had been dashed. And by the time Sir Owain returned from his mission, Eloise’s disappointment at his mysterious departure, fuelled by Sir Rolph’s and Sir Piers’s teasing references to the man’s notorious affairs with ladies of the court, had turned to personal affront. What was he, her father, able to say in Sir Owain’s defence when Sir Piers, having warmed her heart with a constant shower of love-tokens, visits and promises, seemed at last to suggest something more permanent than a hurried offer from a disappearing rake? Her question, not his.
Nor did Sir Crispin have a very satisfactory answer for Sir Owain, the best he was able to offer being, ‘I have less and less control over my daughter’s marriage requirements these days, I fear. She is now inclined to make her own decisions upon these matters, more’s the pity.’ The tone had been apologetic, somewhat shamed.
‘Then it’s time she was told what’s best for her, sir,’ Sir Owain had retorted, far from pleased. ‘Her mind is made up?’
Sir Crispin had nodded. ‘We can still remain friends I hope, sir? Good neighbours?’
‘No doubt, Sir Crispin. We may meet in London, some time.’
To say that Sir Owain was displeased was a typically English understatement that left Sir Crispin and Lady de Molyns highly embarrassed by the developments over which Lady Francesca, in the thick of it, had been powerless to control. It was then that Sir Crispin realised he should never have allowed his son, Sir Rolph, to handle that side of affairs, however proficient his enquiries had been about his neighbour, Sir Piers Gerrard. Nor should he have assumed that the flame he had witnessed being ignited in his beloved daughter was mature enough to burn without fuel.
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