LadyOfConquest:SaxonBride

by Tamara Leigh

She glowered at the man whose job it was to dispense drink to the castle’s occupants. Aldwin sat propped in a corner, oblivious after a night of too much ale—no different from the night before, or the night before that.

  Excusing the sorrowful old man for his fondness for brew, she repositioned the bar and pressed harder.

  “Rhiannyn,” Lucilla called down the cellar steps.

  Rhiannyn peered up at her. “Aye?”

  “Lord Pendery asks for ye. He said to say ’tis time.”

  Time? Rhiannyn turned the word over and caught her breath at the thought he wished her in his bed. But he had freed her from their bargain. Of course, he might have changed his mind.

  “Did he say what it is time for?”

  “He said ye would know, but dally not. He seems impatient.”

  Rhiannyn set the bar atop the barrel, ascended the steps, and hastened to the hall.

  Maxen stood alone behind the lord’s table. To the right of him sat the ledgers in which all transactions regarding Etcheverry were recorded, to the left, bolts of cloth ranging from white to a green so rich and deep it reminded her of grass after a spring rain.

  He looked up when she halted opposite him.

  “Time, my lord?” she asked.

  “You have forgotten.”

  She frowned.

  He reached for the scissors beside the ledgers and extended them.

  She breathed easier. He meant her to cut his hair, which also meant the cloth was for his new garments. “I thought you might have decided against it,” she said.

  “Nay, there simply has not been time to attend to it.”

  “Now there is?”

  He lowered into his chair. “There is not, but the hair is nearly in my eyes.”

  She walked around the table. “A bench would be better,” she suggested, certain the high-backed chair would hinder her.

  He moved onto the bench beside his chair and pulled a ledger in front of him. “Shorten the fringe to the same length as the crown,” he referred to the halo of hair that remained of his tonsure, “and the sides a bit, but leave the back long. I wish it to grow out.”

  “You do not intend to adopt the Norman hairstyle?”

  “I have ever preferred the style of the Saxons—rather, their lack of one—but as I have no choice in the matter of the hair atop my head, I will compromise.”

  As she had seen when his men were Thomas’s, many of the Normans had begun to embrace the less severe Saxon hairstyle, but Thomas had not. Though he had allowed his men to do so, he had said a baron of King William’s must maintain the face of Norman dominance. It seemed Maxen was of a different mind—and in more ways than this.

  Rhiannyn lifted the scissors, parted off a section of hair, and began cutting—at first with indecision, then vision. The blades flashed, their meeting a hiss in the silence of her task and Maxen’s attention upon his ledger.

  “A curiosity,” she mused. “A Saxon holding over a Norman what could easily be made a weapon. Are you not worried I might do you harm?”

  “I am not,” he said without looking up.

  She paused mid-snip and awaited his gaze. But though he surely sensed it, he remained focused on his figures. “How is it you trust me in this, but not other things?” she asked.

  He sighed, looked up. “You lie, Rhiannyn—granted, more for others than yourself. You are more willful than any woman I have known, and you test my patience so I must constantly adjust the bounds. But you are not capable of murder.”

  “Yet you hold me responsible for Thomas’s death,” she unthinkingly reminded him. And silently chastised herself lest the peace between them exploded into renewed hostility.

  But his eyes grew just a bit hard, his mouth a pinch tight, and when he spoke his voice was beset with only a trace of ire. “Responsibility and murder are two different things. We have already established it was another who killed him—your faceless hider in the wood.”

  Leave the subject be, she told herself. She could not. “But I am as guilty, am I not?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you?”

  She blinked. Should he not readily agree? Why did he offer her room to defend herself? Though part of her pressed her to turn from further talk of Thomas’s death, another longed for him to understand. “I but wanted to escape. No harm did I wish your brother.”

  Maxen absorbed her pitiful defense, said, “But Harwolfson wished him harm.”

  Set further off-center by his seeming lack of enmity, she was slow to respond. “They fought, but I give you my word, Edwin did not kill him. You must believe me.”

  “I do,” he said, and in the midst of her wide-eyed surprise asked, “Why did you not flee with Harwolfson?”

  Trying not to see that fateful day awash in crimson and gray, she said, “I could not leave Thomas to die alone.”

  “Why?”

  How had her comment of scissors being made into a weapon come to this? And why this need for Maxen to accept her accounting? “I did not love him as he wished me to, but I was not entirely without feelings for him. Your brother was a good man.”

  “And foolish. He should have let you go.” His words were bitter, but of a sudden, he laughed. “I am the same fool, for neither will I let you go. And if you flee me as you did Thomas, methinks I would also ride after you.” He lifted a hand and touched her cheek. “I wonder, Rhiannyn, will you be the death of me?”

  She shook her head. “Though I thought once to escape you, I have accepted my lot.”

  “And if Harwolfson comes for you again?”

  “Do you not understand?” she said. “As I did not go with him when last he was here, neither will I go with him if he returns.”

  “Will he return?”

  She frowned. “I do not know. There is only Aethel now, and the four others who would join Edwin were he able to release them from the dungeons. It seems too great a risk to add so few to his ranks.”

  Maxen dropped his hand from her. “Saxons are wont to great risks,” he said, and sank into reflections he did not share with her.

  Fearing what he contemplated, Rhiannyn said, “Maxen, pray do not use Aethel and the others to your own end. They have not chosen your way, but still they are good men.” At least Aethel was. Of the four others, there was not one she knew well enough to vouch for.

  “What would you have me do? Release them?”

  “I would,” she said, though she knew she asked too much.

  He rubbed a hand across his shaven jaw. “It is the gallows to which they ought to go.”

  “Why have they not?”

  He looked as if he might disregard her question, but he said, “Part of me admires them. Though it would serve me well to ensure I need never again engage them in battle, it is not easy to fault a man who stands firm in his beliefs.”

  A day of revelations, Rhiannyn realized. Never would she have guessed Maxen capable of such feeling. Yet surely here was the reason he had not yet dealt with his prisoners. “What will you do?”

  “They ought to have had plenty of time for thought. Mayhap now they will be willing to accept me as the others have.”

  “If they do not?”

  He pushed a hand through the hair she had clipped. “I cannot say one thing and do another, Rhiannyn.”

  Her heart sank, though not as deep as it would have had he not offered hope. “This I know,” she said, for it was the way of things for those who dared step into the path of might over right.

  “Finish your task,” he said, ending the discussion.

  While her mind turned front to back all they had spoken of, Rhiannyn took up the scissors again. Why Maxen had discussed such things with her was a mystery, for she would more have expected him to refuse talk beyond the complication of what lay unresolved between them. But somehow they had avoided that.

  Clipping by clipping, his hair fell away until all that was left to cut was above his brow. “If you come around,” she said, “I will soon be done.”

  He turned on t
he bench and faced her.

  Rhiannyn was not prepared to stand between his legs. It was enough that she had spent so long in his immediate presence—sliding fingers over his scalp and pulling them through his hair—but this?

  Avoiding his gaze, she stepped to the side, but he drew her back in front of him.

  “It is easier this way,” he said when her startled eyes met his.

  Easier for him, she thought and lifted the scissors.

  It took but a few minutes to complete the cut, then she stepped back to survey her work. “It is done.”

  “Better?”

  “Indeed.” She was more pleased than expected. The monk was entirely gone, the last of the man of the Church scattered upon Maxen’s shoulders, the bench, and the rushes. Before her was one more handsome for it.

  He stood and brushed the hair from his tunic, stomped his legs to shake it from his hose, and swept it from the bench. As he regained the high seat, he motioned to the cloth. “For my garments.”

  She stepped alongside him, lifted the beautiful green, and rubbed it between her fingers. “It will make a fine tunic. And the others.” She touched each bolt in turn.

  “The green is for you.”

  She returned her gaze to his. “Whatever for?”

  He flicked the skirt of her old bliaut. “I tire of seeing you clothed in such.”

  “But it is as you ordered.”

  “And this is as I order now. I will not have you further debased.”

  It was true she was the most poorly clothed of the women servants, but it drew less attention to her. Still, if Maxen wished her in finer clothes, there were those Thomas had provided. Immediately, she rejected the thought. Their material was of the same quality as the green, but heavily embroidered, and one was set with gems about the neck.

  “The green is not suitable for a serving woman,” she said and pulled forth another bolt. “Brown is better.”

  He dragged the green back over the brown. “This one,” he said. “And if enough remains when your gown is completed, you may fashion a tunic for me.”

  Seeing he would not be moved, she said, “Very well,” and began gathering the bolts together.

  “Leave them, Rhiannyn. I will have them delivered to my chamber.”

  “Your chamber?”

  “A quiet place to make stitches.”

  A dangerous place to make stitches, her presence there furthering the belief she was his leman. “I can sew just as well before the hearth.”

  He shrugged. “As you wish. The cloth will be stored in my chest.”

  She stepped away. “I will begin this eve after supper.”

  “Rhiannyn.”

  She looked around.

  “First, your bliaut. My need is not as great as yours.”

  Before she could protest, someone called, “My lord!”

  “Sir Guy?” Maxen asked of the one who entered the hall.

  The knight lifted a thinly rolled parchment. “A reply from Trionne Castle.”

  Home of Maxen and Christophe’s parents. “I will take my leave,” Rhiannyn said and stepped away.

  Maxen allowed her departure, his attention on the missive passed into his hand.

  As she crossed the hall, she heard him say, “It is good. The supplies are being amassed and should arrive before the new month.”

  Then the stores needed to tide Etcheverry through the winter were on their way—from Trionne? During the winter past, Thomas’s father had been able to assist little, his own harvests scant, but they must be more abundantly blessed this year. That worry easing, Rhiannyn quickened her steps with the thought she must tell Mildreth, the woman’s fretting greater than her own.

  “So, it will not be such a chill winter after all,” Guy’s voice drifted to her.

  The parchment crackled. “Only if the others—Sir Jeremy of Bronton and Darik of Westering—also provide.”

  Rhiannyn’s steps faltered. Trionne could not render all they needed?

  “Think you they will?” Guy asked.

  “If they are able to, for they owe me their lives.”

  Norman lives saved at Hastings, Rhiannyn guessed.

  Once around the corner, she leaned against the wall and listened. It was not good of her, but she had to know what might be said once it was believed she was no longer present.

  “The Saxons will be a great burden upon the foodstuffs if there are no more stores forthcoming,” Sir Guy said.

  “All will be a great burden, but none will be treated differently. If more of an effort must be made with winter hunting, it shall be done.”

  Struck by the force of Maxen moving through her, burrowing a place just beneath her heart, Rhiannyn slumped. He did care, would provide for the Saxons even as he provided for his Normans.

  “It will not be easy,” Sir Guy said.

  “Non, it will not.”

  Rhiannyn pushed off the wall and hurried down the corridor and out into a cold day that seemed tenfold warmer than when she had earlier passed beneath the same overcast sky.

  A fortnight later, in the wake of news of Edwin Harwolfson’s plundering to the west, three missives arrived—two expected, one not.

  Maxen stared at the third. Dispatched by King William, it likely concerned his rival for Etcheverry.

  Though few were the details gathered about the rebel leader, much was the talk of the growing number of Saxons joining Harwolfson to form a stronger rebellion than that which he had accumulated in the wood of Andredeswald. No doubt, he gathered into his fold many already bitten by the coming winter—Saxons without much hope of surviving the season unless they joined their countrymen and took what they were not given.

  Deciding it best to open the missives in private, away from talk of the rebels that seemed to fill every corner of the hall, Maxen rose from the nooning meal. Gesturing for the others to continue filling their bellies, he strode to his chamber. As he dropped into the chair, he broke the first missive’s wax seal.

  Darik of Westering would not fail him. The supplies would soon arrive. Unfortunately, such was not the case with Jeremy of Bronton. The knight offered sincere regrets, his anger over the loss of a vast amount of winter supplies to the “wolf”—Harwolfson—evident in every stroke of the quill.

  Maxen set the two missives aside and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. He knew what must be done to curb the voracious Harwolfson, and it was he whom King William would call upon. Fortunately, he had all of winter in which to plan the Saxon’s downfall, for it would be spring before he was ordered to take up his sword and slay the conquered.

  Rather, it was his hope. And should have been his prayer all these days.

  He closed his eyes, cracked open the door to heaven, and silently sent through the narrow seam, You do not want me back yet, Lord. All is still too dark within me, and I would make promises unkept.

  He eased the door closed, lifted his lids, and considered the third missive before breaking the seal.

  It did concern Harwolfson. Blessedly, it did not call Maxen to arms in this chill season. But there the blessing ended. The king was aware of Harwolfson’s grievance in losing his betrothed to Thomas, having granted Maxen’s brother permission to wed Rhiannyn. Now he instructed the new lord of Etcheverry to keep close watch over the Saxon woman, regardless of whether or not she warmed his bed, lest she slipped away and an opportunity to bring Harwolfson to heel was lost.

  There was no elaboration as to what that opportunity might be, but one was not needed. Whether it was threat of harm to Rhiannyn, an offer to return her to her betrothed, or some other means of controlling the Saxon rebel, her fate would be out of Maxen’s hands if King William found a good use for her.

  And it did not sit well with Maxen who let in the thought that had long been stealing around the edges of him.

  I should have wed her.

  It would not have been remiss of him since the king had given all that was Thomas’s to his older brother, and Maxen could hardly be faulted for
also taking Rhiannyn to wife, but…

  With William’s ploy revealed, it would likely be regarded as an act of defiance if Maxen claimed Rhiannyn, thereby thwarting the king’s plans. Though he had been grateful these past weeks had so teemed with preparations for winter that there had been no time to pursue her, now he begrudged their every distraction.

  Too late.

  He stood, crossed to his chest, and thrust the king’s missive to the bottom. He would think more on it later. Now, he would join his men for the meal and, as instructed, keep close watch over the woman he should not have denied himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “The wolf!” Elan Pendery spat into the wind she rode against.

  So much talk of a mere man. Others might fear him, but she did not. Though he surely reveled in exaggerated tales of his prowess, he was a mortal like all—and destined to be cut down by a Norman. Or trampled beneath her horse, she entertained and smiled at the vision born of a mind her mother said was too fertile.

  It amused her to think such things, though she knew better than to own to them. And she had good reason to indulge—to resent Edwin Harwolfson and those of his ilk. Not until Duke William had crossed the channel two years ago to claim his throne, had she been so confined within the castle.

  At ten and five, she had tolerated it well enough, especially as there had been Christophe with whom to pass the hours. But her brother had gone to Etcheverry, taking with him all the fun they had made together. Now she was forced to look for amusement elsewhere—or, considering the day’s turn of events, a place to more fully worry over her father’s announcement. Remembrance of it stole her smile and caused the scenery to blur.

  Six months past, she had been too indifferent to propriety to be concerned for the future, but now those days were upon her and promised to be terrible.

  This morn, she had swallowed dismay with her bread when her father announced he had made a suitable match for her. She would wed one Sir Arthur, a man of no less than fifty years, three wives passed on, four children, and a demesne equal to Trionne. The prospect turned her stomach, but not as much as that other thing which would be discovered on her wedding night.