Florida Knight (19 page)

Okay, when was the last time he’d felt a warm glow of well-being?

Every time he looked at Catriona MacDuff.

Hell, no, that wasn’t warmth. Whether anger or lust, that was a burn. What he was feeling at the moment was a warm fuzzy from being part of something greater than himself. Oh, he’d had the intense camaraderie of the cop life, but he’d spent years in a black and tan, on his own, handling every kind of emergency and depravity. He’d investigated accidents so senseless and bloody he’d learned to turn himself off, back away, stay remote, just so he could do his job. He’d uncovered truckloads of marijuana, stashes of cocaine, crack, every color of designer pill, an astonishing amount of cash. He’d become an investigator, pulling together the whys of roadway carnage, the wheres and hows of smuggled substances, the oddball highway incidents that defied description. And, always, he’d been alone. Dealing with his job, dealing with himself. With emotions he didn’t want to have, couldn’t afford. Being a lieutenant was very new, he wasn’t even sure he liked it. Instead of being responsible for just himself, he now had to take on the burdens of fellow officers. He’d wanted the advancement, the salary boost, the prestige. But he missed being out there on the road every day, dealing one-on-one with what fate threw in his lap.

He’d missed something in the here and now.

Shaking away the shades of a world totally foreign to the one he was in, Raven stared as Cat left his side, strode down the center aisle, bowed, and knelt before their majesties. Startled, he realized Catriona MacDuff was being declared winner of the Lyst. The King handed her a small hand-painted wooden shield, the event’s most prized award. Cat’s rise to her feet was a shadow of her customary springing grace, Raven noted with a scowl. Upper body bowed low, she backed away from the thrones, then made a mockery of his dark thoughts by loping easily up the shallow steps just as the King’s Herald boomed, “Will the gentle called Raven approach the throne?”

Raven couldn’t move. The guy had to be kidding. No way! He wasn’t going to be part of this. But Owen ap Daffyd was grinning, poking him in the ribs, pointing toward the stage. Cat, eyes sparkling, had paused in the aisle at the end of their bench; the Cheshire Cat would have envied her smile. Raven groaned as eager hands reached out, hauling him to his feet. “I don’t know what the hell to do,” he hissed at the young archer.

“Ten feet out, bow,” snapped Owen ap Daffyd.. “Then kneel at the king’s feet.”

Knees moved to the side as Raven slid past. A heavy hand clapped him on the back. Max. Cat tugged at his shoulders, straightening his shirt. And then he was at the foot of the center aisle, bowing from the waist. Unaccountably, the heart that had been ruthlessly trained to remain aloof to everything was thudding in his chest.
His
knee
hit
the ground, his head bent low before King Corwyn.
But
it was Queen Eilis who was doing the talking, praising his actions in the recent emergency. Raven found he couldn’t even summon a modest protest. The situation was simply too bizarre.

Queen Eilis accepted a rolled parchment from the Herald’s assistant. The Herald bellowed out the formal words of the award; then, smiling graciously, the queen offered the parchment to Raven.

He grasped it, and s
ince the queen’s hand seemed to linger,
he
bent forward, flick
ing
a kiss just above her fingers. A murmur of approval swept the royal retinue as well as the audience. Thank God he’d done it right! Raven rose, backed away, bowed once again
to
their majesties. Like a child released to summer vacation, he ran up the center path toward his place beside his lady.

There was a general rustling as the audience prepared to get to its feet for the exit of the royal entourage. Evidently, Court was over. But as Raven slipped into his seat beside Cat, the Herald’s voice stopped all movement in its tracks.

“Oyez, oyez, oyez! It is herewith decreed that Sir Brocc of Castlewood shall be banished from
the Lords and Ladies of Chivalry for a period of three months.
So ordered this day by Corwyn, King, and Eilis, Queen.”

Cat ducked her head, avoiding the eyes swiveling in her direction. She could not, however, miss the general murmur of approval.

“He got off light,” said Owen ap Daffyd. “Deliberately hurting someone like that is almost as bad as what happened to Garth.”

“No.” Raven looked the young archer straight in the eye. “What happened on the Archery Field was attempted murder.” He grasped the embarrassed Cat by the arm. “Okay, Lady Knight,” Raven whispered in her ear. “You’ve been avenged. Let’s go.”

“Wait!” Cat commanded

The audience rose, heads bowed as the royal party swept uphill and out of the clearing. As Raven and Cat made their way up the path in the king’s wake, he once again whispered in her ear. “Too bad the king got there first. I’d planned on going a round or two with the guy myself.”

Cat stopped, swung around, almost causing a plump woman in elaborate Tudor-style brocade to go tumbling down the aisle. Raven grabbed the unfortunate middle-aged lady, anchoring her to the path. With considerably more cautio
n, the two of them continued
up to the top of the slope. Cat strode to the edge of the clearing, swung round in a flurry of marine blue linen. “Don’t you dare take on Brocc,” she hissed.. “Believe me, being banned from the Lyst Field hurts him far more than anything you could do.”

“Wanna bet?”

Cat’s green eyes blazed, then fell, fixing on the dense underbrush in the woods behind them. “I don’t want anyone else to be hurt,” she said, “not even Brocc. Or you.”

“Okay,” Raven said after a moment, “let’s agree it’s been a really lousy day.” For some reason he’d never be able to understand, he leaned forward, brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Come on, woman, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

She didn’t snarl, she didn’t slap him. Raven reached for the hand that wasn’t holding her Award. Lady Catriona MacDuff and her captive slave headed back to camp, hand in hand.

Raven helped Max prop up a wall in the Feast Hall while Cat and Alys
laid out the elaborate setting for
the
ir table
Max’s lips curled in an indulgent smile. Raven was incredulous. He nudged Max with his elbow. “What’s with all this stuff?” he whispered.

“It’s Feast, man. This is how they do it.”

“Silver plates and candles?” Raven scoffed.

“Pewter,” Max corrected. “And a tablecloth and fancy wine glasses. The candles are real pretty when they turn out the lights.”

“But the site’s dry,” Raven protested.

“Well . . .” Max leaned close to Raven’s ear. “A lot of the guys have wine skins—you know, those leather things. And some just drink water or iced tea. Tastes better in fancy glasses, I guess.”

Raven’s dark eyes swept the hall. He shook his head over the huge wooden thrones that had been transported from the amphitheater to the head table in the Feast Hall. The devotion of the royal retinue was astonishing. All part of the game, he supposed. Like those who toiled to make life easy for sports celebrities, rock stars, movie stars. Still . . .

Cat was filling their goblets with something that looked like water but wasn’t. She took a book of matches out of the picnic hamper, lit two chunky candles, each on some kind of metal stand. The rough wooden hall was taking on an other worldly glow. Candlelight flickered over brilliant colors, stark blacks and whites. Silks, satins, brocades, elaborate appliqu
é
s of every kind of heraldic device. Someone turned out the lights, and time travel no longer seemed impossible. The ugly camp building disappeared. The Lords and Ladies of Chivalry were in a great hall in Medieval times, preparing to indulge in a feast to celebrate some military victory, a noble birthday, a good harvest. For a moment Raven’s cynicism was swept away on a wave of admiration. They might be nuts, these people, but they meant well. Their standards were high. And who could blame anyone for wanting to escape the feverish pace and ill manners of the outside world?

Two hours later Raven had a different opinion of LALOC. The members joined solely so they could eat. He’d devoured green salad, a soup of beef, barley and onions, followed by chicken baked over a bed of apples and onions. Replete, he had another glass of whatever interesting concoction Cat had in the wineskin and settled back to enjoy the troubadour who was entertaining between courses. He’d never tasted better food nor been so full, but when the servers brought out a dish described by the Feast Herald as “Pasta in olive oil with grated cheese and spice,” he sighed and accepted a helping. Another song from the troubadour, and a dish of roasted pork baked over steamed vegetables glazed with honey and cinnamon made its appearance. Raven choked, shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he whispered to Cat as the young server held out his hand for Raven’s plate.

“You’re a big boy, you can take it,” Cat hissed back, lips twitching.

When Raven set his plate back down on the woven tablecloth, he simply stared at it. “How do you stay so thin?” he asked Cat.

“We only do this once or twice a month.”

“And they cook it all from scratch?”

“Yes, but you have to sign up for Feast. At smaller events fifty is max, sometimes seventy-five. This, being a big event, is still only a hundred fifty out of maybe a thousand or so who were here this weekend. You probably noticed a lot of people went home after Court.”

Raven nodded. “Do we get dessert too?” he quipped.

“Just wait.” Cat flashed him a grin before turning her attention to the roast pork.

Dessert was sweet bread with chocolate chips and beautifully shaped candies in pastel shades of marzipan. “Made in a class this afternoon,” Alys told them. “I helped.” She pointed to a confection in lavender. “That’s mine. And that one over there.”

“It’s almost a sacrilege to eat them,” Cat said as she took one of the candies Alys had pointed out.

“This is a first,” Raven said, reaching for the other. “I’ve never even seen marzipan before, let alone tasted it.”

Alys smiled, pleased by the admiration Raven didn’t bother to hide. Cat’s friend might look like an ogre, but she liked him better each time she spoke with him. Who better than Alys, companion of Max, to understand that appearances were not everything?

Later, as the four of them stood in line to wash their dishes, a messenger in king’s livery approached Raven and Cat. “My lord, my lady, you are summoned to a meeting with his majesty, King Corwyn, in the royal cabin directly following Feast.”

Raven frowned. Cat bowed her head, signaling their dutiful consent to the royal command. Raven bent his head to Cat. “Not good,” he hissed.

Cat stood on tiptoe to reply. When her lips brushed his ear, Raven almost missed what she was saying. “Tell them you’re ex-military. Or how about the National Guard?” Raven’s frown turned into a scowl. “It’s hard to hide a take-charge type, even under a surcoat,” Cat said, tugging his head down to meet hers. “You just have to play it by ear.”

Ear. It wasn’t his ears that were bothering him. It was another part of his anatomy that was giving him fits. Raven was infinitely glad for the baggy pants, long shirt, and flowing surcoat. Living within touching distance of Catriona MacDuff was far harder than picking his way through the minefield of LALOC royalty.

Still grumbling, he dipped his plate in hot soapy water, glaring at the bubbles as if they were a sea of snakes.

Chapter 12

The lineup in the royal cabin was formidable. Seated in a semicircle were King Corwyn, Queen Eilis, Prince Marius, Princess Kiriana, the Kingdom Seneschal Etienne de la Haye and Earl Marshal Drakon Fitzwalter. The flunkies, who had met Raven and Cat at the door, disappeared. One of them, Raven noted, was the jerk who’d slammed the door in his face last night. Obsequious little bastard. He’d liked to have picked him up by scruff of his neck and slammed him against the wall. As Cat sank into a low curtsey, Raven ground his teeth, managed a stiff-necked bow. He was out of time, out of place. Once a day for this nonsense was about all he could stand.

The highest nobility in the
Florida
kingdom
of
LALOC
were still dressed in their Feast clothes, their garb elaborate, colorful, and imposing. In spite of the cabin’s plain wooden walls and scuffed vinyl flooring, it wasn’t hard to imagine he and Cat were about to be interrogated by a royal court. Raven recalled a story Cat had told him about a little boy, the son of a LALOC warrior, whose teacher asked him what his father did. “He’s a king,” the boy replied. And he wasn’t lying. These people took their alternate lives very seriously.

King Corwyn waved his hand toward two empty chairs facing the crescent of LALOC’s finest. Raven and Cat sat. The
Kingdom
of
Florida
’s Lady Knight folded her hands neatly in her lap. Raven tried not to look belligerent. This was not, definitely not, where he wanted to be at the moment.

“So who are you?” the king demanded without preliminaries.

“Sir?” Raven shot back, the picture of confused innocence.