by Sarah Hegger
“And you agreed to this? You agreed to marry that lout?”
“I did not have much choice,” Helena retorted. “They arrived suddenly and Roger himself told me it was true.”
“But you are to marry me.” Colin stabbed at the cheese with his eating knife. “How can you be married to another man? Take it away,” he snapped at the young serving girl who hovered near. “I cannot eat now.”
“Colin.” Helena laid her hand across his arm. It was fine and familiar beneath her palm, nothing like the touch of her fingers to Sir Guy’s arm. This was why Colin was the man for her, a courtier and a dreamer, not a warrior. Not some death-wielding butcher who barely spoke above a grunt. “You must not despair. I do not accept this marriage.”
“What does that matter? You are married, and there is naught to be done about it.” He slammed his fist on the table. A few lingering diners glanced in their direction. “This is not to be borne.”
“Hush, Colin.” Helena pinched his arm. “It has all happened so suddenly. I need to think and then I will come up with a solution.”
Colin turned to her, bitterness and betrayal etched onto his beautiful face. “See where your thinking has led us thus far!”
His words stung. Helena drew in a sharp breath. “This is not my doing. You were the one who kept wanting to wait,” she retorted. “You said there was time. I urged you, and—”
“Do not be a nag, Nell,” Colin snapped. “I detest it when you nag.”
“I would not have to nag if you had just wed me sooner.”
Colin turned his head, his jaw set and stubborn. He was no longer listening. They’d had this argument too many times and it was all rather pointless now. Guy of Helston considered himself her husband.
“What am I to do?” Colin demanded after a tense silence. “This news has overset everything.”
He was behaving like an ass, but he’d had a terrible shock. As have I. “We will—”
“I warned Roger what would come of his habit of constantly challenging the king.” Colin gestured wildly. “Now, see, I am the one who will pay the price for his stubbornness.”
Had Colin completely lost his wits? Not one word for her or her predicament. Not one word of their uncle, who was this very moment fleeing for his life. Although the blood tie to Roger was distant for Colin, the man had raised him, called him nephew, and seen to him when his parents could not. It must amount to some small token of affection.
“You are not the one married to a complete stranger,” she pointed out tartly. “You have not just become the chattel to some great, warmongering ox of a man.”
“You are a woman.” Colin threw her a wrathful look. “It is your place to marry whom you are told.”
“How can you say that to me?” She scarcely credited her ears.
“My lady?”
Helena started violently. For a big man, Sir Guy was as stealthy as a cat. Her cheeks heated as she turned to him.
His face was a mask, revealing nothing.
“Sir Guy,” Helena’s voice rose shrilly. Cursing herself, she cleared her throat and tried again. “This is my cousin, Colin.”
They couldn’t have been more different; her cousin with his fair, lithe beauty, and this dark, rough warrior.
“So, you are the one they call the ‘Scourge of Fenwick?’”
Did the stupid man want to get his head cleaved from his shoulders? “Faringdon.” Helena nudged Colin’s ankle beneath the table.
“Eh?”
“‘The Scourge of Faringdon.’” Sir Guy’s voice was chilling in its lack of expression.
“And what will they call you now?” Colin drawled venomously. “The Lecher of Lystanwold?”
Helena stopped breathing. Within her chest, her heart seized. Colin was actually trying to draw the man’s anger.
Sir Guy watched Colin with the keen interest of a predator sizing up its prey. “It would depend if they wanted to live.”
Colin opened his mouth to speak again. Helena stamped on his foot and clambered to her feet. “Did you require aught, Sir Guy?”
“A party approaches. Ready yourself.” He turned on his heel and strode from the hall.
No explanation, no further information, just a barked command. And even more humiliating was the way her feet were already carrying her in the right direction to do his bidding.
Briefly she paused and addressed her cousin. “Do not be a fool, Colin. Roger was tolerant of your sharp tongue and your ways. Do not presume Sir Guy will do the same.”
Colin looked so young and defeated, sitting alone at the table, her heart softened. “All is not lost.” She gentled her tone.
Colin didn’t acknowledge her. He remained at the table lost in his private misery. It seemed he couldn’t even bear to look at her.
Helena feared for him. Colin was unpredictable at times, not used to having his will thwarted. She couldn’t imagine he would challenge Sir Guy. Nobody challenged the ‘Scourge of Faringdon.’
And lived.
Chapter 4
Helena stood on the ramparts as the small party of armed knights drew rein before the gate. Her hands clenched into fists. The party below them was travel-stained and the horses bore signs of having been ridden fast and hard.
The lead knight didn’t dismount immediately. Helena followed the direction of his gaze. A pennant snapped in the stiff breeze—
A lone wolf rampant on Guls. Not Roger’s colours, but those of the new lord.
Beside her, Ewayne stirred restlessly.
“Who put that there?” she asked.
“You know who put that there, Lady Nell,” he replied in the same even tone he’d been using on her since she was a child.
Though Helena fumed, the men at her gate posed a bigger problem than an unwelcome pennant.
Then below, the lead knight took off his helm. Ranulf.
“How dare he come here?” Helena glared down. Anger simmered inside her. Were she a man she would draw her sword and cut the cur from his horse.
Helena motioned toward an archer. She could picture the arrow, arcing through the air, carried swift and true on the back of her vengeance to pierce his black heart.
The archer nodded and nocked an arrow.
I can have it put through Ranulf right this moment.
“Do not, my lady.” Ewayne’s glance strayed to the archer.
“What does he think to gain by being here?”
“He thinks to catch you unprotected.” Ewayne’s face grew taut with disapproval.
Helena deduced he still smarted from their skirmish about her decision to bar the keep. He’d protested loud and long about her instruction to the archer. Three times he’d reminded her that it could be construed an act of war.
She didn’t care. Ewayne fretted as an old woman and Ranulf of Dartmoore wouldn’t put foot in her keep. Not whilst she had breath in her body.
“Mayhap,” he ventured, “we should ask Sir—”
“If you suggest that one more time, Ewayne, I shall scream.” God’s wounds. “That man has barely been here one full day and already you doubt my abilities to run this keep.”
“Lady Nell—”
“Who would you ask if he were not here?”
Ewayne gave her a hard look. “I would be asking you.”
Ranulf was surveying the gate calmly.
The archer raised his bow.
“Lady?” Anger vibrated through Ewayne’s voice.
“Hail, the castle!” Ranulf yelled toward the gatehouse. The sunlight burnished his hair golden. He was beautiful, the lines of his face strong and pure as if carved with loving care by his Maker.
It made Helena feel ill to look at him.
“Answer him,” she told the porter, standing awkwardly and l
ooking from her to Ewayne and back to the figure on the ground.
The rippling creak of the bowman drawing his bow sent the porter scurrying to the edge of the ramparts.
Before he could part his lips to speak, another gruff voice broke in. “Who goes there?”
Helena uttered an oath under her breath. What in the name of all holy was Sir Guy doing here?
As the porter froze, the bowman’s eyes flitted from his target to her.
Sir Guy’s boots rapped against the stone of the ramparts.
Helena glared at Ewayne accusingly at such betrayal and took bitter note of his refusal to meet her eyes.
Their enemy called, “Ranulf of Dartmoore. Newly come from court and passing by on our way homeward.” Ranulf’s glance swung upward. He gave her a lavish bow. “My Lady Helena.”
The hair on the back of her neck rose. She wanted to scrub his gaze from her skin. She motioned for the bowman to shoot.
Sir Guy’s arm lashed out. He snatched the bow from the man’s hand. The archer backed away.
“Stand,” Helena hissed at him.
“Open the gate.” Sir Guy tossed the bow to the stones at his feet.
Helena lunged for it. She would shoot the bastard herself before she allowed him to step foot in her keep.
Guy placed his boot over the bow. He shifted and the yew split beneath his weight.
“Nay.” Ranulf would never enter her keep.
The porter was already moving toward the winch. “Do not.” She turned her glare to the porter. “Do not open the gate.”
“Open the gate,” Guy repeated. The threat of challenging his authority hung implicit in his tone.
“That whoreson does not set foot in this keep. Roger would not have allowed it.”
“Roger is no longer lord here.” The line of his jaw was implacable.
“I will not allow it.” Her teeth ground together with the effort to control her anger.
“Will you force me to exact the punishment for this man’s disobedience?” he asked, indicating the anxious porter.
The question was softly voiced. Only she could hear him. The air rushed from her body.
His eyes were the frigid, merciless eyes of a killer. The crack of wood was loud as he ground the bow beneath his boot.
Beside her, she sensed Ewayne and the porter watching them.
The porter sidled nervously closer to the winch.
From the ground, Sir Ranulf observed all.
Helena spun on her heel. Bitter tears of defeat stung, but she refused to cry in front of any of them. She couldn’t condemn the porter to the lash or worse.
Her heels struck angry marks into the bare earth of the bailey. A serf leapt out of her path as she strode toward the hall. How dare he countermand her before the men? And how dare he let that murderous whoreson into her keep?
“Helena?”
She charged up the stairs. Colin’s footsteps came behind her. “What is it, Nell?”
“He welcomed Ranulf.” She could feel her anger gathering like a summer storm. Not since the day they had discovered her sister, Bess was dead, had Ranulf of Dartmoore been allowed to step foot here.
“Sir Ranulf is here?” Colin asked as she darted through the screens and reached the staircase to the upper level.
“Aye. He is here.” Helena’s voice rose and a young serving girl slid past her nervously. “He is waiting outside the gates, just as nice as you please. As if he had never killed our darling Bess. As if he had never done any of those things.”
“Now, Nell—”
“And there is more.” She swiped a hot tear from her cheek. “Sir Guy has taken down Roger’s colours and flies his own.”
“Roger is banished. We cannot fly his colours.”
“Roger was our uncle!” she shouted, not caring who heard her. “He was the man who raised us and loved us as his own children. Not even one day gone and we must wipe from the earth all trace that he was ever here?”
“Calm down, Nell,” Colin snapped. “It is but a blasted pennant.”
His words hit like a slap and Helena reared back from him. Colin didn’t understand. His betrayal added fresh fuel to the flame.
“How can you say that?” she raged at him. “How can you not care that Roger is gone? How can you just accept another man in his place? You, of all people.”
“You are screeching like a shrew.” Colin curled his lip in distaste. “I have no tolerance for your childish posturing. I am the one who should be wroth about Sir Guy being here. I have lost everything.”
Helena longed to slap his self-righteous face. Bereft of words, she whirled and charged up the stairs.
Her anger carried her to the safety of her solar. Helena grabbed the latch in both of her fists and heaved the door. It slammed into its jamb with a resounding thud. She spun around and stopped short.
He had invaded here too, her private sanctuary. “That craven, churlish, rutting dog!”
Guy’s armour lay on the clothing chest by her bed. She sprang on it with an avenging shriek. “Whore-mongering! Reeking! Swiving! Pig!” She punctuated each insult by flinging first his gauntlets and then his coif and, finally, his shield across the solar.
Steel clattered against the floor. The hauberk was too heavy, and after tugging on it furiously, she gave up with a growl of frustration and sat abruptly on the floor. The stones bruised her tender flesh.
“Ow.” She hiccoughed and then broke into noisy sobs. It was all too much and she cried harder.
She considered herself pious and devout. Most days she said her prayers morn and evening. She obeyed her guardian, at least when he was right. She was serene and gentle, or she tried very hard to be. She didn’t deserve any of such unfairness.
“My lady?”
Helena stopped mid-sob. She opened her fingers a crack.
The lad was partially concealed by the bed curtains, staring at her anxiously. It was too late for her dignity. She didn’t even attempt a recovery.
She dropped her hands from her face. “Who are you?”
“I am Geoffrey, my lady.” The boy sidled around the bed. “Mayhap I should call your attending woman?”
“What are you doing in here?”
“I . . . ah . . . I am Sir Guy’s squire.” The boy edged around the corner of the bed, keeping a safe distance. Watching her as if she were a feral beast, he didn’t notice the gauntlet she’d hurled across the solar. His knees hit the ground with a thud that made her wince.
The boy coloured beetroot red. “Your pardon, my lady.” He clambered to his feet and tugged on the edges of his tunic.
“Oh, I think we are beyond that.” Helena’s shoulders drooped. “Help me up before I make an even bigger fool of myself.”
“Oh, nay, my lady,” Geoffrey lied with admirable conviction.
Given her recent performance, Helena accorded him grudging respect for that much.
“You were merely overset.” He took two steps backward.
“Watch out for—”
Geoffrey landed in a tangle on the floor.
“That coif.” Helena levered herself up. “Well, Geoffrey.” She held out her hand to help him rise. “We are a fine pair, are we not?”
The boy blushed anew and took her hand. “I am clumsy.”
“And I just indulged in some behaviour that would make Bridget box my ears.”
Geoffrey opened his mouth gallantly.
Helena waved him to silence. “It has been a day of nasty surprises. I think we should both make a pact to forget the last ten minutes ever occurred.”
“Oh, aye, my lady.” Geoffrey tugged on his tunic again. He skirted the evidence of her tantrum with exaggerated care on his way to the door. “I have heard worse, you know.” He
spoke in a sudden rush, as if he couldn’t quite believe his own daring.
“From a lady?”
“Oh, aye,” Geoffrey assured her. “You would scarce believe what ladies say when they believe nobody else is listening.”
“I doubt that, Geoffrey.”
“I am from Court.” Ranulf strode toward Guy. His manner was easy, but the man took in everything about him. Guy had seen Ranulf of Dartmoore at Court, but they didn’t share the same circles. Ranulf spent his time with a particularly nasty nest of vipers surrounding the king.
“I came to assure myself of Lady Helena’s safety,” Ranulf continued smoothly. “I see I am behind you, Guy of Helston.” He motioned to the pennant. “Those are your colours that fly there, are they not?”
“They are,” Guy inclined his head. “Lady Helena and I are wed.”
“Verily, I had not heard.” Not by a flicker did Sir Ranulf betray any emotion. “Allow me to felicitate you? Lady Helena is a prize indeed. You are to be congratulated on your good fortune.”
Indeed. Lady Helena was a prize Ranulf had wanted enough to attempt persuading the king to overrule Roger’s guardianship. Roger had discovered the plot in time to put it a stop to it. And here I stand, Roger’s move to halt Ranulf.
Guy nodded in acknowledgement. “Might we offer you the refreshment of the keep?”
“Gladly.” Ranulf wore a congenial smile, but his gaze drifted around the bailey.
Guy would bet his sword the man was tallying the strength of the keep. God be with the conniving bastard then, because Lystanwold was now his, and Guy had the might to defend it.
They settled in the hall. Ranulf sipped his mead, resting comfortably in the chair opposite, his expression calm, even affable. But his pretty face hid an anger that had Guy’s sword hand twitching for the reassuring weight of steel. Too many years of war had honed his instincts and they were shrieking at him now. Ranulf of Dartmoore wanted him dead.
“Your marriage was rather sudden, was it not?”
Guy met the man’s stare in silence. Roger had risked everything to spare his niece from this threat, and Guy understood the why of it. Ranulf was a killer, the sort of knight he’d encountered often in his travels.