Lord of a Thousand Nights (5 page)

“The gatehouse,” she gasped. “They are inside and will open it to the others.”

“What?” a deep voice behind her boomed.

She turned to face Sir Thomas Armstrong and five
other knights. She had intruded on a council. “They have breached the wall and are inside.” She ignored the suspicious way Thomas surveyed her torn gown and unbound hair. “A small band came in through the tunnel. They will take the gatehouse and raise the portcullis. You must hurry.”

“And how did they find the tunnel?” Thomas snarled.

“There is no time for this. Make your interrogations tomorrow.”

Thomas closed in on her with several strides and stuck his darkly bearded face down at hers. “As if your last crime were not bad enough, now you have handed over the tower? Did you seek your own safety by selling us all out? I told Robert and Maccus they could never trust a Graham.”

“While you stand here accusing me, this tower will fall. Get to the gatehouse. If it has fallen, fire the stairs to the tower.”

Even as she yelled, the door of the solar flew open and a guard ran in. “The gate is open,” he reported. “Some are already in the hall below.”

Thomas looked around at the other knights with panicked, wild eyes. None of them were armored, and two did not even wear their swords.

Reyna doubted that these men would live long if they fought against such odds. “Use the postern tunnel,” she urged. “Save yourselves and get help from Clivedale.”

Thomas and the other knights hustled over to the section of wall pivoted open on its internal heavy hinges. As they disappeared into the stairway, Thomas turned his red face on her. “Do not think this betrayal will change things. You will answer for this, and for Robert.”

Reginald hung back. He drew his sword, walked over and closed the chamber door, and positioned himself in front of it.

Dear Reginald. Sweet, honorable, simple Reginald. She touched his arm. “You must go too.”

“I swore to Sir Robert that I would protect you, and I will.” His craggy face showed blank determination beneath his straight blond hair.

She could hear the raucous activity in the hall below. Shouts and noise echoed in from the yard as well. Ian's whole army had entered. Thanks to her, this tower had fallen into Ian's hand like an overripe apple.

“Go, Reginald, while you still can. I command it. You can not protect me if dead. Go with the others and get help.”

He wavered. “Come with us.”

She shook her head. “The first thing Thomas will do when he gets me to Clivedale is judge me. You know his mind on this, and I will not win. I am a Graham, and old feuds die hard. No one will believe me.”

“I will take you elsewhere.”

“We have no horses. Nay, Reginald. In a strange way, I am safer here with the enemy than with the people of my husband. For a while, anyway.”

Closer sounds now. No time to lose. “Go,” she ordered.

He strode to the open wall. “I will stay nearby and find horses. Look for my signal, my lady. I will get you away from here as Robert would have wanted me to.”

She watched him disappear, and then leaned her weight against the stones and pushed them back into place. She hurried over to the hearth where Robert's sword lay. Unsheathing it, she placed it against the wall
beside the door. Then she darted to the bookshelves by the writing table and retrieved the biggest bound folio. Heavy and solid, it bore a silver cover.

Positioning herself beside the door, she waited. Soon someone would come to investigate this solar. She knew who it would most likely be.

It didn't take long. Steps sounded in the passageway and paused outside. The door slowly opened and the glint of candlelight sparked off steel. She held her breath, the open door obscuring her presence. When he stood in full view with his back to her, she stepped forward, raised the tome, and brought it down.

With a shorter man she might have inflicted serious damage, but Sir Ian only staggered from the blow, for a moment off balance. In that instant Reyna grabbed Robert's sword, stepped around, and put the blade to his neck.

He still gripped his own weapon and he glared at her, first in surprise and then in fury.

“Drop it or I will slit your throat,” she said. “Do not doubt my will this time, you son of the devil, for you have made it clear that I have nothing to lose.”

Muttering a curse, he let the sword slide to the floor. “Now close and bar the door.”

He did as she ordered and she kept her blade on him the whole time. “Now on the floor, on your back.”

Teeth clenched, he stretched out at her feet. She stood over him and rested the point of the sword on his neck.

He glared up at her. “Who the hell are you?”

“Reyna, wife of Robert of Kelso.”

Surprise briefly replaced his anger. “I expected someone older. I heard that Sir Robert died not long before we came here. Do you command in his place?”

“Nay. Maccus Armstrong, our liege lord, sent his nephew Thomas to hold the lands after Robert died.”

“And where are Sir Thomas and the other knights?”

“Gone.”

“No doubt they left the same way you entered. If John has been harmed, it will go badly for you.”

“At the moment, it is going badly for you.”

They stayed in silence a moment, Reyna's sword at his throat, the deep pools of his eyes looking up at her. “If you kill me, there will be no controlling these men,” he said.

“And if I do not kill you?”

“Name your terms. I have no choice but to listen.”

“The tenant farmers are to be left in peace. Your men are not to molest or steal.”

“We have not harmed them these last months. We will not start now.”

“There are to be no rapes or tortures or executions.”

He smiled faintly. “It will be so.”

“The children are to be fed well, and not harmed.”

“Aye, and furthermore I promise that we will not spit and roast any babies. I lost the taste for such things several years ago.”

His mocking tone infuriated her. She pricked the sword tip against his skin and a little blood flowed. He went very still.

“There is one more thing. You are to give me a horse and an escort to take me where I choose.”

His gaze slid up the sword and then up her body until he looked her in the eyes. “That I can not do.”

“Of course you can. Your victory, and the way you achieved it, mean that I can not stay here now.”

His expression softened a little. “I understand your position, but I can not let you leave. When I came here, Morvan gave me very few orders, leaving things to my
judgment. But one of those orders was very clear. If by some means I took this tower, I was to see to the safety of Lady Reyna. Since you are she, I can not let you leave.”

“My safety? Sir Morvan bothered with an order regarding me? Why?”

“I believe it was at the request of your father.”

“Duncan! Duncan Graham's request? What has Sir Morvan to do with Duncan and the Grahams?”

“He has an alliance with them to ensure their neutrality in this conflict. Your safety was a condition of that agreement.”

“I will be perfectly safe if I leave. Safer, in fact. You must permit it.”

“Nay. Other than that, I accept your terms. I will treat the people here like my own so long as they obey me, and the men will be restrained. Is there anything else?”

Her confused mind could think of nothing else.

“Then remove your weapon and place it on the floor. The tower is taken and the lands long secured. You have tried your best for your people, and negotiated well. It is time to yield.”

She stepped back and did as she was told. He rose, walked the few paces to her, and hovered, his contained anger leaking out in dangerous ways.

“Now, my lady, listen carefully, for I will tell you this only one time. Twice now you have raised a weapon on me. The next time, be prepared to use it.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to the chamber door. “You will come to the hall and hear me give the orders so that you know that I keep my word.”

The castle folk packed the hall. As she and Ian entered, her eyes quickly found Alice. The plump old cook shrugged sympathetically.

Ian pulled her with him to the front of the crowd,
onto the dais with the high table. She surveyed the sea of faces. Some grimaced sadly at her predicament, but most eyed her suspiciously. She guessed that word of her presence in the enemy camp had spread, and they were drawing conclusions according to their prejudices.

Ian gestured for attention, and a hush fell. “I claim these lands in the name of Morvan Fitzwaryn,” he began. “Some of you are old enough to remember his father, from whom Maccus Armstrong took Harclow many years ago. Sir Morvan comes to reclaim what is rightfully his, and which King Edward has returned to him by decree. This is no conquering army, but the return of your true lord. Obey and you will be well treated. Any man who swears his parole may move about freely.”

The tension in the chamber cracked, and relief flowed. Ian dragged Reyna outside to the top of the tower stairs and spoke with the army gathered below. There the mercenaries learned that there would be no raping or looting or killing.

“Are you satisfied, my lady?” he asked when he had finished.

“If they obey, I am satisfied. I assume that your orders extend to me, and that you no longer expect me to entertain your knights.”

The torchlight played over his handsome face, making his beauty appear mysterious. He wore a sleeveless tunic, and the binding on his arm where she had cut him glowed like a banner.

“They extend to you. But I will not try to create a monastery here. I do not interfere with willing adults. You should tell the women to avoid misunderstandings.”

“So your men may bed any woman who is willing. Does that extend to me, too? May I take a man who pleases me to my bed if I am willing?”

He smiled his disarming, devastating smile. “Aye.”

He reached out and lightly stroked her cheek, then tilted her chin up. It was a gesture that spoke familiarity, even affection. She realized in that instant that he did not simply assume that she found him attractive because all woman did, but knew it for a fact because he had sensed her reactions to his kiss and caress.

She resented the little shiver that defeated her efforts to remain indifferent to his touch. It was distressing that he could evoke this. Her responses, and his knowledge of them, filled her with anger.

“Any man who pleases me?”

He shook his head. “Just this one.”

She stepped away from his touch and laid her finger thoughtfully on her lips. Very slowly, she walked around him, examining him just as he had done her earlier in the day. She barely resisted the urge to prod at his muscles and tell him to lift his hoof. When she had completed her circuit, she saw the combination of amusement and annoyance in his eyes. She had laid a trap for this conceited Englishman, and he knew it.

“Well, Sir Ian, if it is your goal to become known as the Lord of One Thousand and
One
Nights, you had better look elsewhere.” Feeling the only satisfaction she had earned on this dreadful day, she turned primly on her heel and walked away.

“Reyna,” he called after her softly. “I think that I just heard the sound of a gauntlet being thrown.”

Chapter FOUR

T
he next morning, Ian sent half of the company to Harclow with news of the capture of the tower house. He then began assigning the remaining men to chambers and barracks and deciding who would remain outside in the camp. All the while that he established his command of the tower, he kept looking for the slender body and silver-blond hair of Robert of Kelso's widow.

She never appeared. If he had not been sure that no one had slipped past the guards he had posted at the end of the postern tunnel, he might have suspected that she had escaped. Succumbing to curiosity and concern, he ventured into her room next to the solar. Parchments spilled off a table in the spartan chamber, but the lady remained invisible.

He attended the midday meal tired, hungry, and in a mild state of anticipation. His stomach remembered the taste of Reyna's meat pies as surely as his lips remembered the dew of her skin. He looked forward to feasting
on the tower cook's delicious food and sparring with the spirited little Reyna.

Taking the lord's chair at the high table, he was annoyed to find the place beside him quickly claimed not by Reyna, but by Margery, Thomas Armstrong's wife, one of the ladies left behind when the knights fled.

Margery was an attractive, sharp-featured woman in her early thirties. She wore her red hair in an intricate coif and possessed a lush figure well displayed by her tight cote-hardie. She smiled very warmly and Ian, feeling an uncharacteristic lack of confidence regarding his odds of success with Lady Reyna, smiled back.

He let the effect sink in, then turned his attention to the arriving food. He was cursed with a stomach totally unsuitable for a soldier. Eating his company cook's food had been the greatest torture of camp life these last years. Knowing those pies had come from the tower would have almost been incentive enough to storm the walls if his deception of Lady Reyna had failed.