Fairest Of Them All (6 page)

His host”s identity was confirmed by a rousing cheer and a violent press to the fore as the challengers elbowed their way closer to the dais. They gave Austyn a wide enough berth, but he had to reach out and snatch Carey back by his tunic to keep him from being trampled. Austyn was content to linger on the fringes of the crush, knowing he would have a clear enough view over their heads.

Stepping up on the dais, the earl lifted his stubby arms. His hanging sleeves swept open like mink-lined wings. “Welcome! Welcome all to Castle Tewksbury!”

Austyn winced. All the majesty denied the earl in stature had been granted him in voice. Austyn’s head still ached from the blow it had taken the night before and Tewksbury’s bass cracked through it like thunder.

The earl acknowledged the cheering and stamping of feet with a regal nod. “Many of you have traveled far and endured great hardship to accept ray invitation this day. Before we commence with the competition, I wish to provide you with a vision of inspiration.”

Excitement rippled through the crowd, borne by whispers and murmurs of “The lady! He shows us the lady!”

Austyn tried to unclench his fists, but found he could not He only prayed he could stop himself from rushing up on the dais to shield her from the ravenous gazes of the other men. The thought of them leering at her, secretly imagining all the things they hungered to do to her lithe body, all the things he hungered to do ...

A tortured groan escaped him. Carey shot him a wary look, his frown deepening as he spotted the beads of sweat Austyn could feel inching down his brow.

“. . . my wish that you should no longer suffer in suspense,” the earl was saying, his voice little more than a roar of doom in Austyn’s ears. “My beloved daughter has chosen to honor your noble endeavors in song.”

As the earl took a seat on the dais, the clamor of approval that had greeted his proclamation was muted to a reverent hush. Carey bounced up and down on his tiptoes to see over the head of the man in front of him.

Austyn slipped a hand into his hauberk to finger the ethereal softness of his hard-won trophy; the exotic scent of myrrh drifted to his nostrils. The first fey notes of the Welsh lullaby echoed through his pounding head, but he could not have said if they were composed of reality or dream.

The curtain parted.

A woman stepped into view.

Carey tugged his sleeve. His puzzled voice rang like a gong in those first few heartbeats of stunned silence. “Forgive me for asking, sir, but just how dark was it in that garden?”

Austyn’s ears, like those of every man in the great hall, had been tuned to hear the melodic warbling of an angel. Which explained his overwhelming urge to clap his hands over them when the woman on the dais opened her mouth and cheerfully croaked through blackened teeth:

Nary a lady had a knight wi’ such a roamin’ lance. Slay the wenches he did, And begged they for more, Til his lady booted him out the door With nary a second chance!

Austyn’s hand slowly uncurled from his trophy. He knew he should be thanking God for his good fortune, but as the gossamer threads of hair slipped through his limp fingers, he swayed as if some incalculable loss had left his heart bleeding from shock.

“She could have been anyone,” he murmured, dazed by the revelation. “A lady-in-waiting. The earl’s sister. His mistress.” Austyn shook his head to clear it of that intolerable vision. “I never thought to ask her name. I just assumed . . .”

Carey smiled weakly, making a transparent effort to swallow his own revulsion. “ Tis fortunate you were mistaken. Why, she’s just what you wanted! A nice plain little wife.”

Austyn forced back a shudder as the woman launched into the chorus of the ditty with rousing enthusiasm and wretched pitch. “She’s not plain. She’s . . . hideous.”

From the discordant buzz rising around them, he wasn’t the only one present to reach that conclusion. Mutters of trickery and fraud were swarming through the hall like angry honeybees as the men exchanged nudges and suspicious glares. A timid mention of witchcraft led several challengers to cross themselves and back away from the dais.

Twas only the heartfelt sigh of a richly garbed noble that kept the crowd from disintegrating into a dangerous mob. The man shook his head regretfully, the badly singed plume of his enormous hat drooping over one eye. “Aye, a wasting disease. She tried to warn me of it, but her beauty was still such that I refused to believe her.”

This produced several fresh murmurs of “webbed feet,” “bouts of blindness,” and an even more alarming whisper of “pox” that had the men crossing their knees instead of their breasts.

As the rumors sped through the great hall, the knowing nods gathered momentum. At last the men understood the reason for the earl’s haste in seeking a husband for his daughter as well as his offer of such a generous dowry. He plainly hoped to marry her off before her appearance deteriorated further. Several of the challengers cast horrified glances at the dais, the prospect eluding even their superior imaginations.

The song mercifully reached its conclusion. After gaping at his daughter for several long, terse moments, the earl stepped forward. Austyn narrowed his eyes. More often than not, his own survival had depended on his ability to judge the mood of his opponent, and he would have almost sworn the earl’s clenched fists were shaking not in mortification, but in fury.

His host1 s voice cracked like a whip, lashing the gossip to a halt. “We shall proceed with the contest of verse. Who will be the first to pay tribute to my daughter in poetry or song?”

The silence swelled and deepened. The empty space around the dais seemed to be spreading of its own accord. Some of the men fidgeted. Others tried to hide lutes behind their backs or tuck flutes down the front of their hose.

Austyn was rooted to the spot.

Carey hissed in his ear, “Was it not you who said ‘a comely wife is a pox upon her husband’s fortunes’? God has given you a chance to outwit destiny. Don’t squander it”

Austyn glanced at the tempting specter of the door behind him, then back at the dais where the woman stood beaming at the crowd as if too dull-witted to comprehend the stir her appearance had caused. Her father was mopping his shiny brow,with his sleeve and inching toward the curtain.

Austyn was robbed of his right to choose when Carey planted a shoulder firmly in his back and shoved. He half stumbled, half lurched forward, regaining his balance amongst a chorus of ugly titters.

Clearing his throat of its sudden obstruction, he squared his shoulders, rested one hand on his sword hilt and boldly announced, “I’ve come for the woman.”

Holly was having little difficulty maintaining her beatific smile. She was already savoring dreams of victory. She’d seen audiences enthralled by her performances before, but she’d never seen one quite so aghast

She might have feared for her ruse had not Lord Fairfax of the scorched hat plume unwittingly come to her defense by repeating those ridiculous fables she had told him. Her sole remaining concern was the muffled thumping coming from the upstairs wardrobe where she and Elspeth had locked Brother Nathanael. Even that was fading as the minutes wore on.

Aye, she confessed to herself, the back of her papa’s neck was a deplorable shade of magenta, and he was bobbing on his heels like a rotund cauldron about to overboil, but he would forgive her in time. He always did. Her smile took on a dreamy quality as she anticipated the clever wiles she would employ to coax him out of his temper.

First, she would order his favorite supper prepared: fresh peacock stuffed with rosemary and dressed in its own feathers, tiny capers roasted to golden brown perfection, tender sweetmeats and confections drizzled with melted butter. Her own mouth began to water in anticipation.

Then she would don his favorite cotte—the violet one with the matching wimple trimmed in cloth of gold. She resisted the sudden urge to reach up and touch her hair. Twould grow in time and until it did, she had dozens of lovely wimples to cover it She could only hope her eyelashes would grow as quickly.

Once her papa was settled on the brocaded bench before the hearth, she would kneel on a cushion at his feet, pluck a melody from her harp, and sing his favorite song—the one her mama had sang to soothe him after he’d returned from breaking a new stallion or battling the obstinate Welsh.

Oh, he would sulk and grumble a bit as was his custom, but after she’d finished singing, he would shake his head ruefully, chortle beneath his breath, and reach down to ruffle her . . . well, her wimple. Then he would confess how relieved he was to keep her by his side and the two of them would toast her ingenuity with a glass of mead and . . .

“I’ve come for the woman.”

The graceless declaration jarred Holly from her pleasant fantasies. Her grin faded.

She blinked away her sunny haze to discover an unexpected thundercloud looming on the horizon. A cloud of alarming proportions that had scudded in from the west on a tempestuous wind. She would have never thought it possible, but her nemesis from the garden was even more intimidating by daylight than moonlight

He towered over the other men, his long, unruly hair and bristly beard a startling contrast to their Roman-cropped heads and drooping mustaches. He looked less a different nationality than a different species of creature. He bore his weight on his lean hips with such ease that he seemed to swagger even when standing motionless.

Holly could hardly fathom that such a shaggy beast of a man could have tasted her lips with such beguiling tenderness. They still tingled at the memory.

Her initial shock surrendered to an irrational flare of anger. So the wretch fancied himself one of her suitors, did he? Yet he’d been trysting with another wench the very night before he planned to challenge her father for her hand. Worse yet, when his lady had been tardy, he had actually thought to sample Holly’s favors, therefore betraying his potential bride with none other than herself! She scowled, slightly befuddled by the paradox.

“Come forward, sir,” her father commanded.

Holly swallowed a fervent No!, the resulting squeak earning her a simmering glower from her papa that warned her he itched to strip away her disguise before the entire hall, but did not dare risk igniting such a scandal.

As the stranger lumbered forward, the crowd shrank out of his path, warily eyeing the hand welded to his sword hilt He was trailed by a slender man, as far as he was dark.

“Your name, sir?” her father demanded.

“Sir Austyn of Gavenmore.”

At the name Gavenmore, speculation once more churned the crowd to a muttering froth. Holly mentally searched her limited store of gossip, but found no reference to an arrogant Welshman with boorish manners and a fickle heart.

“Have you come to pay tribute to my daughter?” her papa asked.

The knight hesitated, his gaze flicking to the floor, the smoke-stained rafters, his companion’s battered boots, anywhere to avoid glancing directly at her. Holly supposed she couldn’t blame him.

He finally drew in a breath that swelled his chest to daunting proportions. “I have.”

An unbidden shiver raked Holly. Gavenmore imbued the simple words with grim destiny, making his claim seem both inevitable and irrevocable.

Her father waved a hand and said, “You may proceed,” before sinking into his chair. The narrow look he shot Holly plainly said, / hope you’re satisfied, girl.

Holly locked her hands in front of her to hide their sudden tremor, her only consolation being that the knight looked even more miserable than she felt. His companion shoved a crumpled sheaf of paper into his hand. As he squinted at it, a fierce scowl claimed what little was visible of his features.

After clearing his throat twice, he began to read, his voice barely audible. “She walks in dreams, my lady sweet—”

At a sniveling gust of laughter from the back of the hall, he jerked his head up and dropped his hand back to his sword hilt Holly found herself holding her breath with the rest of them, waiting for him to snatch out his sword and begin to cleave off limbs and heads like some fearsome berserk. His hand twitched once, twice, then returned to grip the paper tightly enough to blanch knuckles dusted with dark hair.

This time, perfect silence greeted his halting recitation.

She walks in dreams, my lady sweet With p-p-purple eyes and dainty feet

He shot his companion such a tortured glance that even Holly felt a pang of sympathy for him. The blond man offered a wink of encouragement all the while taking great pains to sidle out of reach of those brawny arms.

She haunts my sleep, my lady fair. With snowy brow and curly—”

He dared a tentative glance at the dais. Holly bared her walnut-stained teeth at him in what she hoped would pass for a flirtatious smile. His hand dipped absently into his hauberk as his gaze seemed to fixate against its will on the uneven tufts of hair afflicting her scalp.

“—hag,” he finished. His companion winced.

Sudden coughing fits seized several of the lords and knights. A man in the back of the hall escaped out the door, his howls of laughter echoing in the bleak silence.

“Hair,” Gavenmore muttered, correcting himself through clenched teeth. He crumpled the paper in his fist, standing so rigidly he might have been carved from a block of stone.

His deliverance came from an unlikely quarter. The earl bounded to his feet, applauding with such enthusiasm that the other challengers had no choice but to join in or risk offending their host

Amid a half-hearted chorus of “Huzzah’s!” Holly’s papa called out, “A noble performance, Sir Austyn of Gavenmore! What man among you is bold enough to challenge such an eloquent opponent?”

Silence descended once more, fraught with renewed twitching and longing glances toward the door.

“Very well, then,” her papa said. “I pronounce Sir Austyn the victor of the contest of verse. Let us proceed to the lists, shall we? Perhaps some of you would prefer to test your mettle on the jousting field.”

A mad dash for the door ensued. Holly suspected most of the men would be driving their horses across the drawbridge before the frozen behemoth in their midst so much as blinked an eye.