Conqueror (26 page)

“You did not drink so adeptly when I saw you last.”

The cup clattered to the floor. A line of red stained the edge of her lips and angled her mouth into a pale pink smile.

“I did not have so much cause to drink, then.” She closed her mouth, the smile-stain remaining, and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands crossed primly in her lap.

“You had some cause,” he remarked dryly.

“Well, mayhap I did at that.” She sniffed and looked out the window. “But I’d never had the kind of fire-water you were offering that night, sir, and would do well to never sport with it again.”

He looked at her delicate profile and the rampaging curls that glinted burnished fire and danced down her curving spine, and recalled the way his hands had moved across that same spine, slid over her hips and down, some twelvemonth ago.

“I liked the things you did with it,” he said gruffly.

And with those simple words, he started it inside of Gwyn. A hot flush spread through her body. She rose shakily from the bed. “Faith, my lord, with your permission, I would go now.”

He threw back his head and laughed so hard the servants scuttling through the hall a floor below halted in their circuits and exchanged frightened glances. “You’ve grown quite docile of a sudden, Guinevere.”

“I was trying to be…easier on your mood.”

He lifted both brows in mute query.

“I have decided ’tis wisest for us to get along, and I will do my part.”

He half-smiled. “Which means?”

She held her breath a moment. “I will be compliant.”

He laughed again, an easy sound, and the boiling tension in her belly lessened somewhat. “Guinevere. I have seen you with a rock in your hand, a retort on your lips, and a foolish notion in your head, but I have
never
seen you compliant.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Some find me endowed with a capacious gift for good humour, my lord.”

“Where are they?” He reached out one muscular arm for the wine jug. “I will learn them their folly.”

She dragged her gaze from his flexed forearm. “And what will we say of yours? I have seen you in a foul enough humour.”

He considered her a moment. “You are right, my lady. We can be at one another’s throats, or we can learn to get along. I prefer the latter.”

She stretched out her hands, palms up. “There, you see. We’ve had our first agreement.”

“And neither one of us shattered from the effort.”

“Or exploded in rage.”

“Or ran screaming from the room.”

Her lips twitched. “I cannot imagine you doing that.”

“I was speaking of you, Guinevere.”

“Oh.”

And somehow, there they were,
smiling
at each other. “’Tis a good omen.”

His slate-grey eyes flicked around the room. “We shall see.”

The betrothal was brief, almost anticlimactic.

Seeing her mother’s dress, thinking of her muddled deathbed promises to her father, and above all knowing what was to come with Griffyn Sauvage after what had
so completely
already been, Gwyn was so weighted with sodden, confusing emotions, she could barely wring out the required words.

“I will take you as my husband,” she murmured, head down, taking
verba de futuro
, vows of the future, binding them in a legal and spiritual betrothal.

It was different for Griffyn.

The priest’s Latin-infused drone barely penetrated his consciousness. Raven-haired, green-eyed, crimson-lipped, Guinevere fairly pulsed with fire as she drifted down the corridor to meet him inside the chapel. The walls seemed to expand when she entered the small stone edifice, her head held high, a small filigree of silver around the high-piled ebony curls atop her head. Distinctly impious thoughts filled his mind. Quick-witted, hot-spirited, intelligent and funny, she was more than he’d ever expected in a wife, and about as far different from his mother as he could have imagined.

No, he decided as they unbent their knees, she was different from any woman—any
person
—he’d known.

If only she hadn’t betrayed him.

The great hall fairly bounced with frivolity, Griffyn noted, all of which his pretty betrothed observed with a down-turned mouth. The tables on the floor were disassembled soon after the three-hour betrothal
cum
victory feast ended, and the vast space of the great hall became a stage for the evening revelries.

He had arranged for
jongleurs
and wrestlers to perform, which they did to the claps and cheers of an inebriated and inordinately relieved crowd—better to have such violence staged. Laughter and stories bounced from rafter to rafter, rising to the slats in the thirty-foot-high ceiling. Griffyn sat back, satisfied.

In fact, he decided, turning his glance to Gwyn, the night was so filled with good humour he was surprised she didn’t strangle every de l’Ami soul whose throat had loosed a chuckle in the last three hours. But she hadn’t. Yet.

On a platform extended above the great hall sat a band of musicians, pouring out music that, as the night progressed, more and more bodies swayed to.

The Countess Everoot’s decidedly did not. She sat as stiff as a rail, her arms cleaved to her sides. The most movement Griffyn could wring from her rigid body was to lift a wine goblet in toast to their betrothal, and that was only by virtue of breathing on her neck as he did so.

He turned to the room at large, focusing in on a table where prominent de l’Ami knights sat, quiet amid the festive riot. A slender but athletically built young man sat in the middle. Jeravius, if he recalled correctly. He’d noticed him in the bailey, when the de l’Ami soldiers were being rounded up. He’d caught Griffyn’s attention, the careful way he’d passed his hand over the battered curtain wall, as if it were an old, beloved pet.

Tonight, Jeravius had been intent on Guinevere, keeping his gaze on her through the smoke and festivities, leaning his shoulders forwards or back when either soldier or wrestler blocked his view.

That Guinevere sat with the kind of rigid stance a plank of wood would have admired did little to ease the knight’s watchful scrutiny, and therefore little to mitigate any threat to Griffyn’s command.

He rose, hoping to be inconspicuous. He may as well have herded a flock of sheep through the hall. Every head jerked to him, the music faltered, and two of his knights, engaged in mock combat, flicked their eyes to him, their contest forgotten.

His gaze drifted over the room, then he ducked his head in a nod, freeing the party to resume its furious swirl. Dancers danced, musicians piped, fires roared, and Griffyn walked down the dais steps to where Jeravius sat.

“’Tis a goodly scene,” he observed, standing beside the table of de l’Ami knights as his eyes scanned the surroundings.

“Aye,” Jeravius responded carefully, getting to his feet. “My lord.”

“Lady Guinevere has lost much this day,” he said, glancing idly around the room before looking back.

Jeravius’s eyes were waiting for him. “She is a good woman, my lord, and deserves only happiness.”

“Which I have in my power, and inclination, to give her.” He looked over the crowd. “Think you I will be met with much resistance?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jeravius’s blond head move in a slow shake. “Not from me, my lord.”

“
Bien
. I’ll do my part, you do yours.”

“Rest assured, my lord.”

Still, Griffyn took note of the belligerent thrust of his chin. He rubbed his cheek thoughtfully, then said in a casual tone, “I’ve need of a stout man to help oversee the rebuilding of the defences. ’Tis no small job.”

He could almost feel the young man’s eagerness pressing forward. He waited, and Jeravius finally burst out with, “If you will, my lord, I would speak freely about the Nest.”

“Please.”

“The eastern wall is tunneled under ferociously, and tilts like a fish trap in winter. And for ten years now, the west wall has been tumbling into disrepair—I can’t believe you didn’t start your assault there. As far as the keep goes, well—”

He trailed off, his face paling, but Griffyn nodded. “That is just the sort of enthusiasm I need.”

“My lord?”

“As I said, I am in need of a man. To learn from the masons I am bringing in, to assist in command of the labourers in the work. Happens I might just have found him.”

Jerv took a step forward and almost tripped over the bench that was there. “Are you in earnest, my lord?”

“For certes. How long have you been a lover of stone?”

“Some long time,” Jerv answered eagerly. “I suppose when I turned seven and my father took me to Westminster, then I knew for certes. But I could ne’er…. I am a knight. Myfather paid well for me to earn that station, to be fostered and tutored by Lord Ionnes. I am a soldier, my lord, meant for other things than architecture. Good things,” he added, a trifle vehemently.

Griffyn nodded. “My uncle also found great pleasure in the labour of designing and repairing castles. He was the architect for the French king and the Duke of Normandy in building several castles. They’ve come to be regarded as masterful works, strong in defence but pleasing to the eye. He built the castle at Côte sur Seine.”

Jerv’s eyes widened. “Côte sur Seine?” he repeated. “’Tis said to be a wonder.”

“I think so,” Griffyn said simply. “Would you like to meet with the mason, when he arrives?” he asked, waiting for the buoyant enthusiasm he sensed in the young knight to burst forth. It may not be tonight, nor come another week, but it would come, and when it did, he would tap it and shape it so it would never threaten his home again.

A boyish grin spread across Jeravius’s face. “If ’tis your will, my lord, I should like it more than anything.” He thrust out his hand.

Griffyn reached out and clasped it. Their hands encircled each other’s forearm, wary, appraising, but with the glimmer of something new: respect.

“Lady Gwyn will be mightily pleased to see the repair begun, my lord,” Jeravius added. “She has oft spoken of it, but with so little money, and so few to hand….” He shrugged.

“And those hands otherwise occupied, it has been put off.”

“Time and again, my lord. For good cause, of course,” he added hurriedly, and cast a wary glance towards the dais.

Griffyn’s head cocked to the side to take in Guinevere’s stiff pose. My, but she was having fun. Her spine was stretched straight, her eyes glaring blankly across the room. She could have been in the front row of the chapel at midnight for all the expression she showed.

The only hint of connection to the room around her was her hand, idly stroking the sleek head of Griffyn’s aged hound, Renegade. The old dog had edged away from Edmund and sat down by a sweeter scent.

“But then, there have been so many good causes,” Jeravius said, “and my lady after them all.”

The words were so softly spoken, Griffyn thought perhaps he was not meant to hear. He looked over to find an affectionate, devoted smile on Jeravius’s face. Why, he loved her. They all did. Exactly as she had said.

Jeravius was turning back to him, arranging his face into the semblance of neutrality. Griffyn nodded back, allowing the young knight the privilege of his disdain. Soon enough he’d have Jeravius and all the others, even the glowering Fulk, as closely bound to him as a sword to its scabbard.

And, if needed, with a more deadly clasp, too.

Gwyn had viewed the whole encounter, from Griffyn’s nonchalant approach, to the ensuing conversation, to Jerv’s animated leap from the bench and the clasping of wrists.

Another conquest, she thought sourly. The stiff, echoing room she had envisioned was not to be. Revelers were everywhere, householders, villagers, knights and soldiers all sat with Pagan’s men and exchanged polite words. No, more than “polite.” The room felt distinctly…jovial.

Had they forgotten ’twas but a moonrise ago they had been at war with these men? Apparently so, for they talked happily with Pagan’s men, sharing ale and laughs, and secrets most likely too. She scowled.

Pagan stood in quiet conversation with Jerv, but still drew looks from around the room. He wore a close-cut tunic which revealed wide shoulders and a body plated with hard muscle and sinew. The bejeweled brooch at his shoulder flashed green and red fire, and her unwilling eye was drawn to the way the dark hose hugged his muscular thighs. Firelight highlighted the slants of his cheekbones and a wide, square chin, and from this distance, the scar was a small slash across the noble lines of his face. He was every inch the triumphant warrior. Which made her his plunder.

When his unreadable grey eyes shifted to her, she was aghast to note that even when he did not plan to, the man sent waves of seduction and sexual prowess out before him like the prow of a ship. He was dressed as befitted his victorious claim to the castle, the lands, and the lady, and he simply took her breath away.

Her fingers, grown strangely cold, fluttered at her throat. Her world was changed from this night on, and it would be by his hand.

His hands. His lips, his mouth.

Gwen ripped her attention away from the ungodly list her mind was detailing and tried to still any sign of fear.

If his smug smile was any indicator, she had failed. Miserably.

The whole thing turned her face further downwards, her mouth into a scowl, her nose to hover above the rim of her wine cup, which was now weaving unsteadily from the tips of her fingers as she beckoned for more. When it arrived, she took a deep draught.

“Careful, wife. I’d rather have you upright, at least for awhile yet.”

Griffyn’s words came close by her ear. She angled a sour look up. He was standing beside her chair, his thigh a few inches from her nose. “Beg pardon?”

“I would rather you be upright. For awhile.”

He was grinning from ear to ear. Oh, but he was a crafty one. He’d won his home back, took a wife, and was on his way to planting a thick wedge of devotion between her and her knights.

All of her father’s curses came back into her mind, vibrant and particularly applicable to the scoundrel standing so close she could mend a rent in his breeches, should she
ever
be so inclined.