Reclaimed by the Knight

by Nicole Locke

  Either way, she didn’t understand it. ‘How did this come about?’

  Bess gave her a pointed look. ‘You don’t understand why Nicholas took a swing at Louve or their male bravado?’

  ‘Both.’

  Bess laughed, then looked more closely at Matilda’s face. She shrugged. ‘Oh! You’re being truthful. Both happened because of you.’

  ‘Me?’ Ridiculous. Maybe Louve had felt obliged to say something in her honour, but Nicholas wouldn’t care what was said. ‘If that’s true—which it can’t be—what would be the purpose?’

  She could imagine Nicholas’s umbrage if she had married Roger behind Nicholas’s back. But that wasn’t what had happened. Nicholas had stopped writing to her, and in doing so had broken their betrothal.

  ‘I told you to wait,’ Bess said, lowering her voice. ‘That with your mother’s death and your father’s demands it wasn’t—’

  ‘Not this.’ Matilda interrupted her. ‘Not now.’

  ‘If not now, when?’ Bess looked away, blinking rapidly. ‘I know with Roger—’

  ‘I loved him.’

  Bess laid her hand over Matilda’s. ‘I know you did, but there was always concern over when Nicholas returned.’

  ‘There was no concern at all.’ None of them had seen the look in Nicholas’s eyes when he’d left. After she had pleaded with her heart, with words and tears... If he’d been able to leave her then, there was no reason for his return now.

  Yet the past and its possibilities haunted her still. Back then with every heartbeat she had waited, and her heart had broken. Then her mother had died. There had been barely anything left of her when Roger had proposed. She’d told him so, and he’d still wanted her. Wanted to protect and defend her.

  And now Roger, who had always been stalwart and dependable, was dead. Matilda still couldn’t grasp it. If not for the pricking grief in her chest from tears she refused to shed, she’d believe him no farther away than in his beloved fields.

  It had always been he who shielded her, who had defended Louve and Nicholas. Even when Louve had questioned their marrying; when Nicholas hadn’t replied to Roger’s letter...or hers.

  She didn’t deserve his unwavering loyalty and neither did they. Where could they be? It was dangerous to be out on a night such as this.

  ‘To plough that field is useless. What kind of behaviour is this?’

  Bess patted her hand, where it still clutched her arm. ‘Your three closest friends were boys. I’m surprised you don’t know that this is absolutely male behaviour.’

  ‘But Roger and Louve never behaved that way together, so—’

  The bellow of an unsteady song heralded Nicholas and Louve’s grand entrance, and the Great Doors bursting open ensured that everyone turned to witness the great event of their inebriation.

  ‘See there! They’re hale and well!’ Bess said, her lips tight with holding back laughter. ‘Nothing to be worried about at all.’

  Matilda wasn’t worried—she was furious. Anticipating something important after their time in the graveyard together, she was shocked at this irreverent arrival.

  Louve was singing off-key; Nicholas was waving his arm to keep the uneven beat. Arms around each other’s shoulders, they entered the hall sideways, which made their floundering balance look not unlike reeds being felled by the scythe.

  Louve’s hair was parted on the wrong side, while Nicholas’s fell long without his queue. Their clothes were rumpled, muddy from the field, and blades of grass stuck to their shoes. But the wetness of their fronts, their hair, and along the side of their legs, as if they’d been splashed with water, was...

  They were taking stumbling steps closer, disentangled now, and Louve was adjusting his tunic, Nicholas straightening to his full height. Both were undeniably proud as they greeted the tenants with smiles and laughter on the way to her and Bess.

  Closer yet, and Matilda had no words. For it wasn’t water that soaked their clothing.

  They smelled, even from a distance, of sweet mead. Which only made her more cross. Mead. Flagons full, if they’d wasted that much. It was a commodity she knew nothing about—hidden somewhere on the land so that she couldn’t serve it nor have some for herself.

  Mead wasn’t made on Mei Solis, so Louve must have bargained something, which he’d thought to hide from her. Except now he’d shared it with Nicholas.

  ‘Mind if I stay here?’ Bess asked.

  ‘Would you move if I told you to?’ Matilda said.

  ‘Not a chance!’ Bess chuckled.

  ‘Such frowns, Matilda,’ said Louve. ‘Look who I brought in from the fields!’

  Matilda eyed Nicholas. With his hair loose, a tendril hanging over his eye patch, he looked...dishevelled. Thoughts unbidden came as she noticed the wave of his hair against his masculine jaw, and how the mead had softened his lips and his gaze.

  He looked for all the world as if he’d just got out of bed. And the fact that she noticed such details startled her. She shouldn’t be noticing any such details about Nicholas.

  She kept her eyes on Louve, who was with certainty more inebriated than Nicholas. If someone had brought someone else in, it was most likely Nicholas who had brought Louve to the hall.

  ‘It doesn’t look like you came from the fields but from the ale stores,’ she said. ‘Except it’s not ale I smell. Where did you get the mead?’

  ‘And did you get any of it in your mouths?’ Bess asked.

  Her tone sounded appalled, but her eyes were too lively. Her friend wanted to laugh, and was only holding it back because of her.

  Louve wagged a finger at Matilda and frowned at Bess’s response. In full concentration, ready for a retort, he looked as if he was ten years of age again.

  ‘The barrel was...uncooperative in releasing its contents.’ Nicholas shook his sleeve, as if that would release the dampness there.

  ‘Over both of you?’ Bess quipped. ‘It looks like you played in it.’

  ‘You fought with a barrel of mead?’ Matilda loved mead—which was beside the point now, but counted in the long list of offences they had committed.

  ‘I believe the mead’s now winning.’ Louve shifted unevenly.

  ‘Come, let us retire,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Retire?’ Matilda said.

  ‘I couldn’t sit through a meal,’ Louve replied.

  ‘Maybe you should have thought of that earlier.’

  ‘Oh, I stopped thinking long ago,’ Louve said.

  Matilda felt Nicholas watching her. She knew she was terse, and probably sounded snappish as well. Normally she wouldn’t care if Louve got drunk, but this was Nicholas’s return feast, second time around, and she was depending on it running smoothly. That meant they must all dine around the table together.

  ‘Then it’s all well and good that it is tomorrow morning we shall be discussing the estate,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Morning?’ Louve muttered. ‘Vengeful bastard...’

  ‘After that last goblet of yours “slipped”, absolutely in the morning.’ Nicholas gestured. ‘I’ll take you up.’

  ‘You can’t.’ Matilda couldn’t believe that Nicholas was entertaining the idea of not dining with everyone. She wouldn’t allow it.

  At her words, Nicholas turned. Other than his appearance, nothing in his mien gave any indication of intoxication or weakness. His gaze was steady, his bearing proud. ‘Since I’ll be retiring as well, it seems most expedient.’

  A mercenary’s stare wouldn’t frighten her. ‘You weren’t here last night. Cook has saved your favourite dishes, and there are tenants in attendance who wish to celebrate your return.’

  Nicholas tilted his head, as if he was studying her. ‘Let them celebrate, then.’

  ‘I’ll take him up,’ Bess said.

  ‘I can take myself,’ Louve interjected. ‘My legs f
eel suddenly very steady.’

  Bess snorted, and Matilda watched her two friends make a hasty retreat.

  There was only one gaze on her now. Nicholas was still watching her. So she schooled her features to look as serene as she hoped she’d actually be some day.

  Nicholas was definitely not as drunk as Louve, and nor was he in as jovial a mood as he’d been when he’d entered. Had she ever seen him play around like that? Of course she had—before he’d left. They all had. It was just that even in a mere day of his returning she somehow knew he hadn’t played like that in a long time.

  And, though he might have stopped keeping time to Louve’s terrible song the moment the Great Doors had banged open, there had still been something resembling happiness as he’d looped his way into the hall and greeted a few of his tenants.

  It had done something to his warrior’s features. Giving her glimpses of the man he’d used to be and also of the man he now was. Indomitable. Fierce. A mercenary, but still devastatingly handsome. After everything, how could he be attractive?

  Whatever serenity she had tried to achieve slipped away, and she let it. If composure allowed her to realise that Nicholas was as striking as he’d ever been, she didn’t need it. She needed defences, barriers, and her ire again.

  Especially since Nicholas stood in front of her now and there wasn’t a trace of the friendship he had shown with Louve, and he no longer looked freshly woken from an evening sharing someone’s bed. Now he was all cold formality and something else that scraped along her skin. Like a warning.

  When the corners of Nicholas’s lips curved into a pitiless smile, she knew that a mercenary’s stare might not scare her, but she did wonder whether a mercenary would kill her.

  ‘It seems you’ve got your wish to keep me here, Matilda,’ Nicholas said. ‘Now, what do you intend to do with me?’

  * * *

  Nicholas relished Matilda’s wary eyes and jutted chin. Surprisingly, not because he knew his words had made her uneasy—though there was an aspect of that—but because in this moment she was all contradictions. Demanding he stay for the meal, and yet cautious, because he, too, was unpredictable.

  In this moment, Matilda was completely unpredictable...but familiar. This was the Matilda he recognised. The composed woman who’d greeted him upon his arrival he didn’t know and didn’t care for. She didn’t fit. Not that anything between them fitted.

  ‘Since I am to stay down in this hall, I expect to be fed well.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘You would have been fed better last night.’

  He didn’t hide his smirk. She didn’t like his imperious demands? Fine. He didn’t like being here. ‘It seems the drink has whetted my appetite.’

  She glanced to the stairs. ‘How much did he drink?’

  ‘We matched goblet for goblet.’

  Too much, and not enough. He had always been able to hold his ale more than the next man. Today he’d wanted to get blind drunk, but he had no desire to carry Louve at the end of it.

  With sweet mead and thwarted revenge running through his veins, the fact that he hadn’t been able to get passing-out-drunk galled him. Since Matilda wanted to keep him here, he’d make sure she felt some of his bitterness.

  He was desperate to forget his need for apologies and revenge. Yet here he was, not drunk and not sober, and certainly all too aware that he could not start demanding retribution from a woman who was currently rubbing her swollen belly.

  ‘Louve rarely drinks,’ she said. ‘He’ll be ill without food.’

  Her loyalty to Louve was freshly added to his tally of irritations, though he couldn’t understand why. ‘Bess will know what to do—and I require food as well.’

  Her eyes were lowered and raised. Fleetingly, but he felt as if she was noticing him. Yet when her eyes met his again there was no seduction there. Was she aware of what she’d done? Or maybe she’d done nothing at all. It was most likely the drink that had him imagining Matilda had noticed him.

  ‘I’m certain you can take care of yourself,’ she said.

  And even though her voice was sharper than before, and her eyes held some frustration that appeared different from her irritation earlier, he couldn’t shake the tightening of his body at her words. How much mead had he drunk?

  He couldn’t—shouldn’t—feel this way for this woman, and yet even her words were suggestive. It was too long since he’d imbibed...even longer since he’d had a woman.

  She’d insisted on holding him here for her sense of celebration. As if he owed anything to the tenants here. He’d cared for them well while he’d been absent. His presence here actually impaired them, since he was not out earning more coin.

  He didn’t need to be here. He needed to be upstairs, with food and a bath brought.

  He felt almost feral in all his denied desires. And. Yet. She. Kept. Him. Here.

  ‘I intended to take care of myself,’ he said, ‘but how could I have denied your kind request?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I didn’t request you to dine. This is your home and you should want to eat here.’

  He gestured to the remaining seats. ‘Never truer words were said. I would like to eat here—thank you, Matilda.’

  With a scathing look, Matilda strode towards the waiting chairs, ensuring that he followed her. It was as if she was the one who dictated when they ate or who had the most power here.

  They sat, and it was as if the crowd drew a collective sigh. Servants immediately brought trenchers and dishes. Matilda sat stiffly next to him, allowing him to choose the different courses to spread on their shared trencher.

  He saw that everyone else was already seated and eating. Consequently the food selection was disappearing before his eyes. Feeling the mead in his veins, he piled what food he could onto the trencher.

  ‘I see you do not keep custom with the tenants waiting until the Lord of the Manor is seated before they sit and begin eating.’

  His father had always insisted that tenants or guests weren’t to sit until the Lord sat. It was a common courtesy, but one he’d found overbearing given that the manor was a simple one.

  ‘It made no sense. You left three of us in charge.’

  He had left three friends in charge and returned to find only one.

  Trying to distract himself from his darker thoughts, he spoke with others, tore into his lamb. He watched Matilda become quiet and pick at her food.

  She was uncomfortable dining with him. Good. Since she had demanded he stay, she should have to live with the consequences.

  Matilda couldn’t get anything past the restriction in her throat. There was nothing to be done, regardless of the words she and Nicholas had exchanged. Nothing.

  She had ordered specialities to be baked and certain dishes to be cooked in celebration of Nicholas’s return. She might not want it, but he was the Lord of Mei Solis. This was his home, and others would look at this night as a cause for celebration.

  But she was all too aware of Nicholas—of how his eyes darted from his food to his drink to those around him. And to her. She felt him watching her.

  Maybe it was her resentment that fuelled her awareness of him. Or perhaps it was his injury.

  His injury was most prominent. The dark slash of leather over his eye worn like a tunic or a pair of breeches. Soft-looking, like a favourite pair of boots. But something about the way he moved his head, or the sudden brush of his hand at his nape, made her think perhaps the patch wasn’t worn as easily as his boots.

  And then there was his scar—thin, well-healed. Jagged from the forced slicing of his skin, from the rugged contours of his face. It should have diminished his presence somehow. The loss of his eye should have made him less of a man. But it didn’t. It made him different, darker. Intimidating. And it didn’t mar his natural beauty.

  But then Nicholas had always held some command tha
t went beyond his position at Mei Solis. He still held some fascination that she had thought long-lost. Especially after he’d broken their betrothal and her heart. And yet, for her, he was still rivetingly handsome.

  Maybe even more so.

  The leather strip covered some of his scar, but there was something...wicked about the way it looked. She shouldn’t notice that. Certainly not when she was pregnant...not when she’d married another.

  Roger.

  There came a piercing of grief in her chest that she fought against. She hadn’t dared let herself grieve for her husband. She’d shed tears while she had tried saving him, and they’d done her no good. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—shed them now, when they were useless. Useless.

  Perhaps some time in Nicholas’s company would destroy whatever misguided feeling still lingered. If she could wrest it from her heart and destroy it, all the better. He didn’t deserve any feelings from her at all.

  He didn’t deserve her to be watching him as he conversed with his tenants. As he ate the food placed before him as if it pleased him. As he idly scanned the hall, taking in all the changes.

  At one time she would have cared what he thought of the hall and the furnishings she’d had made for it. She would have asked about the food, all of it finer than when he had left. She’d spent years of her life ensuring that when he returned he would have the home they had wanted. She had been able to do so because Nicholas had sent more silver than she’d ever thought possible. Silver that she, Roger and Louve had carefully divided.

  Then had come the realisation that Nicholas might never return—or at least never to her. So the coin allocated to home decoration had been given to the tenants. Only Cook had received the original budget, to make improvements on the food, because that was shared with everyone.

  It was sumptuous fare tonight, with candied nuts and fruit, and extra honey on the fritters. Cook had indeed provided treats in honour of the Lord of the Manor’s return.