Lindsay Townsend (9 page)

“All lies.” Stephen threw his glove on the floor
tiles between himself and the portly goldsmith. “I challenge you or any of your
champions.”

“N—” Isabella bit down on her protest. To
honor Stephen’s love she should support him. Through burning eyes she watched
the duke seated across from her smooth his clean-shaven narrow chin.

“There has been enough fighting for one
day.” Duke Henry looked directly at her. “What do you say in reply to these
accusations, my lady? Are you a witch? You certainly appear to have charmed my
armorer.”

Isabella looked at Stephen. He would not
meet her eye. For an instant she doubted.
Does he think I have bewitched
him?
Then she thought of all their time together, their joy in each other
and their children, and her world steadied again.

With a graceful acknowledgment to the duke,
Isabella rose, but before she could answer him, her mother-in-law shoved
through the mass of people. Clearly seeing her chance, the older woman fought
her way to the gap at the front of the room to address Duke Henry.

“You will hear her, my lord, before me, a
good Christian woman who lost her son to this creature?” Encouraged by the
stunned silence, Margery went on. “My boy married her to put an end to a
dispute between two families. She could not even bring that peace.”

“Why was that?” the duke inquired.

 Margery did not want to answer that. She
puffed up her chest like a strutting hen. “Her care of my grandson is
negligent. As for her latest paramour, a man no better than a smith—”

The burning fuse that had been lit in
Isabella’s head by these grotesque accusations exploded. “My care of Matthew?”
she interrupted, stepping forward to face the buxom matron. “My little boy,
whom you tore from me and kept from me for months? My son whom your kinsman
threatened with violence? Matthew was underfed and neglected when Stephen and I
tracked him to Kent! As for my lord being a smith, I am proud of that. I am
proud of him.”

“Wait.” Stephen stopped her. “They
threatened a four year old? You did not tell me.”

I dared not, beloved, can you not
understand that? I feared exactly your reaction
. Wordlessly she tried to express that thought but
Stephen scowled and she hated his displeasure. “I am sorry, Stephen, but… But Sir
William said that unless I did as he asked he would beat Matthew.”

Before any could react, even the duke’s
men, Stephen wordlessly drew his sword and ran at the goldsmith.

“Stephen!” Isabella snatched at his arm,
trying to hold him, but it was like trying to stop a swinging hammer. He tore
through her flailing grip and stormed on.

“Fletcher!” roared the duke. “Stand down!”

There was a mighty clash of swords. John,
Sir William’s servant, desperately defended his master as Stephen used his own
blade like a deadly scythe.

 “I have proof!” Isabella yelled, above the
shouts of  the rest. She flew from the stool onto the dais and dropped to her
knees beside the duke. “The fake seals are hidden in a jewel box with a false
lid inlaid with green lapis lazuli. Please, my lord, set your men to search for
that box.”

“Go,” said the duke, nodding to a group of
men guarding the door. His voice and expression were mild but his eyes were
sharp. “You recall that very late, my lady.”

“I know.” Terrified the duke might consider
Stephen part of this treason, Isabella gabbled, “I saw but did not understand,
my lord. Not until today, this very day. My master Stephen knew no part of it,
I swear.”

Duke Henry caught her hands and turned
them, noting the old scratch scars. He studied her face and Isabella endured
his keen gaze flicking to the scar on her forehead where Richard had hit her,
the scar on her left ear where Richard had belted her. Whatever he saw must
have been enough, for he nodded. “Very well. “ He released her. “You go to
Stephen now.”

Skidding across the floor tiles in her
haste, Isabella saw John disarmed by a looming Stephen. As his servant crawled
away, Sir William’s ruddy face turned sickly-gray. He slumped down, lifting his
hands to shield himself. Margery was already shrieking.

“Stephen,” Isabella said urgently. “He is
not worth it. Please.”

As if he was a man of metal, Stephen turned
slowly to her. His eyes were as cold as she had ever seen them.

 “I will gladly take him,” said the duke,
behind them both. “In justice he is yours, Fletcher, but even so. I will defer
to a lady.”

“Please,” she said again. “For yours and
mine.”

“For you, beloved, and no other,” Stephen
growled, but he allowed his sword to clatter to the floor. The next moment she
had him safe in her arms—or was she in his? It did not matter.

The duke rose. “Take him, Lady Isabella.
You are truly worthy of each other and clearly deep in love with no magic but
caring. I shall make you a grant of land and expect to dance at your wedding.
Now go. Leave your erstwhile…
relations
to me.”   

“My son, my lord,” Isabella began,
determined to have that matter also put beyond doubt. Even as she sought to
frame the question, the duke anticipated her.

“Matthew—that is his name, yes? Matthew
will be forever in your care and your new lord’s. You may be certain he shall
lose no portion of his rights. I intend to have words with Sir Nicholas on that
issue, very soon.”

Heart hammering, Isabella dropped a curtsey.
This was more, far more, than she had hoped. She glanced at Stephen, who still
glowered at the goldsmiths. She was not certain he had even heard. “My lord?”

“Go,” the duke interrupted her. “Take him
away. Feed him, sit with him, love him and your son. Go on.”

As the duke’s men escorted them out,
Isabella could hear Sir William’s desperate pleading. Sir Nicholas and the
other foremost members of the goldsmith’s guild were yet to appear—clearly a
prudent choice on their part.

“Do not feel sorry for him,” Stephen warned,
speaking for the first time in an age as he received his sword back from one of
the duke’s men and sheathed  it.

“Sorry?” She was astonished he should think
that. “My uncle lost all kinship to me when he threatened to hurt my son!”

 “Agreed. And now, thanks to the duke,
Matthew will have his Martinton rights.”

“You heard that?”
Please be pleased.

Stephen snorted. “Sir William made me see
blood when he set his miserly brutes on you, but he did not stopper my ears. It
is a good result, and just.”

Isabella nodded, sending up a prayer of
thanks that Stephen saw it in that way.
Thank the holy mother he is so
reasonable
.

They were walking faster now, hurrying to
the river. “How did you remember that hiding place?” Stephen asked her now.

“From your kiss and your eyes,” she said,
which was no more than the truth, although Stephen wagged a finger at her, his
eyes finally lightening from the storm gray of his earlier dark mood.

“Keep your secret, then, Mistress Angel,”
he laughed.

What a relief to see him more himself again
. “Truly Stephen, I remembered because your
eyes are sometimes the same color and I once saw the inlay come away in Sir
William’s hand. I thought he had broken it but then later saw the jewel box
whole again, without repair.”

She stopped a moment as her companion took
her cool hand in his warm one. “I am listening,” he prompted, and chuckled. “I
did not realize you kept such close attention to the color of my eyes, Mistress
Angel.”

 
We are betrothed to be married. I will
not blush. I will keep answering
. “It was a box Sir William kept close. I
thought it was because he was fond of the decoration, but that moveable inlay
meant that the box had a secret compartment.”

“Aye, and a girl in a goldsmith’s workshop
would notice such things as no repair. Clever lass.” Stephen smiled, weaving
his fingers through hers.

“Not so clever. It was only lately that I
understood what it meant.” Despite the warm day she shivered. “I understood
almost too late.” Thinking of it again, Isabella shook her head. “Let us leave
this place,” she said, suddenly weary of intrigue and London. “Let us leave
tomorrow, for Kent.”

“Gladly, my heart.” Stephen stopped on the graveled
path and kissed her. “Home it is.”

Duke Henry had indeed danced with her at
her wedding. He had sent pink and white gowns and veils for her, Amice, Joanna
and Bedelia, and gold and black tunics for Stephen and Matthew. Isabella wore
her hair loose and knew she had done the right thing when Stephen ran from the
church door to meet her coming to their wedding.

It was a merry ceremony with the apple
trees of Kent in blossom, blooming late and just for them, it seemed. Matthew
and Joanna held the train of her gown between them and Amice perfumed it with a
heady mix of spices that made Isabella long for the evening. There was a dark
instant when she considered her parents who, although invited to her wedding
had not come, but then her family, her true family, gathered her in and all was
well again. When the priest announced them to be man and wife, Stephen kissed
her for so long that Thomas joked he could have made a suit of mail in the
time.

Finally she and Stephen were alone, within
the small barn of his Kent house. Amice talked closely to the duke, perhaps of
spices. Everyone else was still drinking and singing inside his thatched
cottage. Her son Matthew and her new daughter Joanna were dancing, their little
faces bright with glee. Joanna was breathing quickly but well and she looked
very pretty in her new gown. She had a new gold necklace round her slender
throat, given to her by her father, and she carried a lock of gold hair, given
to her by Isabella.

My youngsters are beginning to thrive. And
now at last Stephen and I are alone.
The barn was theirs, hers and Stephen’s.
My
husband.

Isabella laughed when Stephen tossed her
over his shoulder and almost ran up the ladder to the loft with her. Set down,
she realized that her man had already been busy up here. The loft was adorned
with fresh sheets and pillows, sweet hay, sweet flowers, jugs of cowslips and
bluebells. He had brought up flagons of wine, ale and cider. There were cups
and plates, a basket of pies, cheeses, dates and sugared fruits.

Stephen popped a piece of sugared peel into
her mouth. “Chew, little wife,” he said teasingly.

Chewing, Isabella stared up at him. He
looked so splendid in his gold and black tunic, with a gold and black cloak.
She swallowed. “I love you.”

“And I worship you, Mistress Angel, mistress
mine.” He swept her up again. “Let me show you.”     

 With a rapt, amazed expression, like a man
in a dream, he laid her on a soft bed of linen and hay. They made love all that
night, with the birds singing them joyously into the next day and Isabella free
of shadows and fear, a goldsmith’s widow no more, rather a blacksmith’s wife.

END

To my readers
:

Thank you for reading my “Mistress Angel.”
I do hope you enjoyed it. The following pages are first chapter samples or
excerpts from my full-length medieval historical romances “A Knight’s Vow”, “A
Knight’s Captive”, “A Knight’s Enchantment”, “To  Touch the Knight”, “The Snow
Bride” and “A Summer Bewitchment.” I hope you enjoy these, too.

You can read reviews of my work at my
website

http://www.lindsaytownsend.net

Best wishes, Lindsay Townsend

Ever since she was fourteen, Alyson of Olverton
dreamed of marrying a brave, charismatic young knight. His name was Guillelm de
la Rochelle - and his marriage proposal satisfied her deepest yearnings. But
her father forbade their union, prompting Guillelm to set out for the Holy
Land, breaking Alyson's innocent heart. Seven years later, the valiant knight
has defied rumours of his death and returned home, having no idea that nothing
is the same as when he left...Back from fighting in the crusades, Guillelm is
stunned to find Alyson entrenched in his father's ancestral castle - even worse
she was betrothed to his father before he died. Despite this chilling fact,
Guillelm finds himself struggling to resist the temptation to seduce her. Torn
between intense jealousy and overwhelming desire, he shocks them both by
proposing marriage a second time, justifying that it will be easier to keep her
safe if she is his bride. Little do they know, however, that there is an enemy
in their very midst - one who won't rest until he destroys their chance at
everlasting love...

Chapter 1

England, Summer 1138.

“Sir Guillelm has returned! The son of Lord Robert has
come back to us!”

“Thanks be to God, we are saved! The young master has
returned!”

Alyson heard the shouts from the surviving men-at-arms
and jerked her head up, all thought of prayer forgotten. “My Lord Dragon,” she
whispered.

Struggling to rise to her feet from the hard cold
floor of the small narrow chapel, she re-pinned her simple veil and pinched
color into her gaunt cheeks, feeling her heart begin to race. “Can it really be
true?” She had waited for him for so long, she could scarcely believe it.
Guillelm, here, in his family’s castle of Hardspen. For a moment she felt
stunned with happiness.

“My lady!” The reedy voice of her seneschal, Sericus,
floated above the hubbub in the great hall of the castle, calling ahead as he
tottered on gangling legs to find her, to bring her this miraculous news.

“I am here!” Alyson called, darting from the chapel.
Sericus was lame, and to save his withered limbs she picked up the hem of her
plain brown gown and hurried down the spiral staircase of the keep, a small,
slender girl with a mass of long black hair, large, very dark blue eyes and
delicate features whose naturally bright, high-colored complexion had been
dulled by weariness and grief. Longing to see Guillelm, she was reckless in her
haste on the torch-lit stair, where only her natural fleetness of foot
prevented a fall.

Would he remember her? She had been fourteen years old
when he had answered the call of his kinsman, Raymond of Poitiers, and gone
with him to the Holy Land. He had been in the exotic, dusty lands of Outremer
for seven long years and she had despaired of ever seeing him again. For the
last three years, with no news of him, there had even been the terrible rumor
that he was dead. But he was alive!

Was he greatly changed? Would she be the one who would
have to tell him that the enemy forces ranged outside the main gate were poised
to attack? That his father, the noble and intimidatingly austere Lord Robert,
had been dead for ten days? That for the last month she had been living in
Hardspen as Lord Robert’s intended betrothed?

Chilled and appalled by these thoughts, Alyson halted
in the shadows on the final step, raising a finger to her lips as Sericus came
out of the hall in search of her. Sericus, understanding her wish without the
need of speech, passed by her and limped out of sight of the travel-stained men
standing by the log-strewn fireplace in the great hall beyond them.

“Lady, where are your serving women?” he asked in an
urgent whisper.

“Gila and Osmoda remain in my chamber: they are still
sick, as are many within this castle.” Alyson had left them sleeping, no longer
feverish but weak.

“Let me summon attendants to go in with you, a maid at
the very least.”

“You will be with me, Master Sericus, and that is
enough,” Alyson replied, with a smile of gratitude. “You have seen to our
guests’ comfort?” She blushed at calling the new lord of Hardspen her guest,
but Sericus merely nodded his head.

“Yes, my lady. They have ale and bread. Not fresh or
fine bread, I fear. The baker’s boy has been busy with the repairs and the
baker has been sick.”

“Then pray allow me an instant to compose myself. And
sit a moment, I beg you.” Sericus had been without sleep for the last three
nights, as she had, helping her with the sick and with the ordering of Hardspen’s
human and physical defenses - the re-mortaring of sections of walls, the
gathering of stores, the checking of weapons, as their enemy outside the gate
waited in arrogant strength.

“My lady, you are ever gracious.” Lowering himself
onto the stone treads, the wiry, gray-bearded, headed-headed man sat with a
tiny grimace of relief.

Standing in the gloomy stairwell, Alyson took in the
scene in the great hall, the large, high-ceilinged chamber that was the heart
of the keep, where in happier times Lord Robert had dined with his men on the
tables and stools that were now ranged to one side. Today, long after sunset,
those warriors and men still loyal to Hardspen bedded down there in their
clothes on the rush-covered floor to snatch a few hours’ sleep. She recognized
their plain honest faces and saw that they remained exhausted, as she was
herself, but that new hope gleamed in their eyes. Because of the arrival of one
man—

Sir Guillelm de La Rochelle. She picked him out easily
from the small group of soldiers who drank and warmed themselves—for although
it was summer the nights were cold—by the crackling flames of the
sweet-smelling apple wood. Tall as a spear, he towered over everyone there,
long-backed and long-legged, with broad shoulders and lean hips. He was
speaking quietly to one of his men, his back to her and with the dark hood of
his cloak still pulled over his head as his powerful body steamed and dripped
water from the relentless summer rain outside.

“My Lord Dragon,” Alyson breathed a second time, using
the nickname she had given him and which he had made his own. She missed the
sight of that mane of bright golden hair and even more his grimly handsome face
but it was enough to know he was alive and safe. Giddy with relief, she now
heard him speak for the first time in seven years as a castle defender asked
how he and his few retainers had passed through the enemy lines.

“It is my guess that there is sickness and fever in
that camp, as there has been here,” Guillelm replied, in the deep warm voice
which had so often gently teased her in the past, “Your enemy has but few
watchmen to stand lookout. On a gray, wet night such as this, those few can see
no farther than the rainwater streaming from their caps. We slipped past them
simply enough. After that it was an easy matter to bring my commanders safely
inside Hardspen: my grandfather devised secret ways into the castle bailey and
keep, paths which my father showed to me while I was yet a boy.”

“Your commanders, Lord?” asked his interrogator
hopefully, picking up on the thread that Alyson had noticed, although she was
distracted by Guillelm himself. He had turned to face his questioner and she
could look upon the face that had haunted her dreams for so many years.

Eagerly she stared at him, feeling like a thirsty
traveler coming to a well of pure, life-giving water. His was a lean,
clean-shaven face, tanned by the blazing sun of Outremer, with a faintly
aquiline nose which as a girl she had always longed to trace playfully with a
finger. If he had changed, it was only to grow yet more handsome, with lines of
character and decision etched into every uncompromising feature. She now caught
herself wondering what it would be like to kiss that firm, full mouth.

“Some of my commanders, I should say.” Guillelm
sounded faintly amused, yet his next words were plainly intended to give heart
to the men of Hardspen. “The others are camped with the bulk of my forces in
the woods close to the eastern bailey wall. Their presence will give your
would-be besiegers something of a surprise, come tomorrow’s dawn.”

There was laughter, no doubt as Guillelm had intended.
Taking advantage of the lighter mood, he called for more ale. There was a
scramble amongst the oak tables set against the longest wall to retrieve the
pitchers of ale that Sericus had brought up from the winter stores.

Watching how readily the men obeyed him and recalling
her girlish hero-worship of the youthful Guillelm, Alyson sternly reminded
herself of her duty. She must keep these unseemly feelings of longing within
bounds. She was to have been Lord Robert’s betrothed, affianced in a ceremony
as sacred as marriage and now almost a widow. How then dare she entertain such
unruly desires for Lord Robert’s son, a wish that she might kiss him and be
kissed in return, enfolded in those strong bronzed arms?

“Let us drink to the vanquishing of all our foes!”
Guillelm said, raising his goblet. “Let us drink to a new beginning!”

Listening closely, keen to hear him, Alyson sensed a
sadness beneath the stirring words, a sense confirmed when he lifted his cup a
second time and said in solemn, tightly-controlled tones, “Let us drink to the
most valiant of lords. To my eternal grief and shame I did not reach in time to
see and embrace him, as a son should a father, before he was taken by this foul
pestilence.”

He paused, a tremor of deeply-felt emotion passing
across his face. Swiftly, he mastered it and continued in as strong a voice as
before, “To my father Lord Robert—may his soul already abide in heaven!”

“Lord Robert,” came the somber response from the men.

“Robert,” Alyson whispered, tears standing in her eyes
as she remembered him and also, even more painfully, the death of her own
father three months ago at Easter. For Guillelm’s sake, she prayed that whoever
had told him of his father’s passing had done so with kindness. Dashing her
tears away with a trembling hand, she raised her head and smiled at him, hoping
that, although he would not see her, he might sense her sympathy.

Incredibly, as she smiled, he looked down the length
of the great hall, straight at her. His eyes, deeper-hued and richer than the
rarest of velvets, widened as he saw her, capturing Alyson in his dark,
compelling gaze.

I could lose my heart to Guillelm and consider the
danger of his breaking it well worth the risk, she thought, while an inner
voice said, You already have.

For an instant both were still, wrapped in each
other’s glances, but then an indignant shout from Sericus behind her and the
raking of greedy clasping fingers against her shoulder warned Alyson of
another, very different kind of danger. Breaking free of the pawing hand,
ignoring her foul-breathed assailant’s grumbled, “Give me more ale and a kiss,
girl!” she whirled away from him and sped into the great hall, furious at the
laughter of the other men-at-arms, those who had arrived that night with
Guillelm.

Guillelm, she saw, however, was not laughing. She
watched his face darken as the stocky, unshaven man from the stairway still
pursued her, bellowing in nasal Norman French, “What is an English wretch like
you good for, if not for serving your betters?”

“Thierry!” Guillelm shouted, his voice full of
warning, and then Alyson  heard him curse violently in an unknown tongue,
possibly one of the languages of Outremer. She saw him thrust his half-drunk
goblet at his nearest companion and stride towards her and her unwelcome
follower, reaching them in less than ten paces.

“Let the little maid be, Thierry,” he growled in
French, seizing the other fellow’s ever-reaching arm and bending it sharply
back. “She does not care for your rough wooing, and nor do I. Go back to the
garderobe and throw yourself down into the latrine if you can find no better
manners!”

He thrust the man so violently aside that Thierry
careered into one of the oak tables, where he crouched, rubbing his arm and
clearly glad to be out of range of his lord‘s displeasure.

Guillelm had no time for him. He lowered his head to
Alyson, the hood of his cloak slipping down and revealing that glorious mane of
blazing golden hair, bright as a dragon’s flame.

“He has done you no harm?” he asked softly in English,
his deep-set eyes narrowing in concern.

“No.” Alyson stared up at her rescuer, more than ever
conscious of her rekindled admiration for him while at the same time guiltily
aware that her habitually plain clothing had in part caused this confusion. Had
not her old nurse Gytha complained that she dressed more like a serving maid
than a lady? “No, my lord,” she said, knowing she should make some effort to
give an account of herself.

She sensed from the abrupt silence in the great hall
that Guillelm’s men had now been told, in hasty whispers from the others, who
she was. She could feel Sericus hovering close by, awaiting his instructions,
poised for the slightest signal from her to make a formal introduction to Sir
Guillelm de La Rochelle on her behalf. But what was the use? she thought
bleakly.

He does not remember me!