“He also pleases her, something I have never seen before. But still, my lord, she doesn’t see him as a suitor. She seems him as—” Crecy couldn’t find the right word and so Richard said, “Jerval told me she regards him as her playmate. But he wasn’t completely the playmate today. Progress, Crecy, progress.”
“Aye,” Crecy said. “Perhaps you are right, my lord. But still, I am worried.”
“If Jerval wants to wed her, then he will make her understand all of it. Don’t fret. He isn’t a fool. I just hope he can keep from—no, never mind that.”
“Ellis said that if any man could woo her and tame her, it was Jerval.”
“My girl doesn’t want taming. Now, Ellis is limping badly. I don’t believe he will ever again ride into battle.”
“Ah, Ellis is gnarly as an old oak tree. He will improve, my lord. He will improve.”
Richard was thinking that he would have Crecy write immediately to the king, asking his permission for the alliance between Croyland and Camberley. It would be ready for the messenger to take to London as soon as Jerval made his decision.
The following afternoon, Jerval rode silently beside Chandra away from the tiltyard toward the sea. Her face was streaked with sweat; her thick braid, plaited tightly about her head, was dulled with dirt.
In the tiltyard, her lance held firmly against her side, urging her beast of a destrier at full gallop, she had showed nearly his own skill when he had been her age. He had no particular wish to turn their every encounter into a competition, but it was she who wanted it, forced it on him, and in the most natural way imaginable. If only she’d been a man . . . but she wasn’t. I am still her good friend, he thought, her companion, and she looks up to me, admires me, never becomes angry when I best her, never pouts or sulks, merely laughs and smacks me on the arm. What in the name of God am I to do?
He wanted to talk to her, simply spend time sitting beside her, looking at her, mayhap even holding her hand, but really, just talking, learning what was in her mind, in her heart, not these continuous challenges and competitions, pitting them against each other. Like two brash young men bent upon impressing each other, he thought. Damnation.
He thought of his cousin, Julianna, how all she wanted to do was sit with him and talk and talk. It had made him restless, all those soft words of hers, made him desperate to do something, stride about, run with his father’s dogs, anything. But with Julianna, it was always just those sloe-eyed looks of hers and so much talk that he sometimes wanted to stuff one of his mother’s beautifully sewn bathing cloths into her lovely mouth. Julianna had learned to tease and flirt by practicing on him. He’d believed her an angel, perhaps a bit tedious, but that wasn’t important, and then he’d seen her turn red in the face and shriek like a fishmonger at a hapless serving maid, and strike the girl. Jerval had simply walked up to her, carried her away, still shrieking, under his arm, and dropped her at his mother’s feet. He’d never looked at her quite the same again.
He knew Julianna wanted him. He also knew that even if he’d wanted her, his father would never allow it. Marriage wasn’t about anything other than property. He smiled, a big pleased smile. Mayhap not always.
“Chandra, pull up.”
She reined Wicket in, the huge destrier nickering as he drew close to Pith.
“Am I as filthy as you are, Chandra?”
She looked at his powerful arms, still damp with sweat. His tunic was open, and the light hair on his chest was matted with dirt.
“Probably more because you are so large. There is more area for the filth to cover.”
He didn’t care if she was black with dirt. He still wanted to caress every inch of her, feel her with his fingers while he closed his eyes.
“You know that Father is holding a banquet tonight in your honor. Two of his vassals, Sir Andrew and Sir Malcolm, will attend.” But thankfully not Sir Stephen, Mary’s father. Mary believed she should confess to her father, but Chandra knew that would be a horrible mistake. She needed more time to persuade Mary not to tell anyone what had happened, particularly not her selfish and inflexible father. As if what had happened were Mary’s fault. Chandra sighed. Were men so rigid, so set in their thinking that they would not be able to see that it wasn’t Mary’s fault that she was no longer a virgin?
“I trust you will be honoring me more than any other? You will perhaps honor me so very much that you will feed me from your own knife?”
“Yes,” she said, grinning at him, “I have plans for my knife.”
She laughed as she dug her heels into Wicket’s sides. She was gone from him again.
After another ten minutes, Chandra drew in Wicket’s reins and carefully guided his descent to the rocky stretch of beach below, cut off from the harbor at Croyland by a thick finger of land. Jerval followed her, looking at the softly lapping waves collapsing gently on the coarse black sand.
It was a bright day, the sun full overhead, no rain clouds in sight. When they reached flat ground, Chandra dismounted, pulled off Wicket’s bridle, and shooed him away. Jerval did the same, and when he turned to face her, he saw that she was eyeing him, a look he didn’t begin to understand.
“About the formal banquet this evening,” she said, not looking at him. “You and I have jested about it, but truly I have not really thanked you properly for saving me.”
“I have never jested about it,” he said.
“That is because when you remember, you feel fear again that I could have had my throat sliced open.”
“If I could have sat on you to keep you safe, I would have.”
Immediately, her mouth was open to defend her own skill, her cunning, her strength. He raised a hand and lightly touched a finger to her lips, still chapped. “Attend me, Chandra. You must allow a man to do what he was born to do, and that is to protect you. If you take that from him, then what good is he?”
She said slowly, looking out over the sea, “I hadn’t thought of it like that. But there are so many ladies who still need protecting. They litter England. What matter does it make if only one of them doesn’t need your protection? If I don’t?”
He said patiently, touching his fingertips now to her arm, watching her slowly turn back to him, “A man is what he is. You could be larger than I, more vicious than King John before his barons finally defeated him, more stout of heart than King Richard, but it simply wouldn’t matter. I must protect you or die trying. If I don’t, then I am not worth much of anything.”
“You speak like the ideal of knighthood, Jerval. I know that men can perhaps protect women, but they seem to forget all about it when one is available to be raped. Where is all your vaunted protection then?”
“Rape? What are you talking about? Graelam didn’t touch you, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.” She’d almost said too much. Even now he was looking at her, and he was puzzled, wondering why she’d said that. Quickly, she thought, quickly, she had to distract him. “But you cannot deny that men will take what they can and it doesn’t matter if it is a male or a female at their mercy. If you are different—well, I don’t really know that, do I?”
She’d finally done it, just shoved him right over the edge. Anger flamed deep and hot. “Damn you, Chandra, you believe that I would harm someone weaker than I? You don’t know me well enough, you said. Then why would I take my time to save your white hide? And, having saved your hide, why then didn’t I simply throw you on the ground and ravish you?”
“I would have killed you and you knew it.”
He wanted to clout her. Instead, he grabbed her, hurled her over his shoulder and walked to the water.
Since he wasn’t stupid, he had an excellent grip on the back of her legs. She reared up, yelling curses at him, hitting him, but she couldn’t hurt him overly, not if she couldn’t kick him. He kept walking. The water lapped over his boots. They would be ruined. Well, no matter. He kept plowing forward into deeper and deeper water.
“What are you doing? Are you mad, you idiot? Put
me down!”
He said nothing, just kept pushing his way through the water until finally it was at his waist and then he stopped. “You are arrogant. Beyond that, you are ignorant. You think only of yourself and your own value. If you have any wits at all, you have buried them under layers of your own wonderful opinion of yourself.”
She fought him, nearly broke some of his body parts, but he managed to hurl her another six feet forward into deeper water.
She slammed into the water—and sank like a stone.
He strode back to the beach, then turned to see her swimming gracefully, powerfully, back to shore.
Well, damn. He’d hoped she would have a bit of trouble, perhaps need him to rescue her, but no luck. She was wearing trousers, not a gown.
When she pulled herself out of the water, she walked up to him and drew back her fist, her intent to break his jaw.
He laughed with the joy of it. He grabbed her arm, pulled her off balance toward him, then flipped her over his shoulder. She landed on her back in the sand some feet beyond him.
Instead of rage, or curses, she lay there a moment, getting her breath back, and then she grinned up at him. “That was very well done,” she said. “I can wrestle and do all sorts of vicious holds, but not that throw. Could you show me how to do that?”
He said after he managed to recover, “You defy any logic that I have ever known.” He gave her a hand up, then spent the next hour showing her how to gain enough leverage, to use his own momentum against him to send him over her shoulder.
She learned very quickly.
CHAPTER 7
When he was sitting in a large steel-banded bathing tub late that afternoon, Jerval realized that she had never thanked him for saving both her and Croyland. They’d immediately gone after each other’s throats. Well, he’d simply tried to explain a man’s honor to her, but he hadn’t succeeded. Ah, well, doubtless Lord Richard would have her say all that was proper to him this evening. He wondered if she would do it well, if she would be gracious and mean it. He sighed and slid down until the water covered his head. Life, he thought as the water enfolded him in its calm silence, had strange byways. He wondered what he would be thinking now if she had turned out to be a little princess, with soft hands and softer words.
When his head cleared the water, it was to see her standing by the tub, staring down at him. She was still dirty, her hair in tangles about her face. He wanted to kiss her until she was wild for him.
“Did you come to scrub my back?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to scrub yours? It would take a very long time.”
“No. I realized that I hadn’t thanked you.”
Now this was something, he thought, and kept quiet. He was hard, but the water covered him, thank God.
She smiled down at him and lightly touched her hand to his wet shoulder. “Allow me to thank you on my own. Later—well, that will be formal and not between us.”
“All there is between us now is this tub of dirty water.”
She just shook her head at him.
“Have you rehearsed something for me?”
“Be quiet. Listen to me now. This is important. It comes from the deepest part of me, so to me, it is vastly important. If you had not come to Croyland when you did, if you hadn’t managed to come up with such an excellent plan, if you hadn’t been strong and brave, your men as well, then I would have been wedded to Graelam.”
She actually shuddered as she spoke the words. He had the sudden thought that perhaps she would give an equally distasteful shudder if she’d been forced to marry him.
From the deepest part of her? He was brave and strong? “You’re welcome,” he said finally. “I am glad that I was close by, very glad that one of my men found out what had happened. If I had come too late, well then, so much would have been lost. I might not even ever have met you.”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled at him, a lovely white-toothed smiled, filled with relief. “Actually, you wouldn’t have met me at all because Graelam would have murdered me by now—that, or I would have managed to slip a knife between his ribs.”
Or perhaps Graelam would have taught her to bend to him, to admire him, to . . . “I would offer you my bathwater, but it is nearly as black as you are.”
He watched her pick up her long braid and give it a yank. “Always dirty,” she said. “Father won’t let me cut it. It would be so much easier. Look at you. You simply stick your head in a bucket of water, rub in a bit of soap, and it’s all done.”
“You have beautiful hair. I wouldn’t let you cut it off either.”
“How would you like to have to sit still whilst someone had to brush your hair for an hour to get it dry?”
“I shouldn’t like it at all, and that’s the truth. However, when I look at you—your face, your hair, all of you—it gives me, a simple man, great pleasure. It would please me if you would continue to sit quietly for that hour to dry your hair.”
“Now, what does all that mean?”
He laughed. “Nonsense, all of it is nonsense. Your hair pleases me, that’s all. Now, would you like to dry me?”
She cupped her hand in his bathwater and spurted him in the face.
The Great Hall was bright with the light from countless mutton-fat rush torches, the air thick with laughter and conversation. Sir Andrew, Sir Malcolm, and their men lounged about the long tables, waiting for the servants to serve up the thick slabs of roasted beef and casks of wine.
Jerval sat to Lord Richard’s left, impatient that Chandra had not yet come into the hall. He knew that he was being studied, his worth to Croyland weighed and discussed. Lady Dorothy sat at the far end of the dais. There was no expression at all on her face but the ravages of time, of perhaps a bitterness felt so long that it was etched into the shadows in her eyes. He didn’t know. But whatever had made her what she was at this moment, sat deep and heavy on her face. Why did she so dislike her daughter? He raised his goblet, and a serving wench hastened to fill it.
“You threw my daughter in the water, then threw her yet again over your shoulder. I saw that move only once before, done by an Italian boy.”
How did the man know that? Did he have spies everywhere?
“I watched the two of you,” Lord Richard said. “I assume she pushed you over your limit and tossing her into the water was her punishment?”
“Not punishment enough.”
“That throw—she learned it well, very quickly, didn’t she?”
“Yes. I was surprised that she didn’t know how to do it. I learned it from a Scots raider many years ago.”
“Ah. Well, she knows now since you taught her.” He paused a moment, his long fingers curling about his goblet. He didn’t look at Jerval as he said, “She still looks at you as an oversized friend.”
“Yes.”
“But she trusts you now. She has never given her trust or her friendship lightly.”
Lord Richard looked up then and paid him no more attention. Jerval frowned at his host, wondering, until he followed his line of vision to see that Chandra had come into the Great Hall. A father shouldn’t look at his daughter that way, he thought, then wondered at himself. Lord Richard was proud of her. And why not? She was the most beautiful creature he himself had ever seen. Why wouldn’t her own father think so as well? But something about it wasn’t quite right. Something was just a bit wrong with everything here at Croyland.
There was no woman to compare to her. Her hair was shining, it was so clean, and it hung nearly to her waist, kept off her forehead with a narrow golden band. She was gowned in a pale pink gown that barely showed her slippers. She wore a filigree belt around her waist. To see her now, gowned as she was, made it difficult to believe that so short a time before, she’d been a filthy urchin. Actually, it was closer to amazing.
“There is no woman to compare with her, save, perhaps, her mother.” The instant those words were out of Lord Richard’s mouth, he looked furious. Why?
“I
see no resemblance at all between her and her mother,” Jerval said. “But perhaps when Lady Dorothy was younger—”
“Aye, perhaps.”
She walked directly to Jerval, gave him a full curtsy, deep and graceful, and let Ponce seat her beside him.
“It took nearly two hours to dry my hair,” she said, the first words out of her mouth.
“Did you think of my pleasure whilst you did it?”
“No, I was thinking about Wicket’s hock. It is a bit swelled. Later I would like you to look at it, tell me what you think.”
“I will be pleased to,” he said. He heard Lord Richard choke over his wine at her words.
“Tell me about your years with the Earl of Chester,” she said, chewing on a warm piece of bread. “My father tells me he is a madman on the battlefield.”
“Yes, I have seen him fight.” He had also seen his bloodlust turn to sexual lust after a battle if there was an available woman. Willing or not, it didn’t matter to him. Chandra was right, at least about Chester. A battle brought out the worst and the best in a man. He cleared his throat and said, “But he didn’t stint on praise when it was deserved. If he had seen you throw me that last time, he would have told you it was well done.”
“I have also heard that Chester has four daughters and eight sons.”
She looked so soft, so lovely, that it was difficult to concentrate on her words. Here she was finally doing what he wanted, just simply speaking to him, but what he wanted to do was very carefully take her out of that lovely gown and touch every single inch of her. He wanted to bury his face in all that magnificent hair of hers. Suffocate himself perhaps.
“Is that not so?”
“What? Oh, yes, there were four girls. Do you know that all his children still live? It is amazing. All but one have been wedded.” He paused just a moment, then smiled at some faraway memory. “Eileen was the youngest,” he said, his voice soft, “and she followed me about like a small chicken.” No, that didn’t sound particularly flattering to him.