Faerie (5 page)

“Then it was a bluff,” Leonie said. She gasped. She’d forgotten herself again. And there she was, eye to eye with the Peregrine, his censure pouring through his eyes at her, while she could not force herself to look away.

He nodded politely. “Aye, lady, nor do you need fear for yourself. Even Rufus is shocked by the Count of Richmond, and he will let no decent woman fall into the man’s hands. But more
important, the Princess Edith will never marry if Rufus can prevent it.”

“Is that not her father’s choice?” she asked.

“Aye. But recall, the blood of Saxon kings also flows in her veins. To ally Scotland and the old Saxon kings with a Norman as powerful as Richmond—’tis far too dangerous.”

Then what had the Count of Richmond wanted of her? But of course. If Richmond couldn’t have the princess, Leonie at least would bring fine lands and a castle to a marriage.

“Mayhap,” said Aunt Beatrice as she daintily dabbed her napkin to her lips, “Rufus has chosen a husband for our Leonie?”

Leonie sighed. It was Aunt Beatrice’s favorite subject, and Rufus’s delay was almost beyond explaining. Unless every man Rufus had chosen had argued the king out of it.

“I think not,” replied the Peregrine. “If he had made a choice, he would have no need to send me to be castellan of Bosewood.”

Leonie dropped her napkin. Her castle? The king had chosen Philippe le Peregrine?

Uncle Geoffrey frowned. “Yet he does not seek to ally you with the castle’s heiress?”

“He knows I would not.”

Hot shame turned Leonie’s face brilliant crimson. He didn’t have to say it so bluntly and publicly.

“The king honors my vow,” he said, as blandly as if she were not present. “I do not wish to wed. When Rufus chooses a husband for the heiress, then I’ll be free to wander again.”

She wished she could pull her veil over her face. Not even to obtain the very castle and demesnes other men coveted would Philippe le Peregrine take her to wife. Her hands knotted together in her lap. Well. She did not want him, either. He was arrogant and rude. She did not doubt he would be heartless with any wife.

“Enough of talk about a court that is so far away,” said Uncle Geoffrey, and his voice had a kind and gentle tone that she knew was directed at her. “Time for some gaiety. Let us clear the hall and enjoy some dancing.”

The Peregrine reached out his arm, staying her uncle, who had just begun to rise from his chair. “I have another idea,” he said. “A different sort of entertainment. Let us have a shooting match.”

Uncle Geoffrey sputtered. “’Tis dark, Philippe.”

“Let the bailey be lit by torches. I have a yen to redeem my damaged reputation.”

Every muscle of Leonie’s body tightened like a bowstring. Had he not humiliated her enough tonight?

“Sir knight, I do not wish. Perhaps the knights of Brodin might be a better match,” she said.

He laughed, and something dark and hard changed his eyes. “Can any of them outshoot you, Lady Leonie? I think not. Perhaps you are afraid you might be bested?”

The heat of anger pulsed in her veins. “Do you think you can?” she asked, her words low and measured.

His eyes narrowed. “I’ll split your arrows down their shafts.”

“Mayhap she will split your shaft,” said one of her uncle’s knights. The howls of laughter from the Brodin knights echoed off the hall’s stone walls.

Her glare surely shed sparks like a horseshoe striking stone. Ice and fire throbbed in her heart. “Very well, then,” she said. “So shall it be. Forgive me, dear uncle, for disturbing your pleasure. I must fetch my bow and face Sir Braggart’s pleasure instead.”

“Leonie!” Aunt Beatrice gasped.

Leonie hardened herself and turned away from her aunt, whose horrified displeasure would shame Leonie too much.

A cheer went up from the Norman knights. Leonie gaped down the length of the trestle table. Had the cursed knight
bragged to them about besting a woman? Did they also cheer for her coming defeat?

“Aye, lads!” said her nemesis, and he stood, clapping Uncle Geoffrey on the back. “I’ve promised them the best shooting in all England, and now we’ll have it! Where are the butts? Still beside the quintain?”

Leonie fled the hall, her cheeks burning. He did mean to humiliate her!

With that thought, she halted so abruptly that if any man had been running behind her, he would have slammed into her hard enough to knock her down. Nay, Philippe le Peregrine would not shame her. She would shame him.

She could. If she handled it just right.

L
EONIE STOMPED UP
the stairs, through the solar, and into the ladies’ chamber, where Ealga stood, wringing her aged hands.

“Oh, must ye?”

“He baited me.” Leonie strode to the corner where she kept the ivorywood bow and quiver of arrows her mother had left behind when she disappeared, long years ago.

“Ye shouldna rise to the bait, girl. ’Twill be your undoing.”

“If it is so, then it is so.” Her chin jutted as she picked up the soft leather quiver, and she paused a moment to finger the feathers of the arrows and slipped the quiver’s strap over her shoulder.

Ealga moaned. Heavily etched wrinkles in her face became deep crevices, and Leonie ached at her beloved maid’s distress. But she could not give in now. If Leonie knew anything about humans, it was that they saw what they wanted to see. One merely needed to be careful. After all this time, not even her beloved uncle knew Leonie’s secret. He only thought her too much like her mysterious mother.

Leonie reached for the ivorywood bow, braced it between her legs, strung it, and slung it over her other shoulder.

“Have a care, lass,” Ealga whined after her as Leonie marched down the stairs, through the hall, and across the inner bailey.

The glow of torches lit the lower bailey. There, her adversary awaited, his powerful legs standing wide, his bow propped at arm’s length. Every inch of him, from his long, straight blond hair to his muscled arms, legs, and torso, proclaimed his arrogant maleness. She sneered. She had not thought a man could swagger while standing still.

His knights lined up on one side of the straw-stuffed manikin, opposite the knights of Castle Brodin. When men took sides like this, there was always wagering. Behind the knights, lining the stone steps and parapets, the folk of the castle milled and buzzed with excitement and cheered her approach. At least she knew she would please them.

Chin high and back straight, abrasively displaying her unusual height, Leonie strode to the Peregrine and stopped, looking him straight in the eye in the very way she had spent all evening trying to avoid. The man responded with a smirk.

He would not smirk long.

She scanned the line of Brodin’s knights and found her favorite. “Gerard,” she called.

Gerard stepped forth. “Your servant, lady.”

She held out bow and quiver. Gerard bowed and took them. Then she whipped the veil off her head, twisted it into a rope, and bound back the wild hair that was always getting in her way.

“You may have the first shot, Philippe le Peregrine,” she said.

“A lady always goes first.”

“But not first before a guest.”

He nodded warily and eyed the straw manikin dangling from the quintain post.

“One in the heart,” he said.

The muscles in his arm bulged as he pulled his powerful bow. The arrow sang through the air.

An excellent shot. Nearly perfect.

“Ah, but that is not the location of a man’s heart,” she said.

She drew an arrow from the quiver. She caressed its stiff feathers, nocked it to the string, and drew the bowstring back as far as her earlobe.

Fly straight, sweet shaft,
she sang in her heart to the arrow. The bowstring twanged dully as it was released, and Leonie silently steered it as it flew, to thud into the straw manikin’s crotch.

A low moan coursed through the gathering of men. She didn’t have to look to know more than one man clutched his nether parts.

She turned back to the Peregrine. “You said you would split my shaft, sir knight. I invite you to do it.”

A deeper groan came from the men. Even Philippe le Peregrine looked a little ill. He narrowed his eyes.

“Your claws are showing again, little lioness,” he replied. “You know little of a man’s true heart. I shall split my own arrow instead.”

And if he called her little lioness one more time, she feared she would kick him in the shin.

Nocking his next arrow, he paused and sent her a narrowed look. He drew back, took aim, and let it fly. It whizzed the distance to the manikin and thudded into the straw. Perhaps it shaved the arrow. But it did not split it.

Perfect—for her. She might have smiled. But she was of no mood to waste any pleasantry on him. Leonie pulled four arrows from the quiver, one at a time. Three of them she clutched between her third and fourth fingers, just beneath their fletchings, and the fourth she nocked into the string.

“What’s she going to do?” said a voice said from the Peregrine’s side of the shooting yard. “Shoot all four at once?”

She ignored them. And no one from Castle Brodin made a sound. For they knew.

Her mind singing the secret arrows’ song, she drew, aimed, and released. In rapid succession her long fingers flipped the next arrow upward to nestle into shooting position, and it flew. Then the third, then the fourth, so quickly the knights had no time to exclaim between shots. Each arrow found its target: the Peregrine’s first shot flayed, his second beside it split, the arrow lodged in the crotch of the manikin rent in two, and the last, aimed high.

Soar, sweet arrow. Find your mark.

It cut through the rope, and the straw manikin tumbled to the earth.

Leonie lowered her bow and looked around. Not a noise came from anyone. Their mouths hung open.

Then her stomach twisted into a huge knot as she realized her error. Their silence spoke as loudly as a thunderclap.
God in Heaven, help me. What have I done?
What she had done no man could do. Would they now begin to see her for what she really was—not human? Or worse, spawned of the devil, as Normans believed witches were?

She had to turn it around. Or stall until she thought of something. “Gerard, my arrows.”

Gerard nodded solemnly and walked to the target to pull out the arrows, then returned.

“I am defeated,” said the Peregrine, as softly as if he spoke in the nave of an empty, echoing cathedral.

Leonie swallowed her building fear, but she was well practiced in hiding her secret. She could do it.

“Do not disparage, sir knight,” she said, her nostrils flaring above her honeyed smile. “The secret is in the bow.”

Leonie held out her mother’s ivorywood bow to the knight. She gestured to Gerard and his squire to set up the manikin against the quintain post.

Philippe frowned as he studied the bow’s pale wood and the bronze bands above and below the handgrip. “What manner of wood is this?” he asked. “I’ve never seen the like.”

“I do not know. I am told it is merely ash, treated in some unknown way. I call it ivorywood because it looks to me like ivory.”

He pulled on the string, bouncing it easily. “This is no man’s bow. It is too weak.”

“Aye,” she said. “Fit only for a woman.”

The crowd chuckled lowly. He frowned in response.

“Try it, sir knight,” she said. “Plant the arrow between the dummy’s eyes.”

It was an easy shot for him, but just in case, she sang silently to the arrow, and it hummed through the air to hit its target perfectly.

Leonie drew an arrow from her quiver and handed it to him.

“Now, split the shaft, Philippe le Peregrine.”

The missile flew as straight as she sang it, as if it sought its soul mate. But like no soul mate God ever made, it hit squarely at the nock and split the wood down to the iron point.

“God’s face,” he whispered raggedly.

“Would you care to try again?” She grasped another arrow near its nock as if to pull it out of the quiver.

The way he shook his head was strange and slow, as if he were dazed. “Where did you get this bow?” he asked. “Who made it?”

“It belonged to my mother. ’Tis said she made it. I only know that it was among her possessions. But she is gone, so I cannot ask.”

“I don’t suppose you’d sell it. Haps, for the price of a king’s ransom?”

She almost smiled. Almost laughed. “Nay. I have very little of her, and I would never part with it.”

Then the urge came over her, wishing she could lay upon him a gaze so devastating it would bring him to his knees with
overwhelming need to love her, just to make him suffer. She would have succumbed if it had only been in her power, for she wanted—what? Did she want him to suffer even more than the humiliation of a staggering defeat by a maid?

But it made no difference what she wished. It was not within her power.

A trembling coursed through her arms and hands. Lest it betray her, she bowed an immodestly low, mocking curtsy and spun away. Her heart pounded, rushing blood that clouded mind and vision, screaming at her to flee. Somehow she forced her steps to long, swaggering strides, back through the gate to the inner bailey, to the hall and through its doors.