Her Battle-Scarred Knight

by Meriel Fuller

  ‘It matters not…I am here.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…’ His fingers curled around hers.

  ‘Now, look here,’ Walter blustered, interrupting her whispered apology, ‘your brother and I talked about this, on the crusade. It was a simple swap. Matilda for Brianna—Hugh was in full agreement; he knew what he wanted.’

  A raft of dizziness threatened to topple her. She clutched more firmly at Giseux’s sleeve, bracing herself against the steadying buttress of his body. ‘Giseux, he truly did this! How could he? How could he do such a thing?’ She swayed, her eyes seeking his face, the firm curve of his mouth, the spiky black lashes. ‘You warned me and I wouldn’t listen!’ Her voice rose on a half-sob. ‘What kind of fool was I, not to trust you?’

  ‘Why would you believe the words of a stranger over your own brother, someone you had known for years? No one else would have done any different.’

  ‘What am I going to do? Hugh is my guardian—there’s no way out!’

  Walter smiled, slowly, like a spider waiting at the edge of his web. At his side, Matilda perched on the edge of her seat, completely still, a stupefied look in her eyes. Even the servants, moving about their chores in the main part of the hall, seemed to work more slowly, throwing covert glances up to Walter as they watched the drama unfold at the high table.

  ‘Hush.’ Giseux’s arm came around her slender back, balanced her. ‘There is a way out, but you have to trust me—will you do that?’

  Perplexed, she stared at him, trying to decipher his thoughts, trying to read the intention in his granite eyes. Within those elusive depths, she had seen the pain, the despair he carried, but she had also seen a kindness and concern. He had come after her, insisted on travelling with her, even when she had refused to believe him, to accept this awful truth about Hugh. This man was no stranger to her now. She knew him, she cared for him.

  ‘Yes, I will,’ she murmured.

  ‘Then let’s go.’ He smiled. Turning her within the circle of his arms, he glanced at Matilda, cowering back into the ornately carved chair. ‘Come and bid us farewell, Matilda.’

  ‘Wait! No! You cannot do this, you cannot take her!’ Bits of half-chewed meat spilled from Walter’s mouth when he realised what was happening. ‘She is mine!’ He choked as a big piece of chicken jammed in his throat and seized his goblet, drinking quickly to release the constriction. His eyes darted nervously towards the guards, standing in front of the only exit from the great hall, before alighting on the curtained doorway itself. His countenance brightened. ‘Now,’ he pronounced, ‘here is someone who can tell you.’ His broad grin revealed a jagged row of rotting teeth, pegs of yellowing charcoal in his loose-lipped mouth.

  Framed by the floor-length curtain, his frame slumping a little, stood Hugh. Matilda gasped, half-rose, listlessly, before collapsing back into her chair. Her brown eyes, the colour of polished elm, searched for Brianna’s in desperation. ‘I am lost!’ she murmured.

  ‘Nay!’ Brianna replied firmly. ‘Never that!’ She glanced up at Giseux, brilliant aquamarines meeting sparkling flint, reading the unspoken warning in his chiselled features. ‘Let me talk to him, at least. He cannot have been in his right mind when he agreed to this.’

  ‘We will both talk to him,’ Giseux replied as she brushed past him. Chewing her lip, she descended the wooden steps from the high dais, holding her gown high, the dullness in her heart presaging doom. She knew already what Hugh would say, but she had to hear it for herself. She had to hear the truth from her brother’s lips: that he had sold her to the man she hated most in the world.

  Features washed white, Hugh teetered on the threshold, the veins in his forehead standing out, blue, rigid. His clothes hung off his skeletal frame; his illness had shaved any excess weight from his tall body.

  ‘Hugh, what are you doing here?’ Brianna rushed up to him, thinking he would fall. She grasped at his hands, led him to the nearest bench, urging him to sit. He sank down, holding on to her; his hands looked like an old man’s, frail and knotted.

  ‘I…had to…make sure,’ he answered, his breathing laboured, uneven. ‘I had to make sure you were here. When Walter failed to send a message that you had arrived, I began to worry.’ He touched a fluttering hand to his sweating forehead.

  ‘I…encountered some difficulties on the journey,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘But luckily Giseux came to my rescue, brought me here.’

  ‘So I see,’ Hugh remarked sourly, throwing Giseux a cursory glance. ‘I asked him to escort you here, you know, and he refused.’ His features cleared suddenly. ‘You told her, didn’t you! You told her of my plans for her. I knew it!’

  ‘She deserved the truth, at least,’ Giseux replied. ‘But out of loyalty to you, her brother, she refused to believe me.’

  ‘Tell me, Hugh, tell me that you didn’t do this, please!’ Brianna placed one hand on his shoulder, the bones beneath his tunic pinching into her palm.

  ‘Brianna, you should learn to trust me.’ His bright blue gaze narrowed upon her face. ‘Walter is a good man, much changed since his time on the crusade. The marriage will be much better this time, you’ll see.’ His eyes fastened on the slim, dark-haired girl at the top table, distracted. ‘Why does Matilda not come and greet me?’ he whined. ‘What’s amiss with her?’

  Brianna’s hand sprung away from her brother’s shoulder, hovered in the space to the side of his head. Reality crashed around her, broken to smithereens. Bewildered, suddenly bereft of care for her sibling, the urge to hit him boiled within her, to spring at him like a snarling cat and scratch at his face. Breath punching from her lungs, she gripped her fingers together, making a fist.

  ‘Easy.’

  Giseux.

  Brianna took a vast, shuddering breath, drawing strength from the muscular warmth behind her, the reassuring baritone of his voice. Through the blur of hot, angry tears, she couldn’t see him, but she could feel him. And it was enough to give her energy, to give her the power to control her emotions, to stand up to her brother.

  ‘I cannot believe what you have done.’ Finally she found some words, her speech emerging as a low, shaking whisper. ‘How could you betray me like this? After everything I told you about that man!’

  ‘Oh, stop being so melodramatic,’ Hugh admonished her sternly. Colour had begun to return to his cheeks. ‘This way, Matilda is mine and you are looked after for the rest of your life. We haven’t any money, Brianna, it all went to fund the crusade.’ His eyes tracked back to the high table, his expression fretful. ‘Why does she not come over?’ His voice adopted a petulant thread. ‘Can’t she see that I’m ill? Brianna, go and fetch her, will you?’

  It was as if she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Hugh, listen to me, will you?’ Brianna snapped, injecting more power into her voice. She wanted to hurt, to fight back. Maybe if she told him the truth it would shake him out of this odd complacency about both of their futures. ‘Matilda doesn’t love you any more; she wants to marry another.’

  ‘Hah! Listen, I know you’re angry about the decision with Walter, but there’s no point in telling me lies to try to hurt me.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Hugh.’ Matilda’s hesitant voice floated up from beside Brianna. At the top table, Walter craned his neck, trying to catch the conversation—was he really going to have to shift from his seat in order to hear anything?

  The Adam’s apple in Hugh’s throat bobbed up and down several times as he scrutinised the olive features of the girl standing next to his sister. His face turned white, then red; a greyness pawed at his mouth. His mouth opened and closed a few times, flapping uselessly. ‘Nay, you’re wrong, Matilda,’ he replied, his voice wavering around an unusual note. ‘Remember all those promises we made to each other before we left; remember the child!’

  Matilda’s eyes reddened. ‘Our child died, Hugh, he died of a sickness a few months after you left. I tried to send you word…’

  ‘Walter…?’ His voice stumbled. Brianna wondered
if he were going to cry. ‘Walter could have told me, when I met him in Jerusalem.’

  Matilda shook her head, the tied ends of her linen veil brushing stiffly against her shoulders. ‘My father never knew about the child…He would have killed me if he had known—the child was born in secret.’

  ‘Our secret,’ Hugh whispered. His eyes glazed slightly, as he remembered. Without warning, he lurched up out of his seat, staggering. ‘Nay, this is not happening!’ he yelled, clutching out at Matilda who backed away rapidly. He stumbled forwards into the empty space where she had once stood, reeling, his arms scrabbling comically into air. ‘I will marry you!’ He punched his arm out in Matilda’s direction. ‘And you.’ he turned wide, condemning eyes upon Brianna ‘.and you will marry Walter. That is what was going to happen and that is what will happen.’ The skin on his face was florid, enraged; his blue eyes were crazed beyond recognition. Brianna stared at him in horror—what was happening to him? He seemed truly crazed, sent mad with the turn of events. Where had her brother gone?

  Giseux stood close to Brianna, his upper arm grazing her shoulder, watching her distraught face, stark with disbelief. ‘What do you want to do?’ he murmured, his voice so low that only she was aware that he had spoken.

  ‘Please, talk to him.’ Her periwinkle-blue eyes shifted to his. ‘I don’t know him any more.’

  Giseux nodded, placing one hand on Hugh’s shoulder in order to lead him away, out of the great hall. ‘Make yourself scarce,’ he muttered grimly, ‘until I come back. And I will come back.’

  The cheerless shadows of the corridor, dim after the relative brightness of the great hall, enveloped Giseux as he propelled Hugh forwards to what he hoped was a vacant room.

  ‘Let go of me!’ hissed Hugh, rolling his shoulder to dislodge Giseux’s grip. ‘You’re supposed to be on my side!’ It was he who pushed through a door into an empty chamber, a dingy room furnished only with an unpolished table, a chair by the lifeless grate. Cold seeped up from the damp flagstones on the floor, claggy, penetrating, and into the air the breath of both men emerged: white puffs of exhalation.

  ‘It will do no good, Giseux, you talking to me!’ Hugh rounded on him, blue eyes wide with annoyance. ‘My mind is made up!’ He stumbled over to the window, twisting around to prop his gaunt frame against thick-cut stone that formed the window surround. Greyness ringed his mouth.

  ‘Then maybe you should change your mind,’ Giseux replied evenly, settling his sizeable frame into the high-backed elm chair, ornate legs mottled with a bluish mould. Lifting one foot, he rested it casually on his opposite knee, sprawling elegantly.

  ‘I have no intention of changing my mind!’ Hugh stabbed the air with one finger, agitated. He frowned, an entrenched furrow appeared between his sparse brows. ‘In fact, I cannot see that it is any of your business—why are you so interested?’ His voice adopted a tone of suspicious probing. ‘A couple of days ago you refused to escort my sister here—what’s changed?’

  Long, black lashes framing an exquisite pair of cerulean eyes danced into Giseux’s mind, swiftly pursued by the hesitant embrace of a silken mouth, the press of rounded curves against his own. Her pale, angry face as she remonstrated with him about Almeric of Salis, her courage, her scent, everything. His fingers tightened around the claw-fashioned end of the chair arm. ‘I have no wish to see Brianna married to Walter…again.’

  ‘Why? I don’t understand why?’ Hugh screwed his eyes up, searching Giseux’s impassive features for some clue, for some reason as to his interest. Shaking his head with mirth, he clapped one hand against his mouth. ‘Giseux, are you in love with my sister?’

  Love? Was that the term for the way he felt towards Brianna? The fragile bonds that had strung between them over the past few days, shackles that at first had been constructed from protest and argument, had now strengthened, flourishing from shimmering lengths of spider’s silk, to thick, unbreakable ropes, binding them. Emotion speared his heart; it shifted, lightened.

  Breathing heavily, Hugh staggered over to the table, supporting himself on both arms, white fingers bony against the rough, drab wood. ‘Who’d have thought it? Giseux, the great warrior, falling for my useless scrap of a sister!’ His tone mocked, taunted. ‘I thought you had sworn never to have another relationship with a woman again, never to marry, after what happened with Nadia…after what you did.’ His voice took on a deadly poignancy. ‘Oh, yes, everyone knew, Giseux. Everyone knew about the siege of Narsuf. I heard you were a broken man, devastated, incapable of love.’

  ‘I thought so too,’ Giseux murmured. Until I met Brianna. Joy leapt in his chest, for Hugh’s comments left him strangely unaffected. He could insult him all he liked; his words made no difference; they did not apply to him, not any more. A week ago, maybe, but so much had changed since then. Every time he was with Brianna, he became whole once more, the iron case around his heart melting, just a little, slipping away by degrees.

  Hugh absorbed his words. ‘Oh, please, you’re making me feel quite ill.’ A dangerous light filled his eyes; he brought one clenched fist crashing down upon the tabletop. ‘You have no part in this, so I advise you to keep out, to walk away now. Brianna is mine, I am her guardian, and I’m free to do with her what I want. And I want her to marry Walter, otherwise I will not have Matilda.’

  ‘You cannot force her,’ Giseux murmured.

  ‘Aye, I can,’ Hugh vowed, straightening up, mouth warped into a sneer. ‘And you will not stop me.’

  Giseux sprang from his seat. One stride brought him to the table, facing Hugh. ‘I will stop you.’

  Hugh held his hands up, feigning surrender. ‘My, my, such passion. I never knew you had it in you, Giseux. Aye, Brianna whinged on about things not being quite right in the marriage when she came crawling back the first time.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I didn’t pay much attention.’

  ‘My God, you’re her brother.’ Giseux tried to breathe deeply, evenly, keeping a rein on his temper. His tanned face moved close to Hugh’s, fingers itching to strangle this man, this fellow Crusader, this man whose life he had saved. ‘You’re supposed to protect her.’ A muscle jumped along the line of one high, defined cheekbone. ‘That man nearly destroyed her,’ he spoke quietly, voice edged with steel. ‘And I am not about to let it happen again.’ He wheeled away, abruptly.

  Hugh blinked as the door closed behind Giseux, the iron latch rattling back into place. With one shaking hand, he wiped away the beads of sweat sprinkling his brow, smoothed down the short strands of his gold-red hair. Damn, damn, damn! Why Giseux, of all people? Why did he have to be involved?

  His mind tilted crazily, sliding away from reason, from good sense, and plunged into an abyss of ego-centricity, of self-absorption. Self-pity cloaked him; he hunched his shoulders against the invisible garment, throat constricting. Giseux was planning to stop him, to stop him gaining everything he had prayed and hoped and yearned for. All those nights on that senseless crusade, sleeping under the desert stars, clinging to the one thing that pushed him through those dry, hot days: the dream of coming home to marry Matilda, to see his son inherit Sefanoc. Sadness gripped his chest; already his baby son was dead, and with Giseux’s words, his marriage to Matilda threatened to topple, to break into splinters at his feet. But it would happen; he would make it happen. No matter that Matilda loved another; she had loved him before and she would love him again. He couldn’t allow this man to interfere, there was too much at stake. Giseux would have to go.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Mother of Mary! How long does Walter intend to incarcerate us up here?’ Brianna paced across the woman’s solar, stopping once again to kneel up onto the stone window ledge to peer out of the casement. But she already knew her efforts were fruitless; the solar was too high, at least three floors above the muddy-looking moat: too far to jump, too dangerous to climb. She had watched the watery sun move across the sky, from before noon, when a soldier had been tasked by Walter to lock both women in this chamber, to now
, when the ball of liquid fire was about to drop below the horizon. Not a soul, not even a servant with some food, had visited them all afternoon. Not even Giseux.

  ‘Brianna, please sit down, you make me nervous with all this striding about.’ Matilda perched on a stool, wedged up against a table in the centre of the room, restlessly turning a piece of embroidery in her hands.

  Loose white threads from the unfinished hem on the linen dragged across her dark sleeves.

  ‘Sorry. I wish I knew what was happening.’ Brianna approached the table, then slid into a seat opposite Matilda.

  ‘Do you think Lord—er…Giseux will be able to talk some sense into Hugh?’

  Brianna stretched her hands out across the table, clasping her fingers around Matilda’s frozen digits, crushing the needlework. ‘I hope so. He might be able to change his mind.’ She wrinkled her nose—what had Giseux meant, when he asked her to trust him, when he said there was a way out?

  ‘It seems to be taking quite some time,’ Matilda whispered, her milk-white skin glowing in the low light of the chamber.

  ‘Aye, well, as you know, my brother can be stubborn.’ She refused to voice her fears that Giseux had failed in his attempt. Slapping her hands against the table, she levered herself to her feet. ‘This is ridiculous; we can hardly see in here. Do they intend to make us sit in the dark?’ Brianna whisked over to the door, wrestling with the latch, although she knew it was locked from the outside. ‘We need some light in here, now!’ she ordered, thumping on the planks with the flat of her hand. To her surprise, the door swung inwards and she had to jump away to avoid being hit by the cross-braces, the black metal of the latch.

  ‘Not thinking of leaving us, Brianna?’ Hugh swaggered into the chamber, a self-important bluster to his demeanour. His eyes sought Matilda, feasting avidly on the polished gloss of her ebony hair, her willowy figure, and she shrank back into her seat at his blatant scrutiny, trying to fold herself smaller.