Hard Day's Knight (9 page)

Claude paused in the act of removing my plate, sliding a warning look my way, but I was tired of people dancing around the issue. There was some secret about Walker’s past that everyone but me was privy to, and I wanted to know just what it was.

Farrell leveled a glare at Claude until he gathered up the used plates and left the RV.

“Walker . . .” Farrell leaned back and pursed his lips as if he were remembering something amusing. “Walker doesn’t so much suffer from a lack of confidence as he does a lack of skill.”

“If he’s unskilled, why are you so threatened by him?”

Farrell’s nostrils made a little “you hit the target” flare. “Threatened? I’m not threatened by him. He poses no threat to me whatsoever. He never did.”

I said nothing, although it was obvious I’d pressed on a sore point. But I knew men and their egos—having worked around male software geeks most of my adult life—so I kept my mouth shut and let him protest at will.

“Walker used to joust. He was fair, nothing great, although he had everyone in England thinking he was the king of the hill. He was all show and no style.”

The translation from male wounded-ego-speak: Walker was hot stuff and Farrell knew it.

“But then one day about three years ago he lost his nerve. He took a fall during a competition joust, a hard fall, cracked up some of his ribs. After that, he made all sorts of excuses—his arm was injured so he couldn’t hold the lance, his favorite horse was too old to joust in competition, he didn’t have the time to go traveling around from tournament to tournament. It was pathetic. Everyone knew what really was keeping him from rejoining the circuit—he had been beaten, and he just couldn’t stomach losing. Those ground pounders, they talk big, but the truth is they just don’t have the skill or stamina to joust with the big boys. Walker didn’t have what it took then, and he doesn’t now.”

“But he’s here with his team,” I pointed out.

Farrell shrugged as he chewed a mouthful of buffalo mozzarella and yellow tomatoes. “As a squire only. Oh, he trained the members of his so-called team—he does that because he can’t stand to leave the sport altogether—but he’s nothing more than a pitiful shell of what he once was. Do you know what they used to call him?”

I shook my head, feeling a little sick to my stomach at the delight in Farrell’s sapphire eyes.

“Walker the Wild. He was supposedly known for the fact that he took wild chances, used unheard-of, dangerous jousting moves that no one else could pull off, although I think it was all propaganda he put out. I certainly never saw him do anything the least bit impressive.”

Walker the Wild? The man his team members now called Granddad? “That really must have been a bad accident he had if it shook him up so much he stopped jousting,” I said slowly, spearing an olive and popping it into my mouth.

“There’s no jouster worth his salt who’d stop because of a few broken bones,” Farrell said around a mouthful of arugula and cheese. “That was just a convenient excuse to hide behind. The truth is, he didn’t like losing. No, not yet, you fool! We just started our salads!”

Claude, who had come into the RV carefully balancing a couple of plates, stopped dead when Farrell snapped at him. “You know, my job title may be squire, but that doesn’t mean you can treat me like I’m your damned slave.”

I gave him a little thumbs-up, happy to see him not allowing Farrell to stomp all over him, but it was short-lived.

“You are, however, employed to do the tasks I assign you, and if you can’t do them correctly, I’m sure we could find someone who can,” Farrell said with silken insolence. “Now take that away and keep it warm until we’re ready for it.”

Claude scowled down at Farrell, and I held my breath, waiting to see what he’d do, but in the end he just stormed off, bearing the plates of scallops. “He’d fit right in with the software-geek crowd,” I said sorrowfully to myself.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing important,” I said, giving Farrell a long look. “It’s none of my business, but don’t you think you’re a little high-handed with Claude? I mean, all this knight and squire business only goes so far, and in the end you’re just two guys with the same goal—to do your job well.”

Farrell stared at me.

“Right, okay, none of my business. Back to Walker . . .” He rolled his eyes and stabbed at a bit of errant yellow tomato. “What did you mean when you said that the real reason he quit jousting was because he didn’t like losing?”

He shrugged again and poured himself another glass of champagne. “Just that—he is a poor loser. He never jousted again after being beaten.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, waving my fork at him. “Are you saying that he was unbeaten, and that when he eventually was, he quit the sport?”

“Anyone can
say
they’re unbeaten,” Farrell said smoothly—a little too smoothly for my taste. Obviously it was his ego speaking. “All it takes is to ensure that you go up against men who have nowhere near your skill. Because there’s no one governing organization, anyone can form their own jousting society and give themselves titles, make up rules that benefit them, and so on. It’s all unregulated, so claiming you’re unbeaten really means nothing. And now I refuse to ruin the rest of the evening with talk of the unpleasant Mr. McPhail. After dinner I’ll show you around the stables and let you see what sort of a horse a
real
jouster rides.”

I kept my mouth shut after that. I’ve always maintained that you can learn a lot about a man by allowing him free rein, conversationally speaking. Guys who secretly (or not so secretly) feel that they are the most important thing on God’s green earth will talk only about things that have to do with them. Guys who sincerely want to get to know you better will draw you out with questions about your likes and dislikes, your past, your hopes, dreams, and, if they’re really good, your fantasies.

Guess which category Farrell fell into?

Farrell waved a hand at a bay horse later, when we visited the stable. “This is Sonora; she’s my backup in case Lance or Hellion goes lame. She’s very good, for a mare. I rode her earlier this spring at the U.S. Championships despite the fact that I’d just started training her. She held up well. I won that championship by seventy points.”

“Ah,” I said noncommittally as I viewed the mare placidly munching hay in a stable so antiseptically clean, it could have doubled for my mother’s surgery.

“So how hard it is really to joust?” I asked as Farrell walked Moth and me down the brightly lit stable to view yet another horse. Moth, surprisingly, didn’t seem to be intimidated by the horses, going so far as to stand up on his back legs, bracing himself against the stall door in order to smell a couple of the horses who expressed a mutual interest in him.

Moth seemed to be having a better time than me, to be honest. Thus far I’d seen Farrell’s horses and his specially made, custom-designed tack, met a good dozen of the people who served as squires, grooms, and assorted flunkies, chatted briefly with the other three jousters on his team (they all looked like surfers who’d taken a wrong turn in life, too), and survived listening to tales about the last year’s worth of tournament results (all of which Farrell and his team won, of course). I began to envision just how satisfying it would be to plant a lance into his chest and throw him off his horse when he paused for breath. “I mean, I know from what you’ve said that you’ve practiced for years and years and years to get where you are—”

“Not that many years,” he protested quickly.

“—but how hard is it to learn?” I ignored his interruption. “Is it something that anyone can pick up?”

“Why, do you intend on learning how to joust?” he asked, his blond eyebrows making a mocking sweep upward.

I hadn’t—heaven knew I wanted nothing to do with a sport that had to be accomplished on the back of a horse—but his chauvinistic attitude was really grating on my nerves. “Maybe. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Darling.” He laughed, putting his arm around me and pulling me tight to his side. Moth gave him a look that said he didn’t appreciate having his leash tugged in such a manner. “There’s a reason women didn’t joust in the Middle Ages.”

“But they did,” I said, allowing him to walk me down the stable block. “My minor in college was European history, so I know. There
were
instances of women who went to war and who jousted in tournaments. Modern historians don’t want to recognize that fact because it goes against their male-dominated view of the times, but the facts are there for people who want to find them.”

Farrell waved that away without any difficulty. “Jousting is a time-honored male sport. There’s a reason for that—women don’t have the strength that men do. They just can’t do it properly.”

“What about groups like the Palm Springs jousters?”

“Dilettantes. They do performance jousting for charities and such. Their leader is above par—for a woman—but she’s not of competition quality.” Farrell stopped to point out a speck of dirt on the cement floor to one of the women wearing a Team Joust! tunic. She gave him a look that I wholly sympathized with. In fact, Farrell’s overwhelmingly chauvinistic attitude had pretty much pushed me beyond my distaste for horses.

“What’s the gentlest, least-likely-to-eat-my-hair horse you have?” I asked, pulling away from him.

His smile was smug enough that I wanted to smack it right off his face. I also formally struck him off my potential spouse list. Even if his ego could be salvaged, he was just too pretty for me. I wanted a man who spent less time on his hair than I spent on mine, and Farrell’s carefully coiffed, gleaming golden hair positively screamed expensive hair care products and much time in front of the mirror. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Yep. I’d like to see if it’s as difficult as you say it is.”

His eyebrows rose even higher. “You’re not one of those women who feel as if they can do anything a man can do, are you?”

“With the exception of being able to write my name in the snow, yes, I am. It’s put-up-or-shut-up time, Farrell. What’s it going to be?”

He shook his head, but turned to snap out an order to another Team Joust! employee. “Saddle up Volcano, and bring a couple training lances to the warm-up ring. Is the quintain still set up there? Good.”

He turned back to me with a tight smile, holding out a hand for me to take. I didn’t really want to hold his hand, but since I was making him and his crew go to a lot of trouble on my behalf, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to make nice. “Come along, my fair one. If you wish to play like the big boys, you’ll have to do it properly.”

“Um . . . about this horse named Volcano . . .”

His hand closed over mine as he led me toward his RV. “A very experienced mare. She’s the safest horse I have.”

I wasn’t convinced. Maybe it was the gleam of amusement that shone so brightly in his eyes, but I doubted if it was likely the description
safe
could be applied to any horse named Volcano. “Oh. Okay. Uh . . . you’re not going to make me wear one of those suits of armor, are you?”

He eyed my breast shelf. “No, I don’t have any armor that would fit your . . . you. But I think you’ll fit into my chain mail.”

“Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence.”

Ten minutes later I staggered into a large open-air paddock. Next to me was a smug Farrell, who grinned every time I tripped over a clump of grass, and Claude, who was stuck with Moth-watch duty.

“You’re sure the mail isn’t too heavy for you?”

Condescension dripped from every word.

“What, too heavy for sturdy old me? Not in the least. In fact, maybe I should wear a second one, just for safety’s sake,” I said, full of bravado that I didn’t come close to feeling. The mail hung down to my knees, the deadweight of it already making my shoulders ache.
What in God’s name am I doing?
the sane part of my mind shrieked as I stumbled again, quickly righting myself to give Farrell a smile that I feared was just as weak as my knees.
Jousting? Me? On a horse?
I gave a mental shrug and pointed out to my shrieking mind that it was too late now to back out, even if I was the queen of stupid to have allowed myself to be so annoyed by Farrell’s attitude that I was about to mount a horse named Volcano.

“Really? I’d be happy to send someone back for another coat of mail—” Farrell stopped and looked around for one of his minions.

“No, no, it’s already late enough; let’s just get this over with,” I said, tugging on his arm to get him moving again. “So, who am I jousting against? And do I get a shield? I think I should have a shield. I don’t think this mail is going to do much to protect me from a lance hitting me in the chest.”

“Squires always start on the rings, then move up to a quintain before they can joust with another person,” Farrell said, waving over a pretty pinto mare and her attendant. “Since we don’t have the rings set up, you’ll have to make do with the quintain.”

The mare didn’t look at all impressed with what she saw as I staggered forward. She flared her nostrils, and, mindful of years of my mother’s horsey dictates, I bent down to Volcano’s face and greeted her in the approved manner: by exhaling through my nose into hers. She snuffled my face for a minute, gave me a look that said I wasn’t fooling her in the least, and turned her head to beg for treats from Robin, the man holding her.

“Right, a quintain,” I said, eyeing Volcano to make sure she wasn’t going to reach back and nip me as I scrambled into her saddle. “I know what that is—a swingy wooden thing.”

“It’s a training tool. The goal is to hit the shield fixed to the top of the beam. If you hit it dead-on, the quintain will pivot. Usually we put a bag of sand on the opposing arm, which teaches jousters speed as well as accuracy, but for you we’ll just count the revolutions. All set? Stirrups all right? Jody, the lance.”

I settled down on Volcano’s back, the feel of a horse beneath me sending me back to the childhood years I had spent hacking around with my mother, but unlike my mother’s unholy trio of equine terrors, Volcano didn’t seem to mind having me on her. She tossed her head up and down a few times, but I interpreted that more as a “let’s get on with it” attitude than an objection to me personally.