Templar Knight, Forbidden Bride

by Lynna Banning

  Suddenly she was frightened. What was she doing, riding away with Reynaud to God knew what? It had seemed a simple task at the time, carrying a message for someone unknown even to Emir Yusef. All she had to do was sing a particular song, wait for the proper response, and pass a message to the contact. She had not expected the contact to be her cousin Reynaud.

  But then she had no choice. Some instinct told her not to trust Bernard de Rodez, even though he was Uncle Henri’s son; she’d decided to trust Reynaud. Now that she had thrown in her lot with the Templar knight, a knife edge of uncertainty sliced at her belly. She knew this was more than a simple excursion to Carcassonne. There was more at stake, and she was embroiled in it up to her neck. Reynaud was on some kind of a mission and he had enemies who wanted to stop him.

  Until this moment she had not clearly understood that she could be in real danger. Still, she was with Reynaud. All she had to do was stay close to the dark figure ahead of her and he would keep her safe.

  Behind her a branch snapped. Instantly Reynaud glanced back, his face pale as an egg in the gauzy light. He waited until she drew abreast of him, then raised his hand, signalling for silence. He cocked his head, listening intently, then gestured for her to leave the pilgrim road and follow him into the trees.

  All she could hear was her own laboured breathing, and the more she tried to inhale and exhale quietly, the louder it seemed. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears.

  Another owl screeched over her head, then cut its cry short and flapped off. Something had startled it. Before she could draw breath she heard hooves pounding along the road. Had de Rodez discovered her ruse so soon?

  Reynaud held up his forefinger. One rider. He backed his mount further into the trees, and Leonor grasped her reins so tight her fingers went numb.

  The sound of the horseman drew nearer, and she stopped breathing. The hoofbeats grew louder, louder, and then suddenly faded. A shudder rippled down her spine. Whoever it was had passed their hiding place.

  They waited in silence until the trill of a night bird broke the quiet, then cautiously stepped their horses out of the trees. Without speaking they regained the pilgrim road and started forwards again.

  An hour passed. When a rat scuttled across her path, Leonor cried out and Reynaud drew rein.

  ‘What is wrong?’ he hissed over his shoulder.

  She hesitated. It wasn’t only the startling noise of the small animal; she was suddenly seeing the obvious. There was more, much more, to the world outside Granada than she had ever imagined.

  ‘I am wondering what I have unleashed by sidetracking that oaf Bernard de Rodez.’

  ‘Why now do you think of that?’

  ‘That man is up to something. How greedy he was for information! He wheedled and pried until I thought I would scream.’

  ‘What else did you tell him?’

  In spite of her unease, she managed to smile, but she ignored the question. ‘Rey, who is Bernard de Rodez really? What does he want?’

  Reynaud’s head came up. ‘He is a Hospitaller knight. One of others in his order who hate the idea of Granada’s alliance with the Templars.’ He pricked his destrier forwards. ‘And he wants the Templar gold I carry.’

  Her mare threaded its way along the leaf-softened path and she studied the lean figure riding noiselessly through the low-branched trees a few paces ahead of her.

  ‘Where do you fit in, Reynaud? Why are you carrying Templar gold in your saddlebag?’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Why will you not tell me?’

  ‘I do not want you to know these things.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Trust me, Lea,’ he growled. ‘You are safer not knowing.’

  For an instant her heart stopped beating. It was clear he had not told her everything. He was struggling with something. But she did trust him.

  ‘Are your loyalties to Granada and the Templar at odds? Are you pulled in two directions?’

  Again he did not answer.

  His face looked white and strained, his lips stretched thin, his jaw tight. The look he sent her would scorch snowflakes. But the pain in his gaze when he pinned her with those stormy green eyes kept her from questioning him further.

  Goodness! What had seemed like a simple favor to Emir Yusef, and an adventure for her, was turning into something complicated and frightening. Rey was right. The world beyond Granada was dangerous.

  But she would never admit her fear to him. Never. He would scowl at her, make her feel like a child, small and insignificant. She had revered Reynaud when they were young. Now that he was a man, she was not sure how she felt about him. As a man, he seemed aloof and forbidding. There was no joy in him.

  They rode until the dawn sky turned a milky grey, then veered off the road and took shelter in a thickly tangled copse of cypress and blooming tamarisk. Reynaud dismounted and spread one of the travel carpets over the ground; Leonor draped another over a low-hanging branch to provide some shade when the sun rose.

  Reynaud stared at their makeshift camp. Should he lie down to rest next to her? Sleep beside her, without touching her?

  He was glad of the wine in his pack. He welcomed its numbing power, prayed it would render his body insensible to temptation. Being near her was pure agony. He had tried to mask his feelings by being curt, but that had worked only up to a point.

  A sharp pain needled through his heart at the puzzled hurt in her eyes each time he bit out sharp words. Nevertheless, it kept at bay the fire that smouldered just beneath his carefully controlled exterior.

  Was it enough? He sucked in a lungful of the sultry, lavender-scented air and listened to the drone of honeybees in the sheltered glade. No matter what he did, Leonor was always in his mind. Foolish she might be. Headstrong and heedless of dangers she knew nothing about. He disliked her naïvety as much as he desired her. He would protect her with his last breath.

  He wrenched his gaze away from her and focused instead on his warhorse, tied to a thick cypress branch next to Leonor’s mare, and swore under his breath. How could he stand lying beside her? Smelling her hair? Feeling her warmth?

  Leonor settled the wrapped bundle of bread and cheese on the carpet and motioned to him. Without speaking he knelt across from her and accepted the food she handed him, careful not to graze his fingers against hers.

  They ate in silence. He drank more of the wine than he should, then pulled the chainmail shirt off over his head and stretched out on the carpet with his back to Leonor. He heard her re-wrap the food parcel and slip it back into her saddlebag. He closed his eyes, feigning sleep.

  ‘Rey?’ she whispered.

  He steeled himself not to reply. With a sigh she settled herself on the opposite side of the carpet, not touching him but so close the heat of her body scorched his skin.

  ‘Rey?’ she said again. ‘Are you awake?’

  He worked to keep his breathing even. Every nerve in his rigid frame throbbed with wanting, as if a fire danced along his veins. It was torture to lie close to her.

  He lay awake while her breathing slowed and gradually subsided into the rhythmic pattern of slumber.

  Leonor wakened only once. Reynaud sat a few paces away under a drooping willow branch, staring fixedly at something beyond her head.

  ‘Rey?’

  Instantly he focused his gaze on her and his lips formed a wry smile. ‘Go back to sleep, Lea. All is well.’ His voice was low and rough, but his words, spoken so calmly and deliberately, soothed her. He was sharp-spoken and cynical, but he was protecting her, and for that she was grateful. She admired him for it; she knew he did not want the burden.

  She woke again hours later to find him still sitting under the willow, his knees bent, his head pillowed on his folded arms.

  ‘Rey,’ she whispered. He lifted his head and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Rey, you need not sleep sitting up. Why not simply share the carpet with me?’

  It took him a long minute to answer. ‘I
have always slept alone, even when I was a boy.’

  Aye, she remembered. She remembered something else as well. With each league they covered Reynaud grew more snappish and blunt-spoken. Something was amiss.

  ‘You resent my presence, do you not?’

  Wearily, he nodded. ‘But no more or less than before.’

  She bit her lip hard. ‘Or perhaps it is just me, myself, that you resent? A woman who plays and sings for others? A woman who does not meet your standards of behaviour?’

  He sent her a long look, but said nothing.

  That was it. He did not like her. Somehow the realisation made her chest hurt.

  Chapter Eleven

  At mid-morning, they set off again. The sun climbed high above them, a ball of merciless light in the sapphire blue summer sky. The heat pounded on Leonor’s head until her temples throbbed with each step the mare took. She clamped her jaw tightly shut and urged the horse forwards over the rutted path. Dust stung her eyes, clogged her nose and throat. Pulling the white headscarf over her mouth, she glared at the rump of Reynaud’s grey destrier and tried not to cough. Sweat plastered her tunic to her back.

  She was hot and grimy and so sticky that buzzing tiny gnats swarmed around her, catching in her hair. Three hours ago she had laboriously brushed out the tangles and coiled it back up under the turban she wore. Oh, to have a bath! Or even splash cool water over her face.

  Could Reynaud not slow his pace? Or at least rest from time to time?

  ‘May we stop?’ Leonor called.

  ‘No.’ He bit out the word.

  She could curse the man. ‘Rey, I am bone-weary and hot and dusty and—’

  He turned his mount to face her. ‘Can you not keep quiet?’ he snapped.

  Heat suffused her face. ‘But I am thirsty.’

  ‘So am I,’ came his clipped response.

  Tears stung behind her eyelids. ‘Whenever I ask a question, you growl at me like an angry wolf. I would prefer Benjamin’s endless grammar lessons to tiptoeing through a clutch of hen’s eggs to avoid your sharp tongue.’

  He reined away. ‘So be it,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Leonor clenched her teeth until her jaw hurt. ‘As a travelling companion, you are impossible!’

  ‘That I know,’ he shouted back.

  She stared at his rigid back, then prodded her mount forwards until she rode beside him. ‘You have changed, Rey. You are not the same person I revered as a child. Then you were merry, and you told me tales of knights in far-off places. You would even halt your training to play at hoops or teach me chess. Then,’ she said with deliberation, ‘you were my friend.’

  ‘That has not changed, Lea.’

  A curious flash of anger cut into her brain, and more words spilled out before she could catch them. ‘And then you left Granada, rode away to France for some man’s reason that did not include me. You abandoned me!’

  Reynaud spurred ahead, then halted and turned his horse into her path. ‘Lea, I had to go. I had to find my own place in life.’

  ‘I wept for a whole week. I hated you!’

  He frowned at her, a muscle twitching in his jaw. ‘You were a child then, as was I. You are a woman now.’

  A wash of rage flooded her body from neck to toe. ‘What difference does that make? I am jouncing along behind you in this stifling heat and dust, and all you can do is remind me that I am a woman? That I know already!’

  Reynaud leaned towards her. Heat waves shimmered around his broad shoulders and his dark uncovered head. She gulped a breath of the languid, lavender-scented air.

  ‘You insisted on coming with me. This is what real life is like outside Granada, where you were fed iced sherbets in your shaded bower.’

  ‘You liked iced sherbets! Oh, Rey, I understood you when you were a boy.’

  One dark eyebrow arched. ‘You were young, then.’

  The man was maddening. She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. He was well made. Handsome, even, with his finely sculpted nose and mouth and those green eyes. Unexpectedly her heart caught.

  ‘You were also young once,’ she said softly. ‘I looked up to you, admired you. Now you are a man, and…and I do not understand you.’ She bit her parched lower lip until she tasted blood. ‘I do not know this stranger who rides before me.’

  The oddest look crossed his face, and then he gave her a lopsided smile and for an instant she glimpsed regret in his eyes. ‘No one knows me, Lea. Not even myself.’

  ‘You are a Templar. A warrior for hire.’

  His mouth thinned. ‘That I am not. There are more important things than fighting. One is living without knowing who, or what, I am.’

  Without another word he pulled hard on the reins, and the big destrier turned a circle and lumbered ahead.

  They rode for another hour, then he slowed until Leonor caught up to him and he turned the grey to stand nose to nose with her cream mare.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’

  She nodded. He handed her the goatskin bag tied to his pommel. ‘Drink.’

  She uncorked the vessel, pulled the white face veil to one side and tipped her head back. Water dribbled out of one corner of her mouth, and Reynaud reached to retrieve the skin.

  ‘That’s enough. More, and you will be sick.’

  ‘More, and I will no longer be athirst!’ she snapped. She snatched the container out of his hand.

  He closed his fingers around her wrist. ‘Do not test my patience, Leonor.’ He gave her arm a gentle shake, and the goatskin dropped into his open palm. ‘We will stop at dusk. You may drink all you wish then.’

  Her gaze followed the water skin as he recorked it and let it drop over his saddle horn. ‘I would have more now,’ she countered.

  ‘That, I know,’ he said evenly. ‘You do not know what is good for you.’ He guided his horse ahead. ‘Tonight,’ he repeated, his voice low and rough. ‘Now, ride. Ride until I tell you to stop.’

  Leonor pressed her dry lips together. ‘You spew out orders like bossy old Benjamin.’

  Reynaud nodded. ‘Benjamin has your welfare in mind.’

  She glared at his back. ‘And you?’

  ‘I, also. Now, move.’

  Reynaud glanced back over his shoulder to make sure she heeded his command. Her usually cool grey eyes were aflame. Then, as he watched, the hot, angry light in her gaze dimmed, then faded.

  ‘You are travel-weary,’ he said. ‘And tomorrow it will be worse. Tomorrow we leave the pilgrim road and travel overland, through the fields and woods, to bypass Toulouse.’

  ‘Toulouse! But why? I have always longed to see Toulouse. I could try my skill on the harp at the castle court, for I am told that Great Eleanor—’

  ‘I am known in Toulouse,’ he said shortly. ‘And not welcome. Their count is, or rather was, a Hospitaller.’

  His gut wrenched at the disappointment written on her face. ‘I am sorry, Lea. Like as not none would mark me, but I would not chance it.’

  ‘Why should you be remarked?’ she persisted.

  Reynaud drew in a sharp breath and exhaled it slowly. This, too, he remembered of her as a child; she questioned everything. It was even more maddening now than it was then.

  ‘Because,’ he said, his voice quiet, ‘it was I who killed their count.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘But why?’

  ‘It was an accident. In a tournament at Ascalon, after I was knighted. His lance broke. Mine did not. This…’ he patted the grey’s muscular neck ‘…was once his horse. And the sword I carry, and my helmet…were also his.’

  She stared at him, her eyes darkening to the colour of steel. Then the thick lashes dropped, hiding her feelings. She lifted her reins and stepped her mare forwards, past him. He let her take the lead, and they rode in tense silence until late afternoon, skirting golden fields and vineyards lush with purple grapes. The ripe, slightly sour smell of fermenting fruit blended with the sharp scent of hay crushed beneath their horses’ hooves. The heavy, still air
aggravated his unease.

  He kept his gaze riveted on Leonor’s stiff back. She was close to exhaustion, he knew. Still, she did not sway or slump in the saddle. She had not even asked for water these past three hours. His heart swelled in reluctant admiration.

  Would to God she would prove as resolute when they reached their destination. He had no idea what awaited them in Carcassonne.

  At dusk, he called a halt. When his voice rang out behind her, Leonor closed her eyes in relief. She could go no farther! Her thighs stung from the long hours in the saddle. Her bottom ached. And the suffocating heat—ay de mi! She could not travel another step.

  She pulled her knee up and over the saddle horn and slipped off the mare. Reaching up behind the cantle, she untied her cloak and one thin woollen blanket, even though the air was so heavy she would need neither unless it rained. Neither would they need a fire. Late summer nights in Languedoc were as hot and humid as nights in Granada. And, she admitted grudgingly, more dangerous.

  She wandered towards the river that purled a few yards away, then glanced back through the lacework of leafy beech trees where Reynaud was spreading a travel carpet and arranging the food packet in the centre. Then he tramped off through the thick brush to the river’s edge.

  Exhausted and sweaty, she slipped upstream to bathe. Just as she stepped to the river bank she glanced to her left and her heart stopped. Through a feathery screen of tamarisk she could see Reynaud. She watched him raise his arms over his head and stretch his body, rotating his shoulders and neck. Then he brought his hands to the belt at his waist and began to undo it.

  The heady, scented air closed over her nose and mouth, and for a fleeting moment she could not breathe. She gulped a lungful of air, then another, as Reynaud unbuckled his sword belt and laid it aside. He pulled off his chainmail shirt and padded gambeson and dropped it where he stood. His smooth, bare skin glistened with perspiration.

  ‘Oh!’ she breathed. Instantly she clapped her hand over her mouth. He was marvellously well formed! Hard muscle ridged his upper torso, the dark hairs on his chest broken by a curving white scar. Fine dark curls peppered his abdomen.