Reclaimed by the Knight

by Nicole Locke

  ‘You think he feels nothing over Roger’s death? He struck me in his home—in front of his people. That’s some indication of where his heart is.’

  She didn’t want to think of Nicholas’s heart. He didn’t deserve it. Yet Roger had been her friend and her husband. And in that she knew she was the one to answer whatever questions Nicholas might have.

  Dares didn’t work, but she always faced her challenges.

  She knew the path towards the chapel’s graveyard all too well. Her mother and her husband were buried here, and she visited them every day. However, instead of taking the well-worn path she turned left towards the other side. The one that wasn’t lit by the villagers’ fires and lanterns, but only by moonlight and stars.

  Still, she could see Nicholas—exactly where Louve had said he’d be. No statue or grave marker, no matter how grand, was as dark or forbidding as the man towering amongst them.

  Two hands gripped a statue’s base, and his head was bowed between his arms. To anyone else he’d look to be praying next to his father’s grave. However, his father was buried inside, under the chapel’s great stones, not outside, battered by the elements.

  It could be freezing here at night, with nothing to buffer against the wind. Nicholas, bent against his father’s memorial, looked like a man braving harsh weather. To her, he looked like a man shoving a broken plough through rocky ground.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’ Nicholas’s resonating voice, tinged with pain, reverberated across the cold stones.

  Refusing to feel pity, she ignored his grief. Still... ‘We sent you a message.’

  He raised his head, but did not stop gripping the statue’s base. As if he held it up...or maybe it supported him. Whatever the reason, the tightness of his hands was visible to her, but not his expression. It took a moment longer for her eyes to adjust and then she realised it wasn’t only the darkness making his gaze unreadable...it was something of himself that was unknown to her as well.

  ‘I don’t want to talk of Roger,’ he said.

  Conflicting emotions seemed to be battering him. There was pain there, and anger, confusion and something else. She ignored all that at his words. There was only one reason he didn’t want to talk about Roger. Because he didn’t care.

  ‘Of course you don’t.’

  ‘Your meaning...?’

  ‘You don’t deserve to know my meaning.’

  He pushed himself off the statue and rose to his full height. His will seemed to reach out to her and she brushed it aside.

  Turning away, she said, ‘It seems colder here than anywhere else.’

  She only made a few steps before he said, ‘How many more are there?’

  Ignoring him, she took a few more steps. Her reason for coming out here was to talk of Roger, but Nicholas had made it clear that wasn’t what he wanted.

  His standing next to his father’s memorial and not the new headstone of his friend should have been an indication of how futile her coming here was. He obviously still worshiped his father’s desires above anyone else’s...even his own.

  Or maybe she had never really known what Nicholas’s desires were. She’d always argued that he followed his father’s desires and never his own. Maybe his desires were his father’s, and it was she who was blind.

  It was an old argument, and one that she’d thought was put to rest after she’d married Roger. It should have been put to rest—and yet here she was walking through the night to face him again. It hadn’t yet been a full day into his return.

  Another step away, and still Nicholas’s gaze collided against her. She ignored him, but couldn’t ignore her own curiosity. What did he mean by how many? How many deaths?

  Biting back a sound of frustration, she pivoted to face him. ‘How many what?’

  Nicholas was only a few steps away. She hadn’t heard him following her and wasn’t prepared for him to be so close.

  It didn’t matter that it was only moonlight illuminating them because he was no longer in the monument’s shadows. So when she turned she surprised him, and glimpsed his expression before he shuttered it.

  ‘How many other children, Matilda?’ he asked.

  There was a whirling darkness in his gaze, a furrow between his brow. His shoulders hunched as if he’d taken a fist to his guts. She’d thought the emotion gone before he’d uttered his question, but it wasn’t. He was in agony.

  His pain had to be feigned. For the last three years his correspondence had been only perfunctory and infrequent. He had never enquired about his tenants or his friends.

  He had never answered her letter to him.

  Trying to gain distance, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and watched his lids flutter closed for a moment, as if her action affected him. She wouldn’t let him affect her.

  ‘You want to talk of my baby?’ She wanted to shout. ‘Are you concerned that a widow with children will deplete Mei Solis resources? Or, more precisely, that I won’t be able to do my duties as bailiff? That your linens won’t be clean enough or I won’t be able to settle disputes for you?’

  The wind buffeted them, but his words pounded against her. ‘Isn’t it you who is concerned with linens and the depletion of precious Mei Solis resources?’

  Like some spoiled, selfish shrew? Not her. She wasn’t his stepmother, Helena. She’d begged him to stay, to tear down Mei Solis and live a simpler life. Instead he’d left to bring more riches, making it very clear to her what he deemed important. So she had married another.

  And yet he accused her of this?

  ‘After all these years...’ She only just held back the urge to kick him. ‘This is what you want to say to me?’

  Nicholas opened his mouth. Closed it. And she felt the satisfaction in that.

  Until he said, ‘Does it feel like I’ve been gone years?’

  His voice was low, contemplative. She knew immediately how to respond to the judgemental, accusing Nicholas, but not to this man. Rubbing her arms against the wind, ignoring his steady gaze, she gave his answer some thought.

  How long did it feel? Like centuries and like just yesterday. Especially since he’d brought up everything from the past simply by returning. It didn’t matter how much time, it mattered what was felt.

  And she shouldn’t be feeling anything for him. No matter what his presence here meant. She’d married another. Loved and grieved for another and was now carrying his child.

  ‘Your absence has no bearing on what I feel. You were gone six years and that’s the truth. What we care for or feel matters not.’

  ‘I care very much.’

  Judgement, accusation, and now lies. ‘For what? In three years I have heard nothing from you, and you’re here now—’

  ‘I’m here now because this is my home.’

  More lies. ‘Don’t give me sentiment. This property is your income.’

  There was a curve to his lips, but his fingers flexed as if to release tension. ‘It is my home.’

  Which didn’t give him the right simply to return and order them around. She bent and scraped some of the almost solid soil into her palm. When she stood again, she tossed it at him. ‘This is yours—the rest of us are not.’

  He suddenly became as dark as the soil still clinging to her fingers. ‘You made sure of that.’

  ‘I?’ She brushed the soil off, desperate to remove all traces of his property from her body. She wanted no part of any of this. ‘I had nothing to do with your leaving or your staying away.’

  ‘You had everything to do with it.’ He took a step forward, leaning towards her as if he meant to plough her down. His queue was loose, his hair whipping in the wind. ‘Everything! You who—’

  He didn’t say any more, but she’d heard enough.

  A mere day since he’d returned, their first conversation, and it was nothing but barbs and jabs and not
anything she could possibly understand, even though she had been a part of it all.

  Except... She’d made promises that weren’t part of what had been between Nicholas and her.

  She’d made vows to love and marry Roger. To raise their child as he would want. They’d talked about when Nicholas returned and if it would matter. She’d told her husband that it wouldn’t, because she wanted a new life. Or at least to look at the one she had differently. She’d made her choice and so had Nicholas. Still, it had hurt Roger when Nicholas had never replied, but he’d forgiven him.

  She thought she’d forgiven him, too. Yet, here she was with him in a graveyard at night. She was supposed to have changed, but turmoil roiled inside her. Anything between them was supposed to be dead.

  ‘And you’re here now expecting what?’ She gestured at him, at their surroundings.

  ‘Answers!’ He pulled himself away then, as if he hadn’t meant to say that word or put any emphasis on it.

  Answers. In that she would agree—it was why she had written to him.

  ‘Then you should have replied to my letter.’

  He hadn’t because he didn’t truly want answers. He was a mercenary—had fashioned himself to be a trained killer. He’d wanted to leave this home that she loved, and he’d wanted never to return. Now he made demands for no reason.

  ‘Your letter?’ His expression turned mutinous. ‘Damn your letter. How could I have answered that? Do you know when I received your precious letter?’

  His hand went to the back of his head, as if to brush through his hair, but his fingers stopped at the strap of the eye patch.

  Biting out another curse, he jerked his hand away before locking his venomous gaze with her. ‘Too. Late. That’s when I received your letter.’

  Nicholas was like a berserker, crying for blood across the field, and everything in her wanted to answer. To raise her own sword and strike the killing blow.

  He was a madman, a mercenary with no conscience. He should be mourning his friend’s death. Should be apologising for not answering their letters. He should have been here when her mother died.

  He’d done nothing.

  And Louve had sent her out here to provide comfort. There was no comforting madness and cruelty.

  They stood here in this graveyard, shouting on matters that had no bearing in the present. Right now it wasn’t about them, or the past and their arguments. Those had been long decided by his absence, by his deeds. All that mattered now was that she was the one who’d married Roger; she had been there at his death. And she’d go to her grave making sure that Nicholas, who had abandoned them all, knew why.

  ‘Stop making this into something it’s not. You don’t care about what happened to us. Roger’s dead. And I refuse to let you ignore that.’

  He huffed out a breath as if she had hit him. ‘I’m not ignoring his death.’

  A strike to Louve’s jaw...standing in the night surrounded by graves... Maybe he wasn’t ignoring Roger’s death, but he wasn’t acknowledging it either.

  ‘You refuse to talk about him.’

  ‘It’s pointless.’

  The pain in her belly was so sharp she was certain it was physical. ‘Pointless?’ she gasped as she locked gazes with him.

  There was so much there in his face as his brows drew in, as his lips parted. He wanted to say something, but then his face shut down again. The hard angles of his jaw, the slash of his cheekbones. The strip of leather along his left cheek. His scar. His eye. Why did she see it now, and not when he’d struck Louve, or when he’d gripped his father’s memorial?

  To see beyond his injury must be a weakness in her. For it was the wound of a man who killed for a living. She must remember to look at that silvery bisecting jaggedness to remind her that this man had no heart.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It is pointless. Louve told me to come here and tell you, and you don’t care.’

  ‘Not now. Not yet.’ His words were clipped, as if he’d forced them out.

  ‘Is this too soon?’ she mocked. ‘Did you want to wait a few days? Get some rest? Have Cook prepare huge meals?’

  ‘It is too soon for this.’

  ‘Because today you returned? If you didn’t want to hear any of this you could have kept away—like the coward you are.’

  ‘Coward?’ he growled. ‘You want to hear what I want to know? I want to know if that child you bear is even Roger’s. Or is it Louve’s?’

  Something colder than ice sliced through her. ‘Louve’s?’

  He waved his arm. ‘He was standing by you so protectively this evening. Roger isn’t here. What am I to guess?’

  What was he to guess? He should have known. Known never to accuse her of going from him, to Roger, to Louve. She could hate him in this moment.

  ‘You’ve changed.’

  He gave a mocking exhalation. ‘Not enough.’

  Too much. So easily she could hate him. So easily she could turn the shame and the sting to her pride when he’d left her begging into something darker and more bitter. Turn the emotions into being more like him. A mad mercenary.

  Everything about Nicholas was as sharp as a sword. Bitter. Cold. Hurting.

  And yet agony was there in his voice. Everything in her fought to acknowledge it, yet she couldn’t when the heart of his question was more significant than her pride. In a way, without asking about Roger, he was.

  ‘You need to know,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t,’ he mocked. ‘But you’ll tell me anyway, won’t you?’

  She wanted to throw more dirt at him and walk away, but she’d changed since he’d left. She could face his anger...and his agony. For Roger’s sake, she’d force him to listen to her.

  ‘This child is Roger’s, Nicholas,’ she said. ‘He died mere weeks ago, knowing he’d be a father.’

  Nicholas shook his head—once, twice. Then he pivoted suddenly, took a step away from her, then another. His shoulders rose and fell with great gusts of breath.

  She waited, but he remained silent and didn’t turn again. He didn’t walk away. Maybe he knew if he did, it would be she who silently followed him on this graveyard path. She who would stand close so that when he turned he’d be surprised.

  She would be cleverer than him and let none of her emotions show. With his back turned, she could tell nothing of what he felt now, but she didn’t care. He stood still, and for Roger’s sake she’d make sure Nicholas heard every word.

  ‘Roger died by a scythe wielded by a mere child who, though it was not his fault, carries great remorse. He was training the children as he used to. It was only a cut, and yet it wouldn’t heal. It wouldn’t heal and he died. Yet here you are, asking about my children, and what burden they’ll mean for your estate.’ She forced this last word through her constricted throat.

  Roger’s death had been senseless and horrific. He’d been in such pain, and utterly incoherent as his leg turned black. Death’s pungent odour had filled their home and blanketed the cradle newly built for their child.

  When his condition had worsened she’d feared for Roger, felt the grief of knowing he would never see their child, would never grow old with her.

  In the end even that sweet, painful grief had been obliterated by Roger’s sudden shouts, his babbling words, the mocking pus that had oozed from the festering wound. And then had come the bitter remembrance of the healer’s words, that Matilda should have severed the leg when she’d told her to. Nonetheless, she’d thought...

  Nicholas turned. The moonlight played tricks, making the man before her seem suddenly like the man who had left six years ago. However, this Nicholas had declared knowing about his friend’s death was pointless. He’d told her the child she carried was a burden. She had thought she’d hated him all those years ago, when he’d stopped answering her letters, when he’d decided to continue his mercenary li
fe, but it was nothing to how she felt now.

  ‘I’m asking about your children because—’ he began.

  ‘No!’ She could hold her turmoil for Roger’s sake, but she wouldn’t allow him to insult her baby again. ‘You will not talk about my children. You left me—your friends, your home.’ Her voice broke. ‘At the end Roger called for you. Shouted your name. And you say knowing how he died is pointless! Who do you think you are? Why have you bothered to return?’

  He gave her nothing but an open stare that told her nothing. Disgusted with herself for her outburst, and with him for his lack of compassion, she turned and hurried her steps away.

  She was faster this time, and was almost around the chapel when the wind that battered against them carried words she shouldn’t have heard.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter Five

  It was almost midday when Agnes skipped towards Matilda as she and Bess passed her home.

  The sun had barely broken before Bess had knocked on her door to tell her what had happened after she and Nicholas had left the hall. So lost had she been in her confrontation with Nicholas in the graveyard, Matilda had forgotten about Louve, the tenants, and the great welcoming feast.

  Apparently, Louve had laughed about the incident. He’d announced to everyone that he’d dared Nicholas’s fist and had been too slow to duck properly. Bess had reported that everyone had enjoyed the feast, but the whispers hadn’t stopped until Louve had addressed the entire hall and made it into a game: Guess what I dared the Lord of Mei Solis...

  When she’d asked Bess what some of them had guessed, Bess had been silent. One look at her expression and Matilda had known she didn’t want the answer.

  She took Agnes’s hand.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw two males with equal stride walking another path; but when she turned her head they were gone. Could it have been Nicholas and Louve? Or just a memory of them walking together?