The Mercenary's Bride

by TERRI BRISBIN

  ‘Something Gillian said. The truth was there, but she was too young to understand it when it happened.’

  ‘She will not understand it now,’ the lady replied. ‘I did it to protect her, to protect Eoforwic.’

  ‘She will be hurt, but I think not knowing is worse. She grieves for your loss still and she deserves to learn the truth from you, from her mother.’ Brice watched as Lady Aeldra reached out to touch Gillian’s face again.

  ‘I have grieved the loss of her as well, my lord.’

  Brice felt the pain in her words and knew her actions had been done for the best of reasons—she loved her daughter and tried to protect her.

  ‘Speak to your daughter, then. Make her understand,’ he pleaded softly. His own heart lightened at her nod. He wanted Gillian happy now that she was safe. This was the first step.

  Gillian began to stir in his arms and opened her eyes. ‘Brice? I had the strangest dream. We were at the convent…’ Her words drifted off as she realised it was not a dream at all. ‘Mother? Is it really you?’

  Lady Aeldra opened her arms to Gillian and Brice watched as Gillian was held by the mother she had thought she’d lost. Gillian sobbed and Brice found it difficult to observe without being affected. He stood and moved away, giving mother and daughter a chance to talk.

  Giles and Soren stood nearby and he walked over to speak with them, but he had to clear his throat several times before he could get any words out.

  ‘So, the lady has been here all the time?’ Giles asked.

  ‘Apparently so. I suspect that she thought her death would stop the escalation between Gillian’s father and her brother. She was willing to give up her daughter to protect her.’

  Brice glanced over at Soren, who now wore a black hood over his head, so that much of the damage to his face was covered. Fashioned after the chain coif that protected their heads, his was made of leather. Another leather patch lay strapped in place and covered where his eye should have been. Soren noticed his curiosity and walked away.

  ‘Is he in pain?’ Brice asked of Giles.

  ‘He says not, but I suspect he feels much that he does not say.’ Giles let out a breath. ‘He is very changed from the friend we knew.’

  ‘How could he not be? He faced death and came out alive.’

  ‘I do think he believes he was not lucky in living, not with all he has lost.’

  Brice shook his head, not understanding such a thing, but Soren’s good looks were a part of him, now gone for ever and he faced constant scorn and fear over what he had become. ‘’Twill take time, Giles.’

  ‘I think it will take more than time for him to find the man who has always lived beneath his skin,’ Giles replied.

  Brice turned back to Gillian and found the two women sitting now on the bench, talking quietly. It would also take some time for them to be reconciled and for Gillian to understand why her mother chose to leave her.

  He walked over to them and offered Gillian some time with her mother before returning to Thaxted. Though she declined at first, he could tell she wanted to stay, so he convinced her that it was a good thing to do.

  Giles and Soren planned to set up camp just over the hill, so he knew she would be safe here while he saw to repairs back in Thaxted. He would have her for the rest of their lives, so he felt that he could be generous in giving her mother a few days of that time.

  Before he would leave, though, he wanted the feel of her in his arms for just a few minutes, so he held out his hand to her and she took it without hesitation. Taking a few steps away, he lifted her face and kissed her gently. The tracks of her tears still glistened on her cheeks and he thought she would cry more before she was done. Sharing truth could be a most difficult thing for both people involved, but he was glad he’d revealed what he had to his wife.

  ‘Do you forgive me for not telling you sooner?’ he asked quietly. She was precious to him and he hated thinking that she would not forgive him for the secrets about Lady Aeldra and about her uncle that he’d kept. Gillian smiled and his heart lightened at the sight of it.

  ‘All this time I have felt alone and all this time I had protectors I knew not of—my mother, my uncle. My husband,’ she whispered as she reached up and kissed him.

  When he found that he was tempted to do more than just kiss her, he let her go and turned to leave. Lady Aeldra’s question stopped him.

  ‘Do you not want to know about the treasure of Thaxted, Lord Brice?’ she asked.

  He turned back and smiled, glancing from one set of blue-green eyes to the other. ‘I have the treasure of Thaxted, lady. I have no need to seek it out.’

  He’d realised long ago that what Oremund thought his father protected was not gold. ‘Just as Eoforwic thought you the thing most important in his life, Gillian is that treasured thing in mine.’

  He fought off the soft feelings that came from such an admission, but accepted his words as the truth. He’d been given something more valuable than gold. He had a wife to live with him, to care for him and to love him all the days of their lives when he never thought such things could be his. His bastard friends, the only family he’d once known, would now be part of the family he and Gillian would create now.

  Brice left them then, following Giles and Soren to set up their camp.

  A few hours later, he and Ernaut rode back to Thaxted, where he arrived to cheers. His men seemed in good shape, those injured already cared for, his dead being buried first and repairs underway to the wooden structures that had been burned in the attack.

  As he walked through the keep, around the yard and other buildings, he felt a sense of gratitude that they’d been able to save so many and so much.

  He slept that night only because he was exhausted, but he did not like it. Even in the worst of times, he liked having Gillian in his arms.

  So, if he was in a hurry the next day to claim her back from her mother and the convent, it was understandable to any sane person. Brice rode past Giles and Soren, waving off their invitation, and made it to the convent in the shortest amount of time possible.

  Part of him worried that she would want to stay with her mother now that she’d found her. To make up for the lost years. Part of him wondered if she would truly be happier there, for that had been her destination when he captured her. And part of him just worried.

  So when he opened the door into the Reverend Mother’s public chamber and she ran into his arms, he let out the breath he did not know he held in. The Reverend Mother was there and did not look very happy, though Lady Aeldra smiled at him.

  As they rode back to Thaxted, Gillian explained, and all he could do was laugh. While he was worrying that she would find appeal in the contemplative life, she was breaking the rules and speaking during their meals! It was obvious to all that Gillian took great delight in the joys of marriage. Then she had tried to convince her mother to renounce the vows she took and come to live at Thaxted.

  Though she was always welcome to visit her mother, the Reverend Mother suggested clearly that once a year would be the acceptable frequency for such visits. Brice had laughed so hard, he nearly knocked them both off the horse. Though indignant over his reaction, it took less than an hour once they were together in bed to show her four other things she would miss if she lived in the convent, or even if she visited there too often. By the time she’d climaxed for that fourth time, Gillian finally agreed to give up the idea for ever.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thaxted Keep, northeastern England

  July 1067

  Brice looked out from the guard tower and smiled. In the bright summer sun, his fields blossomed with life and prosperity. Lucais predicted a huge, successful crop and already had plans to expand the number and layout of the fields for next summer.

  With the threat gone, Giles returned to Taerford for the birth of his first child and he had made Gillian promise to come and meet his wife. He told her that they would have much to commiserate about since they were both strong Saxon women
married to Breton men.

  And Soren…Soren was a changed, haunted man searching for a way to live after having come so close to death. There was a dangerous anger seething through him and Brice worried for him. When Bishop Obert arrived, there had been some contest of wills between the two of them over the king’s grant—Soren wanting to head off on his quest of vengeance while the bishop had another task for him first. Ultimately, Soren rode north to secure the rest of Eoforwic’s lands before they were swallowed up by the northern earls.

  Obert shared Brice’s concern for those two who seemed to be puppet masters yet, but mostly Brice worried about uncontrolled darkness seeping into Soren and his need for vengeance. They’d learned long ago that battle was not personal, but Soren had forgotten that lesson after suffering and surviving a brutal attack.

  Their plans for improving the keep—rebuilding with stone to replace the mostly wooden structure—would have to wait until Brice had more coins saved, but the wall had been enlarged and expanded as they’d wanted. The rest of the tunnels had been located and filled, leaving only two open for a crisis.

  Gillian was reconciled with both her mother and her uncle and had come to understand the reasons behind their actions. He watched her grow in understanding, as the woman she was now comprehended things she could not have as the child she had been when the actions were taken.

  In spite of the Reverend Mother’s wishes to the contrary, Gillian visited her mother often, sometimes spending the night there. Brice was not happy sleeping alone, but he could see the happiness it brought her. And there was always the time they spent together when she returned to make up for her absence.

  Her breasts were definitely larger and the nipples had taken on a much darker hue. As he touched them, circling them with his finger and then suckling them, her reaction was different, as well. She responded to every caress of them more quickly than before.

  That was nothing to complain about—indeed, there was much to commend on such a response—but some thing was different.

  When he moved down her body to pleasure her, he noticed that the place between her legs was more sensitive and she arched against his mouth almost as soon as he tasted her essence there. He spread her legs, opening her to his sight and his touch and he saw a difference there in that most intimate of places.

  Neither of those concerns bothered him for very long because he was too busy bringing her to a climax. His favourite part was watching her expressive face as she blossomed with the ecstasy they’d learned to find with each other. Well, one of his most favourite parts of it.

  She’d been gone for a day and another half and he was ravenous for her by the time she’d returned from visiting her mother. The only thing that comforted him while she was gone was the knowledge that she would give herself to him for hours on end when she arrived back at Thaxted. Now, having her under his touch, to explore and excite and to love, made being a good husband and a godly man worthwhile.

  When they’d driven each other mad with desire and satisfaction and they lay entwined in their bed, refusing to leave it until the next morning, Gillian finally laughed over the situation.

  ‘I am not certain if getting aroused is the proper reaction any time I mention visiting my mother at the convent, Brice.’

  ‘How can I stop, my love? You can talk all you want about going and praying, but all I do is walk around hard as stone, waiting and praying for your return. ’Tis your fault, after all—you have trained me to expect you, naked in my bed, each time you leave.’ He kissed her then and began to roll over and pull her down next to him.

  ‘Speaking of my mother,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I do not think I want you to speak of your mother when you hold me in your hand, Gillian. It is sacrilegious somehow.’

  They had let all talk go for a while, but Gillian returned to the subject when they lay ready for sleep in the dark of the night.

  ‘My mother told me that she likes you more because you have not asked about the gold.’

  He searched her face for some clue, but found none. ‘What gold?’

  ‘The real treasure of Thaxted, Brice. The gold my father left for my support and for Thaxted.’

  Brice felt as though he was missing half of some conversation. He sat up, sliding back against the head of the bed. ‘I told you and your mother that I have the treasure your father tried to protect. There is no gold and, if there was, I—we—do not need it.’

  He dragged his fingers through his hair, which he had allowed to grow longer, and then looked at her. No hint of merriment played in her eyes. Her serious expression made him wonder.

  ‘Does your mother truly think there is gold, Gillian? I truly thought it was simply Oremund’s obsession.’

  ‘My mother said there is.’

  He thought about it then. At one time, he’d thought that if it existed it might be buried in the grave marked as Aeldra’s burial place, but once he accepted that Gillian and her mother were Eoforwic’s true treasures, he’d not thought about the possibility of the gold again. Any inkling of interest in it was always stopped when he considered the madness that such a quest had brought about in Oremund. Now, though…

  ‘Does she know where it is?’

  Gillian slid over him and off the bed, seeking the small box in which she kept her jewellery and keepsakes. She opened it and brought something to him. When she placed it in his hand, he nodded. ‘She instructed me to give these to you and tell you to solve the puzzle.’

  ‘This is the necklace your father gave you.’

  ‘Nay, that is the one for my mother,’ she corrected him. ‘This is mine.’ He took both necklaces she handed to him and held them up before him. Each was a heart-shaped metal necklace with a key at its centre.

  ‘Mother said that you should find the gold so that you can take proper care of her grandchild.’

  ‘I should find the gold,’ he muttered, frowning that his wife’s mother should be issuing orders from her place in the convent. Then he thought about the rest of what she’d said and stared at her.

  ‘Grandchild?’ he asked, whispering the word. ‘A child?’

  Gillian smiled and nodded as he dropped the jewellery on the table near their bed. He pulled her close and kissed her, still not believing this news. ‘When?’

  ‘Mother says near Candlemas Day.’

  ‘And you are well?’

  ‘I grow tired in the afternoon, but that seems to be the only symptom. And I have missed my courses these last two months.’

  That he should have noticed, for it was the only thing that kept them from pleasure. Now that he thought about it, she had not had them but once since they married. But they could discuss the timing of such things later. He just wanted to hold her. She had not said how she felt about it though.

  ‘Are you happy about the child, Gillian?’

  ‘This is what we have prayed for, and planned for, Brice. The family that both of us have dreamt of having.’ She touched her lips to his. ‘Aye, I am happy to be carrying your child.’

  The necklaces were forgotten until the next day when he found them and decided to study them. Taking the ribbons off, he held them up side by side and saw that they were not identical at all, but mirror images.

  Days passed and Brice found himself intrigued by the necklaces. The first clue came when he noticed that the key in the centre moved as though hinged on the outer heart-shaped piece of metal. Stiff from years in the same position, he was able to use some oil to lubricate them until they moved easily. Once he did that, he could put the keys together to form a larger one instead of two smaller ones.

  He still had no idea of what it could open. Gillian said nothing, only watched as he grew fascinated with the keys.

  Then, one day as they worked to repair an older section of the outer wall, some loose stones fell and revealed a memorial plaque for Lady Aeldra. The heavy cast-iron plaque lay fitted into the original wall. Haefen explained that Oremund had become incensed over its presence and when he
could not destroy it, he ordered it covered so that he would not need to see it.

  It seemed solid under his examination, but Brice noticed a small hole in one corner of it. At first he thought it part of the damage wrought by Oremund until he realised that the key would fit into it.

  He laughed at the possibility. Most likely his mother-by-marriage was just teasing him to see if his feelings for her daughter were sincere and his claim of not needing the gold was true. Aye, a test more likely to measure his worth.

  Brice had ignored it for several more days, but then decided there was no harm in giving it a try. Early one morning, when most in the keep were still asleep, the timing chosen to avoid looking foolish when it proved nothing, he took the necklaces from Gillian’s box and walked quietly to the plaque. He fitted the two pieces together into one key and tried to place it in the hole.

  And it fitted perfectly.

  As he turned the key, he heard the tumblers rolling and felt a latch let go. The metal plaque released from the wall and a compartment was revealed behind it. A wooden box, half the size of the one that held his clothes, sat inside. When he tried to lift it, the weight of it made that impossible. He would need help. So, he locked it back in and waited until he could bring Lucais or Stephen with him.

  Gillian was awake when he returned, but he did not speak of what he’d found until he could bring it to her. After all, it belonged to her. When her mother took her vows, all her earthly possessions went to her daughter and this was part of it. But regardless of ownership, this was her father’s attempt to provide for her future and she needed to know how important she had been to Eoforwic.

  That night he walked at her side going up to her chambers, anxious to see her reaction. He opened the door for her and she walked inside and then stopped suddenly, not moving.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked, shaking her head as though not believing what she saw there.