The Last Arrow RH3 (4 page)

To no one's surprise, Lady Gillian had fit a bow to his hand as soon as he could stand. Brenna, because she was always underfoot and could not bear to be left out of anything, had stood alongside him learning how to find her balance, to sight along the shaft of the arrow, to listen to what the bow string was saying if the fingers plucked too hard or too soft. Under Gil's expert tutelage they had become master archers in their own right with neither able to claim consistent superiority over the other. The game they had played today, they had been enjoying since they were children, and while they retraced their steps through the forest, it would be her pleasure to annoy him by verbally replaying each of the five winning shots, pointing out the errors made or the particular cleverness required to score the winning point.

As far as seeking a deeper intimacy, she could not deny she had thought about it, wondered about it. The trouble was they had been so close for so many years, their affection for one another was more like that of a brother and sister.

To make more of it would have felt like incest—something both had acknowledged long ago despite their parents'

lingering hopes.

All was not completely lost, however. Brenna's younger sister, Rhiannon, was only in her eleventh year, but just last month had presented their father with a petition, a contract of marriage for herself, drawn in her own hand with every word and phrase labored over as if it were going before the king to be made into law. In it she insisted Lord Randwulf and Lady Servanne recognize the immediate and pressing need to insure the future alliance of their noble house with that of FitzAthelstan. Since both Eleanor and Isobel had chosen to marry indiscreetly (meaning they had fallen in love with the landless brothers LaFer), and Brenna showed no inclination to marry whatsoever, she considered herself, Lady Rhiannon Wardieu d'Amboise, the last hope of salvation. Further to the point, she was the perfect match in temperament and passion for the more reticent William.

Upon hearing it, the prospective groom had remained oddly silent on the matter. He had not laughed aloud when Brenna had told him of the petition, nor had he suffered any prolonged teasing with his usual display of good humor.

If anything, he grew downright prickly whenever she broached the subject, and of late, she had even caught him flushing whenever his duties caused him to be in Rhiannon's company.

From a sister's perspective, Brenna supposed she could not fault him for his taste. Rhiannon, like their two older sisters, shared their mother's white-blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, and complexion as pure as milk on snow. Their figures were slender and delicate, their hands unblemished by any labor more damaging than the weaving of threads in a tapestry.

By contrast, Brenna had tough yellow calluses on the pads of her fingers and arms that were more like iron than velvet. Her complexion tended to be more in keeping with nature, lightly tanned with a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hair was an equal blending of gold and brown threads, her eyes were a darker, more exotic shade of blue with hints of violet and flecks of indigo to suggest an underlying temper not precisely in keeping with the expected sweet compliance of someone groomed to be the chatelaine of some noble lord's household.

In truth, she had tried to learn patience, she had even tried to learn embroidery once. That had been when Good-wife Biddy had still been alive and in charge of the nursery. Old Blister had known all of Brenna's hiding places and had not shown the least bit of hesitation in storming the male bastions of the castle to root out her charge and drag her back to the classroom. But Brenna had never stayed put for long. She loved her sisters and admired their maidenly skills, but she had preferred the company of her brothers as far back as she could remember. She would sneak off to join them in the tilting yards, buckling on a sword and challenging them in the practice fields despite the dangers and risks that could not be avoided regardless how careful or indulgent the boys might be. After a while, indulgence was a long-forgotten sentiment as she proved she could hold her own with dagger, mace, and sword. A further challenge from Dagobert had put her up on the back of a destrier for the first time when she was but ten years old, and in spite of the rigid social conventions forbidding a woman to ride, much less own, a blooded warhorse, she had so impressed and pleased her father, he had presented her with a stallion sired by his own great champion steed.

As for her supposed indifference to marriage, it wasn't that she didn't want a husband. It was just that she had not yet met the man whose life and destiny she would willingly trade her freedom to share. She had never experienced the warm fuzziness her sisters trilled about constantly, nor had she felt the earth shift beneath her feet or the blood run cold and hot through her veins. And she certainly had never suffered the queasiness of a flock of butterflies let loose in her belly, as Eleanor had described it. Love, in fact, sounded like more of a malady than a happy circumstance anyway, and there were times she watched Isobel and Eleanor—even Rhiannon who circled poor Will like a bird of prey—and wondered at the nonsense of it all. A kiss was nothing more spectacular than a pressing together of lips.

What a man and woman did together in bed sounded like an uncomfortable chore, looked like an ignoble thrashing of arms and legs, and inspired only vague feelings of disgust when she saw how slack-lipped, dull-eyed, and witless a man became in the throes of lust.

Mercifully, neither of her parents were strong advocates of contracted marriages, and Lord Randwulf was certainly no ordinary father bent on using his daughters to make sound political unions. Kings already quailed at the sound of his name. Whole armies shrank at the sight of the black-and-gold. Troubadours as far north as Scotland, as far east as Jerusalem retold glorious chansons de geste boasting his accomplishments as Crusader, warrior, and sworn enemy of King John. They sung of his years as loyal champion to the dowager Queen Eleanor, and they spoke in awe of his seeming return from the dead to avenge his wrath upon a treacherous bastard brother. And they whispered, even to this day, of his adventures in the forests of England— whispers that had begun to take on the quality of legend, especially in the greenwood of Lincolnshire where there were deeds of outlawry still being attributed to a hooded man who fought like a demon to right the wrongs perpetrated by the king and his evil disciples. This, despite the fact that Black Wolf had not set foot across the Channel in over twenty-five years.

How could a man like that trade his daughter's happiness for mere political gain?

Moreover, Will's mother, Lady Gillian, had taught her more than just how to shoot an arrow. She had been branded and made a guest of the king's prisons when she was not much older than Brenna was now. After escaping, she'd had nowhere to go but the forest, where she had joined the Wolf's band of outlaws and lived among them with no one the wiser for her more delicate attributes until her love for Alaric FitzAthelstan had made her sex difficult to conceal. Even so, she had not relinquished her position of trust or responsibility simply because she had unbound her breasts and allowed her hair to grow. In disguise as Gil of the Golden Eyes, she had proved time and again her skill and deadly accuracy with the Welsh longbow. As Lady Gillian FitzAthelstan, she had personally trained every knight and foot soldier who fought under the blazon of Amboise to have a healthy and lethal respect for the weapon.

"When I saw you just now," Brenna said quietly, "just for a moment, I saw your lady mother standing behind your shoulder."

Will rubbed a hand across the nape of his neck. "Mother would never have been caught out in the open like that. I felt her presence too, more than the heat of your arrow, pinching my nose in reprobation."

"It has only been three months, yet it feels like three years since we lost her. I miss her dreadfully. She was like ...

like a second mother to me."

Will nodded but said nothing. There was nothing to say. Gil Golden had died as she had lived: proud, stubborn, defiant, determined to stand by her husband's side as his peer, not just his bedmate. She had taken a company of the best archers to Roche-au-Moines and led them in the assault against the English mercenary forces. When they had searched the bloody remains of the battlefield, they had found her body, blessedly unmarked save for the single bolt that had pierced her brave heart.

Brenna had been this close to winning her father's permission to accompany Lady Gillian and her archers. Only her age—she had not yet turned eighteen—and Lady Servanne's tears had stopped her. That and a particularly thorough search of the supply wagons before they passed through the barbican gates of Chateau d'Amboise.

"How is your father?" she asked.

"Still devastated. I have tried to help him but he seems to have lost the desire to keep living without her. He eats very little. He never sleeps. He is turning into an old man before my eyes, and there is naught I can do to bring him out of it."

Brenna thought of the passionate love between her own father and mother and knew either one would suffer the same agonies as Lord Alaric should one leave this earth before the other. Thankfully, Lord Randwulf's past injuries had kept him well out of any fighting this time. A knee badly crushed beneath a horse some years back could no longer be trusted to support his weight, and the whole of his right side was riddled with pain from wounds suffered long ago. In three years, he would celebrate his sixtieth birthday, a mark few men with such a violent past lived to achieve.

"And Eduard?" Will asked. "Any news from Blois?"

He was referring to the separate packet of letters usually delivered to Lady Servanne from her daughter-in-law, in which the news was not always as enthusiastic and sanguine as what the son wrote to the father.

"Only that he makes a poor invalid. Lady Ariel sent a message just yesterday begging our forgiveness in advance if she was driven to dent the side of his head with a cauldron."

"She should be thankful he still has a head to dent. Four horses were cut out from beneath him in the battle! And how many sword thrusts did he take? Ten? Twelve? I vow there was hardly any blood left in his veins when we carried him off the field."

"She says he is already trying to use his legs, though he has broken more walking sticks than she can keep supplied by his bedside. And he insists on taking his meals in the great hall so that everyone can see he is alive and still in command of his faculties."

Will nodded. "It was a concern of your father's too. Any sign of weakness and the vultures would have flocked instantly to the walls of Blois Castle. He still attracts the greedy eyes of King John's assassins once or twice a year, and no doubt the price on his head will increase substantially after the role he played in Maine."

"You would think Softsword would be too busy these days to remember old grudges," Brenna sighed. "Father, Eduard, even Robin for pity's sake."

"Once an enemy of the English king, always an enemy of the English king."

"Indeed, but he has so many on his own side of the Channel, why does he persist in plaguing us?"

"Because your father, with but a snap of his fingers, can call up another thousand men to support King Philip should he decide to invade England and drive Lackland into the North Sea. Because Eduard has already proven himself willing to go to any lengths to avenge the death of Arthur of Brittany. And because Robin, firstly, is more than equal to the mantle of all he would inherit should the unthinkable happen to your father, and secondly, because he crippled Lackland's pet viper and left him but a ruined shell of his former self."

"You are speaking of Guy de Gisbourne, of course? The one who thought Robin had such a pretty face, he wanted to splay him on the bed and swiv him?"

Will frowned again. "I might have put it in more delicate terms."

" 'Twas hardly a delicate intention against a thirteen-year-old boy."

"Nonetheless, Robin should have aimed the knife higher and killed him instead of just paring away the few inches of excess flesh that offended his tender sensibilities. Especially now that he has been made Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham."

Brenna laughed. "Gisbourne will have his hands full enough dealing with Lady Ariel's outlaw brother."

Will came to An abrupt halt and stared at her. "How the devil do you know about ... No. Never mind. I should know better than to ask." He started walking again, his long legs scything through the ferns. Brenna walked dutifully beside him, but in her head she was counting off the paces ... five ... six ... seven ...

"All right." He stopped again. "How the devil do you know about Lord Henry?"

"Eight," she said. "Your restraint is improving."

"Your father's will dissolve completely if he thinks there are too many wagging tongues inside the castle walls."

"Only one tongue. And actually ... it belonged to him, so he could only rail at himself if he went looking for a culprit to blame."

"Your father told you about Lord Henry?"