Dreams of Stardust

by Lynn Kurland

  Nicholas slapped Robin's sword from his hands and brought his sword down again, but this time it was Robin's hand that stopped him. Jake, quite wisely to Amanda's mind, took a step or two back. Robin stood facing Nicholas, holding his brother by the wrist.

  "Cease," Robin said clearly. "This is madness."

  "I do not like him," Nicholas said, his words clipped.

  "Is that any reason to kill him?" Robin asked. "Do not continue down a path you will regret tomorrow."

  Amanda watched Nicholas resheath his sword with a curse, glare at Robin, glare at Jake, and then glare the most furiously at her before he turned and strode across the lists toward the hall.

  "Interesting," Miles murmured.

  "Be silent, you fool," Amanda snapped, giving him a shove for good measure.

  "I'll say no more."

  "You've said too much," she said.

  "Do you ever wonder if Nicholas loves y—"

  Amanda turned on her younger brother and apparently there was something in her heart that was showing on her face because, mercifully, he decided against whatever else foolish he was intending to say.

  "Forgive me," he said instead. "Forgive me, Amanda. This is no fodder for jest."

  "Nay, it is not," she said, feeling the hideous sting of tears begin behind her eyes.

  Miles put his arms around her and hugged her. "I am an evil brother," he whispered. "Forgive me."

  "Never."

  He pulled back to look at her. "He loves you, you know," he said quietly. "Nicholas."

  "And I him," she said, dragging her sleeve across her eyes.

  "Nay," he said slowly. "I mean, he loves you."

  "Dolt, do you think I don't know that? And what am I to do about it?" She turned to look for Jake who was currently retrieving his sword. "And look you there: another man I cannot have."

  "Poor wench," Miles said affectionately. " 'Twill sort itself out eventually."

  "I should become a nun."

  "The saints preserve them," Miles said with a laugh. "You, a nun. It boggles the mind."

  "Why?" she asked stiffly. "Think you I haven't the spine?"

  "I think the poor sisters haven't the spine. Every man in the country would be making pilgrimages to your nunnery, just to look at you whilst you prayed. Nay," he said with a final chuckle and shake of his head, "nay, Amanda, you would make a terrible nun and a wonderful wife. Give your poor merchant a chance to make good on his promises."

  "If he survives my elder brothers," she said darkly.

  "Well, he's only had one of them try to kill him. Look you there. Robin is actually being pleasant to him. That counts for something."

  And 'twas true. She watched her eldest brother talking to Jake and there was an ease about them both that bespoke good tidings. Miles took her hand and pulled her over to where Montgomery and John had already clustered themselves next to Jake. Jake looked at her.

  "I was overconfident. There for a minute or two, I thought I could hold my own."

  "You're witless," she replied promptly. "Whatever else his faults, Nicholas knows how to wield a sword. He's trained his entire life to do just that. What were you thinking, you fool, to try to stand against him!"

  She realized she was shouting, but, the saints preserve her, what else was she supposed to do?

  "He could have killed you!" she added, with no small bit of enthusiasm.

  Robin only stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  Jake, that great oaf, only smiled. And so she did the only sensible thing she'd done all morning.

  She burst into tears.

  Jake put his arm around her and drew her close. She wept all over his patched, inherited tunic. And as she stood there with her arms around him, drenching him with the kind of tears she had certainly never bothered to shed for any other man of her acquaintance, she realized that she might very well indeed love him.

  Poor fool that she was.

  "You've been at this how long?" Robin was asking.

  "Less than a month," Miles supplied promptly.

  "We began his training," Montgomery added brightly. "I think we did a marvelous job, don't you?"

  "Marvelous," Robin conceded.

  "We even had to teach him to speak when he first came," John put in. "And he couldn't ride, could he, Mandy?"

  "But he can fight, can't he, Mandy?" Montgomery asked. "We saw him vanquish eight ruffians with but his hands as his weapons. It was very exciting."

  "So Miles reports," Robin said, sounding quite interested. "I can see, Master Kilchurn, that there is much we should discuss. If my sister would cease with her attempts to rust your mail, we could repair somewhere more comfortable and have speech together."

  "Go away, Robin," she said, wishing her eyes weren't blinded so she could have seen him to have given him a shove as well.

  "She never weeps," Montgomery said in hushed tones.

  "Never," John agreed. "She must be powerfully undone."

  "Watching the spectacle of Nick trying to do Jake in must have been too much for her," Miles said. "I say we leave her to the drenching of Jake's mail and go ourselves into the house for something strengthening. When she's finished, she can bring her love in."

  I do not love him was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't even muster up the energy to spew it out.

  "I'm Robin, by the way," Robin was saying. "The eldest of this rabble. Come with me and I'll introduce you to my lady, Anne. Then we'll repair to my father's solar and talk. Privately," he said pointedly.

  Amanda listened to her younger brothers make their protests, but she knew they wouldn't prevail. Robin was very much like their father in that when he determined his course of action there was nothing that would stop him. A trait he apparently shared with Jake.

  "I will be in the solar as well," Amanda sniffed.

  Robin looked prepared to say her nay, but she supposed she looked undone enough that she frightened him into acquiescing. So when Robin started off across the lists with Jake, Amanda went with them, followed by her younger brothers.

  She distracted herself whilst the men ate by seeing to Anne, making certain her sister-in-law had food and drink enough. She tended Robin's son, Phillip, for a goodly part of the afternoon, finding his two-year-old's chatter to be a welcome diversion from the strain of the morning.

  And all the while, Jake and Robin spoke pleasantly together at the high table.

  As equals.

  Amanda finally turned Phillip over to his mother and sent them both upstairs for a long-overdue nap. Jake and Robin had been eating for most of the afternoon so instead of further decimating Artane's larder, they moved to Rhys's solar with a bottle of wine and a basket of things to soothe and sustain them, should their speech exhaust them. She followed them, then made herself as inconspicuous as possible on a stool in a darkened corner.

  "Chess?" Robin asked.

  "Absolutely," Jake agreed.

  They settled down to a game, drawing lots for white, and immediately commenced battle.

  Amanda chewed on her fingernails in a most uncharacteristically womanly fashion. She was not accustomed to fretting thusly. She would much rather have been out in the lists with a sword in her hands, or moving stealthily about the castle, leaving her suitors scratching their heads as to her whereabouts. Sitting was not her preferred activity.

  Not at all.

  She put her hands in her lap and cursed herself. What did it matter if Robin found Jake to his liking? It wasn't as if it mattered. It wasn't as if Jake could offer for her. And it wasn't as if she would accept if he did.

  She sighed. Damn, more time on her knees for lying.

  She focused her attentions not on the cold chapel floor that would greet her come morning, but on Jake and Robin sitting before her at the chess board, battling with their wits and not their swords.

  Jake won the first game.

  Robin won the next.

  And so it went, far into the afternoon. Amanda excused herself periodically, to the accomp
animent of yawns from the other occupants of the chamber, which left her wondering if she was beginning to lose her charm. She brought more food and wine, and received grunted thanks. She hovered anxiously but was ignored. She frowned. Jake was starting to behave like one of her brothers.

  She wasn't sure that boded well for her.

  Robin sat back, after the shadows had grown long and the chamber had been lighted with a torch and several candles. He tipped his king with a satisfied sigh.

  "The game is yours, Kilchurn," he said. "And gladly so. You play very well."

  "So do you," Jake said magnanimously.

  "I think we are most evenly matched," Robin continued. He shook his head. "I can hardly believe you are but a merchant, but I suppose even in merchantry, you must rely on strategy."

  "I do," Jake said with a nod. "Especially in my business. People are quite taken by gems and there are some who will resort to bloodshed to have them if they think they can sell them for a large profit."

  "And your business is in London?"

  "My shop is in London. My business takes me all over the world."

  Robin leaned forward. "Dangerous locales?"

  "Of course. As often as I can manage them." He smiled at Robin. "You have traveled?"

  Ah, Robin's second favorite thing to discuss, or perhaps third, after his swordplay and the intricacies of battle and before the delights of being a husband and father—though she supposed he didn't discuss the latter two all that much. At least with strangers. She heard the occasional comment which was inevitably filled with pride he couldn't disguise and deep and abiding affection for both his lady and his son.

  "Venice," Jake was saying with a contented sigh.

  "Nay, the isle of Sicily," Robin corrected. "Hot sun, delicious food, drinkable wine. Long stretches of strand just made for a man to lie in the sun in his altogether and have a well-deserved rest."

  Amanda sat on the bench under the window and listened to them argue in a friendly fashion the delights and detriments of all the locales they had both visited, and as she did, she had a great longing rise up in her to see such places for herself. She should have dressed as Miles's squire and gone with him on a few of his journeys. Maybe there was something to be said for being a merchant, if that was the content of his life.

  Especially a merchant who carried himself as Jake did.

  The evening wore on. Jake sat with her eldest brother, laughing and talking as if he'd known Robin for years and had always found himself in Robin's closest circle of companions.

  If Jake only knew how truly unheard-of that was. Amanda herself had never found her sweet person taken into Robin's confidence. She suspected no one found themselves there save Anne and Nicholas. Aye, Jake should count it a compliment indeed.

  She realized, quite suddenly, that she was being observed by both men. Robin was stroking his chin. Jake was leaning back in his chair, looking at her with a small smile, his hands behind his head as if he had not a bloody care in the world.

  "What?" she demanded. "Am I to be scrutinized now, like a bloody battlefield?"

  "I'd say you were the prize," Robin remarked.

  She glared at him. "Do you realize how many nights I've sat here being discussed by you, father, and every other bloody male in my family as if I were a mare to be sent to market? I have sentiments of my own! Tastes of my own! I might like to actually love the man I'm to marry."

  "Well, do you?" Robin asked.

  "Do I what?"

  "Do you love him?" For good measure, Robin nodded casually in Jake's direction.

  Amanda gritted her teeth. "And why should I say as much when he hasn't revealed any of his heart?"

  "Haven't I?" Jake said, looking surprised.

  "I've seen no bended knee, no fistfuls of flowers, no sonnets, no lays to my beauty and sweet temperament. How am I to know how you feel?"

  "My grandmother's doing," Robin whispered loudly. "When I was about the wooing of my sweet Anne, I was subjected to all manner of that sort of foolishness." He looked forlornly at his hands. "I fair ruined my poor fingers, placing them at all hours and in all positions upon a lute, merely to satisfy a womanly fancy."

  "You can be certain 'twas not your lute playing that won you the day," Amanda pointed out tartly.

  Jake folded his arms over his chest and smiled. "Name your price, Lady Amanda, and I will gladly pay it."

  "Fool," Robin said with a smile. "You've done it now. She'll have you at all sorts of labors, day and night, without ceasing, just to please her."

  "I can think of worse ways to pass the time," Jake said.

  Amanda sighed and put her face into her hands. " 'Tis impossible," she said wearily. "Naught but a dream."

  "She dreams of you," Robin noted. "A promising sign."

  Amanda heard someone stand, then felt herself being pulled to her feet. She looked at Jake who stared down at her gravely.

  "I know what I must have to offer for you," he said. "How can I ask you to be mine, when all I have is my heart in my hands and no title to my name?"

  She sighed. "You cannot. I suppose I must content myself with knowing that the thought has occurred to you."

  "From the moment you rescued me from the dungeon with soot all over your face," he said seriously.

  "I hope you've thought on what wedding this wench will mean," Robin said. "Never another moment's peace, I daresay."

  "I've had enough peace," Jake said with a smile. "I think I could do with a bit of turmoil."

  "You'll have it," Robin assured him. "Now, let's be off to bed. If you intend to make any respectable showing before my father, we'd best be at it at first light."

  "You're very generous," Jake said.

  "You've no idea," Amanda said. "He rarely trains anyone. His squires, aye, but very, very few grown men."

  "Then I am extremely honored," Jake said. "And grateful."

  Robin rose and walked toward the door. "Come along, you two. I'd best see Jake to bed lest Nick decide a little murder in the dark would be good sport. I don't know what troubles him so. You'd think he would be pleased at the thought of seeing you finally wed so he could be about his own nuptials." He looked at Jake. "He spends all his time tormenting Amanda's suitors. I've no idea why. I think 'tis much more rewarding to torment Amanda herself."

  "Aye, you would," Amanda said, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes. Robin was, as others had no doubt noted as well, a canny warrior, but when it came to matters of the heart, he was a dolt.

  Jake and Robin both walked her to her chamber. Robin watched with interest as Jake kissed her very chastely on the forehead.

  Damn him.

  Robin did shake his head at that. "You should kiss the wench, Jake. See if wedding her's going to be worth it."

  "I'm saving myself for the ceremony," Jake said, with a wink thrown Amanda's way.

  She slammed the door on the pair of them. Fools, both. She crawled into her bed, pulled the covers up over her head, and cursed them to oblivion.

  Temporarily, in Jake's case.

  She closed her eyes and prayed with all her heart that he might be able to manage what he planned to do.

  She didn't want to think what would be left of her heart if he couldn't.

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  "Is this right?"

  Jake looked down at Montgomery's artwork, which he had to admit had promise—what he could see of it through the sweat that was dripping down into his eyes. He was trying to learn everything Robin of Artane could teach him about sword-play and satisfy Montgomery of Artane's desire for art lessons. Concurrently. He wondered how many boys had learned to draw in the lists.

  Not many, he suspected.

  Montgomery was drawing Amanda as she stood on the side of the lists, hugging herself and looking quite anxious. Montgomery's rendering was actually quite good.

  "Just remember what I taught you last night about perspective," Jake said, "so you can make the lists look like they're receding into the dist
ance behind her. You're doing very well."

  "My thanks for taking the time to look," Montgomery said.

  "My pleasure," Jake said, with feeling. And it was his pleasure—anything for a break in the action.

  "Another drink?"

  Jake had to blink a time or two more to convince himself that it was Robin asking him that question and not someone out of an exhaustion-induced hallucination wondering about his state of thirstiness.

  And, heaven help him, it was only noon.

  He nodded. "Yes."

  "Then have one. And you'd best remind Amanda that you live still," Robin said, resheathing his sword with gusto. "Before we begin again," he added.

  Jake nodded and dragged his sorry backside over to Amanda, but he didn't dare sit down on the bench there. He might never get back up.

  "How do you fare?" she asked, looking worried.

  "Very well, thank you."

  Robin came over and slapped him heartily on the back. "Aye, he's a rock. Let him have another look at his prize, then we'll be about our work again. We'll eat in another hour."

  "Absolutely," Jake said, thinking privately that Robin of Artane would have been the answer to many of the social ills of the twenty-first century. Act up and this man has you at his mercy for a week.

  Everyone would have behaved perfectly. Jake was certain of it.

  Amanda handed Jake a cup. "If it eases you any, he's being very hard on you. I daresay he wouldn't be if he didn't believe you could bear it."

  "I'm flattered," Jake said, downing his cup of watered-down wine and feeling quite flattered. Now, if only he didn't feel quite so flattened, he would have been doing just fine.

  It had been two solid weeks of dawn to dusk tête-à-têtes with Robin de Piaget in the lists. Jake ached in places he hadn't known he had muscles, as well as in all the places he'd been certain he did. He went to bed every night shaking with weariness and rose before dawn to start the process all over again.

  Medieval boot camp was hell.

  Robin, on the other hand, looked so damned perky each and every day that it had been all Jake could do not to slug him. He appeared each morning, fresh as a daisy, and retired each night looking as if he'd been out riding casually, seeing to the less taxing matters of the realm.