by Deborah Hale
A feint to the left. A lunge. Catching the other’s sword at the hilt, the Welshman flicked it from his grasp. It sailed into the air and tumbled over twice before Cecily reached up and caught it. She glanced over at the combatants to see the Welshman accepting his opponent’s surrender.
Moving in soundlessly behind him, she touched the tip of the practice weapon to his back. To one side of the spine, between the sixth and seventh rib.
“Have a care, Sir Knight,” she taunted good-naturedly, as she had once taunted her brothers after disarming them. “The sword you pluck with such a flourish from the man in front of you may fall to arm some clodpate at your back.”
The Welshman dropped his shield and weapon onto the red-brown dust of the courtyard. As his hands came up in surrender, his whole body began to tremble. Wave after wave of deep, infectious laughter rolled out of him.
Slowly he turned, flashing Cecily an impudent, self-mocking grin that put her in mind of her brother Hugh. Instantly, she warmed to him.
“And who might you be, lass, to get the best of Conwy ap Ifan?”
“I might be the Bishop of Winchester,” quipped Cecily, suddenly realizing how much she had missed this kind of banter with her brothers. “But I’m not. My name is Cecily Tyrell, and I am come from Berkshire to be Baron DeCourtenay’s bride.”
Conwy ap Ifan smacked his forehead. “I am the clod-pate for not reckoning that on my own.”
He waved his practice opponent away. “I would trust you to guard my back in any battle, Lady Cecily, for you could disarm a man with no more than your smile or a glance of your velvet eyes.”
“I have heard Welshmen are shameless flatterers, ap Ifan.” Cecily tossed him back his opponent’s practice weapon. “I see you are no exception to your race.”
“Not flatterers, my lady.” He lifted the sword to her, saluting a worthy opponent. “Bards. Or what you Normans would call poets. We can resist a flourish with words no less than with our swords. Though by times both may borrow us trouble. As to my name, there are more ap Ifans in Gwynedd than fleas on a hairy hound! Why not follow the lead of your Lord Rowan and call me plain Con.”
She held out her hand to him. “Well met, Con. Lord Rowan is favored to number such a swordsman as you among his force. How came you into his service?”
“That, my lady, is a long tale for a cold night by the hearth.” He bowed low over her hand. “With a beaker of warm mead at my elbow and a harp in my lap. Vagabond I was until I fell into his lordship’s service. Then we were vagabonds together, through Europe and to the Holy Land. Heart glad I am that he has found a fair harbor for himself at last. You are the best argument I have seen in a long while for a man to end his wandering.”
“I hope I can give him cause to think so.” Cecily glanced around the bustling activity of the bailey, wondering where Rowan might be. Seeing no sign of him, she cast her attention back to Con ap Ifan. After so many years adventuring together, he must know her future husband as well as anyone alive. Perhaps he was the clew to guide her through the cryptic maze of Rowan’s character.
“Since his lordship is nowhere to be found, can I prevail upon you to show me around Ravensridge? I am keen to see what preparations are being made to mount the assault on Brantham.”
“An honor it would be, my lady. We must sit you down and talk strategy, for I’d trust you to know the strengths of your keep as well as its vulnerable spots. If we can take advantage of those, we may regain your castle at a miser’s cost in blood.”
“That is my wish also, Master Con.” Feeling as though she’d known him all her life, Cecily clapped him heartily across the shoulders, as she had often done with Hugh and Geoffrey.
She retrieved Con’s own shield and practice weapon from the ground where he had dropped them. “Before we make our tour, though, let me show you a trick I learned to compensate for a shorter reach.”
“What’s that you say, Aenor?” Rowan looked up from the crowded columns of figures on the paper before him. In recent years his eyesight for close detail had grown poor. Reviewing the accounts made his head ache. He doubted Aenor’s nattering would prove much of a remedy.
Perched on tiptoe, she stared out the embrasure window of Rowan’s wardrobe. “Pay me no heed, as usual.” She sighed pitiably. “I was only asking if you mean your bride to wed in a borrowed gown. One thirty years out of style at that.”
Women! Rowan rolled his eyes at Maynard, the steward, who swallowed a smile in reply. What did such trivialities signify when he had knights to muster? Soldiers to arm and drill. Provisions to garner.
“I am no tailor, Sister. Nor could I spare time to prepare Cecily’s bridal clothes if I were. Surely between the pair of you, you can cobble together something suitable.”
If she heard the dismissive note in his voice, Lady Aenor gave no sign. “If Cecily would turn her mind to the task, perhaps we might. I cannot do it by myself, however. Not when I am so hard-pressed to make all the other wedding arrangements, and with hardly any time to prepare.”
Was she going to blubber? Rowan wondered grimly. “What occupies Cecily that she cannot help you ready her gown?”
True, she had not shown much enthusiasm for the idea of marrying him when they’d met up on the day of her escape from Brantham. Surely her blossoming love for him had changed that.
“Come see for yourself what occupies her,” replied Aenor, in the tone of a tattle carrying tales.
Though he silently raged at himself for rising to her bait, Rowan pushed back his chair and sauntered to the embrasure. “If she wants to hoard up as much time as she can in the fresh air and sunshine before winter closes in, what of it?”
At first he could not pick her out in the busy throng below. Then the wine-red hue of her gown drew his eye among the dull grays and browns of his men.
As his near sight weakened, Rowan’s distance vision had become more acute. Once he was able to focus upon Cecily, he could see her all too clearly. At the center of a group of men. Her head thrown back in a gust of engaging, contagious laughter. They pressed around her far too closely for Rowan’s liking.
“She is a comely creature, I’ll give her that,” said Aenor, who seldom grudged words of praise for another of her sex. “Too much so for her own good, perhaps. See how the men flock to her?”
He had eyes. How could he miss it?
As he watched, Cecily and one of the men detached themselves from the group and wandered toward the forge. Rowan recognized Con, his companion at arms for the best part of ten years. When he’d played the part of John FitzCourtenay for Cecily’s benefit, Rowan had often fallen back on the Welshman for inspiration. One might almost claim there was more of Con ap Ifan in Rowan’s fictitious brother than Rowan himself.
“Your Welsh friend is certainly taken with her.” Aenor had a positive gift for proclaiming the obvious. “He’s a born charmer, that one.”
Few had better cause to know it than Rowan.
In an easy, familiar gesture, Con touched Cecily on the arm to draw her attention to a siege engine hard by the smithy.
Like a mace pounding against an iron helm, Rowan’s pulse throbbed in his temples.
Cecily inspected the mangonel, then shook her head. Con motioned several other men over and soon Cecily was in the center of the group, talking animatedly.
Rowan had witnessed as much as he could stand. Wheeling sharply from the window, he strode out of his wardrobe without another word to Lady Aenor or his steward.
He’d been right about Cecily. She needed curbing before she brought trouble on herself and dishonor upon him and his house.
And he was just the man to take her in hand.
They were an eager enough force, Cecily decided. But someone needed to take them in hand.
“Are you planning to trundle that thing all the way to Brantham?” She eyed the mangonel dubiously.
“We’ll take it apart first, my lady,” volunteered one of the men. “Haul it there by oxcart and set it back up again, easy as you please.�
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Cecily shook her head. “Save the strain on your poor ox and leave it at home. Brantham has the stoutest walls in five counties. If we are forced to lay siege, I fear the outcome. Besides, DeBoissard has allies and reinforcements far closer at hand than we will have. No. We must make a quick, deadly strike, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky. If only we could plan some way to alert and arm my people within the castle.”
Glancing up, she saw Rowan striding toward them. Surely between them they could concoct some clever ruse to turn that cur, DeBoissard, out of Brantham for good and all.
“Rowan!” She rushed eagerly to meet him. “I have been making my acquaintance of all your fine men this morning.”
How handsome he looked in a dark blue surcoat. He carried himself with such contained power and forceful presence. Soon he would be hers.
A flash of silver lightning in his blue eyes stopped her dash toward him. Something was not right.
“Aenor requires your presence within, to help with the wedding preparations.”
The words themselves were civil enough. It was Rowan’s delivery that puzzled Cecily—and hurt. The stiff way he held himself. The grim censure etched upon his expressive features. The cold, restrained wrath in the depths of his eyes that made her wonder, just for an instant, if he might be capable of violence against one he professed to love.
His look and tone were too much like her father’s for Cecily to back down or make soft answer.
“I’m a pitiful excuse for a cook.” She cast the men around her a warm smile when they chuckled at her flippant admission. “And I’m a far better strategist than I am a seamstress. Con, here, can use my help far more urgently than Lady Aenor. I was just telling him, about this mangonel—”
Rowan’s head snapped sideways as he surveyed the Welshman. “Con, is it?”
Con looked as baffled as Cecily by what had come over his friend. “Aye. Con. It’s what everyone else calls me. Why should your betrothed be any different, DeCourtenay?” He grinned. “Besides, once a lass has bested a fellow at swordplay, she has the right to call him whatever she likes.”
“Madam—” Rowan turned on Cecily again “—I did not pluck you from the clutches of Fulke DeBoissard and Ranulf Beauchamp so you could endanger yourself playing with swords. I suggest you find Lady Aenor and make yourself useful in your proper sphere.”
“I plucked myself out of Fulke’s clutches, if you will recall.” Though she felt her temper rising, Cecily tried to disguise her defiance with banter. “And the only danger I risked from Con’s practice sword was a sliver of wood in my finger.”
When Rowan’s men-at-arms erupted with laughter at her jest, he silenced them with an intimidating frown.
“My men have much to do making ready for our expedition to Brantham.”
Several at the fringe of the crowd began easing away. Others within earshot redoubled their efforts to look busy.
“They cannot spare the time to amuse you,” he continued. “Nor do they need the distraction of your presence.”
Like a morning mist before the midday sun, the knot of men around Cecily dispersed.
All but Con.
It was heartening to discover one other person at Ravensridge who was not thoroughly cowed by Baron DeCourtenay.
Rowan’s voice fell to a harsh whisper. “In future I will thank you not to make me a laughingstock in front of my men.”
Though his whole attitude infuriated her, Cecily suffered a slight pang of conscience. She had meant her flippant answers as a defense for herself, not an attack upon him.
Before she could apologize or explain, Con ap Ifan spoke up. “If they laughed, DeCourtenay, it is as much your fault as hers, for you set up every target she dispatched so neatly. Did you lose your sense of humor on the road from Berkshire, then? We must scour the countryside in search of it.”
“When I want your counsel, ap Ifan, I will ask for it. Now you take a piece of advice from me and stay clear of my bride.”
All Cecily’s sympathy for Rowan waned. “How dare you warn any man away from me, DeCourtenay? I can choose my own friends and I can take care of myself. I came here to offer myself as your wife, not as one of your hounds or a hawk upon your arm. You cannot keep me on a leash!”
Rowan glared ’round the bailey, where all had fallen silent—audience to their quarrel. Work broke out again with renewed vigor and exaggerated noise.
“We will continue this debate. Inside.”
The calculated clamor that suddenly filled the bailey almost drowned out Rowan’s words. Yet Cecily heard them as clearly as if they’d been thundered by a hundred trumpeting heralds.
She strode to the entry. Very well. She’d prefer not to have the whole castle witness her humiliation. See how her husband meant to grind her under his heel and turn her into a copy of his meek, domesticated sister-in-law.
Cecily almost choked on the gall of Rowan’s betrayal. She had expected better of him.
Once they were within, she turned on Rowan, ready to repel any further repression he might try to inflict upon her. The words he spoke slipped clean past her bristling defenses.
“Does our wedding mean so little to you that you would leave all the arrangements in other hands?” he asked in a voice at once soft, grave…and wounded to the heart. “It is the assault on Brantham that truly matters to you, is it not? You led me to believe that you cared for me, Cecily. Now I see I have been deceived. All you want is a strong warrior to wrest back control of your keep and help you maintain it. Any parcel of bone and sinew might fill that suit of armor and it would all be the same to you.”
How dare he cast her in the wrong like this? Part of Cecily raged. Another part threw down its weapons and raised a flag of truce. She knew what it was to crave love, only to find that craving thwarted. It could drive a person to utter words and commit acts of which they would otherwise be ashamed.
“How can you say that?” She touched his arm, pressing the physical contact between them even when he tried to shake her off. “If it were so, would I have let old Beauchamp beat my backside raw? He would have wed me. Swore he would regain Brantham for me. Before I met you, I might have been able to hold my gorge and accept him.”
Her gaze faltered before the rage and pain in his. Her voice broke. “After, I could not.”
“I want to believe you, lass.”
He pressed her back against the cold stones of Ravens-ridge Keep. His mouth flew to hers, sure and true as the arrow of a skilled archer. He wrestled her into his embrace, kindling a fire in her flesh wherever his hands touched. Even through the layers of clothing they wore, the unsheathed sword of his arousal pressed against her belly with smoldering force, ready to impale her.
Cecily’s ankles threatened to buckle and her head swam. No matter how fast or how deeply she drew breath, she could not seem to get enough air. Desire enveloped her. Trapped her. Suffocated her.
Using a ruse she’d learned long ago when scuffling with her brothers, Cecily let her body go completely limp. For a single befuddled instant, Rowan’s grip on her relaxed. She slithered out of his arms and out of his reach.
“If my putting needle to cloth will ease you, my lord, then I will do it.” If only she could keep from panting when she spoke. All too clearly, it betrayed the disquieting effect he had upon her. “If the result falls short of your expectations, do not take it as an insult. I have never cultivated the womanly arts, nor had any inclination to. I would be a thousand times more value to you as a strategist or marshaling supplies for the journey. We will need to strike camp somewhere between here and Brantham. Your knights and soldiers will need feeding. What about medicines for the wounded? There I do have some skill.”
Rowan held up his hand for silence. “These next few days will be a time of preparation. For both of us. You attend to the wedding. I will attend to the raiding party.”
Stubborn fool! Trying to make him see reason was like hurling herself against the stout walls of Ravensridge. She could
batter herself raw and bruised without making so much as a dent upon DeCourtenay’s arrogant assurance.
“Was it you who journeyed with me from Brantham, truly? I can scarcely believe you were John FitzCourtenay. He listened to me. Sometimes, at least. He admired me for who I am. You would mold me into something I am not, nor never wanted to be.”
Perhaps the citadel of Rowan’s assurance was not so impregnable, after all. The look on his face told Cecily it had suffered a blow.
“So FitzCourtenay won your heart and now you find that I am nothing like him.”
“That’s not what I meant at all. Do not twist my words!”
He sighed. “You may be right. FitzCourtenay was a disguise I wore. In many ways, he’s the man I wish I could be. A man without my responsibilities. Without my past. I must have been daft to think you could love the man behind that mask.”
With that he turned and left her.
For a moment Cecily stood with her mouth agape. In disavowing his likeness to John FitzCourtenay, Rowan had shown more of himself than Cecily had seen since their arrival at Ravensridge.
Darting down the passage after him, she threw her arms around Rowan’s waist, pressing her head to his back. She clung to him as she had clung on the ride from Lambourn.
“I want to love you, Rowan or John, or whoever you are. But how can I love I man I do not know? Every time I try to draw close and learn of you, you bar the door to me.”
He did not break away from her, as she’d half expected. Nor did he turn and enfold her in his arms, as she’d hoped.
Instead he stood in fierce, inviolate stillness. Did he mean to stay thus until she let him go? Then he was in for a long wait, for she could be just as stubborn as he. She would not let this man push her away.
At last he spoke in a tight, quiet voice—words dredged from so deep within himself, Cecily fancied they pulsed and bled.
“I do not bar you, lass.” Slowly, he shook his head. “The door is locked, in that you speak true. The key has been lost for a very long time and I cannot find it.”
Did she possess either the wit or the courage to find it for him? Even as she struggled with those questions, Cecily tugged Rowan around to face her, drawing his head down to rest upon her shoulder.