Such as? she wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to reveal any interest in him. “So you are to be my protector against the Brabancons again?”
“Or you are to protect me,” Denis replied with a chuckle as he bent down and picked a spray of lavender. He presented it to her with a gentlemanly bow. “If there is trouble, he can be here quickly.”
As the scent of the lavender filled her nostrils, Isabelle wondered if Alexander was with one of those disgusting women whose most important purpose was obviously to accommodate the mercenaries whenever and wherever they wanted.
The Gascon chuckled softly as he picked another spray and tucked it behind his ear. “Non, my lady, he is not with a woman.”
She started and flushed with embarrassment. “I was thinking no such thing!”
“Of course you were, and why not? Those women slaver after him like dogs after a haunch of venison. I assure you, he does not return the feeling.”
She began walking along the edge of the garden again. “I wouldn’t care if he did.”
They turned the corner and made their way down what was left of a path. She tried not to ask, but her curiosity got the better of her. “So, where is he then?”
“Teaching a lesson.”
Of all things, she did believe Alexander DeFrouchette was a scholar. “What sort of lesson?”
“He is showing one of the Brabancons what can happen if he speaks disparagingly of an honorable woman.”
Isabelle came to an abrupt halt and stared at Denis. “Do you mean to tell me he’s defending my honor?”
Denis shrugged. “He has his notions of honor, too, my lady.”
She jabbed the lavender at Denis. “So now he decides to be honorable?” She let loose a curse that made Denis’s eyes widen. “It would have been better if he had had such scruples when he came to Bellevoire.”
“He does have scruples,” Denis protested. “I thought you would be pleased—”
She didn’t want to hear what he thought. “Where is this battle over my honor taking place? Not in the courtyard, obviously.”
Denis looked truly distressed. “He will be angry with me if I tell you.”
“I will be if you don’t!”
“Why are you haranguing my friend?”
She whirled around, to see Alexander standing at the far end of the garden, his hair an untidy mess and his tunic slung over his shoulder. Sweat glistened on his naked chest and trickled down the sides of his face. His snug breeches clung to his muscular legs, and she could see a bruise forming on his taut torso.
He had a magnificent body, even better than Connor’s. Her blood, already hot with anger, grew hotter yet with something else, something that made the memory of his embrace explode in her consciousness.
She forced that away as she marched toward him straight through the tangled mess of plants. “Where have you been?”
She silently cursed again. God help her, she sounded for all the world like an anxious wife.
Alexander wiped his face with his tunic. “It seems Denis has already told you.”
“Yes. And there was no reason for you to do that. As if I care what a Brabancon says about me! They are all louts and for you to risk your life—”
“If you will both excuse me,” Denis murmured, “I will take my leave of you.”
“No!” Isabelle cried.
She wished she had kept quiet as both of them looked at her with some surprise—but she certainly didn’t want to be alone with a half-naked Alexander DeFrouchette.
“I do not wish to interfere in your little … spat,” Denis said innocently.
“We are not having a spat!” Isabelle retorted, not for a moment taken in by his feigned innocence. “I just want him to know there is no need to put himself at risk over such a thing.” She glared at Alexander. “After all, you are the person who is supposed to take me home. What if you are killed? Do you think Osburn will abide by the agreement with Connor?”
Alexander finally put on his tunic. “There was little chance of my demise.”
She crossed her arms. “Your arrogance astonishes me—again.”
“Oh, but it is not arrogance, my lady!” Denis said. “He is so excellent a fighter, he will never be defeated.” Denis took hold of her arm and led her toward the very rickety-looking bench. “Now come, why do we not forget this unpleasantness and enjoy the day? You are well, my lady, Alexander has only a few bruises … and I suppose the other fellow—?” He looked pointedly at Alexander.
“A broken leg, a few gashes. Nothing overly serious.”
Denis’s smile beamed. “There—little harm done and they will all think twice before they say such things again.” Denis made a sweepingly gallant bow when they got to the bench. “Sit, please, my lady, and I will tell you the story I promised.”
She did, delicately. She slid further back when it seemed the bench would not collapse beneath her. Denis wisely did not risk adding to its burden; he sat cross-legged at her feet.
Alexander stood a short distance away. “What story is this?”
“How we met.”
Her eyes widened with surprise when Alexander rolled his eyes. Then he, too, sat on the ground and calmly and deliberately removed his swordbelt and laid it beside him. “I had better stay, or who knows what embellishments you’ll add.”
Apparently not at all disturbed by Alexander’s implications about his honesty, Denis shrugged. “As you wish,” he said brightly. “Before I met Alexander, I was traveling with a small troupe of entertainers—jugglers, troubadours, a fortune-teller and tumblers. I was a tumbler. We were the best troupe in Europe and performed at many feasts and festivals. When we were not employed by a nobleman at such times, we traveled from village to village bringing sunshine and laughter into the dreary lives of the villagers.”
Alexander snorted.
Denis looked mightily affronted at both the interruption and the implication. “Well, we did!”
“There were five of you, three men and two women, and you were terrible. I swear you fell down every time.”
“That is because Alphonse was an idiot! He was never in the right place to catch me.”
Alexander gave Isabelle a skeptical look, and she had to smile.
“I tell you, it is a miracle I am not dead from landing on my head!”
“That’s true,” Alexander solemnly agreed. “They were the most pathetic group of performers I have ever seen.”
“Enough about my troupe. She wants to hear about how you saved my life.”
“Yes, I do,” Isabelle concurred.
“In that case, perhaps I should tell the story,” Alexander said. “Otherwise, we will probably be here until the middle of the night.”
“Very well,” Denis said with a wave of his hand. “You tell it—and if you don’t bore her to sleep, I will be most impressed.”
As Isabelle looked at Alexander DeFrouchette sitting so casually on the ground before her, his hair wild and the memory of his virile body so close to the surface of her mind, she doubted she would ever find him boring.
“Denis and his fellows were in a village performing on the green,” Alexander began, “when a baker suddenly noticed several loaves of his bread were missing. At nearly the same time, he spotted one of the women from the troupe stuffing a loaf down her dress.”
“That was part of her costume,” Denis protested, as if Isabelle was about to accuse him of theft right then and there. “Giselle is small there and always wants to look bigger.”
“You must admit, Denis,” Alexander said, “that looked very suspicious. And you shouldn’t have called the villagers those colorful names when they accused you all of theft. Still, I thought you were going to talk your way out of the mess, especially after you offered to pay the baker.”
He addressed Isabelle. “Unfortunately, the butcher and a few others who kept calling them Gypsies were not inclined to be merciful, so they ran. There was very nearly a riot as the whole village started after them.”
“I said, ‘Let him alone.’”
Denis ignored Alexander’s correction. “But the butcher, he is not willing to let me go. He grabs my shoulder. Alexander grabs the other. For a moment, I am in danger of being torn in two, when Alexander sees that the butcher has—Mon Dieu!—a cleaver in his hand. The next thing I know, the butcher is on the ground, holding his hand, and Alexander has the cleaver. ‘You see what happens to those who challenge me?’ he says. ‘Who else will take me on?’”
“I never said that.”
“You did!”
“I did not. I said, ‘Now will you let him go?’”
“Your version would be boring.”
“That doesn’t give you leave to make things up.”
“What, is it not true the butcher had a cleaver?”
“Yes, the butcher had a cleaver,” Alexander reluctantly admitted, but his eyes were bright with a gaiety Isabelle had never seen there before, as if a burden had been momentarily lifted.
And suddenly, there in the tangled garden of a ruined fortress that was her prison, she saw Alexander DeFrouchette as the knight he could—and should—have been, and for the first time she truly understood all that he had lost.
“Whatever Alexander says, he saved my life,” Denis said, interrupting her thoughts, “and for that, I will be forever grateful.”
Alexander shifted as if he didn’t like being thanked, or perhaps it was just from sitting on the unyielding ground. Then he hoisted himself to his feet and held out his hand to help Denis stand. “I have sat here long enough. My lady?”
Denis scrambled to his feet without assistance. “I have other things I should be doing, too.”
“Such as?” Alexander charged as Denis hurried away.
“Making Kiera smile.” Grinning, he dashed out of the garden, leaving them alone.
Isabelle slowly turned to face Alexander, her heartbeat racing, and she couldn’t meet his steadfast gaze. “It was good of you to help him.”
“He has repaid me many times over with his friendship.”
“He seems a lively companion.”
Alexander laughed softly. “Indeed, he is that.”
She raised her eyes and took a step closer, as if drawn to him like a cold woman to the warmth of a hearth. The memory of his tender care and passionate embraces filled her mind and her heart.
If he had had the chance, this man could have been a knight, respectable and worthy of high regard. He could have been a welcome addition to any lord’s retinue, or even the king’s.
If his life had been different, if they had met under other circumstances and he stirred her heart as he did now despite what he had done, she would surely have welcomed his attentions and his kisses. She would have wanted more. She would have wanted him to take her to his bed and make love with her all night.
She wanted that now, and the passionate certainty hit her like a blow.
She wanted to be in her enemy’s bed. She yearned to be his lover, to feel his powerful warrior’s body taking hers with hot and anxious need. To have him thrust inside her until she cried out in ecstasy and completion.
The expression in his blue eyes shifted, and it was like a shutter closing on a window. “If you will excuse me, my lady, I need to wash.”
He grabbed his sword and hurried out of the garden.
Breathing hard, feeling as if she had had a very narrow escape from something more fraught with danger than the Brabancons, Isabelle sank down on the bench.
Chapter 13
Alexander moved the sharpening stone up and down his blade, the smooth rasping sound the only noise in the roofless tower. He did this the first thing every morning, ever since the day his mother had presented it to him. She had been so pleased, seeing this as the first real step on his way to making his father proud of him, and her, too, he supposed.
In one way, he hated what his sword represented, for he had seen what it had cost her to get the money to buy it. Yet because of his mother’s sacrifice, he loved the weapon, too, and took great care of it. The blade was not a fine one, but it was always honed sharp enough to pierce chain mail and the padded gambeson beneath.
This much in his life had not changed.
Other things had, especially after being in the garden with Lady Allis two days ago. He had allowed himself the pleasure of her company, as if he had a right to it. He had loosened the strictures he placed upon himself in her presence, and he had even enjoyed telling the story of how he had met Denis.
But then he had looked at her, their gazes holding, and he thought he had seen something that was surely impossible. She could not like him, not after what he had done, and yet the expression in her eyes…
Was that not why you went into the garden, to be more yourself in the hope that she might at least cease to hate you? Why then do you deny what you saw? What you felt?
Because it was useless. There could never be anything between them once she was returned to her husband.
Who might be betraying her with her own sister.
That is not your concern. When this is finished and she has gone back to Bellevoire, take the money and go far away and try—try!—to forget her.
He was not the only one who was going to have a woman to forget. He had seen the way Denis watched Kiera, and the look that crossed his face every time she went around the screen with Osburn. If he hated Osburn, it was nothing compared to the animosity that fairly shot from Denis’s eyes every time the man even spoke to his mistress.
But that was a hopeless yearning, too. A woman like that, blindly devoted to a man, would probably stay until he killed her.
The door to the tower crashed open.
The woman who haunted his restless dreams stood there, staring at him, closer to panic than he had ever seen her, even when she thought Osburn was going to cut off her finger. “Come!”
His sword clutched in his hand, the sharpening stone fell to the ground as he scrambled to his feet. “What—?”
“He’s going to kill Kiera! I tried to stop him, but he drew his sword and—”
A curse flew from Alexander’s lips. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, but—”
Since she was unharmed, he lingered no more. He sprinted across the courtyard as the sound of a woman’s screams reached his ears.
Fury rose up, hot and strong and powerful, as he barged through the door. The serving wenches, who were clustered around the door to the kitchens, fell silent as he charged forward. The Brabancons in the hall made no move to interfere; Alexander would have struck them down without hesitation if they had.
Rounding the screen, he saw a half-naked Osburn, his sword in his hand, and swaying drunkenly, in the midst of disarray. The bed linens were a heap of torn cloth. A dented silver carafe rocked on the floor in a puddle of wine. A goblet lay at the base of the wall, its contents splattered like blood over the stones above. Pieces of the bedpost had been hacked out, as if a mad woodsman had thought they were trees to be cut down.
Covering her head with her arms, Kiera cowered near the tousled bed. A huge tear in her gown exposed a red welt on her shoulder and an older bruise, purple and yellow and ugly. Her eye was blackening and her lip was cut.
The urge to run the man through pounded through Alexander, demanding that he punish Osburn and assuage the fierce anger shooting through him.
He raised his arm, ready to strike the fatal blow, when Kiera saw him and screamed, “No!”
Her cry alerte
d Osburn, who whirled around to face Alexander, his bleary eyes trying desperately to focus. He raised his sword.
Stupid fool. He was drunk nearly to senselessness and he thought he could prevail? The joy of certain victory sang in Alexander’s veins, even as he tossed aside his sword. “Come on, Osburn,” he said, smiling. “Fight me. Show me what you can do against an unarmed man.”
“No! You’ll kill him!” Kiera wailed. “It’s my fault. I didn’t want—”
“Don’t excuse him, Kiera,” Alexander growled. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Get out of here,” Osburn slurred, waving his sword. “Kiera is my woman to do with as I please—”
In the next moment, he was flat on his back on the floor, struck down by a single blow from Alexander’s fist.
“You’ve killed him!” Kiera wailed.
His chest heaving, Alexander rubbed his knuckles as he stared down at his unconscious enemy. “No, I have not.”
“Don’t hurt him anymore!”
“Take her away from here,” he said to Isabelle, who had come around the screen. He spoke to Kiera. “I won’t hurt him anymore.”
Isabelle hurried to the beaten, terrified girl. She put her arms around Kiera. “Can you stand? Can you walk?”
At that moment, Denis came careening around the screen. He took in the sight before him, especially Kiera’s battered face, and his own reddened with rage. If Osburn was not already lying on the ground, Alexander was sure Denis would have attacked him.
He might give him a few kicks as it was, and if he did, Alexander wouldn’t stop him.
Isabelle led the sobbing Kiera away, probably intending to take her to her chamber, where the girl could weep in private.
He watched them go, one a shivering, weeping mass of cowardice and insecurity, and the other the sort of woman he would have all women be. “Go after them, Denis. See if they need anything.”
Denis nodded, then hesitated, his gaze going from the man on the floor to his friend. “What will you do?”
“Put his lordship to bed.”
“Lord Oswald may not be pleased that you struck his son.”
“Lord Oswald has much to answer for himself,” Alexander grimly replied.
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