Immortal Champion

by Lisa Hendrix

  “Many men would envy you.”

  “They don’t have to feed them all and marry them off. But come, we are here for another purpose. Bertrand?”

  “Here, my lord.” An aging retainer stepped forward with a small personal casket, which he placed on the table next to the sweets. Lord Ralph set aside his cup and took a ring of keys from his belt.

  “I determined long ago that you would have this for reward. And now I am glad I set it aside, for it will suit that new houpelande.” He unlocked the casket and pulled out a heavy chain of silver and gold links. He let the chain pool onto the table with a clatter, then reached in again to produce an unmounted sapphire twice the size of the ruby in the ring the Duchess of York had given Gunnar the night of the fire. “And this is from my lady wife. Both come with our thanks for Eleanor’s life.”

  Gunnar held out his hands to stop him. “It is too much, my lord.”

  “To the contrary. It is far too little and, as my wife has reminded me, far, far too late. I should have had one of my men track you down years ago, but I thought our paths would cross. However, you are here now, and so you will have it.” He dropped the chain back into the chest, placed the sapphire on top, and locked the casket. Taking the key off his ring, he pushed it across to Gunnar. “Take it. It is yours, as is Eleanor’s little gift. Bertrand will see it is kept safe until you are ready to ride on.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Gunnar dropped the key into his purse and, as it clinked against the coins he’d gotten for the silver branch, became richer than he’d been in years. And that wasn’t even counting the treasure that was Eleanor herself, smiling as she pretended not to watch from across the room.

  Westmorland pushed to his feet. “I left three of my sons trying to best my marshal at chess, and I wish to see the outcome. Come. We will leave the women to their music and gossip.”

  Eleanor’s smile faded with Gunnar’s spirits. The earl strode off, and Gunnar had little choice but to follow him out, with no time for more than a general “God’s rest” to the ladies. Eleanor nodded back. “God’s rest to you as well, monsire.”

  So much for this evening of wooing.

  Good thing he would be back.

  CHAPTER 6

  WITH MOST OF the tourney guests having moved on, things were different at Raby the next night. Supper was already half over when Gunnar arrived—likely the way it would be most evenings, since noble households tended to eat their second meal earlier than those who worked the fields—so after he washed, he slid into the first empty place he found amongst the earl’s knights. The meat was less plentiful than at the high table, and the bread made of coarser meal, but it was still far better fare than he enjoyed most nights, and he ate it with just as much pleasure.

  The only drawback was that he wasn’t beside Eleanor, so instead of having another chance to woo her, he was left to perform the trick she had managed so well the night before in the solar: to watch without seeming to watch.

  Fortunately, he had a perfect view, right over the marshal’s shoulder. Anytime the man spoke—which was often and at length—Gunnar could feign attention and watch the lady instead.

  In some ways, his position was better. He saw more than he would have at her side: how easily she smiled, how she made those around her laugh with some jest he couldn’t hear, how she picked over her food even though she didn’t have him to share with.

  How she glanced at him, then looked elsewhere as she delicately sucked the grease off a fingertip.

  He was still contemplating that one when Screaming Lucy approached him after the meal.

  “His lordship asks if you will join him in the solar, and …” She hesitated, picking at a loose bit of braid on her sleeve.

  “What?”

  “And my lady said to tell you she desires you say yes.” She made a slight dip and flitted away.

  My lady desires you say yes. He liked those words, desires you, and wondered if Eleanor had chosen them on purpose, as a reminder of those brief moments alone in the solar. It still took his breath away, thinking about the way she’d surged into his arms. There was a part of him that wished for the old days, the raiding days, when he could have thrown her over his saddle and carried her off without asking anyone.

  But those days were long over. This was going to be about courtship, about subtlety and stolen moments, about the kind of coolness Eleanor had shown last night in the aftermath of their kiss.

  Aye, she’d shown him the path, if he could just manage to follow her. It worried him. There were many reasons his fylgja took the form of a bull; shrewdness and cunning weren’t amongst them.

  Girding himself for the challenge ahead, he finished the last bites of his meal, picked up his cup, and headed toward the solar. Even though he was the last to leave the hall, Eleanor somehow—by accident or design?—ended up falling in beside him. Mindful of the many eyes watching, Gunnar offered her the sort of polite nod he would give her sisters.

  “How went your business, monsire?” she asked as they started up. In the narrow confines of the stairway, her hand brushed against his. He bunched his fist and stretched it wide, trying to purge his senses of her touch before it made him want to reach for her.

  “Neither well nor badly.” Nor any way at all. He had no business, of course, excepting the need to hide what he was by day. “I fear it may take some weeks to finish it.”

  “Ah. You will be in the area some while, then. You will want to stay here at Raby.”

  They reached the top step, and he stood aside to let her enter the solar first. “It would make a convenient base, if the earl is willing to have me.”

  “Have you what?” asked Westmorland as they entered the hall.

  “Rest here while he goes about his business, my lord,” said Eleanor. “I would not speak for you, but—”

  “Of course you can stay here,” Westmorland said to Gunnar. “The marshal can provide a bed for you in the garrison.”

  “A kind offer, my lord, but I sleep fitfully and will be riding out well before sunrise most days. ’Twill be far easier on your men if I take my rest in the hall.”

  “Will it? Well, then, the hall it shall be. Bertrand!”

  As her father turned to snap a few orders at his steward, a smile flickered across Eleanor’s lips, quick as a midge, betraying her pleasure in a way her voice and manner had not.

  Everyone from the earl’s guests and grown children to the full complement of fosterlings and higher-ranked knights packed the solar this night. Pages bustled around pouring wine and filling ale pots, and servants produced gaming tables as well as boards for use by those who took their ease on the thick rugs and floor cushions. As a minstrel and his harper took up a tune in the far corner, Gunnar was called over to the earl’s hearthside table to be introduced to some newly arrived guests. He found himself facing a lad of about twice ten years who looked vaguely familiar.

  “You two know each other, of course,” said Westmorland.

  The lad inspected Gunnar closely, then shook his head. “No, my lord. I do not know him. Should I?”

  Westmorland frowned at Gunnar, who was equally confounded. “How is this possible? Does Lesbury not lie within Alnwick?”

  Of course. The lad seemed familiar because he was a Percy. He had the look of the old earl, who, if Gunnar was right, was this lad’s grandsire. This boy would have been Earl of Northumberland, and thus lord of Alnwick, if his father and grandfather hadn’t been such rebellious fools. Now they were dead, their lands and title forfeited to the Crown, and their heir, this boy, left with nothing but a tainted name.

  “I was born while my parents were on pilgrimage, my lord,” Gunnar hurried to explain. That was the story he and the others had always used to pass their bit of land from man to man over the centuries; he could only hope it would still suffice awhile longer. It became harder to maintain the lie as the English kept more and better records. “And I was left to foster in Guelders. I had not yet returned to take possession of my land
when young Lord Percy, here, was still at Alnwick.”

  “Well, then ’tis time you met, even though he’s not your lord any longer. Nor lord of anything. Henry Percy, I give you Sir Gunnar of Lesbury. He’ll owe you fealty one day, if you ever manage to get your title back.”

  Percy nodded politely to Gunnar, but his eyes bore nothing but sharp steel for Westmorland. Another of the guests, a Lord Lumley from Surrey, took one look at Percy’s frown and turned to the earl. “Shall I set up the chessmen, my lord?”

  “Aye. I learned last evening that Sir Gunnar is a fair hand at chess. We shall have a small tourney, and I will challenge the victor.”

  Eleanor, who had wandered off for a moment, reappeared at her father’s shoulder. “Chess again, my lord? I hoped we might play at cards. It has been a long while.”

  “Cards?” Lord Lumley perked up. “I do enjoy cards.”

  “Mmm. Perhaps.” Westmorland turned to Gunnar. “Do you play, sir?”

  “I, um, do not think so, my lord. ’Struth, I do not know what cards is. Are.”

  “Truly?” The earl drummed his fingers on the table, considering this. “They are new, but not so very new. Where have you been that you have never encountered them?”

  In a wild dene, with a wolf. “Traveling, my lord, and to the wrong places, it seems.”

  “We can fix that.”

  “I’ll fetch them, my lord.” Eleanor quickly retrieved a small box from the cupboard, plunked it down in the center of the table, and flipped it open to remove what appeared to be a tiny, unbound book. Pulling one page free, she held it out to Gunnar. “These small leaves of pressed linen are the cards.”

  Gunnar took the leaf to examine it. It was a longish square painted on one side with a design of red and yellow flowers and on the other with six gilded chalices.

  “This is a simple set,” said Westmorland. “The king has far finer ones, of course. In fact, I gave him a far finer one last year.”

  As the earl boasted, Gunnar took another card and compared it to the first. This one had four silvered swords on the one side, but on the other …

  “The flowers are the same,” he said. “To the very line.”

  “They press the back of each with a carved block of wood covered in ink and then add the colors and gilding by hand,” said Eleanor. “Or so my lord father tells us.”

  “Do you accuse me of lying?” her father challenged.

  Eleanor became immediately contrite. “Of course not, my lord, I just have never seen it myself.”

  Westmorland snatched the cards away from her. “Well, I have. I watched a man do it in France when I bought these. He makes images for pilgrims in the same way, hundreds just alike. Even with the time spent carving, it is faster than any man can trace them.” The earl plucked the other two cards from Gunnar’s fingers, returned them to the book, and fanned them all out like a peacock’s tail. “So. Will you play?”

  “Gladly, my lord, if someone will teach me.”

  “Eleanor may show you.” Lord Ralph casually split the book of cards in two and ruffled the halves neatly back together, a clever trick that made Gunnar want to try his hand at it. “She is a fair player for her sex, though she rarely bests me. Percy, you will be our fourth.”

  Eleanor dragged a stool over next to Gunnar, who quickly found himself learning about suits and what made a winning hand and how that ruffling trick worked—‘twas more difficult than it looked. He also found himself learning more of Eleanor herself—and suffering for what he learned.

  It was odd. Other than instructions on the rules of the game, she said little and behaved herself as any modest maid helping a guest, except …

  Except that every time she reached to point to a card, she managed to brush against his arm. Like the contact in the stairwell, her touch seemed accidental, and she gave no sign it was otherwise.

  But each touch sent sparks racing up Gunnar’s arm, where they then dispersed to other parts of his body to set them aflame. Before long, it was all he could do to keep his mind on the most basic rules, much less absorb any hint of strategy. She might as well have been working to help her father win: her sweet tortures so distracted Gunnar that even playing the cards she indicated, he lost every hand to the earl. However, in the end, he threw down one particular card and Eleanor softly cleared her throat and signaled with her eyes.

  He stared at the cards a moment before he saw it. “Aah. I think that that is triumph?”

  “Triumph, indeed.” Henry Percy threw down his cards in frustration. “First the earl and now you. The cards do not favor me tonight.”

  “You have picked up on the game quickly, Sir Gunnar,” said Westmorland. “You’re ready to play on your own, I think.”

  Gunnar shook his head. “Hardly, my lord. I owe this one small success to the lady’s skill, not my own.”

  “Hold fast to Eleanor, Sir Gunnar,” warned one of the earl’s older sons, laughing from where he leaned against the wall watching. “My lord father tries to puff you up, so you will think yourself done with lessons and ready to wager on your own.”

  “He has done it to all of us,” said Sir Gilbert from his spot by Lady Anne. “His lordship much enjoys winning.”

  “At everything,” added Eleanor, and Gunnar thought he caught a hint of accusation beneath her light tone.

  But if there was, Westmorland missed it. Laughing, he scooped the cards together to begin again. “Of course I enjoy winning. What fool wouldn’t? Help him with another game or two, then, Eleanor, but don’t jump so quickly to tell him what to play. Let him try it on his own first.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  So the torture continued, made worse for its inconsistency. Not knowing when she would lean in to help, Gunnar found himself waiting, anticipating. It was far more difficult, he discovered, to steel himself to touches that fell like random drops of rain.

  His head whirling, he pulled out the wrong card.

  “Ah, no, monsire.” She leaned especially close to point out his error, and he swore—swore—he could feel a pebble of hardness at the peak of the breast that pressed so firmly against his arm. Or was it merely a seam of her fitted bodice? If he could look, he might be able to tell, but with her father right there, not a yard away, and all her brothers and half brothers watching, too, he didn’t dare.

  And yet he so wanted to know.

  Sanity battled desire. His crotch throbbed in time with the minstrel’s music. Perhaps just a glance …

  She shifted away again. “Do you dance, Sir Gunnar?”

  The question, coming from nowhere as it did, shocked him back from the edge of madness. He shook his head and cleared his throat. “It has been far too many years since I had a chance to practice.”

  “A pity. Margaret, Mary, and I had discussed having dancing tomorrow after supper. If my lord approves.”

  “I’m sure he can manage a dance or two,” said the earl, still unaware of what was really going on, thank the gods. “We will discuss it on the morrow. Just now, it is time for the women to retire.”

  “But it is early yet,” Eleanor began. Her father glowered at her, and she quickly clamped her lips together. “Yes, my lord.”

  Gunnar stood and offered his hand to help her rise, relishing the excuse to touch her at last, to get a good look at her, to discover whether those eyes of hers held innocence or … no, mischief. Definitely mischief. Had her color been that high all evening? He held back a grin and gave her a bow. “My thanks for your aid tonight, my lady. God’s rest.”

  “You were a most excellent student, monsire.” Eleanor did her courtesy to Gunnar, to the other guests, and finally, to her father. “God’s rest to you all, my lords.”

  Westmorland waved her off impatiently. He sat back until she and the other women left, then leaned forward, his expression avid. “Go on, Lumley, it is your play, and I wager you tuppence you cannot complete that suit.”

  THE WIND WAS rising.

  Eleanor lay in bed beside Lucy, listening to t
he rattle of the shutters against the window frame alternate with her cousin’s snores. Noisy as they were, wind and snores had little to do with the wakefulness that had dogged her all night; that she blamed on the remembered pressure of Gunnar’s muscled arm against her breasts.

  It wasn’t his fault, by any measure. To his credit, he’d said or done nothing her father could take badly, remained so stolid, so impassive, in fact, that for a time she hadn’t been certain he even noticed what she was doing. But then she’d watched him wiping his palms on his thighs to dry them, caught a sideways glance that he couldn’t quite control, and known she was winning.

  He wanted her.

  And why not? She was young and fair—some even said comely—and she knew what she was doing, thanks to too many years spent watching ladies and knights play the games of love while she waited for Richard. She’d set out to make Gunnar desire her, and she had succeeded.

  “Gunnar.” She pronounced his name soundlessly into the night, testing its strangeness on her tongue for the thousandth time.

  Sir Gunnar wanted her.

  And she wanted him. She hadn’t allowed for that, that in seducing him, she would seduce herself. Brushing against him had had far more effect on her than she would have guessed, the pleasure spreading like fire from breast to belly, growing hotter until she could think of little else.

  She wanted Gunnar.

  She wanted him with an urgency that kept her whole body trembling, making it impossible to sleep. If she could get up and do something—sew, read, anything—she might be able to distract herself, but what could she do in the middle of the night? Perhaps if she could just see him, she could …

  No, that was foolish. But the notion wouldn’t leave her be. It sat in her belly like common hunger, demanding satisfaction. A taste. A moment. She lay there wrestling the craving as long as she could bear it, then carefully crawled out of bed. Lucy mumbled and rolled over, and Eleanor froze, one foot on the floor, and waited until her cousin’s soft snores started up again before she continued. Moving as silently as an owl, she found her slippers and a robe to pull around her shoulders, then took a stub of candle from the basket, lit it from the night lamp, and eased out the barely opened door.