Seating himself beside Saura at the head table, he listened to the ribbing of his friends about the wedding night and grinned in the appropriate spots. The suggestive humor of the ladies brought a blush to Saura’s cheek and made her forget her pique with William, and for that William was grateful. But all the while he kept checking Nicholas. Nicholas ate heartily. Nicholas always ate heartily, not even unrequited love could change that, but as soon as he finished, William knew the time had come to decide. Should he stand and make a declaration, or should he suffer through one more night?
The decision was temporarily taken from him. On the other side of Lord Peter, Raymond stood up. He had the presence few men possessed; William had it, and Lord Peter, and those men could bring a silence to a noisy room. Now as the great hall quieted, Raymond bowed to the married couple and then again to Saura. Hoisting himself up on his bench, he placed one foot on the table and leaned against his knee. His squire brought forth a lute, and as Raymond accepted it, he said, “The bride is the queen of the day, the wife is the queen of the night, and I have a song that declares how I feel about the loveliest queen of all. Saura, our Saura, queen of sunrise and dusk.”
So saying he launched into a song of breathtaking sweetness. A real musician, he produced a ballad about Saura that brought tears to the eye. Even Saura listened, ignoring the demands of hostess for a few moments as she drifted with the melody.
Alarmed at first, William slowly relaxed. This wasn’t the betrayal by yet another comrade; this was a lyric that placed Nicholas’s pathetic vers under harsh scrutiny. William couldn’t understand his own exaltation at this turn of events; why should Raymond’s declaration of devotion ease his fears? Yet it did, and looking out over the lords and ladies, over the servants and churls, he knew why. They were confused. How could they say Saura encouraged Nicholas and Raymond? They could, of course, but as the accusations widened their reliability vanished. Nicholas had arrived before any of them, and they could speculate about what had happened before they came. But what of Raymond? He’d come long after the last guest, and no one had caught him skulking in a corner with Saura.
The song ended as William smiled, lost in his own satisfaction, and on the heels of the applause another knight rose. “I, too, have vers for Lady Saura, the loveliest woman to be snatched from under my nose.” He waited for nothing, launching into a poem about the unfair pathways of fate that led him to Saura too late. Her beauty alone put her above his reach; that, and the fact she was married to the biggest, toughest warrior in England.
After the laughter died down, another knight rose, inspired to spontaneous song. Another rose, and another, all singing the praises of Saura with varying talents and messages. Soon it became more than a chance to show off, it became a way of keeping William and Saura at the table as host and hostess. William put up with their foolishness until he decided the most harm had been done to the rumors about Nicholas and his love. Then he rose and swept Saura up in his arms. “Bedtime,” he said definitely.
That brought the loudest laugh of the evening, and Lady Jane stood up and the other women followed her. “We’ll prepare her, my lord.”
William weighed her firmness against his own desire and let Saura slide to her feet. “As you wish. But don’t be long.”
This recommendation generated such gales of humor Saura suspected everyone had overindulged in ale and wine. She hastened into the solar with the ladies, stood obediently still while they stripped her and placed her hair in strategic locations; not for modesty, for they would display her as a guarantee of physical perfection, but as a tease. The men crowded in, carrying William as if he were unwilling, rather than fighting to proceed. They stood him on his feet and dragged his clothes from him with no craft, and stood him before Saura.
The women, with enticing slowness, lifted Saura’s hair away from her shoulders. The men whistled and shuffled, cackling at William’s look of painful anticipation, and Lord Peter called, “If you wield that lance as well as you wielded your lance at the mêlée, Saura will be dead by morning.”
“Nay,” Jane assured him. “She’ll vanquish his lance. Women always win that battle.”
“Until the lance is resurrected,” Lord Peter said agreeably.
“We do so pray,” Bertha shouted.
Performing his duty, Brother Cedric said, “Lady Saura is physically perfect, except for her eyes. Will Lord William disavow her for her disability?”
“Never,” William testified. “She’s the savior of my sight, the wife of my heart.”
“But how can she view William’s body?” Jane puzzled. “She has the right to see him and verify her willingness to remain in wedlock with him.”
Saura stepped forward and placed her hands on William’s arms. “I can solve that. All I have to do is….” She trailed her fingertips across his chest in a way that brought forth sighs of pleasure from the men. Her actions carried an immediate reward as William swept her up and carried her toward the bed.
“We’ll ask her in the morning if she’s satisfied,” Lady Jane decided, leading the push into the great hall.
Saura’s light laugh floated on the air, and the heavy door slammed shut. William dropped her on the bed with a thump and turned away. “William!” She pushed herself up on her elbows, pushed her hair out of her face. “Let me see you.”
“Wait,” he growled. “I’ll secure us permanent privacy.”
The wooden bench scraped the floor as he moved it. The sewing table from the window seat followed it.
“Do you foresee a visitation?” she asked with interest.
“Foresee is too strong a word.” He grunted as he shoved the heavy furniture close against the door. “Suspect. There have been times when I led the interruption of an intimate moment, and I suspect my friends may have nefarious plans.”
“You’d better push the chest over there, too,” she advised.
Chuckling, he pushed her trunk over until its weight held the barrier in place. He began to walk back to her and changed his mind. He knelt and opened her chest, and she strained to hear what he was doing, but he closed it almost immediately and she remembered his presents. “I haven’t thanked you for the bride gifts. Bless you for making me important in everyone’s eyes.”
“You make yourself important in everyone’s eyes,” he replied. “I simply signify my regard for you.” The bed depressed beneath his weight.
She laced her fingers together, suddenly aware of the quiet in the room, of their privacy for the first time in too many weeks. “I have great regard for you, also.” Clumsy, she thought, embarrassed by her lack of eloquence. Sitting there, bare, she felt a creeping consciousness. She raised the covers and crawled under, pulling the sheets over her knees, her waist, her chest, her shoulders. She kept wondering if he would stop her, but he didn’t.
She began to speak several times, but could think of no scintillating conversation. He said nothing, and she wondered if he was offended. Had her trick with the lack of hose so thoroughly distressed him he wanted nothing to do with her? Then he cleared his throat, and she knew that wasn’t true.
For the first time in a whole moon they were really alone. and they felt foolish. All their other joinings had been spur of the moment, lusty fallings from the vertical to the horizontal. This night required no hurried disrobings, no secretive plotting or special seductions. They were man and wife. They had every right to lie on the bed together.
“Did I tell you how lovely you looked today?” he asked in a soft bass rumble.
“Thank you.” She smiled rather stiffly and cast around for something else to say. “Even without my undergarments?” Immediately she wondered why she reminded him of that.
“Oh.” He shifted on the bed. “Well, aye. The lack of aught under your gown kept reminding me of…I liked it. Aye.”
The silence fell again, until she remembered to ask, “Did you win your ball game?”
“Aye. Aye, my team won by a bit. We started out behind, but after you went
in I played well and we won.” He shifted again, a little bit closer, and a small bubble of relief was born in her.
“I enjoyed meeting your friends,” she offered.
He laughed softly. “All of them?”
“Most of them,” she compromised, her eyes solemn.
“They enjoyed meeting you.” Lifting the covers he slid beneath them, close against her.
She sat, he sat, their thighs pressed together, their arms touching.
Should she move aside? Would he think she avoided him, or would he think she made room for him?
He wiggled his hips and without her having to decide, she was moved aside. “Did you like the furs?” His hands dragged something under the blankets with them.
“They felt intriguing.” Trying to be cordial, she overcompensated and purred her reply.
“I hoped you’d think that.” Those big hands moved closer to her, and a plush touch stroked over her knee. “Those furs can all be made into a cape for you. All except one, and guess what we’re going to do with that?”
She sat very still, unable to analyze the rich tingle that titillated her leg. It wasn’t his hand. The plush caress slid up her thigh and she reached out to identify it.
Pushing her hand away, he breathed, “Nay. This is my part of the bride gift.”
That rich smoothness swept over her torso, and a violent sensation of pleasure forced her stomach muscles to collapse. Her nipples peaked, goose bumps covered her. “William,” she choked. “Is that one of the sables?”
“Aye.” He rubbed the fur across her neck.
“What are you doing with it?”
He pushed against her shoulder. “Lie down,” he urged. “And I’ll show you.”
A scratch at the door pulled her from her sleep. She didn’t want to get up. God, after last night she didn’t ever want to get up, and especially not in the chilly predawn. But the scratch came again, a long, mournful scrape, and duty, and the knowledge Bula would never give up, dragged her from her warm nest against William’s chest.
“Aye, Bula,” she whispered, pulling on her brown work dress. “I’m coming, you stupid dog. Why did I ever let you start this?” With soft grunts and moans, she shoved the chest, the sewing table, the bench to the side. She stopped and listened to William’s breathing; if she’d wakened him, he was faking sleep with the dedication of a well-served man.
She opened the door to his enthusiastic welcome, and she scratched his ears. “Shh.” She listened to the sounds in the great hall. No one moved in awareness. A few bodies shifted on the floor, rolling over in the rushes or groaning in a nightmare. “Take me out, dog.” Clinging to the fur on his ruff, she followed him as he led her through the maze of sleeping bodies and to the stairway on the far side of the room. She pulled the bar back from the door and opened it to the creak of hinges. She found her guiding wall and began to descend. The air got fresher and cooler, and Bula trotted ahead, sniffing enthusiastically. He got farther and farther ahead of her, claws tapping, until he reached the bottom. Then he stopped, and Saura expected to hear him scratch against the outer door. He didn’t; a deep, loud sniffing reached her, and then a short, distressed bark.
Saura hurried down, wondering at Bula’s change of routine. An obstacle on the last two steps caught her toes, a heavy obstacle that yielded slightly but never moved. Crying out, Saura tripped over the top of it, falling and landing head first with a jarring impact on the paving stones. One cheek cracked down hard. One hand slipped and she landed with all her weight on one elbow. Her knees met the rock last, scraping the skin away.
The pain broke her; her mind shut down, yet when she woke she heard her scream still echoing up the stairwell. Her elbow hummed with the impact, and her face, as she raised herself, expanded against her skin. “God,” she moaned. “What was it?” Bula snuffled at her, whining in distress.
Groping back to the stairs, she reached out to touch that obstacle. Coarse homespun met her questing hands, and then a warm body wrapped in a serving maid’s clothing. Her fingers skimmed in increasingly frantic circles, trying to find a spark of life in the woman. There was nothing, no movement at all, and when she found the agonized face she discovered why. The woman’s neck was broken, knocked at an odd angle.
Above her, footsteps and then more footsteps clattered down the stairs and she looked up in horror. Voices she couldn’t identify, voices she should recognize assaulted her buzzing ears. She cried, “Who is it? Tell me who it is!”
The voices fell silent, and then Charles said with cold deliberation, “’Tis Hawisa. Hawisa, the slut who called you a witch. Hawisa, the serving maid you threatened to kill yesterday.”
seventeen
“’Tis Charles.”
“’Tis not, I tell you.”
“Then who is it?” William asked. “You insist it’s not Charles, but who is it?”
Wretched, Saura paced back and forth, her hand on the table for guidance. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But the voice isn’t right.”
“Isn’t right!” William pounded the board with his cup. “God’s teeth, he as much as accused you of murdering Hawisa when he reminded our guests of your threat to her!”
Saura opened her mouth and shut it.
In the waning days of summer, the guests had left. They scuttled away, babbling of the extraordinary events of the wedding celebration and storing up the tales for the winter ahead.
Saura and William had wished them Godspeed, waved until they were out of sight, and then turned to each other and laughed in blatant relief. William had been content to pay court to his bride, assisting her with her chores, walking with her in the woods, loving her every chance he got. But now the time of honey vanished as William stirred and spoke of seige and battle.
In this past fortnight of enchantment, she’d never told William of the threat in her garden, of the muffled speaker who had touched her and declared his love. She feared to infuriate William; she could imagine him stomping out, declaring he would find the bastard who dared approach his wife.
More than that, she feared he wouldn’t believe her. The ladies certainly hadn’t, not even Lady Jane. They had dismissed it as a dream, and with good cause. They had checked on her, they said, and seen her asleep and alone. They’d seen the gate to the garden as they approached, and no one had left that way. Even Saura agreed her phantom hadn’t left that way, but she didn’t know how he had left. After the guests had gone, Saura had visited the garden and, feeling foolish, had groped all around the walls. All she got for her curiosity was a handful of rose thorns.
Still, she should tell William. She would tell William. Turning, she faced him and bravely said, “What do you want for supper?” She blinked. That was not what she’d wanted to say at all, and William knew it.
“What is it, love?” He stood and paced around the table to take her shoulders and draw her to him. “Tell me.”
“Oh, William.” She dropped her head onto his chest. “I’m such a coward.”
“You?” She felt the rumble of his laughter beneath her cheek. “You’re the bravest woman I know. Banging heads with a rock, confronting Arthur, forcing those noble ladies to respect you, marrying me. I wish I had the courage you contain in one small finger.” He held up one of her hands and kissed that one small finger.
“You’re the bravest knight in all Christendom.” She drew their entwined hands back down to her face and kissed the back of his. “You’re kind and generous and a great fighter. You’re clever as a fox.”
“And I must go deal with Charles. We can’t live with this threat hanging over our heads.”
“Nay! Nay.” Reaching up, she caught his beard and tugged it until his face was level with hers. “Nay.”
“Then I’ll go take your fief back from Sir Frazier,” he offered.
Her chin dropped.
“It must be done,” he said.
“I know,” she agreed reluctantly. “But you can’t go yet. You promised to teach me to defend myself.”
<
br /> “To defend yourself?” He was startled. “Why should you need to?” They both knew it was a foolish question. “Aye, I did promise, didn’t I? But the teaching won’t take as long as you hope, dearling.” Grasping her by the hand, he led her to the chairs by the fire and seated her. He pulled his seat close, so their knees touched, and said, “Listen to me. My father teaches this first rule of combat to his fosterings, and it applies to all fighting situations.”
She sat straighter. “The first rule of combat? I’ve heard you say that before.”
“Only a fool forgets it. Listen closely. There’s no such thing as a fair battle. Battles are fought to win. I’ve engaged in wars with the punishment for failure the confiscation of my estates, the death of my son. I’ve been in clashes where a score of men surrounded me, seeking my death with the edge of their blades. ’Tis not strength that succeeds in such combat, but a combination of skill and cunning. If your opponent expects you to charge, retreat. If your opponent believes you’re weak, crush him with your boldness. You, Saura, have a great advantage.”
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“Oh, yes, dearling. You’re a woman. Women are all idiots. You’re beautiful. Beautiful women have even less wit than average women. You’re tiny. A man can overpower you with the muscle contained in his little finger. And you’re blind.”