The king glanced at the table of nobles, then back to Jamie. “If I invest you with Everoot, you will ally with me in good faith?” he said cautiously.
Jamie uncrossed his arms. “If you give me what I want.”
John looked confused. “I am giving you Everoot.”
Jamie bent his head slightly, a nod to his king, an admission of authority. But his next words answered any questions about whether Jamie was making requests, or stating terms.
“I am claiming Everoot, my lord. I require only one thing in return.”
“What?”
“Eva.”
John inhaled sharply, then slowly gave an unamused smile. Jamie could see him reckoning with the Exchequer of his heart, accounting the cost and benefits of giving Eva to the heir of Everoot. Great lord wed to a princess bride, striated history of loyalty, deadly. It had to be a difficult decision.
The king looked at Eva. So did Jamie. So did everyone else in the room, and he had to assume they saw what he did: a slim, pale woman with flowing dark hair in a blue tunic, whose eyes never left his as she held out her hand to him.
“You will serve me?” the king said quietly. “Faithfully?”
“I have always served you faithfully, my lord,” Jamie said, already striding across the room. He did not ask leave and he did not look back. He reached for Eva, who was walking toward him, and pulled her to him. He was fairly certain people were speaking to him, but it was all dim beneath the brightness of Eva’s being here, in his arms. He cupped the back of her head and kissed her. It was only one kiss, but it was thorough, her arms around him, his fingers in her hair. He tipped her face up. “Can you be content with a castle instead of a cottage, Eva?”
“But of course,” she whispered. “If you are able to resist the urge to lock me up—”
He drew back. “Me?”
“—then yes.”
He looped his hands together behind her back and eyed her. “Fine, yes. I will take that.”
“But this putting me with one-eyed Scotsmen for my own protection, it will not do. While I am most gratified to see how deeply you care, I am not the sort to appreciate such unexpected protections. I prefer to choose them myself. Such as when I am bathing in a river and do not wish to be accosted by men or otters, this would be helpful protection.”
“Ah. The otters. I shall recall that to mind.”
“And if knives are being poked at me, I would like to be protected at such times.”
“One would assume.”
She adopted a stern look. “But, Jamie, you cannot put me in places and walk away. For one, I will leave. For two, I will follow. For three, I do not like someone else deciding on the matter of where my bones are. It is only that for so long, I have made those decisions myself. Do you see?”
He nodded. He thought he heard someone distantly saying his name. “I see.”
“I realize this is not to be borne. Yet I ask you to bear it. Will you?”
“I will. For you. Now, for my terms.”
She brightened. She hadn’t realized they were discussing terms. She settled her hands on his shoulders and nodded encouragingly. “I am prepared.”
“One.” He brushed the curve of her jaw with his hand. “You will share with me your thoughts.”
She affected a sigh. “You drive a difficult bargain, sir, but I accept.”
“You will share with me your body.”
“This I have been doing since the moment you dragged me into a tavern.”
“You will additionally stay away from docks, roosters, alehouses, and anywhere that men are fighting. And you are never to handle a rope again.”
She pushed up on her toes. “I have scared you,” she whispered. “Jamie the fearless knight is frightened.”
“Terrified.” He ducked his head, brushing his cheek against hers. “I promise, I will get you your cottage one day, Eva.”
“This is not a thing to worry on, Jamie.”
He entwined their fingers. Someone was most certainly calling to him now. “Everoot does not have a red roof, but you can grow turnips in its soil.”
“See, you are so clever, to seduce me with vegetables.” She smiled up at him. “A man with a sword who is willing to repair roofs, and a place to grow my turnips. How could I not be very happy?” Her eyes were shimmering at him.
“What more could a princess want?” he murmured as he turned her to face the others, to begin living the life he’d held at bay all these years.
“Only you, Jamie. Nothing but you.”
Epilogue
20 October, 1216
The Nest, principal castle of the Everoot earldom
Eva was in the orchard of the outer bailey, rescuing wrinkled apples from the late bite of autumn. It had been a glorious harvest, enough to soften up many of the hard edges of her heart in regard to England.
She was happy. Everoot was a strong home, and Roger was only a half day’s ride away at Endshire, wrestling with the tasks of running an English estate. It was quite different from running through French forests, so Ry was often there, helping unwind the mess ten years of absentee lordship had wrought. Angus was sent back and forth between the two estates, muttering that the English were a lot of fools, and he’d be better off in Scotland, but he never went. Eva plied him with a plethora of meat pasties and very good ale, and in the end, he stayed.
“Only ’cause I’m not sure the debt’s settled,” he’d mutter.
“Oh, it is not,” she’d assure him, patting his arm, and this made them both happy. Jamie rolled his eyes.
Everoot was filled with knights and retainers who were turning out to be fiercely loyal and rather too admiring of their rediscovered lord. Eva worried all the adulation would go to Jamie’s head, after all the years of loathing and wariness aimed his way. It hadn’t happened yet, but one never knew. Eva kept him in check by engaging him in the most mundane of tasks with great regularity, claiming incapacitation. A child on the way gave her the right. Jamie doted.
No one knew her true identity—she and Jamie and the king had agreed to this—and Eva did not wish it any other way. She was Jamie’s wife and wanted nothing more.
She gently poured the little apples she’d been holding in her skirts into a basket, and saw Jamie striding toward her, coming from the exercise yard where he trained with his men.
His long legs swung with his confident stride. He threaded his fingers impatiently through his hair, pushing it off his face. His face was scraped as clean as Eva could get it, but she secretly did not mind when they missed a few days. She enjoyed the dangerous way he looked and the gentle way he touched her.
Well, sometimes gentle.
She was fortunate that he was home, for civil war had broken out. The charter hadn’t held. Barely three months after it had been signed by all the great barons save Jamie—“It will not hold,” he’d said when they’d asked him to sign. “I will serve, but I will not sign”—war had broken out again.
The Nest remained a refuge, though. Couriers and messengers and barons used the Nest as a base for the ongoing negotiations, a place of calm amid the madness.
Jamie reached her side. He took her hand and kissed it absently as he peered into the basket of apples. He picked one up. “Apples?” he asked as he bit into it.
She shook her head. “Berries.”
He grinned as apple juice trailed down his chin. She leaned up to kiss it away. That’s when they heard the rider, coming up the hill to Everoot.
“The king is dead!” he shouted from dozens of yards away. “King John has died!”
The news spread quickly. King John had died from a surfeit of lamprey eels. Nine-year-old Henry would be crowned in Westminster. William the Marshal had vowed to carry the boy on his shoulders from sea to sea, if need be, to make the country pledge. The most powerful men were forming a regency government to advise the young king. Jamie’s presence was called for. They planned to re-issue Magna Carta. The rebels would heel. The war would end.
/> Everyone gathered in the bailey. Villagers, knights, merchants on delivery. It had become the scene of celebration. Jamie gave a quick order to bring drink, in honor of a kingship begun. When the first barrel of ale was rolled out, a great cheer went up. More people poured in. Children were sent scurrying home to gather cups. The revelry reached new heights, with frequent cries of “Long live the king!” and “Long live Everoot!”
“Eels,” Jamie mused and looked down at Eva. “Did we not recently send a shipment of eels to the court?”
“Did we?” she replied vaguely, slipping her arm through his. “I cannot recall such a small matter.”
She felt him staring at the side of her head. “You recall where the wash buckets are stored, and the anniversary of Cook’s mother’s passing. Nothing escapes your attention.”
She tapped her rounded belly. “It is your son. He muddles my head.”
This distracted him. He looked at her belly. “He might be a she.”
Her smile grew slowly, but it grew so large it hurt her cheekbones. “Yes. She might.”
The celebration continued apace. A lute was produced. Children and adults danced. Dogs barked. Someone overturned a bucket and drumbeats were heard. From the ramparts above, cheers drifted down from the soldiers on the walls.
“Your father is dead,” Jamie said quietly, looking down.
She nodded, then quickly shook her head. “I suppose that is so, but it does not feel that way. What mourning had to be done was done a long time ago. Now, the war will end, the harrying will cease, the winter will be easier. I feel no grief for these things.”
“Have you grief for other things? Such as spending a cold winter in the north of England?”
She waved her hand. “Parts of France are very cold indeed, both the places and the people. I am happy here, with you.”
He slung his arm around her shoulder. “And I with you.”
She smiled. “My only sadness is that it will be months until the babe is born.”
“Aye, well, I did the best I could.” He tipped forward and kissed her belly. The sight of their lord kissing the heir-bearing belly of their lady occasioned an outpouring of cheers. He tilted his head to the side and grinned up at her. “They like when I kiss you.”
“They have very good sense, these people of yours. They like when you make me have babies.”
He laughed and straightened. “As do I.”
Eva reached for his hand. “Come, remind me why I want to have many children with you.”
“We cannot make any more just yet, Eva.”
“I think of it more as practice,” she assured him.
He laughed and grabbed for her hand. The slanting rays of autumn evening sunlight shone down on the celebration as Jamie took her inside to practice for the only thing she’d ever wanted: a family of her own, with Jamie at her side.
Author’s Note
The Assassination Attempt on
King John’s Life and Simon de Montfort
There actually was an assassination plot against King John in 1212. Robert fitzWalter and other baronial rebels really did flee for their lives, and were let back only after John patched things up with the Church, as a condition of lifting the excommunication.
The Simon de Montfort most people know about lived some fifty years after this story is set. He was in conflict with King John’s son, Henry III, a struggle which helped, as did the Magna Carta, in forming the beginning of parliamentary rule. The de Montfort referenced in Defiant is the father. He was acknowledged, even by his contemporaries, to be exactly as Jamie described him: brutal, acquisitive, and a master military man. He led the Crusade against heretical Christian sects in the south of France (which resumed with much bloodshed a few decades later).
I fudged the history a bit and collapsed the time line. It’s possible that scions of the disaffected baronial forces did indeed offer the crown to de Montfort in 1210, but the foiled assassination attempt did not occur until 1212, two years later.
I could find no indication of whom the plotters thought to put forward as a candidate this time (even fitzWalter, pompous and a bully, was not so arrogant as to consider himself an acceptable candidate). I thought it plausible to guess they might offer it to the same man as before: Simon de Montfort.
What is more likely is that if they offered it to anyone, it was King Philip of France. Philip was occupied with other campaigns in 1212, but by 1215 and 1216, he’d become quite enchanted with the idea of invading England.
The Character Of Mouldin
There has never been a “Keeper of the Heirs.” But wards and heiresses and minor heirs used to be one of the Crown’s greatest resources. King John did not generally hold on to them; he sold the rights to them, as did all his contemporaries, as part of the complex and shifting network of patronage, fealty, and cold-hard business dealings.
But there were Keepers of many other things: of the (king’s) Body; of the Privy Seal; and by far the most important, Keeper of the Wardrobe. Keepers were vital positions in the king’s government. I thought to plug what was clearly a hole in the administrative functioning of medieval kings, and give John a Keeper of the Heirs.
On John’s Methods of Subduing Opposition:
Starvation and Murder
John is accused of having murdered his noble nephew, Prince Arthur of Brittany. There is no proof, but a great many people, contemporaries and historians, believe it to be true. John had his father’s eruptive Angevin temper, and people had learned to be wary of it.
The idea of starving Mouldin’s family was modeled on the events surrounding William de Briouze (de Braose). De Briouze was an up-and-coming household knight who served King John in many roles, one of which was gaoler. Some said de Briouze saw John murder Prince Arthur of Brittany. Apparently, his wife talked about it.
This was unfortunate. Citing unpaid debts to the Crown, King John chased de Briouze across the length of England and all the way to Ireland, then to the Continent, and when he couldn’t capture de Briouze, he turned on the wife and son, and held them prisoner and starved them to death.
The War Following the Charter and Jamie’s Loyalty to the King
The peace of Magna Carta lasted approximately three months. There was double-dealing and a lack of will on both sides from the start, and the war was in full swing by the time the harvest ended. Throughout the winter, the rebels beseiged, the king marched, sent his routiers harrying the countryside, and soon enough, Philip of France came sailing over. England was ripe for conquest.
But some stayed true to their oaths to the king. W. L. Warren describes it in King John. I love his account of the outbreak of war and arrival of the French king, while a few men held to their oaths to the king, when they had every reason to turn on him.
“Up and down the country castles were held for him by determined men who owed everything to John. Engelard de Cigogné hurled defiance at rebel besiegers from the walls of Windsor. Hugh Balliol held out at Barnard Castle against the Scots, and Phillip Oldcoates in Durham. Hubert de Burgh, now justiciar, sat tight in Dover against all that Louis [my note: King Philip of France’s son] could do against him from July to October. Odd sparks of loyalty fired local resistance movements: the citizens of the Cinque Ports had been obliged to take an oath to Louis, but their vessels harried French shipping; William of Kensham, operating under the name of ‘Willikin of the Weald’, organized a band of loyalists that preyed on Frenchmen in Suffolk and Kent. The west midlands were held securely for the king . . . by the vassals of two elder statesmen, William Marshal and Ranulph of Chester. They had served his father, and despite the insults they had suffered, would not desert the son.” (W. L. Warren, King John [University of California Press, 1961, 1978], pp. 252–53.)
I placed Jamie among these men: loyal when it was inconvenient; steadfast when everything sensible counseled flight; fundamentally bound by deeper ties of oath and fealty when the world was unraveling around them.
In the end, though, it was not lo
yalty so much that saved England but death. King John died in the spring. His son Henry was crowned ten days later, and ruled for fifty-six years, an impressive run for any monarch. He tried and failed to reclaim any French lands, suffered through another civil war, and (begrudgingly) called the first official Parliament. He was an extravagant king who loved architecture and blew with the winds of varied counsel and perhaps was not suited to being a king. His son was Edward I, a man suited to be a medieval king in no uncertain terms.
On Misselthwaite
Yes, I know. It’s my little homage to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I love Misselthwaite Manor, and I imagine the cold, unfriendly castle as precisely the sort of place Eva could have transformed. The secret garden would have been her refuge. And whether he loved it or not (which he would have), Jamie would have been happy there, too, as long as he had Eva.
Look for
Kris Kennedy’s
next sexy medieval romance,
coming from Pocket Books in Spring 2012.
Defiant Page 33