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Authors: Christina Dodd

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Another call echoed through the square. All the
banns had been called. Only the ceremony of marriage itself remained.

They hurried now, placing a wimple of lace on Edlyn’s head and leaving her hair down as a sign that, although she wasn’t a virgin, she was still a virtuous lady. Quite a difference from a few hours ago, she noted bitterly. She had been rescued from her state of sin by a lord with unsubstantiated claims of loyalty and nobility.

The thin hose were white, the shoes of painted leather were too large but very tooled and detailed, so the nuns ignored her complaint and stuffed bits of cloth in the toes. Then she was ready for the ceremony that would mark her as a man’s chattel once more.

As they had done in her two previous marriages, they gave her a bouquet of myrtle and rosemary to hold. This time, she threw it down.

“An inauspicious beginning,” one of the nuns muttered.

“’Tis not flowers Lord Hugh wants of her.” Lady Neville adjusted Edlyn’s wimple. “But he’ll have to work for what he wants. It’s good for a man to have to concentrate on his woman.”

The afternoon sun lashed at Edlyn’s eyes as she stepped outside. She blinked and raised her hand to her face until she had adjusted to the glare, and when she lowered her hand, she wished she hadn’t. Everyone stood in that square. They’d formed a path through the midst of them that led right to the church steps, where the abbot, Wharton, and Hugh stood waiting.

What irked Edlyn was that Hugh had obviously remained calm throughout the afternoon’s preparations. He never had a doubt she would do what he desired, and it made her wish she’d held on to the flow
ers so she could publicly toss them in the dirt. Her impulsiveness had cost her a grand gesture.

Someone nudged her in the back. She didn’t move, so someone pushed her, and she stumbled over her own feet as she started down the aisle of watching eyes and grinning mouths.

“I don’t want to,” she whispered to herself. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to.”

Her rebelliousness reminded her of that first wedding to the old duke. She’d been young and frightened that day, aware she had no choice and helpless to stop the events. Now she felt the same except she wasn’t frightened, but the helplessness drove her to glare at Hugh with all the venom she could muster.

His expression, one of carefully maintained affability, retreated to gravity, and he seemed to gain some sense of the task he’d set for himself. How would he placate his bride?

He wouldn’t, because she was determined not to be placated. Mounting the stairs, she let her steps drag in obvious protest. He smiled faintly. When she reached him, he took her hands—empty of flowers—nodded to the abbot, and the swearing ceremony began.

When Hugh vowed to care for her even after his death, her toes curled in her too-large shoes.

A warrior. He was a warrior. And he would die like all the rest. Like all the young men Robin had gathered around him. Like Robin himself.

She whispered her vows, and they were wed. A cheer rippled through the crowd, growing as Hugh freed her hands, but only so he could wrap his arms around her waist and bring her close.

“Edlyn.” He bent his head and brought his mouth close for the kiss of peace. “Stop pouting,” he whispered.

She wasn’t pouting. She was crying, and he saw the welling of tears.

“Sweeting, what’s wrong?”

He could afford to croon now. He had won everything.

“Sweeting?”

The cheers had subsided to buoyant babblings, but one sharp voice soared above the rest. “My lord, I want to be the first to congratulate you.”

It was Baron Sadynton, his meager mouth pinched into an affected smile, and Hugh raised his head like a wolf sniffing danger.

“It’s extraordinarily compassionate of you to marry this woman, especially after your actions of last summer. The king must be proud of your peaceful overtures.”

Edlyn didn’t like Sadynton. Had never liked him. Thought him a whiner and a troublemaker, and she knew he held her responsible for denying him his syrup of poppies. But his satisfaction in this instance made her more than uneasy. It made her ill. She clutched at Hugh’s arms, unaware that alarm encouraged her to hold him as he wished.

When Wharton headed toward Sadynton with his fists clenched, she clutched Hugh even harder.

Sadynton backed up and talked faster. “I never thought to see the day the widow of the earl of Jagger would marry the earl of
Roxford
.”

Her hands fell to her sides.

“It’s not often a woman will wed the man who hanged her husband.”

Hugh, commander
of the royal troops in the West, watched as Edlyn disappeared into the woods.

“Ye going after her?” Wharton asked.

“Nay.” Hugh couldn’t believe he was saying that, but Lady Corliss’s reprimands clung to his mind. Not that he let a mere woman influence his decisions, but the abbess showed unusual wisdom in her decisions. Also—and he admitted this grudgingly—he suspected the abbess might comprehend the workings of Edlyn’s mind better than he did. “Let her go.”

“What?” Wharton danced around like a rooster plucked of its tail feathers. “But ye
didn’t
hang him.”

Hugh snorted. “Not personally.” But he had captured Robin, earl of Jagger, and sent him into the prince’s hands, where he’d been executed. That was the reason why, even after he’d regained enough strength to protect himself from assassins, he’d remained quiet. He’d hoped to lay claim to Edlyn before she discovered his identity.

A real claim. A physical claim. The kind of claim no woman could forget or dismiss.

He responded to the thought of placing that physical claim on Edlyn with a hard shudder of desire.

Nay, he couldn’t let her wander alone in the woods as she wished. He had to make sure she would return to him, willingly or not. “Wharton, you know her best. Go after her. Keep out of her sight, yet keep her in yours. I’m not comfortable with her wandering the woods alone.”

“If ye’d go after her yerself, ye wouldn’t have t’ have me sneaking around like a mole after a worm,” Wharton protested.

“You flatter neither yourself nor the lady. She’ll be better after a brisk walk, then I can explain my actions to her.”

Wharton scoffed. “Don’t explain t’ women. Just give ’em a bop on th’ head an’ they’re better fer it.”

“I’ll give you a bop on the head if you don’t get after her,” Hugh answered. “And I’ll thank you to keep your marriage advice to yourself.”

“Been married more often than ye,” Wharton replied insolently.

Hugh knew his man well. “And how many of your wives are you still married to?”

Glancing at the abbot, Wharton lowered his voice. “Two fer sure. Mayhap three.”

“I am reassured,” Hugh said sarcastically. “Now go.”

With a nod, Wharton started along the path Edlyn had taken in her flight from her new husband.

Hugh called, “Remember, she is my lady and the greatest treasure of my soul. Treat her as such.”

Wharton raised his hand in acknowledgement.

The nuns stood at the back of the crowd, and Hugh heard one say plaintively, “But we didn’t get to throw the wheat.”

Wheat for fertility. Wheat for increase. Wheat for a son of his from Edlyn’s body. Aye, he wanted that ceremony with the wheat, but Lady Corliss shepherded the nuns toward the cloister and they obeyed as good women should. By God’s gloves, when Lady Corliss spoke,
he
would obey, too. The woman was an autocrat—and a holy woman.

Hugh’s men lined themselves along the bottom of the stairs, and Hugh started toward them. They were his own personal troops, the men he had gathered around him through the years. A dozen knights, twenty squires, and the menservants for them all, they had remained in the area after the battle, hiding themselves and Hugh’s possessions on Wharton’s instruction for fear of giving away Hugh’s position. Now they had gathered for his wedding and watched solemnly the scene that played before their gazes.

As he descended the stairs, he spotted Baron Sadynton watching him with a satisfied sneer. Without a thought, Hugh changed directions, planted his fist right in Sadynton’s face, and before Sadynton had even toppled, strode into the crowd of his men.

They closed ranks and walked him toward his newly resurrected camp. The usual marital congratulations seemed inappropriate when the bride had abandoned the groom, and Hugh understood that. “Come, men,” he called. “Let us go speak together.”

“My lord.” Hugh’s squire, a young Welsh boy of thirteen by the name of Dewey, took Hugh’s hand and kissed it fervently in a gesture of respect and relief. “We despaired of your life until Wharton arrived to reassure us of your good health.”

“It was not my time to die yet.” Hugh freed his hand, then ruffled the lad’s hair. Turning, he glanced over the group. “Where’s Morven?”

Dewey sighed and kicked the ground, and Hugh rubbed his forehead. “He was too young for such a fate. And Sir Ramsden?”

Dewey shook his head dolefully.

“A seasoned warrior, lost to us now.” Hugh was well aware of the gap Sir Ramsden’s death would leave in his small band. No one worked with the horses better than Sir Ramsden, and he had been a faithful companion for many years.

The youthful squire Morven hadn’t been with them long enough to make an impression, but if anything Hugh mourned him the more. Sir Ramsden had lived a full life and had died with a sword in his hand. Morven had been nothing but a lad, all gangly legs and jutting arms, and Hugh muttered, “I should have worked with him more.”

Dewey heard him, for he quickly replied, “Nothing could have saved him, my lord. Three seasoned knights attacked him. I tried to reach his side but was too late.”

“Three knights?” Hugh’s strides lengthened. “Why would they bother? The lad had nothing for them to steal.”

Sir Philip, new in Hugh’s troop but a seasoned warrior nonetheless, answered. “They attacked because he stung them like a persistent wasp, keeping them at bay when they would have taken your fallen carcass.”

Dewey turned on Sir Philip with a hiss, but the knight lifted his hand to silence him. “The lord had to know. He would mourn Morven more if he thought he had died a useless death than to know he died for love of Lord Roxford.”

Lord Roxford. That was he, although Hugh wanted to look around and see this lord of whom everyone spoke. He was new to this earl-homage and found it still staggered him on occasion.

“In sooth,” he said, “Sir Philip is right. It helps ease the grief of his death to know the lad died helping our cause.” Yet still he remembered Morven’s big worshiping eyes following him everywhere, and he wished he’d left the lad with his mother. True, there had been nothing but poverty and starvation ahead of them, but at least Morven wouldn’t now be rotting in the ground. “You did get him buried?”

“Aye, my lord. I took care of it myself,” Sir Philip answered.

Another lad trudged with them, and Hugh called to him. “How did you fare in the battle, Wynkyn?”

“’Twas magnificent, my lord.” His words were hardy but his tone faint.

Hugh lifted an eyebrow at Dewey.

“It made him vomit.” Dewey answered the unspoken question.

Intercepting the nasty glance Wynkyn sent Dewey, Hugh asked, “Is that all? In my first battle, I sweated so much from fear I lost my grip on the sword and almost slashed off my own leg.”

“I couldn’t sleep for nights after my first battle.” Sir Philip grimaced and smoothed his gray hair off his forehead. “I kept hearing the screams of the wounded, and I hated the crunch the horses’ hooves made when they stepped on the bodies.”

Hugh’s chief adviser, Sir Lyndon, had made his way to Hugh’s side, and he smiled with all his considerable charm. “Ah, to me it is the sweet sound of battle.”

“Really?” Hugh shuddered. “I still hate that.”

Wynkyn paled. “Does it get better? The abomination of it, I mean.”

Walking over to the lad, Hugh wrapped his arm around Wynkyn’s neck and tugged him off-balance while ruffling his hair. “It’s always dreadful, but some
how you get used to it. Unless it’s really a bloody battle, of course. Then you’re back puking your guts up.”

He released Wynkyn. The lad would do. His father, the earl of Covney, had been concerned that Wynkyn’s dreamy air would shatter at the first taste of combat, but Wynkyn had held up well and Hugh would send a letter of reassurance to the earl.

Forgetting Wynkyn, he looked at the looming fabric walls of his tent with fierce gratification. He had feared he’d lost it when he disappeared from the battlefield, but here it was. He’d seen chambers in a palace with less room than his tent, but on the frequent occasions when it rained and the wind blew cold, he hosted strategy sessions for his whole troop. He kept a table, camp stools, his camp bed, and trunks filled with blankets and clothes for the squires should they need them, which as boys they frequently did.

Sir Lyndon stepped beneath the black felt roof that protected the entrance and held the flap back invitingly. “Would you care to rest while you await the return of your bride?”

“Nay. I would have refreshment while you recount all you know of the battle past and give me your reports of our enemy’s movements.” Hugh needed to know, and besides, he couldn’t rest until he had Edlyn within his grasp again.

Sir Lyndon tied back the flap. “When you disappeared during the battle, we were discomfited, my lord, and I fear we failed to guard your possessions as we should. After the battle, marauders stole much from you, but I would offer my own camp bed for your comfort. It will be better than the hard floor.”

“My thanks, Sir Lyndon, but of what use is a narrow cot to a newly married man?” Hugh accepted a goblet of ale from Dewey and swallowed the liquid in
one long gulp, ignoring Sir Lyndon’s lifted brow. He knew what Sir Lyndon thought—that a warrior should have better control over his wife. But while he had long treasured Sir Lyndon’s advice in battle or siege, he remembered the pale, beaten aspect of Sir Lyndon’s wife and the suspicious aspects of her death, and he dismissed any claim Sir Lyndon might make about domestic peace. “Dewey will instead make us a wide pad of skins and blankets on the floor.”

Sir Lyndon snapped his fingers and Dewey hurried to obey.

Hugh settled himself on a camp stool outside in the shade of his tent’s overhang. From here he could watch for Edlyn’s return. Around him, squires placed stools according to each knight’s rank and the confidence Hugh held in him, and his knights seated themselves.

There was a general clearing of throats, then Hugh, earl of Roxford, demanded an accounting of his men.

“They fought like demons, my lord, especially when they thought you were dead.” Sir Lyndon flexed his hand as if he recalled the agony of holding a sword for too long. “But actually, ’twas all to the good, for de Montfort’s men overextended themselves and we were able to divide the army and conquer those who didn’t flee.”

Hugh sipped from his refilled goblet and looked at Sir Philip. “We took hostages?”

“Aye, and shipped them off to the prince for justice after stripping them of their armor and horses.” Sir Philip smiled, well pleased with their haul. “We’ve distributed the wealth evenly, my lord, and left you what we thought you would desire. Should you decide differently, we’ll give up whatever you wish.”

Hugh smiled, too. His years as a landless knight
had given him an appreciation for the tradition of stripping defeated foes of their belongings. Many was the time he’d eaten off the money he’d made selling knightly trappings back to his enemies after a tournament or battle. This time, no such offer was made. Those who fought for Simon de Montfort had given up their rights to their property. And some, like the earl of Jagger, had given up their lives.

Hugh glanced toward the forest not far from the tent. Where was she? How long would she sulk? She wouldn’t keep him waiting too long, surely; the sun rapidly approached its nadir, and night in the woods was a fearsome experience.

“We missed your leadership on the battlefield,” Sir Lyndon said. “If not for your early wisdom in planning our maneuvers, we would have been sore pressed after you were wounded.”

Hugh didn’t answer. He didn’t like Sir Lyndon’s barrage of compliments. He didn’t like that their friendship had changed from one between equals to one between superior and supplicant. When Prince Edward stripped Edmund Pembridge of both his title and his castle and bestowed them on Hugh, Sir Lyndon had begun to regard Hugh with an eye toward profit. Hugh found it disconcerting to be viewed as a cow to be milked.

“Who escaped the battle?” he asked.

“Richard of Wiltshire and his party of mercenaries.” Sir Lyndon spit on the ground after saying that name. “Baron Giles of Cumberland. And the clan Maxwell.” He would have spit again, but he knew better.

“The clan Maxwell,” Hugh repeated. He didn’t say so, but he was glad they had escaped.

“I can’t understand what they were doing fighting on English soil.” Sir Lyndon dared to grumble.

Hugh grunted. “They’re Scottish, aren’t they? The Scottish love to see the English fight among themselves, because the Scottish always make a profit off our wars. And why shouldn’t the Maxwell take sides? If the prince wins and the king is freed, they can retreat over the border into Scotland and live off the plunder they’ve taken. If de Montfort wins, they’ll have the pick of any loyal English lord’s castle.”

“You consorted with them, didn’t you?” Sir Lyndon said.

“After they captured me in battle, I lived in Scotland for almost a year,” Hugh acknowledged.

Swept by curiosity, Dewey didn’t realize that a squire should never interrupt. “Did someone ransom you, or did you escape?”

“Neither.” Hugh looked each man in the face as he answered. “They let me go.”

Sir Philip stared in fascination. He hadn’t been with them long enough to have heard this story. But Sir Lyndon avoided Hugh’s gaze. Hugh’s year with the Maxwells occurred before they met, and Sir Lyndon seemed to wish Hugh would forget it—or, at least, stop talking about it.

But Dewey pressed for an explanation. “The Scots let you go? I thought the Scots are barbarians who roast their captives if they can’t make a profit off of them.”

“So they are,” Hugh agreed. “Although I never saw anyone roasted, they do make slaves of their unransomed captives.”

Dewey knelt by Hugh’s stool. “They made you a slave?”

“And made me turn the grindstone in their mill,” Hugh said. “I was chained, and the man in charge told me I was better than a horse and dumber than an ox.”

“He thought you were dumb?”

Dewey didn’t wonder about the “better than a horse” part, Hugh realized, and that was a tribute to his strength. “Aye, he thought I was dumb. That was his first mistake. Letting me off the chain to fight in their championships was his second. I beat everyone there, and when the laird took me into his castle, the miller found himself buying an ox.”

BOOK: A Knight to Remember
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