Untamed

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Though Dominic raised his voice not at all, his words carried clearly to every part of the church. There was a murmuring of relief as Duncan’s men understood that they would not be taken out and summarily hanged for their stillborn rebellion.

  Meg wanted to thank Dominic for his unexpected mercy, but her own relief that carnage had been prevented was so great she became light-headed. The church began to revolve slowly around her while light from the candles dimmed as though someone had drawn a veil over her face. The floor shifted beneath her feet.

  With a soft sound of dismay, Meg reached for Dominic to steady herself.

  Dominic heard Meg’s low cry, saw the color run from her cheeks, and caught her up in his arms before she fell. Silver swirled and seethed against black before flowing into place, soft Glendruid cloth matching each fold of Dominic’s war cape as though cut for that sole purpose.

  The steady beating of Meg’s heart against his hand told Dominic that relief rather than anything more sinister had temporarily taken her strength. He looked from her to the priest.

  The man’s face was as pale as a death lily, his guilt clear to see in the sweat standing on his brow.

  “Finish it,” Dominic said coolly.

  “I c-cannot.”

  “Lady Margaret has done her part. Do yours or die.”

  The priest began talking, his voice shaking so much that the words were all but unintelligible. He completed the ceremony with unseemly haste.

  Meg heard the words as though at a great distance. Nothing was real to her but the knowledge that she had betrayed John and Duncan; and in doing so had saved Blackthorne Keep and its people from destruction.

  Gradually the power of the man who was holding her sank into Meg’s senses, giving her something tangible to cling to in a world that still seemed very insubstantial. She looked up at Dominic’s face, trying to gauge the fate to which she had agreed, wife of the dark Norman lord.

  Candlelight didn’t soften Dominic’s features. It brought them into bold relief, laying black shadows beneath his cheekbones and along the hard line of his jaw. His eyes were as clear and colorless as the eyes of the fabled Glendruid Wolf. And surrounding all was the grim winking of chain mail lying just beneath the flowing, midnight cape.

  The church whirled around Meg again, but this time it wasn’t the rushing of her own blood that caused it. The ceremony was complete. Dominic had turned and was striding down the aisle, carrying his wife in his arms as though she weighed no more than the mist her dress resembled.

  Just before Dominic reached the doorway of the church, he stopped in the shadows to assess the reaction of the people of Blackthorne Keep. He didn’t know if they, like the priest, had wished Duncan of Maxwell to be their new lord.

  An uncertain sound went through the tenants when they saw their lady being held inside the church by the grim Norman warrior as though he had sacked a city and taken her as a prize. Seeing the harsh planes of Dominic’s face, Meg could well understand the hesitation in her people. She herself could hardly believe Dominic had withheld the death that Duncan and her father had earned.

  Yet Dominic had shown mercy. Duncan and her father still lived. Dominic had taken advantage of the shock caused by her acceptance of marriage and used those precious instants not to slay, but to force a peace.

  Hidden within the shadows in the church doorway, Meg touched Dominic’s cheek just above the cold chain mail, reassuring herself that he was indeed flesh rather than steel, and that she herself was alive to feel his warmth.

  Dominic looked down into eyes that were the clear, burning green of spring itself.

  “Thank you for not killing them,” Meg said.

  “It wasn’t done from the softness of my heart,” Dominic said bluntly. “Much as I would enjoy hanging the men who would have forced war upon me and incest upon you, I have no wish to be lord of a ruined keep.”

  Chilled, Meg removed her fingers. “John is not my father.”

  “Then why didn’t he disinherit you?”

  As Dominic spoke, he stepped forward, carrying Meg into the tenuous, silver-white light of day. Again, an uneasy murmuring ran through the gathered vassals.

  “The people,” Meg said simply. “They are why.”

  “What?”

  “This.”

  Again Meg touched Dominic.

  This time the people of Blackthorne Keep saw their mistress’s fingertips resting on the knight’s cheek where flesh rose above chain mail. It was a touch freely given by their lady to her new husband.

  If she was his captive, she was a willing one.

  A great shout went up from the people as they understood that this spring they would sow crops for the living rather than dig graves for the dead; and in their joy it was Meg’s name the people called, not that of their new lord.

  As the waves of jubilation broke over Dominic, he knew why John had never disavowed the girl who was not his daughter.

  8

  THE FEAST SPREAD IN THE BAILEY before the vassals of Blackthorne Keep was a luxury beyond their imagining. Scents both familiar and exotic filled the cool air. Potent ale and even more potent mead waited in barrels that had just been broached. There was fish both fresh and salted, fowl both fresh and smoked, pigs roasted whole and doves lying on beds of fresh greens, breads both traditional and flavored with imported spices so costly they had never before been tasted by the keep’s servants. It was a feast fit for nobles, and it was being given to the commoners of Blackthorne Keep.

  As they approached the laden trestle tables, a shallow bowl was given to each person. In the bottom of the bowl was a silver coin and a piece of candied citrus. Cries of wonder and pleasure rippled through the crowd. No one could say which was more pleasing, the money or the sweet. Most common people lived and died without holding either in their palm.

  Grimly Duncan watched as Dominic and Meg strolled among the people of the keep, accepting their good wishes. For each vassal Meg had a question or a compliment. With Dominic the people were reserved and respectful; with Meg they were both reverent and joyous.

  Whatever hope the Scots Hammer might have had of the vassals refusing to serve their new lord died as Duncan watched Dominic bask in the reflected glow of the people’s love for Meg. Yet even as Duncan watched, he could not help but admire both the intelligence of Blackthorne Keep’s new lord and the ruthlessness Dominic kept as carefully sheathed as his sword; but like his sword, able to be drawn and used in an instant.

  “Saying fare thee well to your ambitions?” a voice asked sardonically.

  Duncan didn’t have to turn to see who was digging spurs into his pride. Simon hadn’t been more than a hand’s reach—or a knife’s—from Duncan since the beginning of the wedding ceremony.

  “Your brother is a clever man,” Duncan said evenly. “He did the one thing that might win Blackthorne’s people to his side.”

  “Spared John’s life?”

  Duncan shook his head. “No.”

  “The feast?”

  Smiling slightly, Duncan still shook his head. “It was shrewd, but not enough.”

  “The money?”

  “Nay.”

  “What, then?”

  “Somehow your brother convinced Meg that he was the only way to peace for her people. When did she come to you with John’s plans? Last night?”

  Simon gave Duncan an odd look. “Lady Margaret didn’t come to us.”

  “God’s blood, I’m not an entire fool! When did Meggie betray us?”

  “You knew it as soon as we did,” Simon retorted. “As for betrayal, the only treachery today was on the part of John. And you, of course.”

  “I am a Scots thane,” Duncan said coldly. “I bend the knee to none but my own king. Henry is not that king!”

  “Aren’t you grateful that your life was spared?”

  “It was spared for Lord Dominic’s purposes, not mine.”

  Simon shrugged. “Of course. He made a present of your life to Lady Margaret. I hope he
doesn’t rue his generosity.”

  For a moment Duncan measured the brother of the man who had defeated him so handily. Duncan had seen men such as Simon and Dominic in the Holy Land, knights who had little to bring to life but their own wit and brawn.

  Duncan was himself such a man.

  Next time use the wit rather than the brawn, Duncan advised himself sardonically. Dominic did, and see what it got him—Meggie’s hand and all of Blackthorne Keep for his domain.

  “Am I permitted to see Lord John?” Duncan asked.

  “Dominic wouldn’t keep a son from seeing his dying father.”

  Duncan shot him a glance through narrowed eyes. “Do you listen much to scullery gossip?”

  “A great deal,” Simon assured him cheerfully. “It makes for less nasty surprises that way. You should be grateful that Dominic listens, too.”

  “Why?” Duncan asked curtly. “It lost me Blackthorne Keep.”

  “Nay. Dominic had laid his plans for the wedding before we ever rode up to the keep.”

  Duncan’s eyes widened in a shock he didn’t trouble to hide. “How did he know?”

  “He didn’t. He simply knew that if trouble were to come, the most unexpected place for it would be in the church itself. So he asked after the priest’s parents, if his brothers were John’s vassals, if his sisters were married to Saxons or Normans, if Lord John had paid for his education in the Church. We quickly discovered that the priest owed far more to Saxon and Scot than to King Henry.”

  Duncan turned and stared openly at Simon.

  “Then,” Simon continued, enjoying himself, “we heard talk of John’s bastard, a knight of courage and quick temper, a fine warrior known as the Scots Hammer, and a man who had been betrothed to John’s own daughter until the king squeezed the Church into refusing the match. The Church was quite reluctant, however. ’Tis appalling what some men of God do in God’s name.”

  “Amen,” Duncan said.

  And meant it. Some of the things he had seen done by men of God to other men of God during the Holy War would haunt him until the day he died.

  “I suspect,” Simon said slowly, “that was when Dominic decided to kill John. The thought of a man marrying his bastard son to his own daughter sickened my brother. Dominic thought no better of the ambitious bastard who would marry his own half sister. Once the facts were known, King Henry would raise no objections to the hangings.”

  A soft whistle came from between Duncan’s teeth as he understood how close to death he still was.

  “Meggie isn’t my sister.”

  It was Simon’s turn to be surprised. And relieved. He admired the Scots Hammer’s audacity and courage. Under other circumstances, they might have been friends.

  “I am pleased to hear it,” Simon said simply.

  “See that your brother hears it as well.”

  Simon looked closely at Duncan and smiled thinly.

  “You begin to understand,” Simon said, nodding. “Dominic is as savage a man in battle as I have ever seen, because he considers war to be a failure of intelligence that must be hacked through as quickly as possible. ’Tis ever so much more useful to have peace, you see.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Neither do I,” Simon admitted.

  The two men looked at each other and laughed.

  Dominic turned at the sound of male laughter, saw Duncan and Simon, and shook his head.

  “What is it?” Meg asked.

  “My brother and the Scots Hammer.”

  Meg looked puzzled.

  “They’re laughing together like friends,” Dominic explained, “yet they came within a single breath of trying to kill one another in the church.”

  “Perhaps that is why they are laughing. They are alive and it is spring and a feast awaits in the great hall. What more could they require of life at this moment?”

  Gray eyes focused on Meg. Slowly Dominic nodded as he considered what she had said.

  “You are very wise, for a maid.”

  She slanted him a green-eyed glance and said dryly, “Wiser than many a man, I assure you.”

  One corner of Dominic’s mouth lifted in a smile. “I shall remember that.”

  Dominic and Meg continued across the bailey through the throng of vassals, making slow progress. It seemed that each tenant, cotter, freeholder, and serf must assure himself personally of Meg’s well-being. Eadith waited rather impatiently at the edges of the crowd, plainly wishing access to her mistress.

  “What is it, Eadith?” Meg asked finally. “Come forward.”

  The vassals parted for the handmaiden’s progress. The light of day wasn’t as kind to her clothing as it was to Meg’s. Eadith’s poverty—and that of the Blackthorne Keep itself—showed clearly in her mantle gone threadbare from much use.

  “Lord John is feeling the strain of the day quite keenly,” Eadith said. “He wishes to give the wedding toast soon.”

  Meg closed her eyes for an instant. She dreaded having to face John’s wrath.

  Dominic saw Meg’s reluctance. He put his arm about her waist under her mantle. The warmth and resilience of her body beneath the silver fabric sent a shaft of heat through him.

  “Tell John,” Dominic said, “that we will join him shortly.”

  Startled, Eadith looked at Dominic. His expression told her she had better become accustomed to taking orders from him. She nodded hurriedly and pressed through the crowd. The pale orange of her dress and the shimmer of her long blond hair showed clearly against the keep’s damp stone as she climbed the steps to the forebuilding.

  Dominic looked down into Meg’s shadowed eyes and guessed the reason for her unease.

  “You are my wife. I protect what is mine. Your father’s ambitions will trouble you no longer.”

  Long auburn lashes swept down for a moment, concealing Meg’s eyes. She wondered if Dominic would feel the same way about protecting her when he realized that he had been trapped into a union with a Glendruid girl of doubtful fertility.

  “But do not try to deceive me again as you did in the mews,” he added coldly. “No trick works twice on me.”

  “You startled me. I wasn’t dressed to receive my future husband. In any case, my father had forbidden our introduction until the wedding itself.”

  Though Meg wasn’t looking at Dominic, she could sense him weighing her words as carefully as a miller weighed wheat to be ground into flour. Unease rippled through her. He was a very powerful man; should he choose to beat her, there was nothing she could do, no place to which she could flee. She was like her mother.

  Trapped.

  After a moment Meg put her hand on Dominic’s arm and looked up, in control of her emotions once more. Her most important goal had been accomplished: Blackthorne Keep was safe from a ruinous war. For the remainder, she would simply take each difficulty as it came and pray that Dominic showed as much restraint in the rest of his life as he did in battle.

  Together Dominic and Meg climbed the steep stone steps to the keep, then turned to acknowledge a final chorus of good wishes from the people. Once inside the forebuilding’s dark interior, Meg turned hesitantly to Dominic.

  “Will you go to our wedding feast in chain mail?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  When Meg would have spoken again, Dominic put his thumb lightly against her lips. Startled, she stood very still, watching him with eyes that were luminous even in the half darkness of the keep’s forebuilding. Her dress shimmered with light, as though mist and moonlight and stars had been woven into the fey cloth.

  “Fear not, bride,” Dominic said deeply. “I won’t wear hauberk and sword in the bedchamber.”

  Meg’s breath went out in a rush of warmth across Dominic’s thumb. An odd smile changed his face, making it both handsome and compelling.

  “Well, perhaps a sword,” he said huskily. “It will be quite hard but it will have not one cutting edge. It will lie quite smoothly within your warm sheath.”

  So surprised was Meg
by the transformation the sensual smile made in Dominic’s face that it took a few moments for the meaning of his words to register. When she understood, heat rose in her face. He saw the blush and laughed softly.

  “We shall do well with one another,” Dominic said with obvious satisfaction. “I expected to do my duty by my wife, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it overmuch. I see that I was wrong. Planting my seed within you will be a very pleasant duty indeed.”

  “Pleasant for whom, my lord?”

  “Both of us.”

  “Ah, I see you want heirs.”

  “Of course I want heirs,” he said. “There is no other reason to marry.”

  “Land and a keep?” Meg suggested with a cool smile. “Are they not worth a marriage?”

  “Without heirs, land is a demanding burden and marriage a cruel hoax,” Dominic said succinctly.

  Before Meg could speak again, Simon and Duncan strode into the forebuilding. When Duncan saw Meg, he stopped abruptly. Simon looked at Dominic, who signaled his brother to go on into the keep alone. But when Duncan started to talk to Meg, Dominic spoke first.

  “Before you berate my wife,” Dominic said icily, “know that you enjoy life only by her sufferance.”

  Duncan gave the other man a long look, took a deep breath to cool his temper, and said, “Meggie had naught to do with any of our plans.”

  “Except as a pawn,” she said before Dominic could speak.

  The two men looked at Meg in surprise, for there had been an edge to her voice that was unusual for her. She continued talking in that same biting tone.

  “My father—or is he my stepuncle, or perhaps no blood relation at all?—has spent much time planning ways to use me. Why should Duncan apologize for doing the same?”

  The Scots Hammer moved uneasily. What Meg said was the truth, but it sounded quite unpleasant spoken aloud.

  “Meggie,” he said in a deep voice, “I wouldn’t have you hurt. Surely you know that?”

  “Is that why you planned to launch a war while she stood in the center of the battlefield?” Dominic asked sardonically.