Knight of Love (8 page)

And then it was over. She was wed.

Maybe.

“Becker sends you a wedding present.” Ravensworth walked into the tent later that evening after spending time with his men at the wedding feast she'd refused to attend. Gunther had brought her a tray instead; the boy had come back a while ago to clear it and leave in its place a German dessert wine and two small glasses.

On the table in front of her, Ravensworth laid the dagger he'd first given her back at Rotenburg. “With his compliments. My cousin also bid me to convey”—the earl's lip twisted in a wry smile—“his very best wishes for a lifetime of married bliss.”

With a deep sigh, she set down the book she'd found by the earl's trunk and ran her fingers down the scrolling of the scabbard. She knew not what to make of this strange man, nor of the situation. He was surely not her husband. Was he her enemy? She rubbed her forehead.

“Ah, you've been reading my
Parzival
,” he noted, shrugging out of his heavy coat. “Do you enjoy epic German poetry?”

It seemed a safe enough topic as she worked to figure out how to deal with him. She straightened. “I have heard of Wolfram von Eschenbach,” she said, “but never read him. He was a medieval knight, wasn't he, as well as a poet?”

The earl nodded. “He wrote
Minnesang,
too. His lyrics are beautiful. I could play some of them for you,” he suggested brightly, reaching for his lute. “It would be quite fitting, don't you think, for our wedding night?”

She held up her hands. “No! Love poems sung in medieval German?” She shuddered. “Thank you, but I think not.” To distract him, she asked, “You have the same Christian name as Eschenbach and are both hereditary knights. Are your family lines related?”

The earl unstrapped his sword belt and set it on the trunk. “A very early forebear, from a collateral family branch.” He shrugged modestly but picked up the book with some reverence to smooth a hand across the gilt-illustrated leather cover.

She stood to look with him at the golden chalice on the cover. “The story of Sir Percival's quest for the Holy Grail. Is it from this Wolfram whose name you bear, my lord, that you derive your belief in chivalry and true love?” She kept her tone light and mocking.

But he would have none of it. “No, not from him.” He put down the book and turned to her with steady and serious eyes. “From you, Lenora. I know true love is real because of you.”

She pursed her lips, annoyed and oddly chastened at the same time. “I never thanked you for this blade.” She picked it up. “Nor for the service you did me that day.” Perhaps a little civility would not be amiss.

He shook his head at the mention of thanks. “Did Kurt leave you alone after that? We tried to keep him busy and away from the
Schloss
.”

She looked up in surprise. “That was you? Your men caused those local revolts?”

He lifted one massive shoulder. “We played some role in it.”

“My thanks for that service as well, then; his preoccupation did allow me to lay plans for escape.”

The earl pulled out her chair again. “Come, sit,” he invited. “Let me pour you some of the
Eiswein
. Tell me how you managed to get away from Rotenburg.”

The dessert wine was another marvelous delicacy for a military campaign. The earl, it seemed, traveled with quite the wine cellar. With its grapes picked after a winter frost to concentrate the flavors, the ice wine tasted of intense fruit and honey—an ambrosia of the gods.

Because she was weary of fighting with him and had had no one to talk with for weeks, she found herself telling him about the assistance rendered by Franz's family and the herbs she'd used to drug her maids. He poured her more wine, offered his box of chocolates again, and listened attentively.

“Good girl,” he said, as she concluded. “You don't know how I worried about leaving you there. If I could have rescued you that night, Lenora, I swear I would have. But the risks to you were too great. The least I can do is rescue you now.”

“I don't need rescuing!” she said tiredly, for what felt like the twelfth time. “And I don't want a husband.”

“I know, I know,” he murmured in reassurance, pushing the chocolates back across the table toward her. “You needn't think of me as your real husband, if you prefer. Just a temporary one to get you through this moment of rather tumultuous history.”

“Do you mean that we could seek an annulment once we are back in England?”

He paused. “If you wished to seek a divorce once you were safe in England, I would work with you to bring it about. Or you may get lucky, and I'll leave you a widow here in Germany. You could claim your dower and be free of me at the same time. But, Lenora”—he paused again to gather her hands in his; it seemed a predilection of his—“there can be no annulment. I must bed you tonight.”

His baldly stated intent froze her in her chair. “What?” Somehow she hadn't allowed herself to think of this. The marriage had been enough to deal with. She had assumed he would leave her alone, as he had the night before. Her stomach began to clench into a painful fist.

“The marriage must be real,
Liebling,
or Kurt could steal you back and claim you himself.” He rubbed at her fingers, which had turned cold as ice. “Tell me this—are you a virgin still?”

Her mouth dropped open. “How dare you ask such a question!?”

“It's important, Lenora. Is your maidenhead still intact? If a doctor were to perform an examination, would he conclude you were still a virgin?”

His question brought back a horror of memories. “You have no right to ask such things!”

“Did he force you?”

She knew not how to answer, even if she were inclined to discuss such things with this man. Kurt had forced her in many sick ways.

“If Kurt left you a virgin and he then captures you back,” the earl continued, “he'll order such an examination. I know him—he'll want to see if his property is sullied.”

“Sullied!?” Her breath hitched in her chest, caught on a ragged edge of anger and panic. “I fear I am sullied, indeed, my lord. If I were your bride in truth, you would find yourself badly cheated out of an untouched innocent for your bed. My maidenhead may be intact, but I am no virgin prize.”

“You
are
a prize,
Liebling
—a treasure, a princess to be cherished.” His deep baritone was so gentle—and so incongruous, to have gentleness coming from that giant form.

“You're saying that you must protect me by deflowering me? What self-serving insanity is that?”

“Indeed. Your virginity is a great liability at the moment,” he said with a straight face. “It renders you a valuable prize of war in this rebellion. I must bed you, Lenora, to consummate our marriage. After tonight, if you wish it, I won't approach you again, not until we settle things better between us.”

“No.” Her voice shook. “I do not consent to consummating this false marriage, Ravensworth. Surely you would not force yourself on me.”

“Lenora, let us not have it come to that. If the marriage is not consummated and Kurt recaptures you, he can have our union annulled and force you back as his wife. There would be no point to all we've done today.”

“Such a scenario strikes me as highly unlikely.”

“All the noble families and landed gentry hereabouts are in league with Kurt against the revolutionaries. If we are not well and truly wed, the scenario is likely indeed.”

“No,” she repeated. It was all she could say. “I do not consent.”

“I am sorry.” He reached out to stroke her cheek, soft as a feather. “I won't hurt you,” he whispered. “I am not him.”

She stood abruptly and turned her back to him. She screwed her eyes shut.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
A deep, ragged inhalation did nothing to steady her breathing. “I can't”—her voice cracked—“can't do this.”

She heard him sigh deeply and then pick something up from the table. There was a scrape of metal. When he came back before her, the wash of tears had cleared enough for her to see what he held out: the unsheathed silver dagger.

“Take it,” he urged quietly, wrapping her cold fingers around the hilt. “Cut me with it. My blood for yours.”

She looked up at him, startled.

“To make things even between us. You are correct, of course. It is neither right nor fair that your wedding night be such as this. To help you accept what must be.” He quickly stripped off his coat, undid his cufflink, and rolled up the shirtsleeve on his unwounded arm. He held out his forearm to her, thick around as a large tree limb, with the tender skin of his inner wrist upward. “Go ahead,” he said. “It's all right.”

The hilt, heated by his flesh, lay warm in her hand. It felt so good to hold a blade again. Its power and protection flowed up her arm. For a moment, she closed her eyes and visualized the knife slicing across the blue veins snaking up Ravensworth's arm.

Or sinking into his heart.

Could she do it?

“Don't worry,” he said. “My training would stop you before you did me any real harm. And I have to warn you, some of the men would truly prefer to use you and send you back to Rotenburg bloody. You might manage to kill me in the night, but the men in the camp are far less charitably inclined to you than am I.”

The image rushed through her. Her wrist turned and her arm rose. Before he could draw breath, she flicked the knife. Like an eagle swooping to prey, it cut the air, zinging by the earl's head to thwack solidly into the tent's center wooden pole.

He turned back to her from the still-vibrating blade and cocked a brow. “You have hidden talents,
Liebling.
”

More condescension. His compliment did nothing for her mood. “I'm sure you thought I did nothing well save embroider a pillow or warble a tune. Men are such idiots. You think violence the answer to everything! Blood for blood! And where does that get us?” She wrapped her arms tight around her sides and paced the narrow tent floor.

He let her pace while he extracted the dagger from the tent post and resheathed it in the scabbard. He dropped it into her satchel with her few other belongings. “Come, Lenora—sit with me.” He sank onto the cot, its frame creaking under his weight, and patted the spot next to him. “You must be exhausted. Did you sleep much at all on the road?”

Truly, her fatigue ate at her, along with her fear and misery. When was the last time she'd slept soundly through the night, undisturbed by nightmares? A lifetime ago, it seemed, back amid the green and peaceful fields of Sherbrooke Abbey.

She dropped down beside him. “I neither slept nor ate much. Mostly, I looked for back roads around towns and for prosperous-looking farms from which to steal something to eat. I'd never stolen anything in my life. I went hungry for a day and a half before I nabbed turnips from a barn. It was either theft or death. That experience of being forced to steal in order to live was actually very enlightening.”

She was rambling, she knew, but too exhausted, too overwrought by circumstances, to stop. While she talked, he rubbed her back in slow circles. It felt so good—a simple, soothing, companionable touch—she couldn't bring herself to make him stop, even knowing where he planned to take it.

How his touch could feel good to her when she knew his intention, she couldn't fathom.

Lord, she was tired, so very bone-deep weary, in body and in spirit.

“I've been in the same situation myself,” he was saying, “one summer long ago when Becker and I traveled through Austria and Hungary. We thought to abandon our tutors on our Grand Tour and travel as commoners. One night in a Budapest tavern, we were stupid enough to drink too much and make ourselves easy targets for pickpockets, who tossed us into the Danube. I'm afraid my conscience wasn't as pricked as yours. We were also arrogant enough to believe ourselves justified in restoring some of our wealth after the thievery.”

She let his words sink in, along with the relaxing press and release of his gentle backrub. “I made a vow last week,” she said, “that if I survived to return home, I'd work with my friend Lady Beatrice on the prison reform and antipoverty measures she is so passionate about. Not only Germany, but England as well, needs change for the better to help the people.”

“I made a vow that I would fight a revolution for the people. Thought to save them all from their oppression. Beware of your vows, lady.” He grinned. “Mine landed me in the midst of a revolution.”

She turned her head to look at him sitting beside her on the cot and rubbing her back companionably. He didn't strike one as a man intent on rape. He was calm, pleasant, polite. Did that make what he planned better or worse? He had none of Kurt's malice, none of that perverse man's sick pleasure in humiliating another in his power. But did Ravensworth's teasing tone change the fact that he intended to bed her against her will?