Reclaimed by the Knight

by Nicole Locke

  He kicked at the soil, revealing the dark, fertile dirt between the rocks. Too many rocks, mocking the need for more land and crops.

  ‘There’s two teams of four now, and four more to divide amongst the tenants. Your demesne is already ploughed, and the tenants are using the other oxen and horses for theirs. This is all that’s left.’

  ‘You talk to me of fields?’

  ‘It doesn’t appear that you want to talk of the other matter.’

  Roger and these fields were one and the same thing. He’d wanted distraction. This was shoving it in his face. ‘She told you.’

  ‘You told me, and now I can’t see out of my eye.’

  Nicholas wanted to growl. He’d gained no answers from Matilda in the graveyard, found no solace in Roger’s death. And now it was just him and Louve and eight oxen, which pawed the dirt and huffed their impatience. Each team was restless. If they didn’t take the reins soon they’d plough this untilled soil anyway. Eight beasts, vying for control, against him and against each other.

  He eyed Louve, who was looking around him as if he had time to waste, to wait.

  ‘Repair your past,’ Rhain had urged.

  It had meant returning here. He should have been prepared. Six years away, and he’d travelled far. Had seen and understood how others lived. Not everyone lived or wanted to live the way his family desired.

  He’d fought and barely survived. He now understood the preciousness of life. He’d gained friendships outside of his home. Because of his injury, he’d gained insight. Now saw the best and worst of humanity.

  But this place... It was as if no time had passed at all. And all his arguments, rage and frustration hadn’t been resolved. And now he knew why. It wasn’t just Mei Solis and his father’s untimely death, or Helena. It was his three friends, so close they were like family. He’d trusted his home to them—his future, his soul. And then he had been betrayed. My Soulless.

  It was fitting that he stood now in a fallow field. Its absolute desolation reflected his years away. He’d left trying to gain, and he had lost everything.

  He should have brought his sword. Out here, he could swing it at nothing until he was exhausted. Instead, like a fool, he’d followed someone who wasn’t his friend, to plough some field that would yield nothing but the misery of reflection.

  ‘You’re right. I don’t want to talk.’

  The teams stamped on the ground, their great heads shaking to loosen their shackles. Nicholas swept over to take the reins. He yanked on the leather and the oxen yanked back. Something reared inside him, and Nicholas welcomed the fight.

  ‘Let’s do this.’

  ‘This is how you will begin? With no direction or instruction?’ Louve stepped towards his own team. ‘Have you been ploughing fields since you left? Ensuring each seed is planted carefully in a row? I’ll tell you true—I’m looking forward to seeing the crooked rows you’ll carve.’

  Nicholas preferred facing his enemy on a battle field versus the machinations inside any fine manor house. And yet something inside him fell into place. He’d had no sleep and was restless. This wasn’t a test with swords, but it was a challenge nonetheless. He recognised it in the light that lit Louve’s eyes.

  ‘You know what I’ve been doing,’ Nicholas said. ‘I haven’t been swinging sickles or scythes at helpless stalks of wheat and barley all these years. I’ve been swinging swords towards men whose sole purpose was to kill me. I lost my eye and six years of my life to send you coin so you could have these oxen and these new ploughs.’

  ‘Not for me. For Roger. His rows were so straight a blind man wouldn’t stumble.’

  ‘Damn you!’

  The oxen surged forward and this time Nicholas didn’t pull back, but urged them on to catch Louve by surprise and take the lead. When Louve drove his oxen in the opposite direction, Nicholas kept his focus on remaining ahead.

  Around and around they went. In opposite directions so that with each complete circle they met again. Three times, and Nicholas was fighting to keep his oxen straight. Though he was strong, he was out of practice—which only drove him faster, harder. Proving himself as he hadn’t in years. The calluses on his hands would protect him from blisters, but not at this intensity. He welcomed the sting.

  Another bend and this time, despite the cold wind, Louve’s face was red with sweat. ‘Ready to exchange words now, Mercenary?’

  Nicholas held his oxen back just enough for him to reply. ‘About a dead man and a pregnant woman?’

  Louve flinched.

  His words were coarse, but justified. Just like tilling this field, or returning here, nothing could be made whole again. ‘Why task my strength on wasted endeavours?’

  Louve looked as if he wanted to make first strike. ‘Wasted? You’ve lost more than your eye fighting for coin. You never would have said that of your friends before. At one point we were family. In returning here, I thought that was what you wanted again.’

  That was all he’d wanted, but it wasn’t here. He’d lost everything. His life. His love. His friendship. And now, with his return, he’d lost his revenge. He hadn’t set anything to rights, had allowed Roger to marry his betrothed. And Louve had stolen her away as surely as the other man. There would be no honour between them. There were no repairs for this and he didn’t want them. This man had no honour.

  ‘If you were family, you were as useless as this field.’

  Louve pulled roughly on a rein. ‘Is that what you want? For me to strike you back?’

  Gladly. ‘As if you could.’

  ‘And yet you till this field with me?’

  ‘I don’t till a field with a man for a promise of friendship he has no intention of keeping. I’m here to keep from being badgered with useless chatter.’

  Nicholas snapped the reins and the oxen surged forward again. Another turn, but he’d get no peace. He could see Louve driving his oxen, driving them forward so their teams would meet again.

  ‘Are you implying your rage is with me?’ Louve shouted before he stopped his team.

  ‘Yes!’ Nicholas forced the word through the last of his breath, through the last of his strength, through the last of his beating heart. ‘Without any doubt.’

  Louve scowled. ‘Is your need for coin that great? Is that what kept you away? Mei Solis is more prosperous than ever, and it’s not because of the damn coin you sent. It’s because I ensured the coin went far. Because Roger, Matilda—’

  ‘Do you think I fault your stewardship? I sent you messages these years. In any of them, did I criticise your decisions?’

  Nicholas had kept up his correspondence with Louve because he was his steward. Those letters had been safe, and any enemy would expect them since all lords kept track of their property. If he had cut out all correspondence, and he had been watched, as he’d suspected, that would have caused more suspicion.

  ‘Then what?’

  Revenge, answers, apologies from all three... That was all he needed to keep the promise he’d made to Rhain. Maybe, just maybe, he’d get one of them today.

  ‘You. Let. Them. Marry.’

  Louve’s eyes widened and his expression darkened. ‘It’s been six years since you’ve been home. Three years since you’ve known. One friend is dead, the other is pregnant, and this is what you want to talk about?’

  Bury your past... Maybe not everything, but he would have answers as to why Louve hadn’t warned him. ‘Yes.’

  Louve wrapped the reins around his wrists. ‘You left and didn’t return—made no mention of returning either. What game do you play with this false blame?’

  ‘This is my home.’

  ‘This is a property you’ve despised all your life. You barely touched the fields after your father’s death. You hate the very soil you’re now stepping on. You left.’

  ‘You knew how I felt about her.’ Nicholas shu
t down the memories of them racing horses, her pealing laughter, her daring him to catch her. Every tenant, all their neighbours, even France must have heard their unfettered joy. The certainty of a match between them. ‘It was hardly a secret.’

  ‘Even so...’ Louve unwound the reins and shook them. ‘Your letters to her stopped.’

  ‘And you didn’t enquire?’

  ‘You didn’t mention it either.’

  ‘You want me to tell you now? Is that why you dragged me out here? It can’t have been to till this useless field.’

  Louve’s oxen jumped forward, dragging him along until he wrenched them under control again. ‘You can’t be blaming me when you should have mentioned something. Anything. You were my friend. They were my friends. Trying to keep the peace was more difficult than your battles.’

  ‘Clearly.’ Nicholas pointed to his eye patch and was glad when Louve didn’t glance away. ‘Tell me what you haven’t told me.’

  ‘Only if you tell me why you want to know. You’ve returned, and yet you act like you don’t want to be here.’

  ‘I don’t. Just the same, I want to know.’

  Louve tilted his head, considering his words.

  Nicholas didn’t intend to say any more. He’d said enough.

  Louve exhaled roughly. ‘Dammit. As children, we were all half in love with her—until she only wanted you. But for Roger and me those feelings didn’t just go away. We were both still a little in love with her.’

  ‘I was absolutely in love with her!’ Nicholas growled.

  ‘You stopped writing to her. She was our friend, more like our sister than any family we had. She...was broken. Roger and I picked up the pieces you left behind.’

  Louve was lying. The Matilda Nicholas had left would never have broken. She’d defied him up to the end. A couple of missing letters wouldn’t have made her change her heart.

  He pictured the scenario of Louve and Roger, swooping on her like vultures. ‘I can imagine those pieces.’

  Louve’s expression turned fierce. ‘We did not touch her. Nothing until it was almost too late. If you don’t like the consequences, then you should have replied.’

  His sweat was chilling the clothes on his body, but nothing felt as cold as Louve’s words.

  ‘Replied?’

  ‘You might have stopped your correspondence, but they didn’t stop theirs. I didn’t write, but Roger and Matilda...’

  ‘I received that letter,’ he bit out. So much agony when he’d lost his eye, but that letter had been worse. He didn’t want to remember that letter.

  ‘Then why didn’t you reply?’

  Because he hadn’t been able to. Because a sword had sliced across his heart and stolen his eye. By the time he’d been physically able to reply it had been far too late.

  Snapping his reins, he forced the oxen to move again. Forced himself to continue. He heard Louve shout, but he ignored it. Another turn and the whole field would be done. This time he welcomed his bleeding hands. The pain was nothing to what he felt inside him.

  It had been too late to reply to Matilda’s letter. The letter that had told him she was to be married. But to this day he loved to torture himself with ‘what ifs’. What if he’d received her letter before they’d married and been able to stop it?

  He knew the answer to that, too. He couldn’t have stopped it. He had purposely not written to them because he hadn’t want to notify his enemies that he cared for others. He couldn’t have protected them.

  In truth, it had been too late for all of them the moment he’d become a hired sword. If only...

  Still, he had expected his friends to remain honourable, not to desire his betrothed. Which showed how young and naïve he’d truly been.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Louve, driving his oxen just as fiercely as he. He, too, was stronger than he had been in their youth, and there was still something honourable in him. The estate had prospered under his care. Why wouldn’t Matilda want him, or he her?

  Another turn was all Louve allowed him. It was all he allowed himself.

  Louve threw the reins to one side and stormed around his oxen to face Nicholas. ‘No more running. No more distractions. The damn field can wait.’

  ‘You brought me out here.’

  ‘To deal with Roger’s death. I didn’t know of the rest!’

  ‘That I thought you had betrayed me as well? What else was I to think? They married. If they could do that then—’

  ‘Then I had allowed it? I didn’t simply allow them to marry. You think I didn’t talk to Roger? To Matilda? You think I could have stopped them?’

  ‘If not for me, maybe yourself, since you’re in love with her as well!’

  ‘You’re jealous! My God. You love her still. But if you feel this way now, you must have felt it then.’

  ‘Would it have changed anything?’ Nicholas asked, even though he didn’t want the answer. He didn’t. Because either way it would be like the sword through his eye again, and this time it would take his heart.

  Louve’s expression darkened with determination. ‘Why didn’t you write to her? Do you know what she faced from the tenants and neighbours when your letters stopped? And it was made all the worse when you wrote to me and not her. Why? Her mother had died. Her father was unstable. She had to bear all of that alone.’

  He’d borne his burdens alone as well, but instead of resentment at Louve’s words, he felt Matilda’s pain against his already open wound. Her mother had died. Had he known? Had he been told? If so, it had not been by Matilda, and that gutted him. He hadn’t been fit to be with her, and yet he’d done it because of her.

  ‘I couldn’t write to her,’ he said.

  Shock and then understanding flashed on Louve’s face. ‘You and your coin. What danger did you court for it to cost you this much?’

  More danger than he wanted to talk about today—and it wasn’t over.

  ‘You need to talk to her. She needs to know.’

  ‘She married him and is pregnant with his child. She made her choice, and it’s as final as the grave.’

  ‘Roger’s...gone.’ Louve swallowed hard. ‘If you—’

  ‘He’s gone, but his decision—her decision—is not. What is done is done.’

  Nothing was resolved. More lies...more betrayal. Rather than have this conversation he’d face Reynold of the Warstone family again, or the bastard who’d taken his eye. He certainly didn’t want to face himself. He’d had adversity since he’d left Mei Solis, but he’d come to terms with it. He’d had a life, and it had been a good one. Or so he’d thought.

  But Mei Solis had been a dagger in his side. And when she’d married Roger, Matilda had shoved that dagger deeper and he’d been bleeding ever since.

  He’d received just one lone letter, and her actions had spoken of where her heart was. He’d thought he had given them his blessing long ago. Let them have their marriage and Mei Solis. And yet when he’d seen Rhain’s happiness he had known something festered in him. Something that wouldn’t give him peace.

  But now, since returning here, he didn’t even recognise himself or his actions.

  A noise across the field captured his gaze. Boys were racing towards them, the dimming light making them barely discernible. How many hours had they been out here?

  Louve exhaled roughly. ‘They’re here to take the oxen and the ploughs in. We need more time.’

  Nicholas considered the man before him. All these years he’d imagined the plots the three of them had made, but perhaps Louve had been a bystander to it all. Truly, what could Louve have done if Roger had wanted Matilda and she him?

  ‘You truly talked to them, didn’t you?’

  Louve rubbed his jaw, pointed at Nicholas. ‘I talked to them both together, and even to Bess. To Rohesia, to her father. I suggest you do the same.’

 
‘No.’

  ‘But—

  ‘No!’ He put as much emphasis on the word as he had effort in tilling the field. Talking hadn’t worked in the past and it wouldn’t now. His anger was still against a dead man and a pregnant woman. His sense of betrayal against Louve, however, was gone.

  ‘Well, then... I could use some ale,’ Louve said, raising his hands. Blood poured from them.

  Nicholas loosened his hold on the reins. They were numb, bloodied, and as broken as the rest of him. ‘Do you have any mead?’

  Louve grinned. ‘From a neighbour who owed us much. A whole barrel full.’

  Maybe it was the words finally shared, his friend’s attempt at humour, or the fact that he would get blinding drunk tonight, but Nicholas’s heart eased just a little. ‘You take the ale. The mead is mine...after we bandage our hands.’

  ‘You need your wounds licked? I knew you’d gone soft, Mercenary.’

  ‘Not soft, but practical. I need to hold two flagons of mead, and these useless appendages won’t do it on their own.’

  Chapter Six

  Another feast was laid out, since Cook had been able to salvage most of the finest cuts and dishes from the night before. Not that it mattered, since the Lord of Mei Solis hadn’t arrived to appreciate her effort.

  There were more in attendance than the night before. Most likely come to see what other events might take place today. The weather was certainly foreshadowing something portentous, with the temperature dropping and a darkening sky, and the fact that two very capable men seemed to have disappeared.

  ‘Are you certain the teams are out of the wind?’ Matilda hugged herself and rubbed her hands against her arms. Despite the repairs, a bitter wind still seeped into the manor.

  Bess shrugged. ‘The boys went out when it was turning dark and helped the men bring the teams and ploughs in to be protected.’

  But Nicholas and Louve had walked off and hadn’t been seen since. She still couldn’t believe Nicholas and Louve had ploughed the fallow fields. She was the one who’d stood in the graveyard trying to talk sense into Nicholas. Louve’s strategy had been to waste a day of hard labour. The fact that they were now gone meant it had either worked, and they were bonding, or one of them was dead and the other had run off.