by Lynn Kurland
Then again, this was Alain of Ayre he was bargaining with.
Rhys watched as Alain came up out of his chair, his face a mask of fury. If Rollan hadn’t caught his brother by the shoulders and jerked him back, Rhys was certain Alain would have tried to cut him down where he stood.
“’Tis a perfectly reasonable request,” Rollan said calmly. “Not very politely stated by our gallant Sir Rhys, but reasonable enough.” He kept a hand on Alain’s shoulder. “The deed will be drawn up after the wedding.”
“Two copies,” Rhys said. “One to be held here, the other to be held in London.”
Rollan laughed softly. “By the blessed saints, you would think Sir Rhys had been acquiring land the whole of his life. I suppose when one doesn’t have the burdens of nobility resting upon him, one has ample time to think on these things.”
“Greedy bastard,” Alain muttered. He looked at Rhys narrowly. “You’d best serve me well, else I’ll rip up the deed.”
All the more reason to have another copy in the hands of the king, Rhys thought to himself. Yet even as the distrust of Alain washed over him, he was also overwhelmed by the truth of what he’d just learned.
Bertram had left him land. He could hardly take it in.
“Are you finished with me?”
Rhys blinked at the sound of that voice, then realized just what he’d forgotten.
Gwen.
“Come now, Rhys,” Rollan said ignoring her. “Can you not assure my brother that you will serve him well? I vow were it me standing in your place, I would be throwing myself at his feet and kissing his boots.”
Which is exactly what I will be doing for the next pair of years, Rhys thought sourly.
“I will serve you well,” Rhys heard himself say, and he wondered where the words had come from.
“Ah,” Rollan said with a sigh of contentment, “chivalry in the flesh. He possesses it in abundance, wouldn’t you say, Gwen?”
“Oh, aye,” she said quietly. “There is a veritable glut of it in this chamber this day.”
Rhys cleared his throat. “If there is nothing else, my lord? I am certain there are duties I should be about as quickly as possible.”
“Duties,” Alain repeated. “I must give thought to what those might be.”
“Perhaps something else as a reward for his morning’s work,” Rollan suggested. “I daresay it should be something that only the honorable Sir Rhys could fulfill.”
“Aye,” Alain said, scratching his head, then looking at his brother. “Perhaps I should think on it later.”
“A wise decision, my lord,” Rollan said, inclining his head submissively. “And I will be at your disposal to hear anything you might suggest, of course.”
The saints preserve me, Rhys thought to himself. Then he shook his head. What duties Alain might decide upon did not matter. Rhys would not be there to fulfill them.
Or would he?
If he could just remove himself from the chamber, he was certain he could think more clearly. Land was within his grasp. And Gwen was within Alain’s grasp. And in order for him to have his land, he would have to watch Alain take Gwen to his bed. And if Gwen wed with Alain, her life would be nothing but a misery—if she survived life at the man’s hands. Rhys knew that if her sire had known of Alain’s true character, he never would have allowed the union.
And if Segrave had never allowed the union, Rhys never would have had Wyckham.
It was a situation more fiendish than the devil himself could have imagined up.
“Now to the wedding,” Rollan prompted. “Surely it should be accomplished with all haste? Perhaps on the morrow?”
Alain scowled. “I had a hunt planned for the morrow.”
“Ah,” Rollan said, sounding immensely regretful, “and I know how you love a good hunt.”
“Best tame her as soon as you can,” Hugh offered between slurps and gulps. “Can’t start too soon with a wench, or so I’ve always said.”
Rhys felt the words sink into him like blades. Tomorrow. The wedding on the morrow. It was too soon. He needed more time. He had to speak to the king, to promise the man gold, fealty, his own sweet neck if that was what was required. Tomorrow was too soon.
“Tomorrow, then,” Alain said, waving his hand at them. “You both may go. We’ll have the ceremony at noon. I might yet get in an hour of falconing beforehand. And remember, de Piaget, obedience in exchange for your land.”
“Of course, my lord,” Rhys responded, and he said as much because he was too numb to do anything else. Numb and terrified.
He was on the verge of losing the two things he’d spent the last four years paying to have with the price of his own sweat and tears.
Gwen passed out of the chamber before him without looking at him. Rhys was silent until the Fitzgeralds had come out behind him into the passageway and closed the solar door.
“Gwen,” Rhys began.
She turned and looked at him and her expression was bleak. “I seem to have misunderstood you.”
He shook his head sharply. “You’ve misunderstood nothing. I’ve always wanted land, of course—”
“And I possessed an abundance of it,” she interrupted. “Thank you, sir knight, but I understood that very well.”
“It isn’t as it appeared—”
“And to think I thought you were different than the rest of them,” she said.
“I—”
Am, he meant to finish, but she had already turned and walked away. The Fitzgerald brothers trailed after her in her wake. Rhys started to go after her when the door behind him opened and Alain appeared, looking at him with irritation.
“Loitering?” Alain demanded. “Lazy already?”
Rhys made the new lord of Ayre a very low bow, ignoring the protests of his damaged back, then turned and walked away before his visage betrayed him. Or his tongue. He already knew what that would win him, and the last thing he could afford was to find himself with a lock between him and Gwen.
Bertram had given him land, and all he had to do to have it was give up the love of his soul.
By the saints, but he’d never expected any of this.
12
A knock sounded on the door.
Gwen ignored it. She was far too busy contemplating the shattering of her dreams to disturb such morose musings by answering what could only be yet another disaster for the day. As if the thought of becoming Alain’s bride on the morrow wasn’t disaster enough.
The knock came again, more firmly.
“Leave me be, I’m brooding!”
The knock came again and Gwen cursed. Well, at least it couldn’t be Alain; he wouldn’t bother to accord her the courtesy of a knock. Perhaps it was John with a sharp blade on which she could impale herself. Feeling that such a thing would be a vast improvement on the day’s events, she crossed over to the door and opened it.
The Fitzgeralds stood there, looking down at her from their great height.
Gwen, feeling emboldened by her impending doom, stared right back at them without so much as a flinch. A pity she hadn’t felt this hopeless when she’d first escaped Ayre. She might have passed more easily for a mercenary. The horror of these two was nothing compared to the terror she would face on the morrow at Alain’s hands. Somehow she doubted very much he would woo her to his bed with sweet songs and wine, as did the heroes of her mother’s favorites chansons.
“Aye?” she said finally, when it became apparent that the twins were bent on doing nothing but staring down at her with those fierce expressions. “One of you knocked?”
The one on the right cleared his throat. “I did.”
“Fool,” muttered the other.
“She should know of this,” whispered the first.
“Babble on then,” grumbled the second. “I’ve no mind to listen to the tale.” And with that, the second stuck his fingers in his ears and stared up at the ceiling.
Gwen looked at the first who had spoken and wondered how anyone told them apart, th
emselves included. The only possible way was that this one on the right seemed to scowl just a bit less than the other.
“He wants you,” he said.
Gwen waited. Then she found herself scowling up at the twins. Saints, but it was contagious this foul humor of theirs. “How was that?”
“Him,” the first said, inclining his head back down the passageway. “Young Rhys.”
“He sent for me?”
“Nay. But the words he spoke today were not the words of his heart.”
Gwen wanted desperately to believe that, but she’d heard the words come out of his mouth with her own ears. They were very hard to deny. Despite his expressions of affection yestermorn, it had been four years since she’d seen him. Much could have changed.
The other demon started to tap his foot impatiently.
“Enough, Connor,” the first said, elbowing him in the ribs. “’Tis rightly your tale to tell and you won’t see to the telling of it, so it falls to me to do it.”
The second, apparently Connor by name, unplugged his ears. “I’ve no mind to relate this to such innocent ears, Jared.”
“She deserves to know.”
“He won’t like it that you’ve said aught.”
“She won’t repeat it. Will she?”
Gwen found herself pinned to the spot by bright blue eyes that seemed to demand a response in the affirmative. She wasn’t, however, above reserving the right to remember the tale for use in future extortion. But she shook her head, as if the thought of repeating such tidings was simply beyond her.
“Well then,” the one named Jared said, looking a bit more comfortable, “this is how it all came about. ’Twas a night several years ago that we were roaming the hall—”
“Looking for makers of mischief,” Connor interjected.
“Overenthusiastic revelers—”
“Oppressors of the weak and helpless—”
“Filchers of savories from the kitchens—”
Gwen sighed heavily. “I think I understand what you were about that night.”
Connor frowned fiercely at her, but she was too weary in mind and spirit to give him any reaction of fear he might have wanted. She looked at Jared expectantly.
“Well?”
“Well,” Jared said, “as we were going about our business, we happened upon the chamber where Rhys was making his bed for the night.”
Gwen wondered if this could possibly be something she would want to hear. Jared seemed to think it necessary, for he plunged on ahead.
“Connor, being the inquisitive soul he is, put his ear to the wood to see how young Rhys’s labors were progressing.”
Gwen snorted before she could stop herself.
“My thoughts exactly,” Connor grumbled. “Must the child hear this?”
“Aye, she must,” Jared said with another elbow in his brother’s ribs. He turned his attentions back to Gwen. “Finding the moans the wench was making little to his liking, Connor opened the door with the purpose of observing Rhys to divine just what it was he was doing so poorly as to wring such inadequate sounds from his companion.”
“Well,” Gwen said, hardly able to believe her ears. “This is news.”
Connor pursed his lips and resumed his contemplation of the ceiling.
“Aye, well to be sure what Connor saw inside was news indeed.”
Jared paused in his tale and waited expectantly, as if he desired some sort of response from her. All Gwen could do was return his stare. He frowned at her a bit, as if by so doing he could wring from her the reaction he wanted. Finally he frowned again in exasperation and spoke.
“Well,” he asked, “will you not know what was occurring inside?”
Gwen shrugged helplessly, feeling completely at a loss. Did she need to know this? Then again, how could the tidings possibly make her any more wretched than she was at present?
“Um,” she began, “well, I don’t know—”
“Nothing,” he interrupted.
Gwen blinked. “Nothing?”
“Well,” Jared said with a thoughtful look, “it wasn’t as if nothing at all was happening.”
She waited. And when he said nothing more, she prompted him with an “I beg your pardon?”
“Aye, that was what Rhys said at the time, too, as he turned from his game of dice to look at Connor.”
“Then he was . . .”
“Dicing,” Connor said, shaking his head in disbelief. “And a fine-looking wench she was, too. I could hardly believe my eyes.”
“Then he wasn’t . . . they weren’t . . .” Gwen hardly knew how to voice her question.
“Wasn’t,” Jared confirmed. “Didn’t. Not then.”
“Not ever,” Connor added in a disgruntled tone. “If you can believe that.”
She couldn’t. “That isn’t the tale I’ve heard.” Rumors of Rhys’s prowess in many areas had reached her ears thanks to John’s finely honed eavesdropping skills. Men bedded women, and some men bedded as many women as possible. Rhys, by all accounts, fell into that last lot.
“I should hope you hadn’t heard differently,” Connor said. “Think on the embarrassment for the lad!”
“’Tis highly chivalrous, if you ask me,” Jared countered. He looked at Gwen. “He invited the wench to leave, then relented under our questioning—”
“Which was most fierce,” Connor said. “Had to rough the little lad up a bit to pry the truth from him.”
“In the end,” Jared continued, “he told us his true motive.”
“Unwillingly enough, though,” Connor said. “And to be sure I can understand why he was loth to give voice to such a ridiculous notion.”
“It isn’t a ridiculous notion,” Jared argued. “’Tis most romantic.”
“’Tis foolish.”
“’Tis not!”
“Please,” Gwen interrupted, wishing she had the courage to knock their heads together and stop them from arguing. “Tell me what his motives were!”
Jared looked at her and smiled proudly. “He was saving himself.”
“Saving himself ?”
“Aye,” Jared nodded. “Nary a taste of those pleasures has the lad had in all his years.”
“Not that he’s a gelded stallion,” Connor hastened to add. “He’s a man sure enough. Ruthless.”
“Fierce,” Jared added.
“Merciless.”
“And quite the swordsman, if I do say so myself,” Jared finished. “Taught him all he knows,” he boasted.
“I taught him all he knows,” Connor said, turning to glare at his brother. “That two-fisted thrust through the ribs and out the back—”
“My axe in the thigh with the right hand and dagger across the belly with the left—”
“My ferocious swipe with one blade and a delicate slice the other way with the second—”
Gwen had the feeling this kind of argument could go on for more time than she had to spare. Besides, the descriptions were starting to make her more than a little queasy. Perhaps a mercenary’s life was not for her.
“Let me understand this,” she said, interrupting them. “He has never made any of the conquests he’s credited with.”
They looked at her as one and nodded.
“Why?”
“Why?” Jared echoed. “Why, for you, my lady.”
“Me?” She shook her head. “He doesn’t want me. He wants my land.”
“Bah,” Connor said, “’tis a bad habit he learned from Jared, that lying.”
“From me?” Jared gasped. “’Twas from you he learned to deny the feelings of his heart! I taught him to express himself in the most tender of ways. If he’d spent less time listening to you and more time to me, he would have told this girl years ago of his feelings for her!”
“But he did tell me,” Gwen said.
Both Jared and Connor turned to look at her, their mouths hanging open.
“He did?” they asked, as one.
She nodded. “It took me a bit to wring them
from him, of course.”
Jared’s ears perked up. “Did you stick him?”
Connor snorted. “She wouldn’t stick him. She’s a passing sweet girl.” He turned his fierce gaze on her. “What’d you do, then? Loosen his tongue with sweetmeats cooked right proper? Well-cured eel smothered in savory sauce? Roasted pheasant with all manner of little nuts and pleasant things surrounding it on a fine platter?”
Obviously Connor had heard of the delicacies produced by her mother’s kitchens.
“Nay,” she said, “I used my womanly ways to convince Sir Montgomery to deliver a message for me—”
“That Montgomery always was soft,” Connor said in disgust.
“And I cornered Rhys on the roof and told him I wished him for my champion.”
“And he agreed,” Jared stated, as if there could have been no other outcome.
“Of course he agreed,” Connor groused. He frowned at her. “He’s had tender feelings for you since he was a lad, sadly enough. Ruins him for serious swordplay, I’ve always said. He spends at least a handful of moments each day mooning over you, and has done for years. That time was better spent honing that little dodge to the groin, or perhaps the blade carving artistically along the jawbone—”
Gwen could hardly bear another listing, so she turned to Jared, who seemed much less inclined to catalog his warriorly moves than his brother.
“Why then do you suppose he said what he did?” she asked.
“What else was he to do?” Jared said with a shrug. “It wasn’t as if he could admit the innards of his heart to Lord Ayre. Wouldn’t think he thinks on it overmuch himself, though. And that isn’t because of any lack on my part, of course.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
She felt suddenly as if her world had righted itself again. Rhys loved her. He had for years, just as she had him. He couldn’t have said as much to Alain or Rollan, and he certainly wouldn’t have said the like to her guardian. After all, hadn’t he tried to bribe Hugh that morning? Bribery for land was one thing; bribery for a woman was another. It wasn’t something Hugh would have understood, so Rhys approached him with something he could understand. A pity Rhys hadn’t used a few wagons of foodstuffs instead of gold. It might have had a better effect.