Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set (53 page)

Of all the many climes where he’d lived in his long
life, Lord Reginald liked the hot, dry desert Holy Lands the best.
It was the only place in the world where his deformity didn’t pain
him, the only place in the world where other men and women didn’t
look upon his twisted body with disgust. The Moslem Saracens were
an often strange and enigmatic people, but they were also
enlightened and civilized. Even the most refined noble Frenchman
was an animal compared to a Saracen.

Europeans might call the Saracens degenerate
heathens, but the Saracens called Europeans illiterate,
small-minded barbarians. And only the Saracens were right.

The rain and wind pummeled the pavilion’s cloth
walls that much more because Lord Reginald had directed his men to
make camp on a high, barren hillside overlooking the King’s
highway. An experienced military tactician, Lord Reginald knew
better than to give the enemy the high ground—even if there were no
enemies in sight. In Lord Reginald’s world, everyone was a
potential enemy, even his own men, even his own family and friends.
England might have been under Norman rule for almost forty years
now, but it was still a conquered land. And in a conquered land, no
one could be trusted.

Lord Reginald’s field pavilion was faded blue
oilcloth decorated with the French royal fleur-de-lis. Which might
make a naïve onlooker think he was a member of the French royal
family, but nothing could be further from the truth. Lord Reginald
was a common mercenary by birth, the illegitimate son of a corrupt
Catholic bishop and a common prostitute. The Church had paid
handsomely for his education (and to keep his true parentage a
secret), then had sent him out into the world with nothing but his
sword and his wits to earn his living. He’d earned his title thanks
to a combination of successful military service and sheer cunning,
had amassed lands and a vast fortune thanks to both.

Lord Reginald had purchased his old French royal
field pavilion secondhand a number of years earlier from a minor
French noble whose lands bordered Paris. He’d done it partially as
a joke, and partially to intimidate his Norman rivals into thinking
he had royal blood. Lord Reginald could afford far better
accommodations these days, but he didn’t see the need to expend his
hard-won gold and silver on fancy field gear. Nobles who travelled
about the countryside lugging impractical satin and velvet field
pavilions and wearing cloth of gold did so only because they were
desperate to impress.Lord Reginald didn’t need to impress anyone.
His reputation preceded him wherever he went. And if his reputation
didn’t impress someone, the cool steel edge of his sword usually
did.

He emptied the wooden tankard of sheep’s milk and
handed it to a servant. “Bring me my minstrels,” he ordered the
servant in French. The servant stared at him blankly, not
understanding. Lord Reginald gave the order again, louder this
time. Still no response. Exasperated, he finally remembered that
most of the low-ranking servants that travelled with him were
conquered Saxons who spoke only coarse English. He made motions
indicating that the lowly Saxon bring him his head footman, who was
Norman, and therefore civilized.

His head footman Pierre appeared a moment later.
“Oui,
mon seigneur?
”

“Pierre, what news from the road?” Lord Reginald
asked him in French.

“
Rien
, sir,” Pierre replied. “Nothing
of importance in from any of our scouts. Only this scroll from your
future father-in-law, arrived about an hour ago on horseback. The
messengers carrying it said it was urgent, but when pressed did not
know what it contained. Most likely just wedding wishes,
Sire.”

Lord Reginald looked at him
sternly. “
Mais non.
It is indeed an urgent message. The Duke of Angwyld would
never dispatch messengers in this horrid weather otherwise. Read me
the message, Pierre.”

Pierre broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. He
scanned the carefully inscribed words, but did not understand them.
The letters were not Roman, but some strange hieroglyphics. “It
seems to be written in a secret code of some kind, Sire,” he
sputtered.

“Give it to me,” Lord Reginald snapped, and snatched
the vellum from Pierre’s hands. He glanced at the note and
chuckled. “He has written it in Greek, likely for secrecy. The Duke
of Angwyld is a very learned man, which makes him unique on this
island of ignoramuses.” But when he started reading the letter in
earnest, his mirthful expression quickly melted into something
angry and sinister. “She is gone!” he boomed. “My beloved betrothed
is gone!”

Pierre rushed to his lord’s side,
his whole body quaking with fear
“What do
you mean, Sire? Our spies at Angwyld Castle last reported that Her
Ladyship is alive and well, and ready to become your
bride.”

“The spies were wrong,” Lord Reginald sputtered.
“Clearly something was afoot which they did not detect.”

“Whatever do you mean, Sire?”

Lord Reginald waved the scroll in Pierre’s face.
“Apparently Her Ladyship is missing, whether by flight or capture
it is not known. The Duke dispatched this message to inform me of
this dire emergency.” The grizzled old humpback grabbed his heavy
wooden cane and used it to pry his misshapen body out of his chair.
Once he was upright, Lord Reginald’s strange-yet-powerful physique
was still enough to make Pierre quake in his boots, especially now
that the old man was about to explode with rage. Pierre might have
been Lord Reginald’s faithful servant for almost twenty years, but
that didn’t mean there weren’t times that he didn’t fear for his
life in his master’s presence. And now was definitely one of those
times.

“What shall we do, my lord?” Pierre asked, not even
trying to hide the fear in his voice. Lord Reginald was known to
kill the bearers of bad news, after all. “Whatever I can do to be
of service, it shall be my honor to complete.”

His master crumpled the scroll into his fist. “Bring
me the captain of my mounted guard,” he snarled. “Bring me Robert
de Tyre.”

Robert de Tyre was at the south end of Lord
Reginald’s camp, tending the traveling garrison’s horses. Lord
Reginald maintained a fine collection of both Arabian and English
steeds, the former of which were descendents of a herd of horses
that his lord and master had acquired thanks to the benevolence of
his former Saracen captors. The Arabians were all magnificent
animals, even when you factored in some of the coarser English
horseblood that had mixed itself in with their fine Eastern
bloodlines over several generations of foaling. Try as his master
might to keep the bloodlines separate, a stallion was still a
stallion, and there was no stopping a stallion from mounting a mare
in heat, be she Arabian or English. Some things were just part of
the laws of nature.

“Easy there, Amir,” Robert said in a soothing voice
when one of the largest Arabian stallions pulled hard against the
reins as Robert tied him to a picket line for grazing. The stallion
was even more restless than usual, probably because his favorite
mare was with foal back at Lord Reginald’s castle compound in
Essex. “I know you haven’t had a woman in a while, Amir, but we
don’t take mares with us on journeys. God knows if we did, none of
us would ever get out of camp.”

And what was true of horses was equally true of men.
No women ever accompanied Lord Reginald’s garrison on the high
road, not even so much as an old wrinkled crone for cooking and
laundry. Lord Reginald had picked up that habit from his time with
the Saracens, who forbade any mingling of the sexes of any kind,
outside of lawful marriage. Robert thought such thinking was
completely unnatural. But then again, it wasn’t his place to
question Lord Reginald’s odd customs, or his less-than-pleasant
treatment of anyone who got in his way. After all, Robert wasn’t
here to ask questions. He was here to make a living.

Robert de Tyre was a mercenary. He’d come from a
long line of mercenaries, going back at least seven generations,
possibly even longer than that. His grandmother had even told tales
about some of his Gallic ancestors collaborating with Julius Caesar
in exchange for cattle and three sacks of gold. The men of Tyre, a
tiny village just off the shores of Normandy, all had the same
thing in common, whether they were tied together by blood or gold.
They were opportunists, always looking for the next big thing on
the horizon. And while they occasionally tried their hands at
fishing or farming, more often than not the men of Tyre latched
their fortunes to a sword and shield and sold their skills to the
highest bidder.

After so many generations of mercenary work, the men
of Tyre were legendary warriors, and even more legendary horsemen.
Robert’s father had helped to lead the cavalry for William the
Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, which secured England for the
Normans once and for all. Not that King Harald’s army would have
been hard to defeat even without horses, though. The English had
gotten weak and timid during the reign of Edward the Confessor, who
cared more for saving souls than he did for protecting his realm.
When Edward’s weakling son Harald took the throne, William and the
rest of the noble Normans saw an opportunity, and took it. The
Normans were a whole race of opportunists, after all. William the
Conqueror might have been a king, but he was no more or less a
mercenary than Robert de Tyre was. William the Conqueror, bastard
son of the Duke of Normandy, had thirsted for legitimate royal
power, but he discovered that gold and riches was a kind of power
in and of itself. For without wealth, there was no power to be had
anywhere in Christendom. And so, William the Bastard became William
the Conqueror because lacking a kingdom and throne of his own, he
decided he could just steal someone else’s.

Robert de Tyre had no interest in becoming a king,
or even a minor baronet like his grandfather was. His needs were
simple. He merely wanted to earn his food and lodging, along with
enough gold and silver to maintain the small house and farm where
his mother and sister lived with their few remaining servants.
Robert was of noble blood, but he was descended from the second son
of a second son of a minor baronet, which meant he had no title and
little money other than what he earned for himself. Therefore,
Robert latched his sword to whoever was paying the most at any
given time. Right now, it was Lord Reginald.

Lord Reginald paid his mercenaries handsomely for
two reasons. One, he demanded only the highest level of skill and
bravery from his mercenaries, and paid them accordingly. Second,
even considering he paid his mercenary soldiers two to three times
more than any other employer in all of Western Europe, because of
Lord Reginald’s fearsome and brutal reputation, he had a hard time
finding enough skilled soldiers willing to work for him at any rate
of pay. That, compounded with the fact that Lord Reginald was
detested even by his fellow Normans—tolerated only because of his
unmatched skills as a battle general—made him an unpopular employer
indeed.

Robert couldn’t have cared less about how brutal or
violent Lord Reginald might be, or how much most of his own
countrymen loathed him. Like all men of Tyre, Robert cared little
for religion, ethics, or morals—except as they applied to earning a
living. And if Robert had to kill or maim a few men here and there
to earn his living and to keep his mother and sister decently fed
and clothed, so be it. Going months in the field without the
comfort of a woman was a small price to pay.

Besides, working in Lord Reginald’s garrison wasn’t
without its perks. Managing Lord Reginald’s unmatched herd of fine
horses was one of them. Traveling the beautiful English countryside
was another. Unlike his master, Robert loved everything about
England. He loved the beautiful green countryside with its rolling
hills, fields full of grazing sheep and yellow wildflowers, the
Celtic castles and monasteries of stark gray limestone, which
seemed so simple and elegant compared to the overly decorated
Gothic structures of his Norman homeland. He liked the language and
the culture—especially the music and bards’ tales. He even liked
the weather. Robert was melancholy by nature, so he actually
enjoyed the gray skies and cold drizzle of England most of the
time, possibly as a throwback to one of his Dane ancestors from
countless generations ago. The Danes had ruled England for several
generations before the Normans invaded, intermarrying with the
Britons and Saxons until all the bloodlines were indistinguishable.
And now Robert felt his single drop of Danish blood from who knew
how many generations ago awakening as he and his sword roamed the
rolling hills of southwest England.

Robert finished tying the horses to their grazing
lines and was about to reach for his currycomb when Pierre, Lord
Reginald’s annoying, effeminate lead footman, bounded up to
him.

“Master Robert, you must come to His Lordship’s
pavilion at once! There is an emergency.”

Robert spun around and placed his hands on his hips.
“Let me guess. His Lordship ran out of sheep’s milk again? I’m not
raiding any more pastures, Pierre. The peasants around here need to
eat, too.”

Pierre rolled his eyes. “No, Master Robert. This is
a genuine emergency. His betrothed bride Lady Sabina has gone
missing. The Duke of Angwyld dispatched an urgent message seeking
His Lordship’s aid in finding her.”

Robert raised an eyebrow. “So we’ve got a runaway
bride, eh? Why am I not surprised? I’m sure any sane woman would
flee at the very thought of marrying Lord Reginald.”

Pierre gasped. “How dare you
insult His Lordship in my presence! In
anyone’s
presence! Do you not
understand what our lord and master is capable of?”