Hard Day's Knight (6 page)

“I had no idea women could be jousters,” I said, watching as the two men rode to opposite ends of the lists. Walker called out some instruction to Bos, but I couldn’t hear anything other than a threat to have his guts for garters if he did something foolish like he did the last time. “Wow. Walker is really mad at him, huh?”

“He should be,” Bliss said, handing me Moth as she stood up. “Bos let his lance dip. He came close to harming Butcher’s horse. Walker was just letting him know that if he did it again, he’d be off the team.”

“Ouch. I don’t think it’s right that a horse should be hurt, but it seems like kind of an ironic thing to be mad about when the whole point of jousting is to knock the other guy off.”

“Do you know what they used to do to a knight who hit a horse with his lance?” Bliss asked as she stepped down over the bleachers.

I shook my head.

“They’d shoot him with crossbows. The first rule of any joust—performance or competition—is that if you hit a horse with a lance, you’re history. Drummed out of the jousting community. No second chance, no appeal, nothing. It’s all over.” She smiled at both me and CJ, then headed off toward the stables behind the practice ring, pausing by the rails to have a quick word with Walker.

“Wow,” I said, watching as the men prepared to joust again.

“I told you they loved their animals,” CJ said smugly, then stood up and yelled out encouragement to the big man in black armor.

They ran another course, but this time I was prepared for what was going to happen. Both jousters kept their seats, although Bos lost his lance. Walker went out to both men and evidently told them what they did right and wrong. I felt a little sorry for Bos—Walker spent just a minute with Butcher, who nodded his head several times, but Bos got a lengthy lecture before Walker clapped a hand on Bos’s leg and gave Marley a pat.

Over the course of the next half hour, they jousted five more times, with Butcher going over his horse’s butt once, and Bos being tossed three times. You’d think watching the same thing over and over again would be boring, but it was just the opposite. Each time the great horses jumped forward, each time the lances were leveled at the opponents’ chests, my heart jumped into my mouth.

“Now I know why tournaments were so popular in the Middle Ages,” I said as I sat down after a particularly spectacular crash on Bos’s part, having just stood and screamed my support for him (I felt it only polite, since CJ was yelling like mad for Butcher). “This is fabulous stuff!”

“If you think so now, you should see us in all our finery,” a smooth English voice said. “Then we’re not just fabulous; we’re spectacular. CJ, what a delight it is to see you again.” The handsome dark-haired young man named Vandal stood with one booted foot propped up on the edge of the bleacher. “You look lovely as ever. Might I hope that you have seen the error of your ways and are ready to bestow upon me your fair hand and fairer body?”

His eyes danced wickedly as their gaze lingered first on CJ’s bodice (her bosom had distinct hemispheres, unlike my shelf of solid breast), then on mine. His eyes bugged out a bit when he got to me, but eventually he managed to drag his gaze off my shelf.

“Not on your life, Vandal. You know my heart and all the other parts belong to Butcher,” CJ answered, blowing him a kiss nonetheless.

He made a show of catching it and sighing dramatically. I had to give him credit: He was a really handsome guy, just my idea of what a knight should look like: tall with waist-length black hair pulled back in a ponytail, a charming goatee, not in the least bit effeminate in a worn leather jerkin and green tights. . . . Oh, all right, it was the way the tights clung to his long legs, and the jerkin opened to expose a smooth, muscled chest that
really
had me paying attention.

“Butcher is an infidel. I can only hope the time comes when you realize just how cruel you are to wrong one who has sworn to you his eternal love. You must be Pepper. My darling sister told me there was a new toothsome Wench on the grounds. My lady, I am your servant.” He swept me a low, elaborate bow. “Might I hope that your heart, at least, is not claimed by any knave present?”

“Nope, I’m heart free,” I said with an answering smile, sliding CJ a questioning look. I did a little eyebrow semaphore to let her know that I was perfectly willing to entertain the idea of Vandal as a mate if she, the queen of matchmaking, thought it was a good idea. Her eyebrows signaled back uncertainty.

“Lovelier words I have never heard, unless they be ‘I name thee tourney champion,’ ” Vandal said, possessing himself of my hand in order to kiss it. Moth, who had been disgusted with the fact that I kept leaping up to cheer on the jousters, was sitting next to me wearing an extremely pained look on his white face. When Vandal reached for my hand the cat hissed and flattened his ears back. Vandal snatched his hand back quickly.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, clamping a hand down over Moth’s head. He glared at me from between my fingers. “He’s a very
bad
cat.”

“Protective of his lady. An admirable quality in one so . . . erm . . . diminutive,” Vandal said, eyeing Moth’s rotund sides. “Might I beg for the honor of your company later tonight, say, at the dinner hour? I know of a perfectly divine inn where the mead flows like a honeyed river, and the roast boar is most delectable.”

“Does he talk like that all the time?” I asked CJ, amazed that anyone could get so much into his persona.

“Yes. Don’t buy that line about honeyed rivers. He uses it in other contexts, too, which has given him the title of Champion of the Medieval Pickup Lines.”

“I am beset by a desire in my loins, dearest lady, and only you can quench its fire,” Vandal said in a soft, seductive tone, his dark blue eyes going into flirting overtime.

Moth growled at him.

“Alas, brave sir knight,” I said, getting into the swing of the thing (when in Rome and all that), “yonder kitty finds your loins unworthy of my extinguishing attempts. Mayhap another time I could tame?”

“
Any
time,” Vandal all but cooed, and I think he would have braved Moth’s displeasure to kiss my hand, but just then Walker, who was standing a few yards behind him in the practice ring, yelled his name.

“Stop slobbering on the woman and suit up, Vandal. You and Bliss are next.” Walker’s velvety voice had an underthread of steel that sent a little shiver up my back and down my arms.

Vandal slid him a questioning look, but nodded before giving both CJ and me another bow, excusing himself to go don his mail.

“He wasn’t doing anything wrong, Walker,” CJ called as Vandal headed at a trot for the stable. “Just flirting. You know Vandal—he doesn’t mean any of it.”

“He might not with you,” Walker answered with a dark look at me, “but that’s because he knows Butcher would have his balls on a platter if he touched you. Other women aren’t excluded from his less than honorable intentions.”

“Wow, a man who knows what honor is,” I said facetiously. I don’t know what it was about Walker that had me wanting to alternate between a full swoon and teasing the smug look right off his face, but I just couldn’t refrain from tweaking his nose a little, so to speak. I’ve always been partial to a man who can parry words as well as a sword. “I wonder if we can clone you?”

He glared at me. I smiled back. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, be feeling protective of me since you saved my life?”

“Hell, no!”

“He saved your life?” CJ asked, looking from me to Walker and back. “You said you ran into him. How did he save your life?”

“He rode in just like a knight saving a lady from a dastardly villain, only the villain was a big, mean white horse. One moment I was a nanosecond away from a horribly painful death; the next I was crushed up against Walker’s manly chest. It was very romantic.” I sighed, peeking from the corner of my eye to watch Walker.

“It was
not
romantic,” he answered, looking disgusted at the very idea.

“Yes, it was.” I batted my eyes at him, thoroughly enjoying the horrified look that flitted across his face at my next words. “A lesser woman might have swooned into his strong arms and begged him to make her his woman, but alas, what with him and Farrell insisting on trying to stretch me on some sort of equine rack, I had no chance to swoon and beg. Perhaps later?”

“I’m busy,” he said quickly, and almost ran back to where Vandal and Bliss were coming into the ring.

“That was fun.” I giggled to CJ as I watched him walk away. My mind went a little girlie on me there for a couple of seconds while it admired the natural saunter in his stride, not to mention the long line of his strong legs. Unfortunately his tunic hid all the good parts, but I allowed myself a moment of fantasy about just what his backside would look like before I realized that CJ wasn’t giggling with me. “Wasn’t that fun?”

“I don’t know,” she said, a faint frown between her brows.

“I was flirting, Ceej. You told me I have to be proactive, so that’s what I’m doing. Flirting is step one in the hunt for a mate.”

“You didn’t flirt with Vandal,” she said slowly, looking at me as if it were the first time she’d seen me. “Every woman who can breathe flirts with Vandal. Every woman but you.”

I shrugged. “He’s just so obvious. Where’s the sport in that?” I let my eyes drift back to the broad-shouldered, long-legged, smooth-voiced man in the ring. “I prefer my prey to be a little more of a challenge.”

“Yes, but—” CJ bit the words off without continuing.

“But what?”

“But Walker isn’t . . . he’s not . . . he’s just . . .”

“What? Married? Involved with someone? Gay? A
eunuch?
”

“No to all of those—at least, the last time Butcher wrote to me Walker wasn’t involved with anyone.”

“Then what’s your objection? Honestly, Ceej, here you are ready to do the matchmaking thing, and you get all dismal on me when I do a little constructive flirting.”

“He’s not right for you,” she blurted out quickly, clutching my arm. “There, are you happy? You made me say it. He’s not right for you. He’s not the one you should end up with. He’ll only bring you unhappiness. Look somewhere else, Pepper. I don’t want to see you hurt, but pain is all you’ll get from Walker.”

“You can say that again,” a smiling, auburn-haired, very tanned woman said as she stopped at the bottom of the bleachers. She wrinkled her perfect nose at CJ. “I know you, don’t I? You’re one of the British team, yes?”

“No. My boyfriend is,” CJ answered, giving me an unreadable look.

“Oh, yes,” the woman said. She held out her hand and gave us a bright smile. “I’m Veronica Tyler.”

CJ shook her hand politely. “This is my cousin, Pepper Marsh. I’m CJ Brand.”

“How nice. Do you joust?” Veronica asked me.

I raised my eyebrows. “Who, me? No! Don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Oh.” Her emerald gaze raked over me, making me extremely aware that I was hot, sweaty, my hair was pulled back in a simple scrunchy, and I had a shelf bosom, whereas she looked cool and stylish with perfectly coiffed short ’do, a green-and-cream-striped tunic with a tiny palm tree emblem over her left breast, matching cream tights, and boots that went up to midthigh. “I assumed if you were Walker’s new squeeze that you’d joust.”

“I’m not his squeeze,” I said, pulling Moth closer to me to make room for her. “I just met him an hour ago.”

“No? Mmm. You’re just his type. He loves red-heads.” She touched her auburn hair with a long-nailed hand, then sat on the other side of the cat and watched the ring for a moment. In it, Bliss and Vandal were taking their positions.

I wanted to ask her if she was making such obvious insinuations for any particular reason, but decided that it wasn’t cool to be so suspicious right off the bat. Too, it wasn’t as if I had any right to be jealous or put out by her obvious (and assumedly ex-) girlfriend-hood. I wasn’t serious about flirting with Walker.

There’s nothing wrong with investigating all possibilities,
Wise Inner Pepper said as I thought back to the feeling of being held on Walker’s lap. I ignored my inner voice, telling myself I wasn’t really
interested
in Walker; I just liked to tease him. I was only amusing myself, indulging in a little light flirtation to pass the time, a way to keep my sadly out-of-practice hand in the action before my knight in shining armor rolled up and swept me off to his castle.

Wise Inner Pepper snorted at that thought, leaving me to distract her with other things. “How come Fenice and Vandal aren’t wearing suits of armor? And why do they have shields, but Butcher and Bos didn’t?”

“Light armor,” Veronica said, leaning forward to prop her chin on her hand. “For light armor you joust in chain mail, and strike your blow on your opponent’s shield rather than their breastplate or grand guard. This is French, so they use shields.”

“French what?” I asked, wondering if there was a guidebook on jousting I could read.

“French style of jousting. There are seven different styles, each one slightly different. Some use light armor and shields; others use full armor and no shields.”

“I take it you do some jousting?” I couldn’t help but ask.

She smiled. “Darling, I don’t just do
some jousting,
I win.”

“I’ve heard of you,” CJ said suddenly. “You’re the woman who organized the team of all-women jousters. Californians, aren’t you?”

“The Palm Springs Jousting Guild,” Veronica said with a practiced hair flip and another white-toothed smile. She could have been an actress, she was so perfect. “This is our first official international competition. I’ve competed for the last few years, naturally, but this is the first time the team has competed together. We’re quite good, you know.”

“Wow, a whole team of women? Good for you!” I said.

“Thank you. I hope I can count on your support when . . .” Her words stopped for a moment as Walker gave the signal, and Bliss and Vandal dug their heels into their horses’ sides. There was a moment of a dull rumble as the horses charged toward each other, then a massive crash as the lances met the shields, and the shattered lance tips went flying. “. . . we compete. Bliss is very good,” Veronica said, her voice losing a smidgen of its self-confidence. “She must have been training this summer.”