Heart Of A Knight

by Barbara Samuel

  Only one of his own men was yet standing, the same who'd eyed the bay—and had captured it. He joined Thomas with a cry, and together they faced the other three. Kivelsworthy, his blond curls sticking out below the helm. Margrave in his black. The one they called The Mountain.

  A swell of heat and power swelled in Thomas. His breath came in ragged gasps, and sweat prickled along his back and scalp and sides, and his arms were so weary he could not think how he'd manage even a blow with one sword, much less lift two. But it did not matter. Here was the heart of it, and his blood sung. All time slowed, and there came over his ears a deep silence, where no roaring or wild trumpet or shriek came, only the loud thudding of his heart and the raggedness of his breath and the eyes of his opponents. He did not even hear his own cries, only the roughness of them tearing his throat.

  And here was the dance: the swing of swords in weary arms, the swirl of horse and man and shining armor, the blood roaring, the smell of battle. A beauty unmeasured, a power unknown, a perfection of movement that ached in him, burst like a wild sun in his chest.

  And when it was over, he sat alone, only mildly wounded, blinking to see they had finished. Margrave lay on the ground, and Thomas could not quite see what looked so odd about him until he saw that the man's helm had twisted, and he could not see. Kivelsworthy, sprawled in the dust, motionless, and the fat knight wheezed to one side of the arena, bent over.

  Thomas laughed, and ripped off his helmet and raised both arms with both swords over his head in triumph, to accept the roaring approval of the crowd.

  But he sought the gaze of only one, and sought her on the dais, but she was not there.

  She was in the field, racing in her green gown, her hair flying behind her, tears streaming down her face. He dismounted and his knees nearly buckled at the new trial of bearing his weight after so much. He dropped the swords and stood there, unable to take another step, unsure he could even lift his arms to embrace her.

  But she flung herself with a glad cry into him, and Thomas found he did have a little strength left to put his arms around her. And there in the tournament field, with the cries of a happy crowd all around him, he bent and kissed his lady, as a knight.

  And the crowd roared again, and tossed trinkets toward him. Thomas lifted his head in wonder, holding her close to him, as others swarmed up to him—Robert and John, Mary and Alice, both with tears on their faces.

  "Four horses!" Robert cried in excitement.

  "I thought you dead at the last!" Mary said, touching his arm.

  "That was some fight," John said, near chortling. "One, two—"

  Their voices swirled and washed over him, but Thomas looked only into the green eyes of his love, who had fought for him, as he'd fought for her. "I love you," he whispered.

  Her eyes spoke for her, eyes filled and shining. "You were as noble as a king out there, Thomas. I near fainted away with rapture."

  He laughed.

  There was a sudden muting of the chatter, and Thomas looked up to see Edward himself parting the crowd. He halted before Thomas, his eyes unreadable as he stared.

  At last he said simply, "Well done."

  And smiled.

  EPILOGUE

  Alice of Roxburgh wore a gown of blue silk, dyed with indigo by the lady's own hands. The fabric swirled around her on currents of air that swept from some invisible source through the grand cathedral.

  Where her son, born to her in a cottage so mean it had only dirt on the floors, knelt before the king of all England, who raised his sword and pronounced the grand words that would make him Sir Thomas of Roxburgh, soon to be husband of Lady Elizabeth.

  As he rose, they cheered. Isobel and her Stephen, Tall Mary and John Tyler, even John Margrave, who bowed as Thomas passed.

  And Alice discreetly wiped away a tear, and left at the foot of Mary, the mother of all women and their sons, the wooden cross she had worn all her life.

  Then she went out into the grand sunlight of the bright autumn day to feast in celebration of a long journey, well ended.

  ~~###~~

  This is for my father, Jim Hair, who took a fourteen-year-old girl to Romeo and Juliet and didn’t mind getting the soundtrack for Christmas even though his taste ran a little more to country; who said a long, long time ago maybe romance novels were what I’d do best; who used to tear out his hair at missed curfews and bad-boy boyfriends but now brags to everyone about his "creative and independent daughter." Thanks, Dad, for never giving up on me.

  BARBARA SAMUEL O'NEAL

  Barbara Samuel (who also writes as Barbara O’Neal) is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, and has won Romance Writers of America’s RITA award an astounding six times, and she has been a finalist 13 times. Her books have been published around the world, including France, Germany, Italy, and Australia/New Zealand, among others. One of her recent women’s fiction titles, The Lost Recipe for Happiness (written as Barbara O’Neal) went back to print eight times, and her book How to Bake a Perfect Life was a Target Club pick in 2011.

  Whether set in the turbulent past or the even more challenging present, Barbara’s books feature strong women, families, dogs, food, and adventure—whether on the road or toward the heart.

  Now living in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Barbara lives with her partner, Christopher Robin, an endurance athlete, along with her dog and cats. She is an avid gardner, hiker, photographer and traveler who loves to take off at dawn to hike a 14er or head to a faraway land. She loves to connect with readers and is very involved with them on the Internet.

  You may read more about Barbara’s books at her main website, find her at her A Writer Afoot blog and on Facebook.

  Visit Barbara on the Web!

  www.BarbaraSamuel.com

  www.AWriterAfoot.com

  www.BarbaraONeal.com

  ~~~

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Please enjoy excerpts of some of Barbara's other Books:

  Excerpt: Lucien's Fall

  Excerpt: A Winter Ballad

  Excerpt: A Bed of Spices

  Excerpt: The Black Angel

  Excerpt: Night of Fire

  Excerpt: Dancing Moon

  Additional titles, including those from other genre, are listed at the end of the excerpts or click HERE to jump there.

  Barbara is very active writing new books and converting her backlist into eBooks. To find the most up to date information, please visit her website.

  LUCIEN’S

  FALL

  (Excerpt)

  by

  Barbara Samuel

  PROLOGUE

  To souls oppress’d and dumb with grief,

  The Gods ordain this kind releif;

  That Musick shou’d in sounds convey,

  What dying Lovers dare not say.

  ~ John Dryden

  Lucien Harrow was drunk. It was not uncommon. In his set, to be sober at three of a muggy early summer morning would have been a far more unusual occurrence.

  What was uncommon was the fact that he sat in his shirtsleeves in his study, his brocaded waistcoat flung over the back of a chair, dipping his quill again and again in a pot of ink.

  A powerful sense of desperation—unblunted by the spirits he’d consumed—drove him to scrawl notations over the paper. In his head pounded a wild, ringing gypsy music, a swirl and a dance, a little turn…

  He squeezed his eyes closed and pushed away from the writing table, dropping the quill and picking up his glass. His head bobbed in time to the sound in his mind, the notes undrowned. Unsteadily, he aimed himself for the sideboard and the decanter of claret.

  Crystal bottle in hand, he hummed the music aloud, over and over, swinging the bottle as if he were conducting. And as he hummed, he saw the notes as a river of colors. They rose and swirled, like an elaborate braid, each strand woven around the others, none muddied or muted. Unless he wished it.

  The claret shone in his glass, ruby colored, like the sound of viola. Lucien pushed his hair from hi
s face and drank deeply, then stumbled back to his desk, carrying the glass. Some splashed onto his hand. A burn in his belly warned him to cease, but he drank it all in a single swallow.

  He then gathered the sheaf of papers over which he’d been laboring, and calmly, deliberately held them over the flame of the candle until they caught fire. When they were black and curled, he tossed them on the grate and stumbled toward bed, having silenced the sounds one more time.

  One more time.

  Chapter One

  Black or fair, or tall or low,

  I alike with all can sport.

  ~ Thomas Stanley

  A rose thorn bit Madeline’s finger, another tiny, stinging scratch to add to the many marks covering her hands. Absently, she straightened. Sucking welling drips of blood from her finger, she eyed a cloud of dust that marked the arrival of yet another pair of visitors. Their figures were haloed against the lowering gold light of a late May afternoon.

  Guests had been trailing in most of the day in a slow, sporadic trail, Londonites fleeing the strange early heat of the city. Among them would be the marquess Beauchamp.

  Madeline wondered if one of these might be he, the man who would, with any luck, be her husband before the year was through. As this pair, one on a horse, the other a phaeton, raced through dusty bars of sunlight on the drive, Madeline doubted seriously either of them was the marquess. She’d heard he was a conservative man.

  Since it was the marquess she awaited, Madeline turned away. Overly warm and feeling dusty, she knew she ought to go inside and bathe before supper, but a curious stubbornness kept her wandering through the ragged hedges and neglected flower beds, pausing to peer at one bush or another with a frown.

  Once the gardens at Whitethorn had been famous throughout England, the legacy of the first earl of Whitethorn. Madeline had often thought the man was her spiritual grandfather, for she alone among his descendants had been born with his passion for the place. Juliette, her stepmother, was in favor of allowing it to go wild in the fashion of the day, but Madeline couldn’t bear the thought.

  Unfortunately, there was simply not enough money left in the estate to pay the gardeners required to maintain formal gardens of this size. And not even Madeline, with her love and the knowledge she’d laboriously uncovered for herself, could hope to do it alone.

  With a sigh, she shook her skirts and wound her way toward the house over a path covered with lemon thyme. The sound of the two riders pounding up the graveled drive reached her. She brushed away a stray lock of hair as she looked through the claire-voie, a window cut in the eight-foot-high topiary hedge.

  The riders raced up the road madly. The gleaming, sporty phaeton rocked dangerously in the rain-rutted course. The other man rode on a beautiful, lean black horse; beast and man were illuminated with the bars of hazy light falling through thick tree branches. They were young men, London rakes, a breed of man beneath Madeline’s contempt. She found their arrogance and idleness a bore.

  And yet, as they laughed and shouted, each goading the other to a faster pace, Madeline felt her blood rise in a strange excitement. It was in particular the man on the horse who caught her eye. He wore no powder or wig, and his thick dark hair was drawn back into a queue with a black ribbon. His body was long and sinuously made, and he rode as if he and the horse were one being. From where she stood, his face gave the impression of exotic tilts and powerful bones.

  But it was the hedonism Madeline ordinarily found so distasteful in such men that drew her now, made her take up her skirts and run toward the opening of the maze so she would not lose sight of him behind the hedge.

  She broke through to the open stretch of lawn between the maze and the Elizabethan house of Whitethorn just as the man urged his horse into a full run. Light dappled faster and faster over his dark hair, his dark horse, his long legs. Next to him, only a little behind, the phaeton rocked noisily.

  As they neared the end of the drive, Madeline burst into a run. The man on the horse left the road and bolted across the same lawn. His speed was almost dizzying, and he headed with purpose for a shoulder-high hedge that edged the house garden.

  Madeline froze. They would both be killed.

  But even as she clamped a hand over her mouth, watching in horror, the black beast leaped with stunning grace over the squared hedge. Horse and man hung—haloed and gilded by the afternoon light—for an endless time against the sky.

  As he hung there, suspended in midair, looking like Pan, like some untamed beast come in from the wild, the man laughed. The sound rang with robust defiance into the day, and Madeline felt her heart catch with a sharp pang.

  To be so free!

  Horse and rider landed nimbly on the other side of the hedge. For one long moment, Madeline stared after him, her heart pounding. Then, setting her mouth, she gathered her skirts and turned away to slip into the house by a side door. She didn’t wish to greet anyone in such spirits, and particularly not the man who’d risked life and limb for a foolish jump.

  The sound of the free male laughter, the easy camaraderie of bets won and lost, followed her as she ducked into the house.

  * * *

  Lucien Harrow dismounted with a victorious cry.

  "Foolish bet, Jonathan!"

  Jonathan leaped from the carriage nimbly and set his wig aright. "I would have won it had you not taken that suicidal leap!"

  From the top of the wide stone steps came a female voice, at once mocking and congratulatory. "Well done, Harrow! We saw it from the windows."

  Lucien leaped up the steps and took her hand, his breath still coming fast. The widowed countess, though well past the first blush of beauty, was still generally counted to be the most glorious creature London had ever seen—and word was her sexual appetites were as prodigious as her beauty.

  Lucien had never been her lover, but he never ruled out the possibility. With a mocking smile of his own, he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a bold, moist kiss to it.

  A flicker of approval danced in the violet eyes. "Dear boy, I’m so glad you could come!"

  Jonathan elbowed Lucien aside, not at all covertly, and swept the countess into a lewd embrace. Over his head, Juliette met Lucien’s eyes with a tiny smile, lifting one eyebrow lightly.

  "Jealousy doesn’t become you, Jonathan," she said in reproof, tapping him with her fan as she moved away, trailing lace and brocade and the scent of her omnipresent cosmetics. "Come have refreshment, gentlemen."

  Jonathan shoved Lucien, only half in play. "This is one you’ll not spoil, man."

  A slow smile spread over Lucien’s face. "You know I cannot resist a challenge, Jonathan. Do you so doubt your prowess?"

  Jonathan, recovering, laughed. "Hardly." As if all was forgotten, he gestured for both to go inside.

  But both of them knew Jonathan had revealed too much. Lucien smiled to himself, plucking a rose from the bush alongside the door. Jonathan in love—fancy that. And with the most notoriously unfaithful woman in all of England.

  Interesting indeed. Lucien doubted he’d try to seduce her himself; for all her beauty she was a female of surprisingly sharp edges. He fancied women a little softer.

  Nonetheless, there was nothing like a good tangle of amour and vice to brighten the dull countryside. Perhaps his exile would not be so deadly boring as he’d feared.

  * * *

  Juliette sailed into Madeline’s chambers just before eight, dressed in a gown of apricot silk that displayed her awe-inspiring bosom and flawless skin to perfection.

  Pearls gleamed around her long neck, and coquettish curls framed a perfectly shaped ear.

  "Ah!" she said in her resonant voice. "You’re nearly done. Wonderful!" She rounded Madeline, examining her. "And you are beautiful tonight, sweet."

  Madeline held her head very still, allowing the maids to finish dressing her hair, which was piled high on her head and laced with emeralds. Wryly, she gazed at Juliette. "Thank you."

  It was impossible to feel any sense o
f beauty in the presence of the countess, and Madeline had long ago ceased to try. Even her youth was no benefit where Juliette was concerned—every single detail of the woman was exactly what it should be to draw the attention of men. Her teeth, her eyes, her hair; her magnificent figure and modulated voice.

  The maids finished with her, and Madeline waved them away to don her long gloves, which would effectively hide the scratches on her hands. "Is he here?" she asked, not looking at Juliette.

  "Yes." Juliette smiled and stepped forward to take the patch box from Madeline’s hands. "He’s rather impatient to meet you."

  "I’ve heard he looks like a pig—all pink and beady-eyed. If he’s that awful, I’ll not marry him, no matter how much money he has or how close to the throne."

  Juliette’s lips tightened infinitesimally. "You’ll marry as I wish, or lose this estate. Your father gambled far too much and we are paying the price."

  "Oh, it was his gambling," Madeline said with a lift of a brow. "Fourteen years ago?"

  There was a flicker of steel in the violet eyes. "Do try, Madeline, this once?"

  Madeline took her fan from the dressing table and flicked it open in an expert, mocking imitation of Juliette. "I’ll try," she said.

  When Madeline would have walked out with Juliette, the countess stopped her. "No, my dear," she said, smiling. "You’ll enter alone tonight."

  Madeline inclined her head and let her stepmother go down ahead of her. Before her trip to the Continent, Madeline had oft been used as a foil for Juliette’s jeweled loveliness. Tonight, perhaps the aim was to display Madeline in a better light.

  Certainly no expense had been spared on the dress, made of brocaded forest green velvet, cut in a wide square at the bodice—or what there was of a bodice. The color agreed with Madeline’s pale skin and dark hair, and the necklace of emeralds, so cold at first, had warmed and now lay with a comforting, glowing weight against her chest. The fabric and jewels made her feel a little less the dull child. Cynically, she supposed if she were to wed a marquess, she’d get used to such things.