Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (43 page)

Their embrace stole the breath from both of them. Everywhere they touched was fire, purer and more powerful than the flames they’d battled earlier. Flesh burned against flesh. His coarse, muscular textures rasped across her soft, sensitive places. Their lips sought to quench their thirst on silken nape and rough-stubbled cheek. Their hands caressed and teased and persuaded until rapture took them both up into its arms.

With a soft roar that was like a claiming, he pressed into her, and she received him with a sweet wantonness that brought tears to her eyes. Their consummation was gentle, languid, loving. He moved against her with care and tenderness. She answered him with exquisite leisure. They savored each glance, each kiss, each moment.

Only in the final throes of desire were they forced to abandon their measured grace. Then they strove against each other with the devotion of novice nuns and the recklessness of new-trained knights.

Linet sobbed in ecstasy as her patience was at last rewarded. It felt as if a halo of fire surrounded her and burst into a thousand flames, each brighter than the sun.

Duncan’s seed pulsed out like an endless fount of honey, and he shuddered with the force of his release. He kissed her on the mouth—a firm, grateful kiss. Then, at a loss for words, he settled for merely sighing her name.

She hugged him to her with what strength she had left. As the sun began to lighten the sky, she drifted off, dreaming of their long and happy future together.

It seemed to Duncan just moments ago that he’d fallen blissfully asleep in Linet’s arms. But the sun streaking in through the eastern window and penetrating Duncan’s slumber was already high enough in the sky to light up the straw-covered floor of the chamber. His eyes were gritty, and his throat burned. He gave a great stretch of his arms, groaning at the ache, the result of several hours of hoisting heavy buckets of water.

Someone was scratching on the chamber door. “M’lady.” It was Margaret.

Beside him, Linet stirred.

“M’lady, ye must come down.”

“It can’t be morning yet,” Linet rasped, her voice smoke-roughened. She sat up and groggily peered out the window, as he had, to gauge the time. She shook her head to clear the fog of sleep. Suddenly her red-rimmed eyes grew round. “God’s wounds!”

“What?” he shot back, startled, fearing another fire had begun.

“What day is it?” she demanded.

He only stared stupidly at her as she flung herself from the bed. She began hurtling aimlessly about the room, wringing her hands. The fact that she was completely nude helped to wake him.

“I have to… First… Nay! Margaret. Margaret!” she called, trying to run her fingers through the hopeless tangle of her hair. “Hurry!” she yelled at him. “There’s no time!”

Duncan ran a filthy hand across his unshaven chin, still baffled by her panic.

“I promised Lady Alyce her cloth today,” Linet explained as she struggled into a kirtle, “and the day’s half gone. She’ll think I’ve cheated her.”

Duncan smiled. So it was her reputation she worried about. Her concern was unwarranted. Cloth was probably the last thing on his mother’s mind. It was the last thing on his mind as well when Linet drew her hands up the graceful length of her thigh.

“Oh,” she wailed in misery as she found a huge rip in the kirtle, “this will never do. I stink of smoke, my clothing is a shambles, and I have no goods to deliver. Just look at me. Margaret!”

Duncan just looked at her indeed. He couldn’t help but grin at the spectacle of his bride-to-be dashing about the room, deliciously half-naked. She snatched up a robe from her clothing chest and threw it on just as a knock sounded at the chamber door.

“M’lady?”

“Margaret! Come in, come in. Fill a basin with water as quickly as possible. We’ll need food and the horse and cart—”

“But, m’lady, the villagers wait—”

“And make sure the nag is fed well. The way we’ll have to drive her, this may be her last journey!”

“Journey? But, m’lady, what shall I tell those who wait below?”

“Those who…” Linet stopped her pacing. “Who waits below? Is it the Guild?”

“Nay, m’lady. It’s the villagers.”

“The villagers?” Linet frowned.

“Tell them she’ll be down as soon as she’s dressed,” Duncan said.

Margaret went swiftly to do as she was bid.

When the basin arrived, both of them scrubbed ruthlessly at their blackened skin and sooty hair until the cold water resembled a murky moat.

Linet wriggled into a surcoat of deep green wool. But Duncan had no change of clothing. He pulled on the filthy braies and the tunic he’d worn yesterday. The tunic was still fairly clean, but
someone
had lain atop it all night, so it was creased in several places. He smoothed his tangled hair as best he could with Linet’s silver comb.

“M’lady,” Margaret crooned from behind the door.

Linet’s nerves were stretched to the limit. “What is it?” she snapped. Then she sighed. She didn’t mean to be rude to the old woman, but her reputation as a wool merchant rested upon how she handled the awkward situation today. Every moment was critical.

“M’lady, ye must come below.” Margaret seemed unaffected by Linet’s tone. Indeed, she sounded absolutely delighted. “They’re waitin’.”

“The villagers?” Linet asked. “What do they want?”

“Please hurry, m’lady.”

Linet looked askance at the beggar, who only shrugged. Then she tossed her wet locks over her shoulder and opened the chamber door. When she saw what awaited her in the great hall, she came within a hair’s breadth of retreating and closing her chamber door on the impossible sight.

All the peasants of the village must have come to camp at the de Montfort mesnage. The hall was packed with their milling, unwashed bodies and the various meager possessions they carried. A leather-skinned crofter grinned toothlessly up at her, lifting a basket of leeks in salute. A grimy-faced old woman clutched a bundle of rags to her sagging bosom. A pair of dirty young lads drove a small pig forward with sticks. A buxom lass cradled a clucking hen in her bare brown arms. And more still pushed their way through the front door.

For a brief moment, Linet feared they were taking over the household. The thought dizzied her. She faltered back. The beggar caught her.

“What do they want?” she whispered, trembling.

“Why don’t you find out?” he said. He sounded so confident, so unconcerned.

It took all her courage to descend the steps. Halfway down, the offers began. A gangly youth hoisted up a brace of slaughtered hares. “I caught ‘em myself yesterday.” He slung the carcasses across the trestle table.

“My wife won’t be needin’ these, God rest her soul,” an old man mumbled, elbowing his way forward and dropping a pair of thick leather shoes onto the table.

A pair of giggling maids bounced out of the crowd, their arms draped with crudely embroidered linens, which they deposited beside the shoes.

“It’s got a limp!” a barrel-chested, black-bearded man bellowed, pushing a rusty wheelbarrow toward her. “But it’ll serve ye well enough!”

One by one, the villagers came forward, yelling out the virtues of what they’d brought, leaving their humble offerings in a growing pile in the midst of the great hall. There were livestock and linens, flour for the pantry and seedlings for the garden, some things she needed desperately and some for which she had absolutely no use.

But they were for her. These peasants with scarcely two coins to rub together had managed to scrape up enough to help a neighbor who’d lost her warehouse and outbuildings to fire. They had brought her gifts of their hearts.

Tears brimmed in Linet’s eyes, and she had to clamp her lips to keep them from quivering as the villagers eagerly dropped their parcels on the table.

“This isn’t right,” she whispered to the beggar. “I can’t take these things.”

His voice was warm and kind against her ear. “You have to take them. You’ll offend them if you don’t.”

Linet sniffed. The last thing she wanted to do was to offend them. In all the years she’d lived in Avedon, she’d scarcely breathed a word to any of her neighbors. Yet here they were, offering her comfort and sustenance they could ill afford. It touched her deeply.

She’d accept the gifts. It was what they wanted. But somehow she’d repay their generosity. She dashed the tears from her face with the back of her hand and raised her chin.

“Good people,” she called out clearly, “I can’t thank you enough for your kindness.” She swallowed hard, praying God would somehow grant her the wherewithal to keep her next promise. “I vow to you…all of you…that when my warehouse is restored, when the looms of de Montfort are operating again…” She looked at all the faces, faces that had before always seemed a blur, and found in them decency and affection and encouragement. She smiled proudly through a new welling of tears. “I shall weave for each of your families a length of fine worsted such as the nobles wear, enough to make you Sunday garments.”

The villagers remarked in wonder among themselves, smiling their gratitude, until someone started a great cheer. In a moment, the hall of de Montfort was ringing with her praises.

How she’d restore her warehouse she didn’t know. The Guild would probably oust her for marrying a commoner, preventing her from selling her wares at market and hiring apprentices. Even if she could somehow raise the coin to purchase a loom or two for her home, it would take her years to fulfill her promise, weaving alone.

But somehow she’d do it. Somehow she’d struggle to her feet and repay these people for all the years she’d scorned them. Somehow she’d redeem herself.

She descended the rest of the steps cautiously, like a swimmer approaching a cold pond. A snaggle-toothed man shot forward and snatched her hand between his two dirty paws, pumping it roughly. She gasped at first, afraid he meant her harm. But his eyes twinkled with affection. She smiled, and then withdrew her hand, placing it atop a shy little girl’s head. A wizened old woman hobbled up, embracing Linet suddenly with a motherly squeeze. A tiny boy sucking his thumb tugged at her skirts.

It wasn’t as disconcerting as she’d expected. She moved forward through the crowd as through water, touching a shoulder here, receiving an embrace there, wading deeper and deeper into the midst of the humanity. And yet she felt neither fear nor repulsion. They were only people, even with their dirt-stained aprons and their sticky fingers, their stringy hair and their bare, lanky limbs. They were
her
people.

She was still floating on a current of good will when she climbed aboard the cart to make the journey to de Ware Castle.

The beggar had to drive the nag at a breakneck pace through the countryside to get them there by nightfall. Maple, oak, and birch passed in a blur as they sped along. Even the merrily twittering sparrows couldn’t catch them. The odor of damp earth and the faint scent of apple blossoms wafted by like fleeting memories. The few clouds above seemed like faraway nomads drifting across the sky, sky that was almost the exact color…

Linet gasped suddenly. The beggar slowed the horse, turning to her in concern.

“What is it?” he asked.

How could she explain? It seemed so trivial. “My blue worsted…”

Suddenly the weight of all she’d lost in the last year came crashing down on her shoulders—her father, her title, her warehouse, her looms… But at this particular moment, nothing seemed so devastating to her as the loss of her precious blue worsted, the worsted dyed with rare Italian pigment, the worsted that matched the color of his eyes. It was silly, she knew, insignificant in the face of her greater losses. But it moved her to tears.

“It’s gone,” she whispered, burying her face in her hands. “My blue worsted is gone.”

Duncan didn’t hesitate to comfort her. He reached across the seat and gathered her into his arms. He’d soothed enough weeping women to know that their words often had nothing to do with their tears. It was no matter that she’d narrowly escaped death at the hands of sea reivers, that she’d been hunted halfway across Flanders, that she’d singlehandedly slain a Spanish criminal, that she’d lost the source of her livelihood to fire. That damned blue cloth was her biggest concern now. And he couldn’t get it back.

“Everything will be all right,” he said, combing her hair with his fingers. “I promise you.”

Duncan smiled to himself as the cart wobbled through the gates of de Ware. If Sir Duncan de Ware had ridden up to the castle astride his noble mount, his adoring vassals might have recognized him. But atop this merchant’s cart at twilight, in the shadow of a beautiful angel with curls of gleaming gold, he passed through the throng at the gates without notice.

Linet seemed oblivious to most of the stares. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet for the past hour. It was probably nervousness. They circled the courtyard, and Duncan dropped her off before the door of the great hall so he could stable the horse.

“Don’t worry,” he said, squeezing her hand in reassurance. “I’m sure Lady Alyce will understand.”

Linet scarcely heard him. She was occupied with choosing words of diplomacy for the confrontation ahead. How she’d explain it all, she didn’t know. She had no cloth for the lady, nor did she have the advance payment she’d received from her. Worse, she had neither warehouse nor wool to complete the order. But she had her honor. She hoped it would serve her now.

She stared at the imposing front doors of the great hall until the beggar was gone. Then, taking a shaky breath, she broached the entrance.

The cavernous hall was empty except for a few servants and a man-at-arms, to whom she gave her request for an audience with Lady Alyce. She attempted to still her trembling heart and hands. Lady Alyce was a kind woman, she reasoned. Surely she could rely upon her patience and understanding.

She waited for what seemed an eternity, counting her steps along the length of the vast room, tapping her fingers against her thigh, watching the servants travel back and forth from the buttery to the pantry.