The Warrior's Wife

by Denise Domning

  Rafe shot a final glance at Kate. Now that she knew who he was it wasn’t likely he’d have another chance to approach her this evening. Not that it was necessary; nay, he’d done enough for one night, and the morrow offered plenty of opportunity. As tradition demanded, the newlyweds would cling close to their chamber for all of the next day. To honor them the wedding guests would likewise remain close to Haydon. Baldwin of Haydon planned a short hawking excursion into the nearby woods with a picnic and dancing to follow.

  Again Rafe smiled. Summer foliage was thick. The possibility woke of luring Kate far enough away from the others to kiss her once more, if not steal her outright.

  Content, he made his way to where the remainder of his companions stood. “Dicing already?” he asked as he came to a halt beside them. “I thought you meant to wait a day or two before you lost your riches.”

  “We’ve no choice,” Simon said, shooting him a sidelong glance. “There’s nothing else for us to do now that so many here know we serve the king. A good half of Lord Haydon’s guests shun us, so busy are they plotting rebellion against our monarch. The other half only want to convince us they’re yet loyal liege men, so we might carry the tale of their faithfulness to our royal master. Lord, but we grew so tired of listening to them we were almost sorry to have begged leave so we could return from France for this event.”

  Beneath the fringe of Simon’s light brown hair, sly amusement gleamed in the young knight’s pale eyes. A grin pricked at the corners of his mobile mouth. “That left us naught to do but wager over what you’re watching from the shadows.” He paused, his smile quivering a little. “So, just what were you watching?”

  “What am I ever watching?” Rafe asked with a shrug, knowing full well past behavior would lead his friends to assume he once more planned a seduction. Not even they would think him bold enough to plot the theft of the Daubney heiress.

  His companions hooted. “What, indeed, save some rich man’s wife?” laughed dark Hugh d’Aincourt from beside Simon, pouncing upon the bait left for him. It was whilst the king battled his Welsh son-by-marriage a few years back that Hugh had won the thick scar across his cheek. Rather than detract from his appearance, it lent Hugh’s otherwise dour and harsh face a rakish air.

  Alan FitzOsbert gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You’ll die a castrated man, my friend.” Although his fair hair and gray eyes made Alan the darling of those ladies at court addicted to tales of courtly love, he was so cautious in his behavior that it’d earned him the pet name Priest from his companions. Alan wanted desperately to become a knight Templar, a celibate warrior. Unfortunately, he was his father’s only son and was expected to breed up heirs for the family line.

  “Rafe will never be castrated, Priest, because he’ll never be caught,” Stephen de St. Valery retorted, his green eyes merry. He rattled the die in his cupped hands. With his easy nature and ever open purse, Stephen could always be counted on for a drink, a game or a song. Now, the youngest son of an earl offered his friends a broad grin. “Being chased by so many husbands has made our Rafe quick enough to outrun Death, if need be.”

  Stephen’s jest teased Rafe into shooting a final glance over his shoulder. It wasn’t Kate he looked for this time, but her sire. If Death waited for him these next days, he’d surely wear the guise of Lord Humphrey of Bagot. Both father and daughter were gone, no doubt retired for the night.

  Rafe looked back at his friends, only to have excitement over the morrow once more tug at his heart. It was enough to make him reckless. Opening his purse, he took out a couple of his precious pence to show them to his friends.

  “What say you, Stephen?” he demanded. “Do you intend to toss those bones or only rattle them in your hands all night?”

  A cock crowed, then another and another. Geese honked. Sheep bleated, anxious to be milked. Kate groaned and pulled her bedclothes over her head, praying for another hour’s sleep.

  It was hopeless. One after another, maids sang out their good morrows while noble guests began calling for their servants. Why, even under all the linens with her eyes clenched shut, Kate could feel the tent walls gleam bright red and blue with newborn sunlight.

  Throwing back the blankets, she stared at the fabric ceiling over her head. Like the majority of Haydon’s better heeled guests, Lord Humphrey came to this wedding with his own tent and set up camp in the castle’s grassy exterior yard. Sleeping out of doors was no hardship in midsummer. Indeed, those camping in the bailey were better off by far than the guests chose to sleep in the hall, all of them packed into that airless room like herring in a barrel.

  From outside the tent’s flimsy wall a few feet from Kate’s cot, one of her father’s men-at-arms cleared the dreams from his throat and spat. His voice was a wordless rumble as he muttered his greeting to the few of Bagot’s soldiers who accompanied them to this event. As his men stirred, so did their lord. From the opposite side of the blanket that partitioned the tent’s interior into two smaller chambers, Lord Humphrey’s cot creaked. He groaned, the sound rusty and pain-filled.

  “Is it dawn already, Peter?” Bagot’s lord asked of his manservant.

  “It is, my lord,” the man replied. A rustle of straw said that Peter was rolling away his pallet for the day.

  “Then I’ll bid you a good morrow in our Lord’s love,” Humphrey said in somber greeting to his man. He followed this with a brusque “Help me to sit up.”

  There was more rustling, this time of linen. Lord Humphrey released another pained sound. The servant clucked in concern. “Are your joints so bad, then, my lord? I thought with Haydon being drier than Bagot you’d have less aching here. Need you more of that salve?”

  “Not now, Peter. Mayhap tonight,” her lord father replied, his tone so warm, so filled with gratitude for his servant’s concern, that Kate came upright on her cot with a start to stare at the blanket that separated father and daughter. She hadn’t known her sire capable of such an emotion.

  “For now, all I need is water for washing,” Lord Humphrey went on, his voice yet friendly.

  “Then that’s what you shall have, my lord,” Peter said.

  The sound of the tent flap opening followed, then there was nothing but quiet. Kate eyed the blanket partition. Dawn’s light pricked through its open weave to scatter tiny yellow squares on her side of the tent. She gnawed on her lip in consideration. Was a little concern for her father’s ills all it took to win the lord of Bagot’s affection?

  Although the greater part of her chided that this was naught but foolish thinking, that the way her father treated his servants had nothing to do with how he treated his daughter, Kate’s need to postpone her next marriage was the stronger. If she could but end the surly silence that lived between them, perhaps she could persuade him there was no need to hurry that ceremony. Throwing off her blankets, she shrugged into her bedrobe then went to carefully pull back the dividing drapery.

  Sunlight streamed through the tent’s opening, bright enough to make her squint. The braided rush matting that served as their floor glowed golden. At the back of the tent, the brass bindings on her father’s armor chest glinted. Encased in a nubby hemp sheet, Peter’s rolled pallet leaned against the chest’s end. A single jointed stool, a seat easily dismantled for travel, braced the pallet in place.

  Her father yet sat on the edge of his cot, the tangled linens draping the lower half of his naked body. A long scar marked his bare chest from shoulder to waist, its lips raised and uneven. It was an old mark, having long ago lost its lividity. Her sire’s yet night-capped head was bowed as if in prayer, his beard resting against his chest.

  If her father didn’t notice her, his favorite hound did. The burly beast’s ears pricked as it considered her. Perched nearby atop its T-shaped roost, her sire’s hawk turned its head from side to side, knowing she was there even if it couldn’t see her. The tiny bells on its blinding hood tinkled with its movement.

  The sound stirred Lord Humphrey from his musings. Sighing, he
lifted his head. His expression was quiet, his face relaxed as he met his daughter’s gaze.

  For the briefest of instants his gray eyes came alive with longing, then hardened into icy slate. “Back,” he snarled so sharply that Kate nigh on flew backward into her own half of the tent. The partition dropped into place, leaving her blinking in the sudden dimness, too startled to feel the sting of yet another rejection.

  “Albreda, your charge escapes you,” her father called, his voice raised, although there was no need to shout. “Rise and see to her, else I’ll have you beaten for dereliction of your duty.”

  On her pallet at the other side of Kate’s cot Albreda came upright with a startled snort. Over the past night, thick dark hair had escaped the maid’s plaits to tumble around her meaty shoulders. Eyes wide in her fleshy face, the middle-aged woman glanced frantically around her until she found Kate.

  “She’s here, my lord,” Albreda cried out in relief.

  “I know she’s there, you fool,” Lord Humphrey retorted in irritation. “Wake up. The dawn’s come. See that my daughter is dressed appropriately for hawking.”

  Kate’s shoulders tensed until they were tighter than a catapult’s rope. Her heart felt just as twisted. “She, her, my daughter,” she muttered. “Speak to me,” she demanded of her sire. Coward that she was, she kept her voice too low for even Albreda to hear. Her father was the only man on the earth’s face with the right to raise his hand to her, and Kate wasn’t interested in finding out what he might do if provoked.

  “Aye, my lord,” the maid replied breathlessly as she came to her feet.

  Having never disrobed the previous night, all Albreda need do to prepare for the day was straighten her blue gowns and tie on her headscarf. “Stay here while I fetch your water, my lady,” she commanded, her chiding look clearly blaming Kate for her own scolding. Still barefooted, the maid exited around the dividing drapery.

  Kate made a face at Albreda’s back. God forbade a daughter from hating her sire for rejecting her, but the good Lord had nothing to say about despising maidservants for their disrespect.

  Indignation swiftly devolved into a homesick longing deep enough to make Kate’s lips quiver. Oh, to be back in the de Fraisney household and have sweet Maud at her side once more. Maud, Kate’s maid for all the days she’d lived with the de Fraisneys, had been both friend and confidante. When Lady Adele offered Maud to Lord Humphrey, Kate’s sire had refused. Humphrey of Bagot said he’d have no strangers in his home.

  Kate’s jaw tightened. God knew her sire hadn’t lied when he told Lady Adele as much. Why, he couldn’t wait to be rid of his daughter, a woman who was as great a stranger to him as hapless Maud.

  Wishing she could scream out her frustration but not ready to discover just how her father would react to such an outburst, Kate dropped down on the corner of her cot and rubbed at her aching brow. The day loomed before her, one long torment. With no hawk of her own there would be nothing for her to do but watch others hunt. And the picnic promised to be only more of last night--prospective husbands being shoved at her throughout the event’s duration.

  “Good morrow, my lord.” Warin de Dapifer’s deep voice flowed through the dividing blanket as his footsteps marked his entry into the tent.

  Excitement chased away Kate’s headache and her depression. Her heart filling with the affection she bore Warin, she shifted on her cot to peer desperately through the blanket’s weave. The smallest glimpse of her dear love and all would be right with the world.

  “I hear Lord Haydon’s foresters have herons for our hawks this day,” Warin said to his lord. “At last, a prey worthy of your bird.”

  “Aye, so it is,” Lord Humphrey replied with a pleased grunt.

  The squeak of the cot as Bagot’s lord came to his feet gave way to a fond murmuring. Again the bells on his hawk’s hood loosed their delicate chimes. Kate didn’t need to see her father to know he was stroking his bird’s feathers.

  Resentment simmered. What evil could she have done her sire before her eighth year that would cause him to give more care to a bird than he spent on his own flesh and blood?

  “I’d expect nothing less of Haydon,” her father said after a moment’s pause. “He’s a good host, careful of the entertainments he offers. Have you news from Bagot? Nay, what news could there be,” he went on, sourly answering himself, “when those foul Godsols are here? My property will be safe from attack for as long as I know where they are.”

  Guilt and not a little fear shot through Kate, a reminder of just how close she’d come to disaster last night. Never again, she vowed to herself. It was an easy promise to keep. Now that she knew who Rafe was, she’d stay as far from him as possible.

  “Nay, my lord,” Warin replied, “there’s no news. I only thought to pass on what I’d heard about the day’s hawking.” As he spoke, the drapery separating him from Kate rippled as if he’d touched it. His shoe scraped on the rush matting near its hem. “That, and I meant to inform you we’re at your convenience, ready to escort you to the hall to break your fast.”

  “As you should be, Sir Warin,” her father said, a touch of laughter filling his voice. “As you should be.”

  “My lord,” Warin said, the simple statement signaling his intention to depart. Disappointment shot through Kate. He was leaving, and all she’d seen of him was his shadow against the curtain.

  Again his shoes scuffed on the matting. The blanket jerked. A wee packet of parchment shot beneath it to bounce unevenly across the flooring and come to rest upright where one length of mat met another.

  A note! With a happy gasp, Kate snatched it up and unfolded it, her fingers trembling with excitement.

  Warin had a careful, neat hand. The ache of her loneliness and rejection eased at the very sight of it. My dearest lady, he wrote, another day without your goodness to enlighten this poor sinner is too long to be borne. Take pity upon me, my sweet saint. Once the hawking is done and we’re at our victuals I will retreat into the woodlands. I pray you, follow me. When you find me pining for you ‘neath some shady tree, come ease my misery as only your kind words can.

  It was signed, Yours in God’s love and mine, Sir Warin de Dapifer.

  Kate’s exhilaration died. Adele’s warnings against such intimacy with any man, especially a courtly lover, clamored. Warin wanted her to join him in the wild woods beyond all sight of the others when they’d never before met in private. Why now, when he’d always before complimented her on her insistence that they remain within sight if not earshot of witnesses?

  What was wrong with her? This was Warin, the man she loved. Unlike some men she had the misfortune to have recently met, if Warin wished to be in her presence it wouldn’t be to force unwanted kisses on her.

  Nay, Warin would never suggest a tryst. All he wanted, nay—all he needed was the simple joy of her presence. The proof of that was in her hand. For a seducer to claim to love her as he loved God was sacrilege.

  Not that any of this mattered. Disappointment ate at Kate as she folded the note back into its tiny square. Her father’s plans for her didn’t include allowing a half an hour’s private time to spend with a man she could never wed.

  Then a sly and daring thought followed, the sort she hadn’t had in years. She could escape her sire for a time, just as she had last night. With the right excuse he’d be none the wiser as to where she went or what she did. The echoes of last night’s wild exhilaration raced through Kate, strong enough to make her smile. No wonder the priests spoke of temptation’s lure. Sin was thrilling, indeed.

  Caution came swiftly on its heels. If she was to do this, she’d need to be careful. Unlike her heedless youth before Adele made a lady of her, if Kate were caught this time the penalty would be more than a few stripes laid on her back with a belt.

  First and foremost, the note must be hidden from Albreda, for the maid would surely give it to her sire. Reaching beneath her cot, Kate pulled out the wee wooden casket that held her jewelry and opened it. Painted
parchment lined its lid. Prying the sheepskin away from the wood, she slipped Warin’s note into the space between lining and lid, then pressed the skin back in place. When all was safely stored and the coffer returned to its spot beneath her cot Kate grabbed up her comb and straightened her hair, now waiting impatiently for Albreda’s return. With every breath her love for Warin filled her until she thought she’d burst with it. It was going to be a glorious day.

  “Here she is, Rafe,” Will Godsol said to his brother, “Daubney’s bitch and Glevering, both here within your reach.”

  Although Rafe and his eldest brother sat on the outskirts of the picnickers, Rafe could barely hear Will’s voice. It wasn’t that the musicians’ piping and drumming was overly loud; it was a trick of the surrounding foliage. Towering oak, thick ash and delicate alder, their feet cloaked in heavy tumbles of pink hedgerose and fern, caught the music in their glossy leaves and sent it echoing back into the glade.

  It was just as well there was so much noise. The last thing Rafe needed was for anyone else to hear Will spilling obvious hints at their plans for retaking Glevering through its heiress. Nor did Rafe need his brother to tell him where Kate de Fraisney was. The woman he would marry hadn’t been out of his awareness all morning.

  He glanced up from the cold meat pie in his hand to the dancers at the center of this grassy spot. Beneath a wisp of a veil held in place with a golden circlet, Kate’s dark hair gleamed coppery in the sun as she danced. She was dressed for hunting even though she done none of it. Made of sensible linen, her upper garment was sleeveless to allow ease of movement. Her undergown sported sleeves wide enough to allow her to draw a bow while lacking the extravagant drape of formal attire. Both were dyed a dark hunting green. Plain the gowns might be, but their color suited Kate marvelously well. His wife-to-be didn’t need jewels and silks; she was beautiful in her own right.

  Across the field Kate threw back her head and laughed as she danced. Rafe drew breath in admiration, his lungs filling with the spicy scents of fresh ale, crushed grass and summer air. By God, but she was more beautiful and more alive than any woman he’d ever seen.