by Deborah Hale
Still he looked doubtful.
“You cannot win by siege!” Why could he not see that? “Fulke will not come out to give you fight. Stephen’s allies from the surrounding country will attack you. Our only chance is to seize the opportunity God has sent us.”
Rowan gave a wry, mirthless laugh. “What makes you so sure the devil did not send it?”
She had one last appeal to advance. But did she dare?
“My lord, you promised me before we wed that you would not thwart me. Do not think that because you melted my bones last night, you also melted my will. If you deny me this heaven-sent opportunity to free Brantham from the thrall of that cursed viper, DeBoissard, I do not know if I will ever be able to forgive you.”
At that instant she read capitulation in his eyes. And she read something else, too.
Agony.
Rowan reeled from the blow.
What could he do? If he refused to go along with Cecily’s reckless enterprise, she would never forgive him. But if any harm came to her on account of it, he would never be able to forgive himself.
Was there no one who could talk sense into her and make her listen? Rowan looked about the encampment. Con ap Ifan should have been in his war counsel with Fitzwalter and Blount.
“Has anyone seen the Welshman?” he demanded of no one in particular.
“Not since last night, my lord,” came the hesitant reply. “After you went into the wood, he saddled his mount again and rode off.”
Rowan bit back a groan of despair, remembering their fight. The daft, galling insults he’d spewed upon his friend. One more unpardonable offense.
His stricken conscience must have shown plainly on his face, for Cecily’s look of proud defiance softened and she touched his arm. “He’ll be back, Rowan, you’ll see. Con doesn’t have it in him to nurse a grudge against those he loves.”
She hesitated briefly, gnawing her lower lip. “Perhaps I don’t, either. It was wrong of me to threaten you with a lifetime of reproaches for doing what you believe is right. Can we find no common ground in this? Together we are a force to be reckoned with. I know we can prevail. If only you will risk trusting me as I trusted you would not harm me last night, when I followed you into the woods.”
Rowan held himself still, searching for a possible solution to an impossible situation.
One thing he knew beyond doubt.
“When this is over, I will find Con, if I have to search from the Marches to Gwynedd and back again. I will set things right between us…somehow.”
Then, as if his resolve had magically restored his friend to him, Rowan knew what Con would counsel.
But could he find the courage to risk a course of action that bid fair to break his heart?
He could not bring himself to meet Cecily’s frank, searching stare. “We will ride for Brantham with all speed. And before the night watch ends, we will put your plan into action.”
He cut off her effusive expressions of gratitude with a gruff warning. “We do this on my terms, mind. Taking every precaution to ensure success at the thriftiest cost in lives.”
His stern tone had no dampening effect on Cecily. She clasped him around the waist with a ferocious joy that drove the breath from his lungs. Or perhaps it was his own yearning for her that robbed him of air.
Almost of their own accord, his arms came up to enfold her. For the last time?
Resting his chin on the top of her head, he ran his hands through the unbound waves of her hair. “Before we strike camp, can I lure you back into my tent and make your bones melt again?”
She tilted her head back, treating him to a brazen, beautiful grin that begged to be kissed. “I see your plot now, DeCourtenay—to tup me until I am too tender to sit a horse!”
Rowan trumpeted with laughter, even as his heart recoiled in pain. “Now there is a plan with merit.”
What if this desperate scheme cost her everything?
As DeCourtenay’s force tethered their mounts in the woods near Brantham, last minute doubts stalked Cecily’s thoughts, black as the predawn darkness.
Realizing the need for swift surprise, Rowan had ordered the supply wagons and siege engines unharnessed and left behind.
“We’ll breakfast from Brantham’s kitchens,” he’d declared in bold, ringing tones that left Cecily atingle.
The drays had been pressed into service to ferry foot soldiers, two and three to a mount. Each of the knights had carried another man pillion.
Cecily had shared Rowan’s gray gelding, fighting the compelling inclinations to let her hands stray lower than his waist.
An owl hooted from a branch overhead, startling Cecily from her musings.
Atop a nearby hill, silhouetted by the pale light of a half-moon, stood Brantham Keep. Her destination. Her goal.
Her home.
Had it been only a fortnight since she’d stolen out of its gates in disguise? It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime in which Rowan DeCourtenay had taken her heart by storm. Compared to the perilous risk of loving this enigmatic man, their surprise attack on Brantham felt like the most timid caution.
“For my own peace of mind,” said Rowan, “let us review our strategy again.”
Fitzwalter and Blount murmured their assent.
“I would rest easier if I could ride with the advance party,” he said—not for the first time.
Cecily fumbled for his hand in the darkness. “Rowan, we have plowed this furrow a dozen times. You match none of DeBoissard’s men in size and coloring. Besides, we need you to lead the raiding force. Do you remember what I’ve told you about the layout of the keep?”
“Aye. A handpicked trio of my men will take the armory and forge—dispensing weapons to your castle folk. Do you recall your part?”
She rattled it off by rote, like a bored scholar repeating an easy lesson. “Once we are through the gates and your men have engaged the watch, I fetch a bow from Ethan’s saddle and fire a flaming arrow. Your signal to attack.”
“Very good.” He drew her away from his lieutenants. “But there is more.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Because I did not want to waste the entire day’s ride arguing with you.”
His tone tightened her already taut nerves. “I do not care for the sound of this.”
He sighed. “Heed me anyway. I would strike you a bargain.”
“Aye?” she answered dubiously.
“I know the two things you value most in life are Brantham and your freedom.”
Cecily opened her mouth to protest that she valued him above even those. But was it true? Uncertain, she could not speak.
“I will grant you both, absolutely,” Rowan continued. “Once I have wrested Brantham from DeBoissard, it will be yours and I will pledge you all the men and supplies you require to hold it. If you find yourself in need of a wily marshal, I know a certain Welsh mercenary who’d likely be glad of a post.”
“Why will I need Con ap Ifan?” Cecily retorted. Surely Rowan could not mean what his words implied. “Where will you be?”
“That is the other side of the coin. Your freedom. We will remain wed so no other man can claim you, but I will take the cross again and promise not to return for many years, leaving you in peace.”
If one of the mighty oaks nearby had suddenly fallen on Cecily, it could not have crushed her so painfully. How could he calmly and coldly advance such a proposition if he cared for her even a tithe as much as she loved him?
“What must I do in return?” She stalled for a moment, fighting back tears Rowan might despise. “To earn such a…boon?”
“It is simple enough. When you get clear of Brantham’s gate to fire the signal flare, do not go back in. I will assign you a trusted escort. You and he will take a pair of horses and ride to that northern manor of yours—Rosegarth? There you will stay until the keep is secured and I send for you.”
He was offering her everything she’d ever wanted from life. Why then did it feel a
s though he was hacking her heart out with a dull, jagged blade?
The harsh lessons of her childhood armed Cecily to rally. Perhaps she was well rid of a husband whose heart she could never hope to claim. Her futile quest for her father’s affection had taught her that much.
Her anger gathered strength. How dare Rowan DeCourtenay have whetted her appetite to the physical pleasures of marriage, only to deny her them for the rest of her life? He had used her, like some common camp follower. And all the while, he had planned to desert her.
Cecily’s rapidly failing composure would only permit her to reply one word.
It hung in the darkness, sealing her fate.
“Agreed.”
Chapter Nineteen
For all its audacity, Cecily’s plan unfolded smoothly.
Almost too smoothly.
The tattoo of hoofbeats from the advance party had barely faded from hearing when a single flaming arrow arced across the night sky. For an instant, Rowan’s heart lifted.
Cecily was clear of the fighting.
It plummeted back to the depths when he realized he might never see her again. Their parting kiss, swift, fierce and indescribably sweet, still burned on his lips. He knew he’d had no choice—to protect her from harm.
To protect her from him.
And she’d accepted his bargain.
Even if he could somehow find absolution for Jacquetta, even if he could somehow make himself worthy of Cecily, he would never come first in her heart. Brantham and its folk would always be ahead of him, and he could not settle for a lower place.
Or could he?
There was no time for him to ponder. Already his men were on the move, advancing swiftly and silently toward the open gate of the keep, with their weapons ready. Fitzwalter drew up the rear, leading a pair of horses. Rowan regretted losing his most capable knight from the raiding party. But he would not trust anyone less canny and valiant with the vital task of spiriting Cecily to safety.
In the flickering torchlight that issued from Brantham’s gate, he saw her throw herself into the saddle. For an instant before she urged the horse northward, Cecily looked back, her gaze searching the throng that poured into the keep.
Like an arrow swift and true, it found him. And held him. For a heartbeat that felt so much longer.
Yet not long enough—by a lifetime.
Even as his warrior instincts spurred him to lead the fight for Brantham, Rowan’s stubborn feet remained rooted to the spot. Watching Cecily ride off, he could not believe that the new day would soon dawn.
For him, an endless night had fallen.
“My lord!” Blount seized Rowan by the arm and shook him from his trance of regret. “We must join the fray—DeBoissard’s garrison is rousing to fight!”
Fulke.
Black bile rose in Rowan’s throat, even as he dashed into the bailey, sword swinging.
That swine had robbed him of every ray of sunshine that had ever brightened his life. After Jacquetta’s death, Rowan’s kinsmen had spirited him out of Poitou before he’d had a chance to wreak his vengeance.
No one stood in his way now.
Brantham’s bailey churned with thunderous, shadowy combat. The fierce clang of iron on iron. Bellows of rage. Shrieks of pain.
Fancying DeBoissard’s oily visage on the swordsman before him, Rowan roared forward, striking him down. His sword now baptised, he swore a silent oath to the women he’d loved.
Before this day had well dawned, he would quench the flaming torch of his rage in Fulke DeBoissard’s blood.
Cecily and her escort rode away from Brantham as fast as was safe in the moon’s waning light. Fortunately, her horse followed Fitzwalter’s with no urging from her, for she could scarcely see the road through her tears.
When she had caught Rowan’s eye that last time, at the gates, she feared sharing the fate of Lot’s wife. Turned by regret into a pillar of salt and never being able to stir again.
She did not doubt that Rowan would prevail against Fulke DeBoissard, now that the stout walls of the keep no longer loomed between them. Soon she would be reunited with her people as the undisputed mistress of Brantham.
Yes. She would soon have everything she’d once told Mother Ermintrude she wanted from life—independence and power over her destiny. Why did these no longer appeal to her as they once had?
Her own perversity, mayhap?
Cecily’s lips twisted into a skewed half smile in spite of her tears. Did she always hanker after what she couldn’t have? Like the hard-to-reach fruit on the pear tree’s topmost branches, which always looked plumpest and juiciest.
Was it only because he’d placed himself beyond her reach that she now yearned for Rowan DeCourtenay more fiercely than ever? Then she would have to conquer her own chronic discontent.
Lost in her thoughts, Cecily had to clutch the reins and sit tight when her mount suddenly slowed and reared up.
From out of the deep shadows on the road ahead emerged a lone horseman.
“Stand aside and let us pass!” demanded Fitzwalter.
The rider curbed his steed. “Does the battle go so badly, then? I’ve never known you to flee a fight, Sir Ilbert.”
Cecily’s heart leapt at the sound of that familiar Welshlilt. “Con! Well met. I thought you must be halfway to Gwynedd by now.”
His ready laughter lightened the night and the shadows in her heart. “I barely got to Witney when I repented my hasty temper. When I rode back and saw DeCourtenay had cached his supplies and engines, I knew you must have convinced him to make a surprise attack. What are you doing on the road, my lady, instead of fighting at his side?”
Cecily patted her horse’s neck to steady him. “Rowan sent me away, Con.” Fighting to keep from blubbering, she told him about the bargain she’d struck.
Instead of the sympathy she’d hoped for, the Welshman replied brusquely, “I thought you a clever wench. But, by heaven, you’re as daft as your lord! I do think passion must make lovers run mad.”
When he’d roused her and claimed her body, Rowan had certainly driven sense from her mind. Cecily did not need a cocky Welshman to rub salt in the wound. “Hold your tongue, Ifan! Or I shall teach you manners at the point of my blade.”
“Don’t be testy, lass. It ill becomes you. Save your spleen for that cur who stole your castle. And tell me what folly made you accept this poor bargain of DeCourtenay’s when you know full well how you’ll pine for him?”
Veiled by the night, a hot blush smarted in her cheeks. Yet Cecily could not deny the truth of Con’s words. “I won’t be a millstone around his neck if he’d rather be free of me.”
“You free of him and him free of you—fie on it! Freedom’s not the great boon it’s vaunted to be, mistress. It may just mean your heart’s a storm-tossed barque without a mooring.” His impatient tone softened, cajoling her to reason. “Take it from a fellow who’s long wanted a lady to hold him a willing captive. DeCourtenay doesn’t want to be free of you any more than you want to be free of him. Look inside yourself and see how little that is.”
Cecily looked.
Con was right. Her free future without Rowan stretched ahead, bleak and barren. Only one question remained.
“Why did he strike this bargain, then, if he doesn’t want to be free of me?”
To her surprise, Ilford Fitzwalter interrupted her discussion with Con for the first time. “Why, even a dunderhead like me can puzzle out that riddle, my lady. He feared for your safety in the fray. He’d have promised you anything to see you clear of the fighting.”
Her mouth fell slack. Why had she not seen it? Rowan did persist in thinking she needed protection. As Jacquetta had. As Aenor did.
Confident in her own fighting skills—perhaps overly so—she’d never been able to appreciate the depth of his concern for her safety.
So he did love her. The notion all but knocked Cecily off her horse.
He loved her enough to risk losing her from his life rather than see her
in jeopardy. Perhaps if she had taken a moment to puzzle it out, the answer would have been obvious. Once again she’d charged ahead without forethought, goaded by her own lack of assurance. Would she ever learn?
Pulling hard on the reins and prodding with one knee, Cecily wheeled her mount back toward the keep on the hill. “There is no time to lose,” she called to Con and Fitzwalter. “DeCourtenay will need every sword he can muster!”
She spurred her horse forward, not bothering to see if the others followed her. She knew they would. But whether they followed or balked made no difference. She would fight for her home, her people and her Empress, by the side of her lord.
Where she belonged.
Barely slowing their mounts as they approached Brantham’s gate, Cecily, Con and Fitzwalter vaulted from their saddles.
When the Welshman paused to pull the bow from his, Cecily urged him on. “Hurry, Con! This will be hand-to-hand fighting. A bow will only slow you.”
Con slung it over his shoulder just the same. “You never know what you might need in a fight, my lady. Now, try not be too bold in the fighting and let me guard your back. If you take a hurt in this and DeCourtenay finds out I urged you to join the battle, he’ll kill me—slowly.”
Cecily laughed. Her spirits, so heavily weighed down just moments ago, had taken flight to the moon. “Look to your own hide, Con. I managed to disarm you once, remember?”
Into the bailey they charged. A burly old warrior immediately rushed forward to engage Cecily. Dizzy with joy at the sight if him, she could scarcely hold up her sword to parry his attack.
With her other hand, she peeled back her hood. “Sire Paston, hold! It is I, Cecily.”
Dumbstruck, he dropped his sword to the ground and held his arms open to her. Tears streamed down his broad face. “My lady. Welcome home.”