A Knight's Vengeance

by Catherine Kean

  On Elena’s instruction, Elizabeth lowered her chin so the maid could secure the braid. Yet, the memories persisted like an unsettling dream. The rogue’s livid expression and growled words revived in her mind with a wallop. You hoped to seduce me.

  She frowned down at her clasped hands. She had encouraged his kisses—indeed, he had a most tempting and skillful mouth—yet how could he make such an accusation? He had initiated the intimacy. She should accuse him of trying to seduce her.

  Annoyance burned the last vestiges of sleep from her brain. ’Twas not her fault he had a temper shorter than a pig’s tail.

  Her gaze drifted over the beautiful rose wool and fine chemise, folded on the table where she had left them. “Why I must wear this horrible gown? I thought I could wear the clothes of a lady again.”

  “I do not know,” Elena said in a hushed voice. “Milord was quite specific about your garments.”

  After downing her breakfast, Elizabeth followed the maid into the corridor. The guards did not take her to the great hall, or Geoffrey’s solar, but to the bailey.

  As she stepped out of the musty forebuilding, surprise and excitement thrummed in Elizabeth blood. Overhead stretched the robin’s egg blue sky. The breeze stirred her gown and teased wisps of hair across her cheek, and brought the smells of horse, damp stone, and blooming wildflowers. A child’s voice carried to her, and she saw a boy toss a pail of scraps to the rooting pigs.

  Laughter drew her attention to the straw-roofed stables. Geoffrey stood leaning against one of the wooden wagons and chatting with Dominic. Sunlight shot the rogue’s dark hair with silver highlights that reminded her of the gleam in his eyes when he challenged her to a verbal joust. Her stomach squeezed. How handsome he looked, wearing a leather jerkin, tight brown hose, and leather boots.

  The guards ordered her forward. When she walked out of the keep’s shadows into daylight, he turned and saw her. His expression became guarded. “Milady.”

  She walked past the snuffling pigs and halted before him. “Milord, why did you bring me to the bailey? Am I to embroider outside this day, to better see my stitches?”

  Dominic chuckled. She looked into his round, expressive eyes, and he glanced across the bailey. Whatever the secret was, he would not tell her.

  “Patience, damsel. All will be clear soon.” A mysterious twinkle lit Geoffrey’s eyes.

  “By the blessed Virgin.” At the sound of Mildred’s voice, Elizabeth turned. The matron hastened toward her, doing her best not to trip on the hem of a mud-brown bliaut. “Good morning, milady. Milord.” She attempted a curtsey. “Lord de Lanceau, pray tell me why you roused me from my warm bed. My old bones do not see daylight until the sun is risen.”

  Geoffrey answered with a crooked smile.

  Mildred’s eyes narrowed. “If an old woman may be so bold, what mischief have you concocted for us?”

  “’Tis your lady’s bidding.”

  Elizabeth started. “Mine?”

  “You told me you wished to clean the garderobes.”

  Horror slid through Elizabeth like chunks of ice. She had indeed made such a rash claim, but had not expected him to believe her every word.

  Mildred wailed and slapped a wrinkled hand to her brow. “Milady, what have you done now?”

  “I did not say I desired such a task.” Elizabeth scowled. “If you remember the circumstances of my comment, you will know I am right.”

  Geoffrey’s gaze clashed with hers. “Our talk last night made me consider many things. As I told you once before, we have too many tasks for too few hands at Branton. I questioned why I kept two able-bodied women sitting by the fire when they could earn their keep.”

  Mildred huffed. “Milady mended your tunic.”

  “That is not the kind of toil I mean.”

  An angry blush warmed Elizabeth’s face. “You hold us hostage. You cannot mean for us to—”

  “I regret the garderobes were cleaned two weeks past,” he said, straightening away from the wagon. “Otherwise I would have obliged. However, the keep’s gardens need tending. You”—he pointed to Elizabeth and Mildred—“will see it done.”

  Elizabeth tsked. “What a shame, I am not able to mend the saddle trapping. You will have to ride into battle without it.”

  His insolent smile broadened. “After you have finished your day’s labor in the gardens, you will work on the repair.” He thrust an iron-edged spade and a billhook toward her. “You may begin gardening now.”

  “This is madness,” the matron sputtered.

  Elizabeth stared at the implements, and her fury flared. He expected her to dig up weeds and dirty her hands and clothes like a commoner? She glared at him.

  An answering gleam heated his gaze. He expected the refusal on the tip of her tongue.

  As she stared at him, standing with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, she forced down an indignant scream. The knave wanted her to protest. He hoped she would throw a tantrum and refuse to cooperate, so he could belittle her in front of his men and have the satisfaction of forcing her to his will.

  Elizabeth bit back a smug laugh. If he anticipated an easy victory, he was mistaken.

  She accepted the billhook, and her graceful fingers curled around the spade’s wooden handle. “Of course, milord.”

  Geoffrey’s face pinched as though he chewed a mouthful of pig slop. “What?”

  Mildred gasped.

  “Sunshine and gentle exercise do wonders for a lady’s figure and complexion. Will there be aught else, Lord de Lanceau?” Elizabeth tilted her face in a gesture of eager compliance.

  The rogue looked baffled. His mouth opened, and then snapped shut. “That is all. For now,” he added with a snarl.

  She beamed. “Lead the way.”

  He stalked past her, his brow creased into a forbidding frown, and Elizabeth smothered a gleeful shout. She flipped her braid over her shoulder and strolled off across the bailey after him, carrying the spade like a foot soldier’s pike.

  “Saints preserve us,” Mildred groaned.

  Elizabeth followed Geoffrey past the well, the maidservants airing blankets, the blacksmith’s shop and roaring fire, to an area surrounded by a wooden palisade. He yanked open the gate, and the iron hinges creaked with disuse. “The garden.”

  She brushed past him. It must have been beautiful once. Now the vegetation grew in such tangled profusion she could not tell bush from vine, or weed from herb. Insects buzzed. A straggling rose bush with spent blooms grew across the stone path that started at the gate and vanished into the undergrowth.

  Mildred shuffled to Elizabeth’s side. “By the blessed Virgin,” the matron whispered, mopping her face with her sleeve.

  “Which . . . ah . . . patch do you wish us to weed, milord?” Elizabeth asked. A wasp hurtled out of the bushes and, shrieking, she flicked it away.

  He chuckled. “You misunderstand. I wish you to restore this garden to its original grandeur.”

  “All of it?”

  “Aye.” He kicked aside a stone with the toe of his boot. “When you are finished, you will tell me what plants and herbs are here and what I need to purchase.”

  Mildred’s eyes brightened with interest. “Herbs?”

  “A former lord of Branton Keep hired a monk from a local monastery to lay out the garden and stock it with herbs. Some were used for medicines. Others were dried or went straight into the cooking.” Geoffrey’s smile turned wry. “As Lady Elizabeth pointed out at one meal, adding flavor to our food will be an improvement.”

  “’Tis a monumental task you give us.” Elizabeth dropped the spade with a clank. “We cannot complete it in one afternoon.”

  “I give you two.”

  “Two days?” Mildred snorted.

  Geoffrey’s eyes glinted like polished silver as he looked Elizabeth. “Two days.” He turned, walked out into the bailey, and slammed the gate closed behind him.

  The matron plopped down on the edge of a crumbling rockery. “Harrumph!”
/>   After retrieving the spade, Elizabeth uprooted a dandelion by her feet. “The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”

  “I am a lady-in-waiting and a healer, not a brawny gardening wench,” Mildred grumbled. “This garden is so overgrown it no doubt harbors all kinds of nasty creatures—spiders, snakes, and red-eyed rodents, to name a few. If you ask me, you are better off apologizing to that rogue for whatever he is annoyed about and saving your strength for our escape.” She frowned and scratched her head. “What is he annoyed about?”

  Her cheeks burning, Elizabeth attacked the grass growing between the path stones. Her bruised arm was healing well, and did not twinge with the effort.

  She would not fail to meet the rogue’s challenge.

  Nor did she wish to explain last evening to Mildred.

  “Milady?”

  Elizabeth cringed at the matron’s suspicious tone.

  “Since we will be working together all day, milady, I see no better time for you to divulge all the details. Do you?”

  ***

  Geoffrey halted outside the garden and motioned to the armed sentries who had escorted Elizabeth to the bailey. “Stand guard at the gate. The women are not to escape.”

  The men nodded and trudged over to their posts.

  Exhaling a harsh breath, Geoffrey tipped his face up to the sky and willed himself not to plow his fist into the palisade.

  He would not let the damsel win.

  He had meant to bend Elizabeth to his will, to teach her that although she tempted him, she would never control him or his deeds. He had expected her to toss her hair and stamp her foot like a spoiled child, or burst into tears. Instead, she had walked to the gardens like a woman anticipating a delightful day of picnicking and hawking, even with the spade slapping against her skirt. The lady astounded him.

  Admiration and desire battled in his thoughts. He shook his head and strode back toward the keep. Right now, he wanted her out of his sight, rather than sitting within easy glance. He needed a quiet spate in the hall to finalize some important matters, without a black-haired, blue-eyed distraction.

  As he neared the forebuilding, Dominic’s laughter greeted him. “Well done, milord.”

  “Well done?” Geoffrey crossed to his friend, who helped a boy draw water up from the well. “The lady made a fool of me.”

  “Did she?” Dominic’s grin was innocent enough, but the warmth in his eyes proved he knew quite well.

  “She will not last. Before the midday meal, she shall be begging to return to her chamber.”

  As the lad heaved the filled bucket from the well’s edge and stomped toward the pig’s trough, water splashed onto the ground. The boy could not be more than ten, Geoffrey’s own age when his father had died. When his life had changed forever.

  Quelling another surge of fury, Geoffrey looked at Dominic. “My friend, find me a suitable messenger. ’Tis time to send the ransom demand.”

  ***

  “If I do not stretch my aching joints, I shall be kneeling for the rest of my living days.” With a pained grunt, Mildred pushed up from her place beside a pile of pulled weeds. “I will see what awaits us farther down the path, milady.” Without waiting for a reply, she raised her bliaut’s hem and trudged into the undergrowth.

  Elizabeth set down the spade. The earlier breeze had vanished, and now the sun beat upon her back. Her bliaut and chemise stuck to her body like a second skin that chafed. Why, oh why, had she goaded the rogue?

  The garden did not offer any hope of escape. As she had discovered during a quick perusal, the only way in and out was through the gate. The palisade was too high to scale or jump. Moreover, the gnarled plum tree did not grow close enough to the fence to use its boughs to climb over.

  “Will you come too?” the matron called. “Spare me from the ticks, snakes, and red-eyed rodents? I recall you once questioned my sense of adventure.”

  Elizabeth chuckled and started down the path.

  As she batted away a bumblebee disturbed by the movement of snarled vines and leaves, Mildred clucked her tongue. “Weeding is not a task for a noblewoman. De Lanceau must be very angry with you for what happened last evening.”

  “He is a fool.”

  Mildred’s laugh sounded as dry as the browned rose petals that disintegrated in Elizabeth’s fingers. “You told me yourself he thought you tried to seduce him.”

  “I know naught about seducing a man.”

  A crow cawed from its perch atop the palisade fence. Elizabeth glanced at it, and did not notice Mildred had come to a halt until she almost walked right into the old woman.

  Brushing a cobweb from her sleeve, Mildred glanced over her shoulder. “You need but look at a man with your blue eyes, and I vow he is lost.”

  Elizabeth felt a strange pang of discomfort, for Aldwin had once teased her with a similar remark. At the time, she had dismissed it as a jest.

  “You must know how smitten Sedgewick is.” Mildred sidestepped the anthill in the middle of the path and resumed her steady plod. “I expect Aldwin is too, and there must be countless others of whom you do not even know.”

  Loosing a silent groan, Elizabeth wished she had not told Mildred of last night’s events. “De Lanceau is not smitten. The last thing I want is more of his attentions.” She had only to think of his smoldering, heavy-lidded gaze and her belly flip-flopped in an alarming way.

  “He is handsome,” the matron said with a wistful sigh. “A rogue indeed, but most pleasing to the eye.”

  “Mildred.”

  The matron shrugged. “I may be old, but I am not blind.”

  A blush stung Elizabeth’s face. “This chatter is pointless.”

  Planting her feet on the weed-choked path, Mildred turned around. “I am trying to understand our day of toil. Mayhap you had a reason for your actions last night of which I am unaware.”

  Elizabeth threw up her hands. “I did not try to seduce him.”

  The healer grinned. “As you claimed before.”

  “Do you believe that I could . . . that I would seduce him?”

  Mildred seemed to mull the question, then nodded. “I think you would do whatever you must to stop him from harming your father, or reclaiming Wode.”

  “You place a great deal of faith in my abilities as a temptress.”

  “Milady, you are as sweet and ripe as a summer rose. More than ample temptation for any buzzing bee or hornet.” With a swish of her skirts, Mildred spun and walked off down the path.

  Elizabeth blinked. She was still struggling to find a suitable retort when Mildred dropped to her knees beside a leafy plant with yellow flowers.

  “Rue.” The matron pointed to the spiny-looking plant nearby. “Rosemary. This must have been the herb patch.”

  Elizabeth crossed to Mildred and knelt in the carpet of coarse grass. Stringy weeds with pinkish flowers blocked her view, and she tugged at the stems to remove them.

  The matron brushed her hand away. “That is sage. A healthy bunch too.”

  Sighing, Elizabeth sat back on her heels. “They all look like weeds to me.”

  “If you clear the path,” Mildred suggested, “I will tend the herbs.”

  Reluctant to walk back and fetch the spade, Elizabeth tugged on a vine growing over the path stones. It did not budge.

  Bracing her foot against a crumbling rock wall, she took the vine in both hands. She gritted her teeth, yanked, and yelped as the roots tore free. She landed on her bottom.

  “Milady!” Mildred leapt to her feet. Her mouth gaped, and Elizabeth started to giggle. She could not help it. She must look a sight, sitting in a most unladylike position with her bliaut scrunched up around her knees. Filthy knees, too.

  The matron’s cheeks turned pink, and then she too laughed.

  ***

  Geoffrey wiped sweat from his brow and urged his destrier under the teeth of Branton Keep’s wood and iron portcullis. As he emerged from the gatehouse’s shadows, he waved to the sentries calling to him from the w
all walk. He had dreaded taking a preliminary tally of the harvest soon to be carted from the demesne fields, but as Dominic had assured him, the rains several days ago had been lighter here than on the roads near Wode. The drying crops had sustained little damage. The yield would be higher than expected.

  Before leaving the keep, Geoffrey had dispatched Troy to Tillenham with the ransom. He had also sent missives to the few knights under his command, telling them that he would require their military services.

  Soon, very soon, he would have vengeance.

  Shrugging stiffness from his shoulders, Geoffrey glanced at the guards posted outside the garden gate. They acknowledged him with a nod. He thought to inquire after the damsel when a sound reached him. He frowned, reined in his horse, and listened for the noise that had been dimmed by the bridle’s clink.

  Laughter. It came from the garden.

  Geoffrey had not expected Elizabeth’s merriment, but he did not mistake her voice, bright, musical, and as alluring as a summer breeze. It held none of the caution she used when she spoke to him, and he regretted being denied the pleasure of her laughter.

  His fingers tightened around the leather reins. Elizabeth meant naught to him, and he did not care whether she laughed or cried. He had given her a day of work so foreign to a pampered lady she should have wilted from exertion hours ago.

  Instead, she laughed.

  A maidservant strolled past, carrying a basket covered with a linen cloth. She curtsied to him and approached the guards.

  “Wait.” Geoffrey slid down from the destrier. He took the basket.

  The girl looked bewildered. “Cook ordered me to deliver two meals to the garden. Did you not request it, milord?”

  Geoffrey patted the maidservant’s arm. “I will take the food. Lead my horse to the stable.”

  The gate squeaked as it swung open, but the laughter did not cease. He headed down the path, foliage hissing against his boots with each stride. A few more steps and he spied Mildred’s broad back turned to him.

  He slowed. Where was the lady?

  His gaze fell to the grass, and he drew a sharp breath. She sat on a broken stone, grinning like a reckless child, her bliaut raised to her knees. Her pale ankles and calves were bared to the sunlight. What curvaceous legs. Desire hurtled through his blood with the speed of an attacking hawk.