Rise of the Defender (8 page)

     “’Tis time to return to your own room, my
lady,” he said softly.

     Her head came up. “Nay,” she said, her nose
stuffed from crying. “I would stay here. My mother needs me.”

     “Your mother is dead, my lady,” he said
with gentleness he never believed himself capable of. “Let me take you back to
your rooms.”

     Dustin looked at her mother as if she didn’t
believe what he was telling her.  Her features crumpled. “It is not true,” she
whispered in a painful burst.  “She cannot be dead.

     He moved around the side of the bed. Lady
Mary was already stiff and the underside of her body was turning deep purple.

     “Dustin, she is gone,” he said quietly. “You
must let the servants take the body away for burial.”

     Dustin sat bolt upright in bed, her lovely
face twisted. “No burial,” she snapped. “Not in the ground.”

     “What do you mean?” he asked with a furrowed
brow. “What else is there?”

     She looked as if she had an answer but a
sob escaped her lips and tears coursed down her cheeks. “The ground is cold and
dark,” she whispered. “Mother does not like the cold.”

     His heart went out to her. She sounded so
much like a small child, so vulnerable and pathetic. He reached out and grasped
her arms.

     “Your mother is in paradise, sweetheart,”
he whispered, feeling her soft flesh in his hands like a painful jolt.  “She
will not care that her earthly remains have been placed in the earth.”

     Dustin was amazingly light and he swept her
into his arms effortlessly. But she stiffened, twisting and pushing against
him.

     “Put me down,” she cried. “I can’t leave
her.”

     He gripped her tightly to his chest. “Relax,
my lady. All will be well.”

     “Nay!” she screamed, beating him with her
fists and screaming for her mother.

     Christopher took her out into the hall
where he was met by several house servants. “Where is Lady Dustin’s room?” he
barked.

     A few women pointed fingers to the room directly
across the corridor and he was moving for it, his wife still screaming and
thrashing about.

     “Remove her mother,” he ordered the weeping
group. “We bury her come the morn.”

     He entered Dustin’s bedchamber and slammed
the door. Then, he went straight to her bed and placed her upon the mattress. Sniffling
and weeping, Dustin tried to climb off the bed as Christopher removed his heavy
leather vest. The vest hit the floor and he reached out and grabbed her by her
leg, dragging her back across the bed and throwing himself on top of her simply
to keep her from escaping. He didn't know what else to do.

     Surprisingly, she didn’t overly resist
him.  Certainly, she was stiff and unbending, but she wasn’t out-right
fighting. She lay enclosed in his massive arms, her back to his chest as they
lay upon their sides. After a while her movements lessened and her crying
softened to no more than loud hiccups. He could feel her hands gripping his arms.

     She was soft and warm and sweet-smelling
against him, igniting his husbandly desire. He didn’t want to marry the woman
and he wanted little to do with her, but the fact remained that she was
beautiful and alluring.  He also felt a measure of emotion towards her at the
death of her mother, and pity had a way of breaking down one’s resistance. When
she finally ceased all struggles, he removed one arm from her long enough to
pull the coverlet up over them both, realizing he was focused only on her
comfort and needs. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t thinking only of
himself.  It was an odd awareness.

     It was a long while before her trembling
stopped and she went limp against him and he knew she had fallen asleep.
Christ, how the scent of roses filled his nostrils. He had never liked roses
very much but there was something about the particular scent on his wife that
made it different. He thought he could grow to like it.

     He smiled into the darkness, laughing at
himself. The only time he had ever been in bed with a woman was to satisfy
himself, and here he was laying with the most beautiful woman he had ever seen,
his legal wife no less, and he wasn’t making mad love to her.  What in the
world was happening to him? Since when did he give a care about anyone other
than himself?

     He thought of Dustin, how she had been rude
to him, how she had been openly hostile. She’d never said a kind word, nor had
he even seen her smile. Yet here he was, comforting her. Christ, he was stupid.
The sands of the Holy Land must have rotted his brain somehow.

     “My lord?” It was Dustin.

     “Aye?” he answered, mildly surprised that
she was awake.

     She took a ragged breath. “When you carried
my mother up the stairs earlier, I did not thank you.”

     “’Twas my duty, as your husband,” he
replied.

     She paused a moment. “I know. But I will
thank you all the same.”

     He grunted a reply, thinking she sounded
quite lucid now and thinking on leaving. In fact, he thought it would be a very
good idea considering the warm and yielding thoughts he was having about her. 
He didn’t want to let his guard down for a woman who would only batter him.

     “You do not have to stay with me,” Dustin
said softly, as if she was reading his thoughts.  “I am much calmer now.”

     He unwound his arms and she rolled onto her
back, looking up at him with a completely open expression. He was propped up on
one elbow, gazing down at her and thinking her face to be wonderful.  So much
for letting his guard down; he couldn’t help it.

     “You are beautiful,” he said before he
could stop himself.

     Dustin blinked in surprise at the
compliment. She said the first thing that came to mind. “I am too short.”

     He scowled, showing emotion for the first
time. “What does that have to do with your beauty?”

     She looked stumped and tired. “I…I do not
know. I am just too short, that’s all.”

     He cocked a reproving eyebrow and pushed
himself out of bed. “The usual response to a compliment is thank you,” he said.

     She sat up wearily, watching his movements.
“Were you with my father when he died?”

     He paused, looking at her, before
collecting his leather vest on the floor.  He debated what to tell her but
realized he couldn’t lie about it. “Aye, my lady.”

     “How did he die?” she whispered.

     He didn't know if he should tell her
anything. After all, she had enough grief without hearing about Arthur’s
nauseating end.

      “We will discuss that at a later time,” he
said after a moment. “As it stands, you will go to sleep and I will see you on
the morrow.”

     She didn’t answer him but lay back down,
her huge gray eyes still on him. He watched her in return, his movements
slowing a bit, not particularly liking the distant look in her eye. He was
hesitant, thinking that mayhap he should not leave. Women in grief were known
to do all sorts of strange things, and he did not want to be held responsible
should his wife decide to hurt herself.

     As he wrestled with indecision, something
heavy rubbed up against his leg and he took a startled step back, looking down
to see a huge orange cat blinking up at him with cat-green eyes. It was the
biggest damn cat he had ever seen.

     “What’s this?” he pointed at the feline.

     Dustin tore her eyes from him long enough
to follow the direction of his finger. “'Tis Caesar, my lord. My cat.”

     The cat was purring loudly and moved over
to him, rubbing on his leg once again. “I do not like cats,” he said finally.

     A flicker of a smile crossed her face. “He
likes you,” she said. “And he does not take to people easily. Caesar is my very
best friend.” She clucked to the cat and the beast  immediately jumped onto the
bed, kneading the mattress to get comfortable.

     He watched her pet the cat, a faint smile
on her lips. He was becoming enchanted by her faint expression and was seized
with the desire to see her smile even larger. He was very curious to see what
sort of smile she could display; was it charming? Twisted? Did she even have
all of her teeth?

     “That beast is as large as a lamb,” he
remarked. “What do you feed it? Small children?”

     As he had hoped, she smiled wide and he was
absolutely captivated. As beautiful as she was, her whole face changed dramatically
when she revealed her straight, white teeth and deep dimple in her left cheek.

     “Nay, my lord, only chicken and innards,”
she replied softly, scratching the cat’s ears. “’Tis all he will eat. But he is
a fine hunter.”

     “No doubt,” he cocked a dubious brow. “I will
have to watch that he does not hunt
me
. I have a feeling that I would
become supper.”

     She gave a small laugh and he found himself
smiling in return. But when her eyes moved to him once again, he quickly erased
his smile. For some reason, he did not want her to see that she had affected him
that way.

     “I will leave you and Caesar, then,” he
moved for the door, strangely feeling better that the cat had made an
appearance, as if the animal could watch over her. “Sleep well, my lady.”

     She watched him close the door, still
scratching the cat. Her smile faded and in the darkness of the room, she had
never felt more alone in her entire life.

     Her husband was a cold man. Even in his kindness,
he was a cold barbarian, for his kindness was forced and unreal. When he had
held her with those massive, warm arms, he was stiff and not at all comforting.
It was obvious he didn’t like her, although he had called her beautiful.
Strange
,
she thought. Mayhap he just meant her hair and not the whole of her. Or mayhap
he liked the color of her eyes. Whatever the reason, he was not sincere.

     Sadness swept over her and tears came to
her eyes once again. Tears of grief for her mother, tears of pity for herself.

     She was entirely alone.

CHAPTER
FOUR

     Dustin buried her mother next to her
father’s parents in the tiny chapel of Lioncross. She would have liked to have
had a nice wake and mass for her mother, but with the oppressive heat, the body
simply would not keep, and they buried Mary two hours after dawn.

     Christopher stood a few feet away from
Dustin, stoically listening to the same priest who had married them intone the
funeral mass. He could hear Dustin’s faint sobs, wondering if he should lend
her some sort of comfort but not making the effort to try. Deep down, he didn’t
want to be embarrassed if she refused him. And he knew she would.

     His wife was dressed in black, from head to
toe, only her porcelain face evident underneath the voluminous wimple. She was
so pale that the contrast was striking. And she had dark circles under her
eyes; evidence that she had disobeyed him last night and had not gone back to
sleep.

     The mass was over and the priest moved to
Dustin, whispering a few words of comfort to her. She nodded but did not reply,
instead, continuing to stare at the fresh grave.

     Christopher glanced at the other knights,
standing several feet away, and dismissed them with a faint jerk of his head.
The servants and a few peasants had already left, trekking down the soft green
slope and back toward the keep. He waited until everyone was well out of range
before attempting to approach Dustin.

     “We should return now,” he said softly,
standing behind her.

     She didn’t respond and he wasn’t sure if
she even heard him. He gazed off across the village in the distance and sighed.
“My lady, the day grows wa….”

     He was cut off when she whirled around in a
great gush of black material, her gray eyes dark and her face flushed.

     “I hate you,” she spit at him. “You caused
all of this, you devil’s son. “’Twas you who bore the news of my father’s
death, and you who forced me to marry. You drove her into her grave and I shall
hate you forever.”

     He was taken aback and the accusations but
remained quite calm in the face of her raging.

     “I forgive you for speaking to me in such a
manner, knowing your grief is making you mad,” he said. “But as far as I….”

     Then she did something so completely
unexpected that he was caught entirely off-guard. Somewhere from underneath the
black cloak, a small balled fist came flying up at him and caught him on the
corner of the mouth.

     “You arrogant, conceited dolt,” she hissed.
“I do not care if you forgive me or not, and I am quite sane. But know this; I
shall hate you until I die, always, and forever. You may hold the titles and
lands of Lioncross, but I am your wife in name only. Never expect my respect or
my loyalty or my kindness, for you shall never receive it.”