The Tenth Suitor

by Laura Strickland

  She felt the icy sting of its bite and knew she was cut, if only superficially.

  Julian lowered the blade as soon as they were away out of her father’s yard, but his arms still imprisoned her like bands of iron.

  Soon, given the cold, she could barely feel any of her extremities. They had ridden into the maw of a storm such as frequently swept this country at the end of the year, and the beautiful costume she wore proved insufficient to protect her from snow and wind. Only Julian’s hateful arms around her and his body at her back lent any warmth. Much as she detested him, she knew she needed that protection.

  She must survive until Thorstan came. How she knew he would come she could not say, save they had exchanged that one look, and his promise lay in it. Her every heartbeat made her certain. He would follow after because she was his—now and forever.

  Her practical side reminded her she barely knew him. A few kisses and a dance in the dark did not evoke eternity. He came to her father’s door in disguise—he might be anyone. But she had seen him fight, a doughty man with a sword. She had seen the way his eyes danced, and felt his strength.

  Whoever he might be, he was the man for her.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked Julian through lips stiff with cold.

  At first it seemed he would not answer. She spoke again, in demand. “Where—?”

  “To the priest. I told you back in the hall. Silly wench, do you not listen?”

  “My father will kill you,” she told him succinctly.

  “Not if I disappear with you after. You will see. Once you are with child, what can he do? He will have the heir he seeks. And everything he owns will be mine.”

  “You are mad.” But Edwina’s heart plummeted, and for the first time her bright certainty wavered.

  Could such a thing happen? If they stood before a priest… But where? The nearest must be at Guisborough. Could he then drag her away and force her to the marriage bed?

  Anger flared still brighter within her, lending welcome heat. No, for she would kill him first, with his own blade if necessary.

  “You think my father will accept such a marriage, such a child?” she spat.

  “I know he will. Beneath all his silly bluster, he is a practical man.”

  “And me? You think I will accept this marriage, speak the words before the priest—that I will not find a way to slit your throat in the night? You may make me wife, but I swear to you I will be widow soon enough.”

  “Shut up, stupid cow! What do you know of how the world works? I saw you, shaming yourself with that jester.” Julian’s voice gusted in Edwina’s ear, like the wind. “You think I will fail in my task because of some buffoon?”

  “Your task?” Edwina repeated.

  “My father forbade me to fail him. Master Cedric may have overindulged you to the point of ruin. But me, I strive always to live up to my sire’s expectations.”

  “Why, you small, arrogant excuse for a man!” Edwina, insulted as well as outraged, straightened and jerked both elbows back into his midsection.

  When he emitted a satisfying “Oof!” she reached with her stiff, half-frozen fingers and drew on the reins, tearing them from his hands.

  She might well be spoiled and headstrong, she might not be the delicate flower Julian would prefer, but she was a horsewoman and knew ponies. Their mount liked pressing on into this foul weather no more than she, and did not fight the command to halt.

  Julian swore and grappled with her, but when he tried to close his hands on her arms she threw back her head in a wild movement and crashed it into his chin.

  While still he howled in agony, she slid from the horse, turned in the swirling darkness, and ran back down the road.

  Chapter Eleven

  Edwina’s slippers had not been made for running, and especially not through snow. Her beautiful gown, of which she had been so proud when she donned it, gave no protection from the wind. She knew Julian, advantaged by the horse, would pursue her. She should get off the road and hide, but in this cold she suspected it would mean certain death.

  Certain death, or marriage to Julian… As she pelted along, she weighed the two in her mind. How could all of this have gone so wrong? A Christmas gathering, her father had proposed, a feast at which you shall have the opportunity to see the best of our local gentry and choose one for husband.

  A Christmas wedding, her mother had enthused. Could anything be more romantic?

  Struggling through the icy darkness did not feel romantic, nor did straining her ears for sounds of pursuit above the wind. But oh, swirling in the arms of her fool among those kinder snowflakes had.

  And perhaps all this peril made a fair exchange for one kiss from him.

  Upon that thought she heard it, faint below the gusting of the wind—the sound of a horse coming up behind. That had not taken long.

  She had to get off the road, find a cottage or hut where she might beg shelter.

  But before she could, a huge dark shape loomed above her out of the storm. She screamed and the figure—another horse—reared, held in check by a smaller figure. A man swore and then spoke in a voice she knew.

  “Edwina?”

  “Thorstan!” He had come, oh, he had! All at once she wanted to weep, but there was no time. She could barely see her love between the driving snowflakes. But his hands caught her shoulders before he tore the black cape from his back and thrust it at her.

  “Here—wrap that round you. Where is he?”

  “Coming. I got away, but—”

  “Up on the horse with you. Ride.”

  “No.” Tears clogged Edwina’s throat. “Not unless you come with me.”

  “I will. You ride ahead.”

  “Thors—” The word broke when he covered her lips with his, a quick, bruising kiss that, there in the cold darkness, managed to convey all he felt for her. His strength lay in it, which stiffened her spine, fired her intent.

  “Go,” he told her then.

  Aye, he might love her—she believed to her toes that he did—but he little knew her yet. It would take far more than cold and darkness to make her abandon him.

  “Go,” he repeated. “Your father is on his way.”

  She mounted his horse, one of her father’s sturdy ponies, but did not move away. Before she could reconcile her own defiance, Lord Julian appeared from the midst of the white, wind-driven vortex, leading his mount.

  “You!” he cried as he dropped the lead and raised his sword. “Misbegotten buffoon!”

  And, just like that, the two men engaged one another. No careful, deliberate contest this, such as they had staged in her father’s hall. This was swift and deadly battle and, clear from the outset, a matter of kill or be killed. Edwina blinked desperately and strove to see through the snowflakes that half blinded her. Thorstan’s black costume made a stark silhouette against the white snow; Lord Julian, harder to see, fought like a ghost half hidden by the storm.

  Edwina’s pony danced nervously beneath her, and her heart lodged in her throat as the swords screeched together again and again. The cold nearly forgotten, she urged her reluctant mount closer. Should Thorstan fall, she would charge Lord Julian, if need be, and use her pony as a weapon.

  A quick flurry, a desperate movement, a cry, and a gust of wind that made Edwina shut her eyes and turn her head.

  Both combatants were now so plastered with snow she could barely tell them apart. When she looked again, blinking madly, she saw one of them lay in the road and the other stood above him, sword to his defeated opponent’s chest.

  But which of them had won? Edwina knew she should ride and swiftly, in case the white-shrouded form even now stalking toward her proved to be Julian. But oh, what did her safety matter if her love lay there in the road?

  Hands reached up and seized the reins, pried them from her suddenly limp fingers.

  “I thought,” Thorstan said, amusement lying beneath the strain in his voice, “I bade you ride.”

  Relief swept Edwina,
staggering in its intensity.

  “Ah, but as you shall discover,” she told him with regret, “I am rarely obedient.”

  And her fool told her, “I can hardly wait.”

  Epilogue

  “Are you frightened?” Gertrude asked as she smoothed Edwina’s hair over her shoulders. “After all, you are marrying a man you barely know. I was well acquainted with my Marcus, yet I remember I nearly threw up before my wedding.”

  Edwina met her own eyes in the wavy glass, which was one of her prized possessions. “Frightened” did not describe her emotions. Anxious, eager, and half dizzy with desire, aye, but she felt no fear.

  She would lie in the arms of her love this night.

  “And are you sure you want to wear your hair down?” Gertrude pressed. “You look beautiful, but I could give you an elaborate weave of braids, all piled up, if you like.”

  “Down,” Edwina breathed. She wanted to go to her husband with all her defenses lowered and her heart in her hands. She wanted him to see her as the woman she was.

  Her father entered the chamber behind Gertrude, big, bluff, and intrusively male.

  “I wish to speak with my daughter before the ceremony, Gertie,” he said kindly. “Run along now.”

  Gertrude went, after squeezing Edwina’s fingers. Edwina turned to face her father.

  “Well, child,” he said, “are you certain about this?”

  Edwina drew a deep breath, fighting her rampant excitement. “You have not come to forbid the union, Father? You bade me make my choice; so I have done.”

  Cedric gazed at her; she could not read the expression in his eyes. “Ten lords a-leaping for your favor, and you choose the fool.”

  “No fool, he.”

  “And no titled bridegroom, either. I so wanted that for you, daughter.”

  “Aye, Father, but I find Thorstan is a lord after all—that of my heart. And,” she added cunningly, “he did save my honor, if not my life.”

  “A former mercenary,” Cedric pretended to lament, though now Edwina could see the twinkle in his eye.

  “A strong man, just like you.”

  “Good thing he did not murder Lord Julian; that is all we would need. Your Thorstan knows how to pull a stroke, I will say that for him.”

  “Then bless me with a kiss, Father, and let us go to him.”

  The great hall, when they reached it, seethed with guests and glowed with candlelight. Edwina’s mother, already in tears, hurried to meet them.

  “So romantic, Edwina. A Christmas wedding after all.”

  An aisle had been formed between the standing guests. Edwina clasped her mother’s hands and gazed down it, her eyes searching for one man, but she saw only the priest awaiting her.

  “Come, daughter.”

  She started down the aisle on her father’s arm, her feet seeming to float above the flagstones. The onlookers shifted as she passed them and suddenly…

  She saw him standing quietly and waiting for her beside the priest.

  Waiting for her, aye, and oh, how very handsome he looked with his spine straight and his brown hair all shining and—from whence had come that fine suit of clothes he wore?

  She caught a glimpse of Alfred standing with him, serving as groomsman, and had her answer. Her fool came to her still in costume. But beneath it all, his was the truest heart she had ever known. She had encountered that honest, true heart when first he coaxed her to smile for him, when they danced together in the night, when he kissed her. And now she claimed it for her own.

  She and Cedric paused before the altar. Edwina longed to extend her hands to Thorstan, but her father held on to them, turned, and addressed the crowd.

  “My good friends, this is a day of which I have dreamed. I bade my daughter make a choice, and in so doing she has taught her old father a lesson. For she takes a self-made man, one who has earned his own way in the world by dint of courage, determination, and”—he grinned widely—“a touch of deception, just as I did. Which proves like needs like, and in the end the heart knows where it is at home.”

  He placed Edwina’s hands in Thorstan’s, which felt warm and strong. Edwina looked into Thorstan’s eyes and saw that despite the sober occasion and his air of quiet dignity they danced with the merry humor she wished to see every day for the rest of her life.

  The priest spoke the words, though Edwina barely heard them. She must have given the proper responses, for Thorstan smiled at her and his hands tightened on hers as his gladness became her own. She saw his lips move also, and thought about kissing them later, in the dark.

  Abruptly, the main door of the great hall flew open, turning every head in the room. A man stood there, a weedy, trail-stained fellow whom Edwina recognized, after a stunned moment, as none other than Kenweth, the missing lord.

  He gazed about in earnest confusion, focused on Cedric, and asked plaintively, “I think I had an invitation, though I seem to have lost it. But I came anyway. Am I too late?”

  Thorstan began to laugh, and Edwina also. Hands still clasped, and surely joined, they turned to face their future, together.

  A word about the author...

  Born and raised in Western New York, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. Embracing her mother's heritage, she pursued a lifelong interest in Celtic lore, legend and music, all reflected in her writing.

  She has made pilgrimages to both Newfoundland and Scotland in the company of her daughter, but is usually happiest at home not far from Lake Ontario, with her husband and her "fur" child, a rescue dog.

  She practices gratitude every day and is delighted to be published by The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Thank you for purchasing

  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.