The knight had the effrontery to let his gaze touch Jocelyn before bowing with bare civility. “And a good day to you, too,” he sneered. “I see no one has bothered to mention that a knight should have more to recommend him than brute strength and animal cunning. Which all of Trecombe knows, sir, is the only way in which you unseated me.”
If Moore thought to provoke him to a rage with such obvious taunts, he would be sorely disappointed. Nothing this pretty fribble called him could touch him. He’d already been pierced through by Jocelyn’s words and the knowledge that he would never win her wary heart. And since he could not have her love, why then…what mattered anything else?
Nicholas snorted. “You know nothing of war or battle, boy. Pray thee you never will.”
Guy flushed hotly. “I may not yet have been christened on a battlefield, but at least my honor did not die in some heathen’s cell.”
Nicholas regarded him flatly. “Go home to your mother’s hearth and return to me when you’ve grown a beard.”
“Like yours? Pah! You’ve come to England more heathen than native son. What other vileness did you learn from your captors—or were they your masters?” Moore stepped forward, his clean chin jutting belligerently. Nicholas stood silently. Behind him he heard Jocelyn hiss on a sharp indrawn breath.
“If you were worthy of being a knight, you would never have surrendered,” Moore continued. “Thus, I can only assume that you are no knight, sir, but a jumped-up villein who Richard, in battle blindness, mistook for a man.”
Nicholas turned his back on him. “Get out of here, Moore, before you have to be carried out.”
“Not before you and Jocelyn hear me out.”
At the sound of his wife’s name on another man’s lips, Nicholas’s head swung back around. “You speak with a familiarity to which I take exception, boy. Henceforth, refer to my wife as Lady Jocelyn.”
“Why?” the young knight asked. “I am far more familiar with the lady than you are, Sir No-Name.”
The suggestive tone sparked the embers Nicholas had been trying so hard to keep banked. In one long stride, he was at Moore’s side, his face inches from the lithe young knight’s. “Go, boy,” he said in a velvety rasp. “Now.”
Moore met his gaze, his eyes wild with injured pride and greed. “I challenge you to a joust, Sir Nicholas, the winner of which shall have Cabot Manor and its holding.” His gaze leapt to where Jocelyn stood, dutifully silent but trembling, her eyes hot and contemptuous. “And Jocelyn.”
He smirked at Nicholas, confident in his jousting skills. Nicholas could almost read the boy’s thought: Now that he knew the sort of tricks Nichols might employ, he considered he would easily overmatch him. He’d better weapons and finer steeds than Nicholas had ever seen, let alone owned. “Three days hence.”
But Nicholas had also seen the leer Moore cast upon his wife and it drove a spike of pain through an already open wound.
“A pox on your ‘three days hence!’” With a savage snarl, he backhanded Moore, the violence of the blow hurling the young knight across the room.
“You want my wife?” Nicholas thundered striding across the room after the fallen man. “You dare come in here and leer at my wife?”
He seized Moore’s embroidered surcoat and hauled him to his feet only to shove him away and stalk toward him again. Feverishly, Moore staggered back, barely able to keep his balance, hand groping at his side for his sword. When Nicholas was almost upon him, he found it and with a screech of steel wrenched it from its scabbard, bringing its tip to the center of Nicholas’s broad chest.
Nicholas looked down at the point denting his tunic and sneered.
“I should kill you!” Moore howled. “If I kill you I’ll be doing her a favor. She can’t want you. She can’t!”
A shadow crossed Nicholas’s thoughts. Something dark and foreboding, deeper still than pain, bloomed into a hideous resolve.
“Perhaps not,” he said, without looking at her, “but unless you release her with my death, she is mine and mine she’ll stay until my dying breath.”
He could not bring himself to see how Jocelyn received this timely reminder that with his death, she would be free. She need not even be party to it. She simply needed to stand by and witness his death. Then accuse the murderer and be free of both men.
With a sound of pain, he grabbed Moore’s blade in his bare hand and shoved it aside while cuffing the young knight across the face, as one would a presumptuous brat.
“Last chance, boy. Go home.” He struck him again. Moore staggered back under the seemingly casual smack. His lip broke, dribbling bright red blood down his chin. His brows lowered and his chest heaved. He started to bring the sword back up to Nicholas and, with a sound of contempt, Nicholas ripped it from his hand and tossed it aside.
“I warn you, sir,” Guy panted. “Don’t lay hand on me again or—”
Nicholas smote him across the face again. “Or what?”
“Please, Nicholas!” he heard Jocelyn cry.
Only her voice could have turned him aside. He looked toward the sound and as he did, a short dagger appeared in Moore’s hand from beneath his short cape. With a triumphant roar, he slashed at Nicholas. The blade cut across his tunic and sliced through his flesh.
With a gasp, Nicholas fell back but not before he’d seen the feral glint in Moore’s pale eyes and the spittle at the corner of his mouth.
Be damned if the boy wouldn’t do Jocelyn’s work for her yet! Nicholas laughed, holding his arms wide, backing up and circling the panting young knight. The sword had spun beneath the table on the other side of the room. If he could just get to it, he might end this farce.
“Stop laughing!” Moore shouted, slashing wildly.
“Why? That you might kill me with an all due sense of gravity? Never.” He sneered.
He’d humiliated the boy in front of his ladylove and now Moore was nearly frantic with the need to repay him for that humiliation. That frenzy of hate was the only thing Nicholas had on his side. The boy was young, quick, trained, and had a dagger. And he was spilling precious blood by the moment.
“Don’t you see the humor in it, boy?” he asked, backing toward the sword. “I survived a crusade, a spear in my side, a fetid Syrian dungeon, and a three thousand mile trek across hell, and here you are, a moment away from dispatching me with that little toad-sticker. Well, you’d best do it quickly, Moore, lest I die of laughter first.”
Moore plunged forth again, slashing Nicholas across the forearm before he could leap back. It was a shallow wound, but one which would soon grease his palm with blood, making it difficult to grip the sword. Should he get to it. He edged sideways, his gaze never leaving Moore’s.
Suddenly, Moore darted forward, his dagger flailing as he broke between where Nicholas stood and where the sword lay.
“What sort of fool do you take me for, Sir No-Name?” he spat contemptuously. “And who is now trapped? Why, ‘tis you! Ha!”
Moore sauntered forward and flipped the dagger over, holding it by its tip, preparatory to hurling it. Into his chest, Nicholas supposed.
“I should thank you,” Moore said before addressing Jocelyn who stood behind him. “You’d best leave now, Jocelyn. You wouldn’t want to see this—”
Crash! Out of the corner of his eye, Nicholas saw the guild master’s staff come careening out of nowhere and catch Guy Moore flush to the side of his head. Like a poleaxed beef, the young knight crumpled where he’d stood.
Nicholas turned. Jocelyn stood beside him, her lips pursed, her eyes dark as she stared down at the fallen knight. “Oh, yes, I do,” she said to the knight she knocked senseless.
Nicholas stared at her. She’d saved his life. She lifted her head. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Why?” he whispered, uncertain what he would do if he allowed himself to move.
The tears might flow unabated, but this was Jocelyn, not some tender, sentimental girl. Her lips tightened with exasperation.
“W
hy?” She threw down the staff in disgust. “Because I love you, you great hairy ox!”
And without awaiting his reply, she marched through the open door.
Chapter Six
“Witless ox. Blind knave. Dullard! Fool!’’ Jocelyn strode down the corridor leaving a litany of her husband’s failings in her wake, the servants fleeing before her approach. Having begun in fear, her tears had continued in a glut of relief. They streamed down her face as she strode to her chambers and slammed the door shut behind her.
If he ever, ever put himself at such a disadvantage again, she would stab him herself! And what of those wounds? Had he sense enough to see them properly bound? Would someone make a compress for him. Perhaps she should…? No!
She dashed a renewed flood of tears from her cheeks and sat down on the window seat, glaring out at Guy Moore’s squire loading his barely conscious master onto his palfrey. If Guy Moore ever set foot on their land again, she would give order to have him shot.
When she had seen the paltry boy draw his dagger on her unarmed husband, her heart had stopped and her breath had stilled in her chest. She’d tried to avert the scene, tried to convince Nicholas not to see Moore. But would he listen to her? No. So, she’d confronted him.
She hadn’t anticipated his reaction, his shock and disgust. Then Moore had entered and provoked her husband to a greater extent than any other man would ever have allowed. Still, Nicholas hadn’t hurt him. Not even when Moore had held a sword to Nicholas’s throat.
Restlessly, she rose and paced through her room, picking up and setting aside her needlework, uneasy with her thoughts. She had been wrong to accuse Nicholas of blood lust, wrong to judge him by her uncle’s ghost, wrong to try to stay his hand when it had only been raised to protect her. He was no ravening beast, her husband, he was a man who would die for her, a man she wanted desperately to live with her. Because she was in love with him, Sir Nicholas No-Name.
As for killing him, she would as soon kill herself. Sooner. He was vital to her. Everything to her. Each morning she rose eager to hear his voice, to speak with him. Each night she trudged listlessly to her pallet, unhappy to be parted from him. She loved arguing with him, teaching him, listening to his tales, looking up and seeing his green eyes fixed with such solemn directness upon her.
What a fool she’d been. But no more, she thought fiercely. It was time she put away her fear and pride. If he was to walk in here in the next minute, she would greet him as her husband, her beloved—
The door crashed open and her beloved stood in the empty frame, his hands on his hips, bare above the waist save for a hastily tied bandage wrapped about his broad chest.
“I am the master of this fief,” he said in the belligerent tones of one who expects an argument.
“Yes,” she agreed, folding her hands in front of her and looking down.
“I am master of this manor,” he went on, looking mildly surprised and a bit suspicious.
“Indeed, sir, you are,” she replied calmly.
“I am master,” he looked about for some likely thing to lay claim to and spied her wardrobe, “of that chest.” She bobbed her head in assent.
He frowned, but more in consternation than ill temper. He took a few steps into the room, looking about with a proprietary air. “Good. Then we are clear on this matter. I am the master. You are my lady.”
“Yes.” Her palms had grown moist contemplating the boldness she planned. But she’d never been a coward. Not true, she amended honestly. He had made her a coward. She feared losing him more than she feared death.
She took a deep breath and crossed the room until she stood directly in front of him. Resolutely, she placed her hand on the bandage covering his breast. “Are you badly wounded, sir?”
He went still the second she touched him, his gaze falling greedily upon the sight of her hand on his chest. Slowly, his gaze lifted to hers. “Nothing that would keep me from your bidding, my lady.”
She smiled then, a little wobbly but a smile nonetheless, because he was not subtle, this husband of hers. His desire heated the air between them, his look scorched her, and yet, she was not afraid. She would never be afraid of him again. He would not trespass where he was not welcome. And because she had the power of consent or refusal, she luxuriated in that power. She could even tease this big, bold spouse of hers.
“And how dire do you judge your condition would have to be before you admitted you were not up to…to any task I might require of you?”
He broke into one of his rare and beautiful smiles. “Perhaps a minute or two past death, ma’am.”
She laughed, finding an unexpected delight in such wordplay. “As I thought.”
She walked her fingers carefully to the edge of the bandage and peeled the upper edge back, peering at his wound. “It is deep.”
“I’ve had deeper.”
“I would not cause you harm.”
“Too late.”
“How so, sir?” she asked, alarmed.
“I am returned from a foreign land, starving and in need of what you possess, and you withheld it from me.”
“I did?”
“In truth,” he replied somberly.
“Then I must make recompense.” Her heart raced as the laughter in his eyes faded before her implied promise.
“‘Twould be honorable,” he allowed softly.
She broke away, laughing nervously now that they had arrived at this point of making choices, of no returns. She turned, plucking at her gown’s embroidered girdle. “So, what do I owe you, sir? Wine? Honeycakes?”
Suddenly she was swept up in his arms, held high against his broad chest, his brilliant, beautiful green eyes boring into her. “I admit to wanting both, needing both,” he said, “the intoxication of your embrace and the sweetness of your kisses.”
“I see,” she murmured, linking her hands around his throat.
He smiled at her. “You said you loved me.”
“I do.”
“You know you have my heart.”
“I know.” And she did. Everything he had done since returning home—for, as God was her witness, this place never was her home until his presence made it so—bespoke his respect, his regard, and his love. He may have fallen in love with an ideal she represented but he had ended loving her, both her assets and her shortcomings, her quick temper, her astute management, her economy, and her impulsiveness. “I know.”
He was watching her carefully. She became attuned to the easy rise and fall of his breathing, the effortless way he held her, the scent of his warm skin. “Alas, my love comes housed in bones and flesh.”
“Alas?” she asked, unlinking her hand and letting it drift along his collarbone to the base of his throat, where an increasingly erratic pulse pounded.
“Alas, because the flesh is weak, ma’am.”
“This flesh does not feel weak to me.”
“It is,” he insisted, “It is—ah!” He closed his eyes as her fingers drifted in gentle exploration down his unbandaged chest to the flat copper nipple partially obscured by silky, dark hair. It was leathery and supple beneath her feathering touch but, she lowered her lips against it, also satiny and—
“Enough!” he burst out. She rolled her chin into his broad chest. The muscle contracted and swelled.
“Sweet Jesu, Jocelyn, are you purposefully striving to discover my limits?”
Delicious, wanton desire suffused her. Curiosity drove her. Love guided her. “I am touching you, sir, as a wife does her husband. Is not that what you mandated I do before you would”—she strove to find the perfect term for what she wanted, what he wanted, too, and found—”make love to me?”
In answer, he looked wildly around before spying her small pallet.
“Yes,” she murmured, seeing the direction of his glance and, though the pallet looked small and mean on the flagstone floor, she did not doubt that it would seem an Ottoman’s enclave if he took her there.
But he looked down at her and his expressi
on warmed with pleasure. “Not here. You deserve better.”
“The bed…?” A tincture of distaste followed the suggestion, but it was just a bed, after all, not an emblem—
“It has been burned,” he answered, the hard cast of his features relating clearer than his words the pain his remembered adultery caused him.
He turned with her still in his arms and pushed open the door, heading down the hall toward the stairway. He mounted it two steps at a time. Though she worried such exertion would cause his wounds to start bleeding again, and his heartbeat drummed thickly next to hers, his breathing scarcely changed.
At the top of the stair he turned toward the solar where he and Keveran were oft heard battling. He paused at the door and looked down at her. “My lady, I would propose that I have more to offer you than a sword arm.”
She reached up and stroked his cheek above the black beard, looking deeply into his eyes. “I know that, Nicholas. Ire provoked words that I knew even while speaking them were nothing but malicious. Forgive me. I know you are more than simply a powerful man, Nicholas. And I pray you think no less of me if I confess that I revel in your power, sir. For I admit that your strength pleases me. Your breadth excites me. Your power quickens my pulse. Indeed,” she caught her lower lip between her teeth, “I would know that strength as wife as well as lady.”
He lowered his head and placed upon her lips a kiss so gentle but intense that tears sprang to her eyes. She wrapped her arms tightly around his throat and kissed him hard in return. Vaguely, she heard the door open. He lifted his head and slowly she opened her eyes, cupping his cheek in her palm.
“Madame, I have made you a present.”
He turned with her and she saw it. Indeed, how could she not see it? It was a bed, a bed such as she had never seen before. Tall as it was wide and long as it was tall, it had been carved in a fantastical manner, the style both lushly oriental and austere, foreign and familiar. The rich walnut gleamed in the morning light. The elegantly carved posts at each corner were as wide as, well, as wide as Nicholas’s biceps—
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