“Hey, you!” Sukey was already in the arena, serving Veronica, so I yelled at an empty-handed squire. I beckoned the lanky teen over, awkwardly dismounting and shoving the reins into his hands. “Hold my horse for a minute.”
The judges loge was midway down the ring, on a raised platform on the arena floor. It was hard work stumbling in full armor through the soft dirt-and-sand mixture that was gentle on the horses’ hooves. I skirted the edge and was halfway across the ring when the marshal called, “Lay on!” into his microphone, and the two horses jumped forward.
Candy never stood a chance. The crowd yelled their approval as Veronica sent her flying backward over her horse’s rump.
“Marshal? Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The list marshal, wearing a crown and fancy purple robes, frowned as I staggered up to him. “What are you doing here? Jousters are not allowed on the field unless they are acting in the capacity of squire.”
“It’s about what my team captain did—whatever she told you, it wasn’t true. I’m not so improved that I’m ready to joust Walker McPhail.”
“My decision is final, Miss Whatever-your-name-is. If you wish to file a grievance, you may do so after the joust.” He dismissed me without a thought.
“But that won’t do me any good now,” I argued.
“My decision is final,” he said again, turning away from me. I knew then that Veronica really had blackmailed him somehow. Probably she’d slept with him, too.
“Your decision sucks, and you can just bet your bottom dollar I’ll be filing that grievance, and one against the dubious ethics of a list marshal who allows himself to be blackmailed.”
He didn’t even look at me as he said, “I believe they are calling for you. It is preferred that jousters enter the list on horseback, but if you wish to joust on foot . . .”
I swore as I ran back toward the opening. Veronica was just leaving after taking her victory lap around the ring, waving and smiling at the yelling fans. Candy limped past me, having bowed out of the remaining two runs of the match, yielding the win to Veronica. Walker dislodged his gang of adoring teens and was next to where Tansy stood.
Veronica blew him a kiss as she rode by, Walker watching her in surprise for a few seconds; then his head snapped around to me. I knew the moment he realized what she had done—his hands went tight on the reins and Marley reared in protest.
“Walker McPhail, Three Dog Knights, and Pepper Marsh, Palm Springs Jousting Guild, in the arena, please.”
Walker’s roar of protest had both horses dancing nervously, and several squires covering their ears.
“Help me up,” I ordered the squire who was trying to calm Tansy. With a boost to my rear, I managed to get into the saddle.
“Pepper!” Walker bellowed, heading straight for me.
“Shush,” I ordered when he got close enough to hear me. “Walker, I talked to the list marshal; there’s nothing we can do.”
“Yes, there is. I won’t joust with you.”
“You have to,” I said as quietly as I could and still be heard. Tansy didn’t like being so close to Marley, tossing her head and laying her ears back, but I told her to get a grip and reached across for Walker’s hand. “I don’t want to do this any more than you do, but Walker, we have to. If you forfeit this match, your titles and the prize money will be stripped from you and the rest of the team.”
“I don’t care about the damned money. I will not joust with you.”
“I care about the money. After Vandal’s mortgage is paid off, you all share the remainder of the winnings equally, right? Of your sixth share, half of it is going to go to the government in taxes, so that leaves you with only a twelth, which means we’re going to need you to win today in order to have enough to start a life together.”
“We can have a life together without it,” he snapped.
“Second call—Walker McPhail and Pepper Marsh.”
“But we’ll have a better one with the money. I can go back to vet school. We can go to Central America so you can meet my mother. We can buy a house.”
His eyes were dark, but I could see the panic in them as he leaned close, his breath hissing along my face. “Pepper, I could kill you. I could cripple you for life like I did the German five years ago.”
“But you won’t,” I said, squeezing his hand, throwing every ounce of love and confidence I had into my eyes so he would see how much faith I had in him. “You’re not the same man you were then, Walker. You’re better. You’re smarter. You won’t hurt me.”
His teeth ground together for a few seconds. “There’s nothing to stop you from forfeiting the match.”
“Nothing but my honor,” I said softly, pushing aside his mail coif so I could touch my gloved hand to his cheek. “I wouldn’t mind stripping Veronica of her wins and prize money, but I can’t do that to the rest of her team. They’re innocent. If I quit now, they all lose. That’s not fair to them. They worked hard.”
“Third and final call for Walker McPhail and Pepper Marsh,” the crier yelled, looking directly at us.
“We have to do this, Walker. There are too many other people counting on us.”
He pulled away from me, reaching for his black helm, jerking it over his head as he dug his heels into Marley’s side. “Nothing says I have to joust well.”
“I say you do! Those judges will be watching you extremely closely. If they see you deliberately pulling your blows and taking it easy on me, they’re not going to give you the points. Farrell is only a little behind you. If you don’t get the full points for jousting seriously, you’ll be out of the money. We need that money, Walker!”
He ground his teeth at me, but said nothing, turning Marley toward the opening of the arena.
I muttered to his back a couple of rude things about men who were too chivalrous for their own good as he rode into the ring. I was still muttering as I took the shiny helm from Sukey, jerking on my cloth cap before easing the helm over my head. Tansy danced forward a few steps into the arena. I reined her in at the opening as Walker’s music, the Triumphal March from Aida, blared throughout the arena.
Marley pranced forward, the big horse showing off for all he was worth. Rather than take his processional ride around the ring so everyone could cheer him on and throw favors at him, however, Walker went straight to his end of the list. The crowd, hyped up to see Walker the Wild joust, didn’t know quite what to think of that, and everyone sat down while the remainder of Walker’s music played.
My music (“Saturday Night,” by the Bay City Rollers—it was the only tape I could get my hands on in a short time) started. Tansy didn’t need any urging to trot into the ring, her neck arched beautifully as she, too, played up to the crowd. Following Walker’s lead, I didn’t circle the arena, but rode straight to the man I loved.
With one gloved hand I flipped up my visor when I was close enough to yell over the noise of the music and cheering audience. “Listen here, you great big adorable man! Stop giving up! You wouldn’t let me quit, and I’m not going to let you.”
He shoved his visor up, too, his mercurial eyes blazing at me from the shadows of his helm. “I will not hurt you!”
“Damn straight you won’t; you’re too talented to hurt me. But if you pull your punches, I’ll know, and I’ll never forgive you, so put that in your helm and smoke it!”
I slammed down my visor before he could reply, wheeling Tansy around and cantering her down to the end of the list.
Before I could so much as reach for my lance, Walker was upon us, bellowing over the music and the audience, “I love you, you infuriating woman!”
“I know,” I yelled back, then realized he couldn’t hear me with my visor closed, so I opened it and yelled even louder, “I love you, too, but if you don’t win this match, I’ll make your life a living hell, and don’t you think I can’t do it!”
“The next woman I fall in love with is really going to hate horses,” he swore before sliding his visor down and spinnin
g Marley into a turn.
“The next woman? Oh, you wish,” I yelled to his back, closing my visor and reaching for the lance. The announcer pumped the crowd up with Walker’s exploits and wins, including a detailed list of all his tourney wins. He was noticeably silent about me, but I didn’t care. I was too busy praying to as many deities as I could think of to survive the joust without injury. I didn’t care so much for my own sake—although I truly didn’t care for the idea of being pummeled by Walker—but I knew that if he injured me, his jousting career would be over. Worse, I’d spend the rest of my life trying to get him to believe in himself, and he’d spend the rest of his convinced he was a miserable failure.
“Lance up until the last minute, aim dead center on the grand guard, drop the reins, let go of the lance as it falls,” I murmured. Tansy’s ears twitched, a fine tremor running through her as she waited. Veronica had trained her well, I had to admit, Tansy was extremely responsive to leg cues and loved to run. I was grateful that at least one of us knew what she was doing.
“Lay on!”
The audience surged to their feet with a roar as Tansy sprang forward, taking me by surprise for a second before I realized she was cantering down the list. I gritted my teeth against the coming impact, sighted Walker’s black grand guard, and lowered my lance.
“Pepper? God, love, tell me you’re all right. Pepper?”
I opened my eyes to find Walker leaning over me, his helm gone, his eyes haunted.
“Hi, Walker. Have I told you how much I like your eyes?”
He looked up and spoke to someone else. “She’s delirious. Dammit, get the paramedic over here now!”
Paramedic. Delirious. The joust! I struggled to a sitting position, pushing Walker away. “I’m not delirious, just in love. I’m fine, not hurt at all.”
“You were unconscious,” he accused, putting a restraining arm on me.
“Like hell I was,” I lied, slapping at his shoulder armor until he let me up. I thought I was going to pass out again when I sat up, fighting hard to keep my voice and face from showing just how hard I had been hit. Bravado, that was the key; I’d just brazen it out and he’d never know. “What’s the matter, you afraid to joust with me again?”
“Pepper, I am not going to—”
I lurched to my feet, my chest as sore as if someone had kicked me. “Sure you are, ’cause I am, which means you have to, or all these fine people will think the man I’m going to marry is a coward.”
“Marry?” he asked, his frown a fearsome thing to see as he followed me to where Sukey held Tansy.
“Well, yes, I assumed you’d want to marry me.” It took every last muscle I possessed, but I managed to clamber into the saddle without either vomiting or passing out. I took the helm offered to me and bit my lip as I looked down at Walker’s face, his adorable face, a face now wearing a mingled expression of anger and guilt. “You do want to marry me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do, but that’s not the point. We’ve had one run; now you can concede the win to me without jeopardizing the rest of your team.”
A little of the tightness across my chest eased. “I could, but I’m not going to. My honor’s at stake here, Walker, but more important, yours is as well. I trust you. I believe that you can joust without harming me.” I looked down at the dented section of my armor. “Much. So get that adorable butt of yours back onto Marley and prepare to defend yourself, because this time I’m taking off the kid gloves. It’s war now, buster.”
It was all bravado, of course. I didn’t relish taking another blow like the one he had dealt me, but it was important that Walker triumph over his fears. One run wouldn’t do it, but three might.
“Pepper, dammit, I’m not going to joust against you again. You can’t make me.”
“I love you, Walker.”
I could see his teeth grinding together. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to shame me into another run, and it’s not going to—”
“I love you more than anything in the whole world.”
“I will not be manipulated like this—”
“I love you so much, I trust you with my life.”
He snatched up his helm and shook it at me. “Fine! But when I break your damned fool neck and you spend the rest of that life crippled because you insisted I joust, I just hope you’ll be happy!”
“Hugs and smooches,” I called to him as he stormed over to Marley, muttering and swearing the whole way.
Walker rode to the end of the list, and I sent up another quick prayer to protect us both from injury, barely getting it completed before the audience exploded in cheers as the list marshal called the start.
“Well, this is getting to be humiliating,” I said a moment later as I raised my visor and shook the dirt and sand from where it had permeated my helm. “I don’t think I even touched you this time. You don’t have an extra-long lance, do you? And no, I don’t mean your manly eight inches.”
Walker pulled me to my feet, his gaze frankly assessing as it ran over my dented armor. “Are you hurt?”
“No, just a little winded. That passing on the right side really takes the breath out of you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” he lied. He wasn’t even sweating despite wearing all that armor.
I pushed his visor up high and leaned forward to brush my lips against the thinned line of his mouth. “You’re a rotten liar. I’m fine, Walker. Your accuracy is dead-on, and you’re setting me down much gentler than even Bliss does.”
Pain flashed over his face, thickening his voice. “You’re killing me, Pepper. My heart stops each time I think of what could happen.”
“Then think instead about how good you’ll feel when I give you your reward for jousting with me.”
The frown I had come to love pulled his ebony brows together. “What reward?”
“I bought out Bawdy Mary’s selection of lotions. I thought tonight you could be my smorgasbord,” I whispered, then limped back to Tansy.
“Pepper—”
“Come on, I want one more shot at knocking you on your handsome butt. On your horse, McPhail.”
I smiled to myself as he shook his head and walked back to Marley.
“There goes the man I’m about to make deliriously happy,” I told Tansy. She snorted and jogged to the side when Sukey shoved the lance into my hand. “I just hope I live to appreciate his gratitude.”
Time seemed to do that weird “flashing your life before your eyes” telescoping thing as Walker turned Marley at the far end of the list. The roar of the crowd dulled to a distant white noise as I stared through the narrow eye slit of my visor at the figure of the black knight facing me, my breath rasping hard in my ears as it echoed in the steel confines of the helm.
Beneath the steel plates, mail, cloth gambeson, and thin linen shirt, my heart was thumping madly, so hard I could feel it in the tips of my fingers as I gripped the lance. Tansy must have felt the excitement too. She positively danced in anticipation, but her movements seemed slow and laborious; even the sound of her harness jingling seemed to be slowed as it penetrated the shelter of my helm.
From the very corner of my eye slit I saw the list marshal raise the cloth pennant. Although I couldn’t hear the words, the second his arm started its downswing I clamped my legs tight on Tansy’s sides, my breath coming out in a shouted exhalation that deafened me as the horse lunged forward.
Walker was quick off the start as well, but even so, each second seemed to take five times what it normally did; the only sound audible was my own breathing, hard and fast as Tansy pounded down the list. Walker and Marley suddenly seemed to speed up as I lowered my lance, clamping it down between my side and arm, my eyes on the curved black plate that was bolted to Walker’s shoulder piece.
I dropped the reins just as his lance slammed into my grand guard, knocking me backward against the high back of Veronica’s McClellan saddle. Splinters from the shattered tip flew up, blinding me and blocking my view of Walker, but the shock I
felt as my lance connected with him twisted me to the right, my left leg coming out of the stirrup. I clung desperately to the horse and threw myself into the lance in an attempt to keep from being thrown.
There was a tremendous pressure in my chest that had me falling into a pit of blackness, but just as I started losing my grip on both consciousness and my lance, a thunderous crack reverberated through the air. The pressure miraculously disappeared, and Tansy was flying past Walker. I looked down, surprised to find myself still in the saddle, my right hand numb, but still there, gripping the remains of a lance broken in the middle.
“We did it,” I said, still staring at the lance, Tansy having turned to trot docilely back to our end of the list. “We did it. I don’t believe it—we did it!”
There was a flash of black to my left, and suddenly I was ripped from the saddle and slammed up against a brick wall. A black brick wall, one made up of plate armor and an extremely dishy knight.
“We did it,” I told the knight as he ripped my helm and arming cap off. “I can’t believe it. We did it. It was a draw because we both broke our lances, right? So I didn’t lose? Man, was that amazing!”
“You are never doing that again, do you understand?” He shook me a little as he spoke. “My heart won’t stand for it! I forbid you ever to joust. I refuse to go through that hell again—promise me you won’t do it again!”
I looked up into the silver eyes I loved so much, smiling through my tears of happiness at them, pausing only to pull off my gloves before I cradled his face in my hands. “You look furious and relieved and happy all at once.”
“I could have killed you.” His voice was so low I felt rather than heard it.
“But you didn’t. You, my brave knight, have proven your worth and won the fair maiden. So what are you going to do about that?”
“Take you back to my tent and make love to you for the next three hours,” he growled against my lips. His mouth was hot on mine as he kissed me, hot and fiery, aggressively demanding, but at the same time impossibly gentle. Around us the audience cheered, but we didn’t hear them as our lips parted reluctantly. My dream man, my knight in shining armor, the man who made me see that I, too, could do anything I wanted. . . .