Hard Day's Knight (43 page)

“Pepper? God, love, tell me you’re all right. Pepper?”

I opened my eyes to find Walker leaning over me, his helm gone, his eyes haunted.

“Hi, Walker. Have I told you how much I like your eyes?”

He looked up and spoke to someone else. “She’s delirious. Dammit, get the paramedic over here now!”

Paramedic. Delirious. The joust!
I struggled to a sitting position, pushing Walker away. “I’m not delirious, just in love. I’m fine, not hurt at all.”

“You were unconscious,” he accused, putting a restraining arm on me.

“Like hell I was,” I lied, slapping at his shoulder armor until he let me up. I thought I was going to pass out again when I sat up, fighting hard to keep my voice and face from showing just how hard I had been hit. Bravado, that was the key; I’d just brazen it out and he’d never know. “What’s the matter, you afraid to joust with me again?”

“Pepper, I am
not
going to—”

I lurched to my feet, my chest as sore as if someone had kicked me. “Sure you are, ’cause I am, which means you have to, or all these fine people will think the man I’m going to marry is a coward.”

“Marry?” he asked, his frown a fearsome thing to see as he followed me to where Sukey held Tansy.

“Well, yes, I assumed you’d want to marry me.” It took every last muscle I possessed, but I managed to clamber into the saddle without either vomiting or passing out. I took the helm offered to me and bit my lip as I looked down at Walker’s face, his adorable face, a face now wearing a mingled expression of anger and guilt. “You
do
want to marry me, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, but that’s not the point. We’ve had one run; now you can concede the win to me without jeopardizing the rest of your team.”

A little of the tightness across my chest eased. “I could, but I’m not going to. My honor’s at stake here, Walker, but more important, yours is as well. I trust you. I believe that you can joust without harming me.” I looked down at the dented section of my armor. “Much. So get that adorable butt of yours back onto Marley and prepare to defend yourself, because this time I’m taking off the kid gloves. It’s war now, buster.”

It was all bravado, of course. I didn’t relish taking another blow like the one he had dealt me, but it was important that Walker triumph over his fears. One run wouldn’t do it, but three might.

“Pepper, dammit, I’m not going to joust against you again. You can’t make me.”

“I love you, Walker.”

I could see his teeth grinding together. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to shame me into another run, and it’s not going to—”

“I love you more than anything in the whole world.”

“I will not be manipulated like this—”

“I love you so much, I trust you with my life.”

He snatched up his helm and shook it at me. “Fine! But when I break your damned fool neck and you spend the rest of that life crippled because you insisted I joust, I just hope you’ll be happy!”

“Hugs and smooches,” I called to him as he stormed over to Marley, muttering and swearing the whole way.

Walker rode to the end of the list, and I sent up another quick prayer to protect us both from injury, barely getting it completed before the audience exploded in cheers as the list marshal called the start.

“Well, this is getting to be humiliating,” I said a moment later as I raised my visor and shook the dirt and sand from where it had permeated my helm. “I don’t think I even touched you this time. You don’t have an extra-long lance, do you? And no, I don’t mean your manly eight inches.”

Walker pulled me to my feet, his gaze frankly assessing as it ran over my dented armor. “Are you hurt?”

“No, just a little winded. That passing on the right side really takes the breath out of you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he lied. He wasn’t even sweating despite wearing all that armor.

I pushed his visor up high and leaned forward to brush my lips against the thinned line of his mouth. “You’re a rotten liar. I’m fine, Walker. Your accuracy is dead-on, and you’re setting me down much gentler than even Bliss does.”

Pain flashed over his face, thickening his voice. “You’re killing me, Pepper. My heart stops each time I think of what could happen.”

“Then think instead about how good you’ll feel when I give you your reward for jousting with me.”

The frown I had come to love pulled his ebony brows together. “What reward?”

“I bought out Bawdy Mary’s selection of lotions. I thought tonight you could be my smorgasbord,” I whispered, then limped back to Tansy.

“Pepper—”

“Come on, I want one more shot at knocking you on your handsome butt. On your horse, McPhail.”

I smiled to myself as he shook his head and walked back to Marley.

“There goes the man I’m about to make deliriously happy,” I told Tansy. She snorted and jogged to the side when Sukey shoved the lance into my hand. “I just hope I live to appreciate his gratitude.”

Time seemed to do that weird “flashing your life before your eyes” telescoping thing as Walker turned Marley at the far end of the list. The roar of the crowd dulled to a distant white noise as I stared through the narrow eye slit of my visor at the figure of the black knight facing me, my breath rasping hard in my ears as it echoed in the steel confines of the helm.

Beneath the steel plates, mail, cloth gambeson, and thin linen shirt, my heart was thumping madly, so hard I could feel it in the tips of my fingers as I gripped the lance. Tansy must have felt the excitement too. She positively danced in anticipation, but her movements seemed slow and laborious; even the sound of her harness jingling seemed to be slowed as it penetrated the shelter of my helm.

From the very corner of my eye slit I saw the list marshal raise the cloth pennant. Although I couldn’t hear the words, the second his arm started its downswing I clamped my legs tight on Tansy’s sides, my breath coming out in a shouted exhalation that deafened me as the horse lunged forward.

Walker was quick off the start as well, but even so, each second seemed to take five times what it normally did; the only sound audible was my own breathing, hard and fast as Tansy pounded down the list. Walker and Marley suddenly seemed to speed up as I lowered my lance, clamping it down between my side and arm, my eyes on the curved black plate that was bolted to Walker’s shoulder piece.

I dropped the reins just as his lance slammed into my grand guard, knocking me backward against the high back of Veronica’s McClellan saddle. Splinters from the shattered tip flew up, blinding me and blocking my view of Walker, but the shock I felt as my lance connected with him twisted me to the right, my left leg coming out of the stirrup. I clung desperately to the horse and threw myself into the lance in an attempt to keep from being thrown.

There was a tremendous pressure in my chest that had me falling into a pit of blackness, but just as I started losing my grip on both consciousness and my lance, a thunderous
crack
reverberated through the air. The pressure miraculously disappeared, and Tansy was flying past Walker. I looked down, surprised to find myself still in the saddle, my right hand numb, but still there, gripping the remains of a lance broken in the middle.

“We did it,” I said, still staring at the lance, Tansy having turned to trot docilely back to our end of the list. “We did it. I don’t believe it—we did it!”

There was a flash of black to my left, and suddenly I was ripped from the saddle and slammed up against a brick wall. A black brick wall, one made up of plate armor and an extremely dishy knight.

“We did it,” I told the knight as he ripped my helm and arming cap off. “I can’t believe it. We did it. It was a draw because we both broke our lances, right? So I didn’t lose? Man, was that amazing!”

“You are never doing that again, do you understand?” He shook me a little as he spoke. “My heart won’t stand for it! I forbid you ever to joust. I refuse to go through that hell again—promise me you won’t do it again!”

I looked up into the silver eyes I loved so much, smiling through my tears of happiness at them, pausing only to pull off my gloves before I cradled his face in my hands. “You look furious and relieved and happy all at once.”

“I could have killed you.” His voice was so low I felt rather than heard it.

“But you didn’t. You, my brave knight, have proven your worth and won the fair maiden. So what are you going to do about that?”

“Take you back to my tent and make love to you for the next three hours,” he growled against my lips. His mouth was hot on mine as he kissed me, hot and fiery, aggressively demanding, but at the same time impossibly gentle. Around us the audience cheered, but we didn’t hear them as our lips parted reluctantly. My dream man, my knight in shining armor, the man who made me see that I, too, could do anything I wanted. . . .

“Best five out of seven?” I asked brightly.

I hung up the phone and looked at the bodies scattered around me. “All right, you mangy mongrels, get off me and let me get up. I have to go find your daddy.”

“I’m right here,” Walker’s voice rumbled from the kitchen, the door slamming behind him. I pushed Searcher the greyhound off the pad of paper that lay next to me on the couch, digging through the blankets to find the pen I had been using before the call. Walker loomed up on the doorway in his black leather duster, pulling his gloves off as he eyed us. “You look comfortable. You were right about the sofa—it does go well with the house.”

“Farm,” I corrected, wrinkling my nose when the elderly spaniel curled up against my hip emitted a sign he’d been into the compost heap again. “We have a farm, thanks to your winning the tourney championship, not that we got to see a lot of the money—what is it with your government taking so much of it for taxes? You won it in Canada, you shouldn’t have to pay English taxes on it—”

“Pepper,” he interrupted what was fast becoming my favorite rant.

“What?”

“Is there something you wanted me for?”

“Other than wild, unbridled lovemaking, you mean?”

He grinned. “That goes without saying.”

I slid my foot out from where Baskerville the bloodhound was lying on it, wriggling my toes to restore the flow of blood. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did want you for something else. When CJ explained to me that you had three dogs, I thought, ‘Okay, so the man has three dogs. I can live with that.’ But this”—I waved my hand at the canine carcasses that were spread out on and around me—“this appears to be
five
dogs.”

He grinned. “They just seem to find me. They all needed homes, and, well . . . I couldn’t leave them.”

The blanket on my lap moved. I pushed it aside to uncover the three steel-gray balls of fur that Walker had brought home the previous day. “And the kittens?”

His eyebrows shot up in mock horror. “You wouldn’t have liked it if I let old Ferguson drown them, would you?”

“No, of course not, but that didn’t mean
we
had to take them.”

“You’re good with animals,” he pointed out, squatting down next to me to tickle one of the kittens’ tummy. “Who better to have animals than a vet?”

“I have been at vet college exactly one week, buster. Nothing says I have to stay there! Besides, we have a situation that may mean I have to leave.”

“A situation?” He leaned in and kissed me, his lips cold from the chilly November weather. “What sort of a situation?”

“A family one,” I said.

His eyes widened until they were silver disks. “Pepper! You don’t mean you’re—”

“No! Not that. I’m not ruling it out, but not now, not when we’re just getting settled, and you’re starting the jousting school, and I’m trying to figure out the British veterinary world. It’s . . . well, there’s just no easy way to say this. My aunt called and she wants us to go back to Ontario.”

“She does?” His brow wrinkled. “Why?”

I sighed. “It’s Moth. Evidently he’s been in a decline ever since you left. He’s pining for you. He won’t eat; he won’t play with his toys—not even wearing his devil horns cheers him up. My aunt wants to offer you visitation rights. She knows he can’t come here because of the quarantine laws, so the only solution is for you to go back to Ontario every other month and jolly Moth out of the doldrums.”

Walker laughed so hard he fell back onto his butt, taking me, the blanket, the kittens, and four of the five dogs with him. We sprawled over him in a glorious confusion of fur, legs, and tails.

“Welcome to my world, Mrs. McPhail,” he said, his lips teasing mine as he plucked a kitten from between us.

“Thank you, Mr. McPhail. I think I may just stay awhile.”

And so I did.

Every author walks a fine line when incorporating factual content such as details about a sporting event into a novel. We balance the need to be realistic with readers’ demands to be given an entertaining story. With that in mind, when writing this book I took a few minor liberties with the subject of international competition jousting. One such liberty is the creation of a fictional international jousting competition with a $1 million purse. Although there are many competitions with generous purses to be won by the victors, I am not aware of any that have reached the level described in this book. Participants of the competition jousting world believe that they will one day be possible, however.

Other aspects of jousting competition presented in this book are as factual as I could make them, although the existence of several international jousting organizations, each with their own rules, own style of jousting, and own award system, makes it difficult to standardize specific details. For that reason, the rules of my tourney are an amalgamation of existing tournament rules, with a few little twists thrown in to make them fun.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dameon Willoch of the Seattle Knights (
www.seattleknights.com
) for his limitless patience in answering my questions regarding styles of jousting, international rules, and myriad other queries covering everything from horse injuries to how it feels to take a fall in full plate armor, as well as for inviting me to watch his training classes and jousting demonstrations.