Heart of a Knight (3 page)

She raised her head. "A confession which does you honor, my lord."

My lord
. Thomas bowed his head. Fastening his hands behind his back, he said, "Griselda slept at my feet e'ry night."

As if remembering herself, Lady Elizabeth stood, brushing ineffectively at the dog hair littering her surcoat. "Then you must be sleeping in my chamber, sir."

Thomas refused to take offense. Instead he gave her a crooked smile. "Mayhap it is yours, my lady. I chose it for the scent in the bedding." Before he could stop himself, a bold jest came from his lips. "I vow I scent the same notes here."

Her eyes fixed upon his face, unmoved. "Well, you'll sleep there no more." All briskness now, she clasped her hands. "Where is the missive from my cousin?"

"Your cousin?"

"Aye. The king?" She tilted her chin, as if to berate him for his ignorance of her high nobility.

Thomas felt a stab of real fear. 'Twas a dangerous ruse he played—more dangerous still with one so high born as this.

Without speaking, he fetched the folded parchment with the king's seal from behind a loose stone on the hearth. To his disappointment, she did not immediately open it, but tucked it into her bodice. "We will speak later," she said, dismissing him. "First I wish to see if you have slept in my bed."

Thomas narrowed his eyes—did she know how bawdy that sounded? A hint of a smile touched the edge of the bowed red mouth, but she turned away before he could be sure.

"Come, children," she said to a girl covered in a gauzy veil and a sullen-looking boy of about twelve. A servant dressed in heavy black shooed them all toward the steps, sparing a single narrow-eyed glance at Thomas.

The veiled girl tagged behind. Deliberately, she pulled the gauzy covering from her head, to reveal a tangle of palest gold curls, and wide, knowing eyes in the face of an angel-child. No more than fifteen or sixteen, and too bold by half, he thought, but rewarded the child with a half-smile of appreciation, together with a slight nod. Beauty, he had learned, required only recognition.

Appeased, she tossed her head and climbed the stairs with the seductive sway of a serpent.

Trouble there, he'd warrant.

Thomas watched them until they disappeared, then let go a breath he was scarcely aware he'd held. It was only then that he saw Alice, emerging from her hidden place. She touched his arm as she passed, and mindful of the guards still eyeing him suspiciously, murmured, "Well done, my lord."

  2

Though she longed mightily
for the privacy lent by her status as widow, Lyssa paused on the gallery to give direction to her charges. "Nurse, you and Isobel may sleep in my old chamber." She pursed her lips, looking at her stepson Robert. At twelve, he'd outgrown a nursemaid, and needed fostering. He gazed at her with his usual strange calm. "What do you wish, boy?"

"I'll sleep in the hall with the guards." A faint sneer edged his words. "Since there are no noble lords to wait upon."

His tone pricked Lyssa's temper. "Ah, but there is a lord here for you to tend, as you should have been doing long since."

Robert scowled. "Not that beast out in the yard! A common knight!"

"All the better, to teach you humility." Briskly she spoke to one of the guards. "Give word to have

Lord Thomas moved to the south tower, and Master Robert will sleep there as his page."

Harry grinned, his gap-toothed smile glinting briefly between his thick whiskers. "Aye, my lady. Come, lad."

Nurse, a ruddy faced woman whose wispy gray hair was bundled tightly below her wimple, folded her hands on her considerable belly and fixed her stern gaze on Lyssa. "On a feast day, they'll be none to tend you, girl, as there should be. Isobel here needs her training if she's to be a grand lady-in-waiting, like your sister."

Isobel smoothed hair from her face, and Lyssa wondered when she had taken off her veil. Even on the dim gallery, her pale blonde beauty shimmered with a light of its own. Wide gray eyes gave the impression of innocence and sweetness, just as her brother's did, but well did Lyssa know the impression to be untrue. She'd never met a more scheming pair than Isobel and Robert, and rued the day she'd been forced to take them in.

She was unprepared for the cooperation Isobel offered now. "Nurse, can you not see she longs to be alone?" She smiled at Lyssa and put her slim hands round Nurse's ample arm. "Let her be, to revel in the pleasure of her own things for a day. Tomorrow will be soon enough to see to ladies-in-waiting and servants and such."

Touched, Lyssa kissed her stepdaughter's cheek. "Thank you, my sweet." Still, she'd learned to keep a firm rein on the girl, and as she turned away, Lyssa said, "Nurse, do not let her out tonight. There will be much drunkenness."

A faint wrinkle marred Isobel's flawless brow, then disappeared. "Ever seeing to my safety."

With relief, Elizabeth at last escaped up the winding stone stairs in the east tower. On the landing, she paused, drawn by the sounds of the villagers coming in on a soft breeze through the open shutters of a small arched window. A puddle of sunlight warmed the stones, and Lyssa breathed a prayer of thanksgiving before rounding the corner to climb the rest of the stairs. Griselda followed behind.

Her chamber sat just below the armory, an airy room most times. Now the windows were shuttered, and by the scent hanging in the close air, she knew the knight indeed had slept here. It smelled dark, like crushed leaves in the shadowed forest. A man's scent, so potent it nearly made her dizzy.

Purposefully, she crossed the Arabian carpet that was her prized possession, and flung open the shutters to the light and air. On three sides of the tower were wide, arched embrasures that opened out to an unbroken view of the protected forest that spread around Woodell for unending miles. Leaning over the embrasure, she spied the river, far below, winding along one side of the castle.

Home. She closed her eyes and breathed it. Again the lingering taste of the knight, mingled now with forest spice and the sweet, clear breeze from the water, filled her.

"Who is he, Griselda?" she asked her dog. Griselda only licked her hand, and settled on the carpet with a heartfelt sigh. Lyssa smiled. She knelt again to put her face in the dog's soft long fur. "Of all I am most pleased to see you, sweet girl." Griselda groaned softly, nosing Lyssa's neck.

Parchment crackled against her breast. Remembering the letter from the king, she sat on the floor next to her dog and drew it out. For a moment, she only held it in her hand, unwilling to learn he had already found her another husband. She was only widowed a year, and would be better pleased to remain one.

It was not that she grieved her husband overmuch. At fourteen she'd been wed to Philip, Duke of Mereworth. Thirty years her senior, he had been a widow who'd much loved his first wife, and only married Lyssa at the order of his king, bringing with him two spoiled, sullen children.

Their marriage had been barren in more than its childlessness. Though he bed her when he returned to Woodell, the act was perfunctory and cold, and she knew he performed as much out of duty as she did. Both were thankful he was rarely there at all, for the king had sent him on endless missions to France. Two summers ago, he'd died of plague in Rouen, leaving her a widow at eighteen.

But King Edward would not let her remain a widow. Her lands were too valuable. No, a husband she would have. The most she could hope for was one who would not mistreat her, perhaps give her a child. A child of her own might be reward enough for having to bed another husband.

With a sigh, she broke the seal on the parchment. As she read the words, the heaviness that had so weighed upon her heart these last months lifted. The news was good.

Edward wrote simply that he was still considering the problem of her husband, but his attentions were consumed by the troubles on the land. The cursed plague had left a tangle of troubles in its wake, and he had not yet found a suitable husband for her.

Lyssa blinked, and read the words once more to be sure she had not made some mistake. Then she cried out happily, and jumped up and ran to the windows. Bending far out into the day, she took in a deep breath of air. No father or husband to order her about or wait upon; no nights to dread. In her home, with her threads and looms and plans, with the village safe, and the castle secure, she would live free as long as God granted.

Throwing back her head to the warm sun, she laughed, and remembered an old legend of St. John's Day. It was a charmed festival, and one was said to find hidden treasures on it. In truth, she could think of none so sweet and unexpected as this.

Her journey had been long, and she was weary, but there were no servants about on a feast day to bring her hot water for a bath, so she contented herself with a wash in the basin and a change of clothes. When two guards came to fetch the small belongings of Lord Thomas, she asked them to send word to the kitchen for her supper. Tomorrow she would set about reordering life at the castle. For tonight, she ate soft cheese and rough black peasant bread with sharp cider made in vats in the village, and then slept a little.

When she awakened, it was near dark, and she made her way to the castle walk. Every night of her youth she'd watched the sunset from high on the battlements, taking pleasure in the way darkness pooled first in the thick forest to the west, and leaked out to the road in long, pointed shadows. The shadows stretched, and grew, engulfed the village, then the fields. At last, the sun sunk abruptly beyond the forest, and all was cast under a gray gloaming.

Most nights, the village would now go quiet, the sounds of a cow or a sheep the only counterpoint to crickets whirring in the grass.

But tonight on the ancient hill to the east there burned a great bonfire, crackling hot yellow and orange against the darkening sky. The low thud of drums, like the comforting beat of a mother's heart, reached Lyssa's ear, and she knew there would be pipes, lilting and gay, even though she could not hear them. Smiling at the reassurance the old festival offered, she watched the shadows of the villagers leap in dance against the fire's great light.