Fairest Of Them All (8 page)

Holly could only hope he took her feeble grunt as one of assent. It took little imagination to envision a future as Eugene’s wife. Once age began to fade her beauty and some pert thirteen-year-old with supple breasts and an opulent dowry caught her husband’s lascivious eye, she had only a headlong tumble down the castle garderobe to look forward to.

As the marshal introduced the new challenger, three men-at-arms rushed out to gird Eugene in plates of armor so bright they seemed to reflect the fires of the forge that had molded them.

This time her father’s blessing rang with righteous conviction. “Fight with honor, gentlemen, and show mercy to your opponent!”

As Eugene drew his burnished sword to face Gav-enmore, Holly wished she hadn’t pared her beautiful nails to the quick, giving her no choice but to nibble the tender skin of one knuckle.

The men circled each other like wolves warily scenting the blood of a fresh kill. Holly might have been more intrigued by the spectacle had she not known that the victor would have every right to make her his next morsel. Gavenmore outweighed Eugene by at least two stone, but de Leggef s slender grace offset the advantage. He darted like quicksilver, parrying each of the knight’s mighty swings until their blades clashed in a deadly symphony.

Holly winced as Gavenmore took a blow to the helm that would have staggered a lesser man. A roar of approval went up from the crowd. She scowled at them. Eugene wasn’t particularly popular, but they’d have probably cheered Satan himself had he volunteered to trounce the Welshman and uphold the precious English honor not one of them had been willing to defend.

A downward slash of Eugene’s blade drew a dark bloom of blood on the Welshman’s hose. He gazed down at the wound in patent disbelief.

Eugene tipped back the faceplate of his helm. “Shall you yield?” he invited with a sneer. “I fear hacking you limb from limb might offend my bride’s delicate sensibilities.”

Holly didn’t realize she was holding her breath until Gavenmore drew off his helm altogether and cast it away. His crooked smile was a dazzling flash of white against his swarthy beard. Shaking sweat from his eyes, he said, “ Tis not the lady you should fear offending, sir, but me.”

With that fair warning, he charged, roaring like an enraged bull. Holly would have been hard pressed to say who was subdued most effectively—Eugene or the crowd. Here at last was the savage berserk they had all feared. The knight’s fierce press gave Montfort no choice but to squander his every move in retreat and his every swing in deflecting the giant’s relentless blows.

The onlookers lapsed into dismayed silence, but when Gavenmore whacked Eugene on the ear in a flat-sided blow that would probably leave the baron’s smug ears ringing for a fortnight, Holly jumped to her feet, cheering wildly. Realizing abruptly that everyone was gaping at her, including her ashen-faced papa, she sank sheepishly back down, wishing for the protective veil of her eyelashes.

The knight kept swinging. Eugene kept retreating. His shiny helm went sailing as he tripped over his own windmilling legs and fell to his back in the straw. His sword dropped from his hand, landing only inches from his fingertips.

Holly peeped through splayed fingers as Gavenmore pressed the tip of his broadsword to Eugene’s bobbing Adam’s apple, wondering if anyone had bothered to tell the Welshman that this was not to be a contest to the death.

“Shall you yield, sir?” His steely voice lacked the scorn Eugene had displayed in his own request.

After a moment of agonizing hesitation, Eugene lifted his gauntleted hands, palms exposed in the time-honored signal of surrender. “I yield.” His voice was hoarse, as if he were choking on his own blood. Or his own pride.

A single cheer went up from the far end of the list Holly saw Gavenmore’s lone man-at-arms, jumping up and down and waving his battered hat in the air. At the knight’s cryptic signal, he scurried back to the fence to fetch his master’s mount.

Gavenmore turned his back on Eugene and started for the gallery to claim his prize, his rolling swagger betraying more weariness than Holly would have suspected.

Behind him she saw Eugene sit up on his elbows. Sunlight glinted off the lethal blade of his sword as he prepared to hurl it at Gavenmore’s defenseless back.

Time slowed until it seemed Holly could count each sparkling mote of pollen drifting lazily in the air. The distant song of a lark was muffled by the dull roaring in her ears. She turned her head this way and that, horrified to realize that not a single soul was going to warn him. He had done nothing but fought valiantly and well, yet they were going to let him be slaughtered just for daring to be a foreigner in their midst.

Suddenly ‘twas not his bearded face, but their own that seemed the cruel visages of strangers. Her father’s hand twitched, then went still. He was the most honorable man she knew, yet he, too, was willing to sacrifice the Welshman for his own gain.

For a brief, tantalizing second, she allowed herself to entertain the notion. With one coldly calculated strike, she would be rid of both Eugene and the obstinate Welshman. Eugene’s disgrace would disqualify him from claiming victory. And the Welshman would be dead, his big body stretched out in the straw much as it had been in the garden. The vitality fading from his limbs. His blood seeping into the thirsty sand. His crooked grin frozen forever in a pale mask of death.

Eugene drew back his arm.

Holly sprang to her feet.

Don’t speak above a murmur, Holly. You’ll strain your voice.

Holly almost looked behind her to see if Brother Nathanael had escaped his wardrobe prison, but realized the rebuke was only in her head. Using the full volume of that magnificent voice, she leaned over the gallery rail and screamed, “Gavenmore! Behind you!”

The knight whirled, throwing up his arm in instinctive reflex. Eugene’s blade glanced off his steel gauntlet and thudded harmlessly to the ground. Gavenmore stared at the sword for a long moment, his face unreadable, then scooped it up and strode back toward the fallen man. Holly cringed, wondering if she had unwittingly signed Eugene’s warrant of execution. If he so chose, Gavenmore would have every right to embed the blade in Montforf s treacherous heart

Instead, he reversed the weapon and dropped it across Eugene’s lap, hilt extended in invitation, as if to say the man presented no more challenge with the sword than without it. It was an insult more damning than any blow. “You are a craven coward, sir, and a disgrace to the honor of this tourney.”

Although Eugene made no move to touch the sword, his entire body quivered with impotent rage.

“Enjoy your bride while you may, Gavenmore. Shell be a widow soon enough.”

Shrugging off his enemy’s threat, the knight once again turned his steps toward the gallery.

Holly stood mesmerized at his approach, no less captive to his will than she had been in that moment when the elm had snared her curls. Her stubborn knees refused to bend, refused to lower her to the chair where she at least might cower in comfort.

She earned a brief reprieve when a carrot-curled little girl scrambled beneath the ropes and danced into his path, clutching a chaplet of woven bluebells in her chubby fist He paused to accept the offering, ducking his head in a shy bow that coaxed a trill of delight from the child. An unfamiliar hand squeezed Holly’s thundering heart.

Then he was climbing the shallow steps to the gallery, each resolute footstep shuddering the wooden platform. Fortifying herself with a deep breath, Holly turned to face him, naked in the ugliness she had inflicted upon herself. A breathless silence reigned over the gallery, the lists, the spring day itself.

She forced herself to meet his gaze, then wished she hadn’t. As he searched her eyes, a faint frown of bewilderment creased his brow. Holly quickly inclined her head. There had been nothing she or Elspeth could do to disguise the unusual hue of her eyes.

She expected him to boldly proclaim his victory. She expected him to demand of her papa the prize that was his due. What she did not expect was the ethereal brush of bluebell petals against her ears as he settled the chaplet of flowers on her brow, ringing the ugliness of her shorn head with the unspoiled beauty of a child’s generosity.

A tremor of shame went through her as he dropped to one knee at her feet, bowed his shaggy head, and brought her hand to his lips. “My lady,” he said, the simple words both tribute and vow.

Holly slipped into the castle chapel, forsaking the warmth of the afternoon sun for a dank coolness’preserved year round by stone walls six feet thick. She had retreated to this place to seek her own counsel, but was not surprised to find her papa standing over her mother’s tomb, his hands splayed over the granite as if to draw strength from it

She crept silently to his side. Her mother’s carved effigy bore none of the warmth Holly remembered. Felicia de Chastel had not been the beauty her daughter was. Her charm was of the more subtle variety, her snub nose and cherubic mouth hinting at a delight in life impossible to recreate in stone, no matter how talented the artist.

“Papa?” Holly dared.

Her father’s graceless fingers caressed the carved tendrils of his wife’s hair. “I have failed her. I have failed you both.”

His pain wounded Holly in ways she had not anticipated. “Of course, you haven’t! Why if Mother were here, she’d probably be laughing right now, thinking this all a great jest.”

“I’m glad she’s dead.” Holly recoiled from his stark words. “Better dead than forced to witness such a debacle. She warned me of your strong will, said I might have to take harsh measures to protect you from yourself. But I failed to heed her. From the moment she died, I let that will rule our lives. When you cried, I nearly wept myself. When you pouted and sulked, I gave in to your demands. Now my weakness has brought us all to ruin.”

like everyone else at Tewksbury, her father seemed to be having difficulty looking at her. Holly seized his dangling sleeve, desperate to evoke some familiar response from him. “Not ruin, Papa, surely. Perhaps if we go to this Sir Austyn, the both of us together, and explain ... he seems a reasonable enough fellow.”

The words sounded hollow, even to Holly. She was talking about a man who had chased her through a garden with drawn sword, accused her of witchcraft, kissed her with a tender hunger that still had the power to make her toes curl, then proceeded to alternately threaten to ravish her and chasten her for behaving the strumpet Reasonable indeed!

“If he was very angry with us, might you not lock him away in the dungeon?” she inquired timidly, ignoring a twinge of guilt. “Just for a few years until his temper cools?”

Her papa’s sleeve was torn from her fingers as he paced away from her. His voice echoed from the rafters like cracks of thunder portending a mighty storm. “Aye, let us go to him together, this Gavenmore, and explain how your fine jest has made a mockery of the both of us! We shall tell him that I intend to break my vow to deliver you as bride to the champion of the tournament and forever cast a shadow on the name of Tewksbury. And if he chooses to lay siege to the castle and take you by force, what then? Will he still honor you with marriage or will he seek to punish you for making such a jape of him?” Her father pivoted on his heel, flinging his shout in her bloodless face. “Aye, we shall go to him, you and I, and explain that it was no more than a cruel, childish prank that brought a proud and mighty warrior to his knees at your feet!”

Holly pressed her fingertips to her lips to still their trembling. His words had done nothing but echo her growing sense of shame. She shook her head helplessly. ‘Truly I meant no harm.”

“You never do when it comes to seeking your own will. But you’ve sealed your fate this time. The Welshman will take you to wife just as I promised he would.” His next words were spoken so softly that Holly suspected they weren’t meant for her ears. “You could have had anyone. A man who would have adored you. A man who would have humbled himself just to kiss the hem of your gown.”

If Holly could have choked the words past her raw throat, she might have told him that she wanted no such man. That she knew in her most secret heart that she was nothing more than a vain, ornamental creature, praised only for outward things. That she could never give her heart to any man fool enough to adore her. But she sensed another blow would stagger him so she gathered her skirts and left him to his regrets.

When his daughter had drifted from the chapel, her profaned visage nearly unrecognizable, Bernard de Chastel did what he had not dared do in the thirteen years since his wife’s death.

He shook his fist not at his wife’s effigy, but at the vast and indifferent heavens beyond the chapel roof. “Damn you, Felicia! I’ve done everything I could for her. The rest is up to you!”

Cast from the solace of the chapel, Holly fled to the garden, fearing that after the wedding that was to take place that afternoon she would be forever denied its sanctuary.

The somnolent spring day mocked her agitation. A chubby bumblebee hummed its satisfaction over a primrose blossom. Butterflies flitted from violet to heliotrope, their lacy wings limned in sunlight. The sultry perfume of jasmine caressed her sharpened senses.

Despite the warmth of the air, the chapel’s chill still clung to her. Even more intolerable than her father’s bitter denouncement had been the revulsion she had glimpsed in his face, a revulsion that seemed less for her appearance than for her character.

Holly drew her fingers along the ropes of the swing. It swayed gently at her touch as she struggled to comprehend that her father refused to relent, that he had every intention of giving her to the hulking giant of a Welshman who hadn’t given her a moment’s peace since invading this garden.

The grass beside the bench was still crushed from his fall. She remembered how he had lain with arms outflung, seeming somehow both vulnerable and formidable all at once. She brushed her fingertips against her lips, still stung by the impossible tenderness of his kiss. A kiss meant not for her, but for another.