Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) (5 page)

Drustan grabbed Brangien’s upper arm and I could plainly see the control he exerted to not bruise her in his haste. “Tintagel? You’re sure?”

She nodded, eyes wide as twin moons against a pale sky.

“Do you know what news?”

She shook her head. “Only that King Anguish seemed pleased. After that business with The Morholt—begging your pardon for bringing up his memory, my Lady—I thought for sure we’d see war. But the king’s mood is… light.” She turned back to me. “Not so much your mother’s, though. But she seemed more angry at the king.”

Angry? I could feel my forehead crease. Mother was the indulgent and easy-going sort. That she could be brought to anger—especially toward her husband whom she adored—only piqued my interest in the news from Cornwall.

“Sir?” Brangien squirmed under Drustan’ hard grip. He blinked, and as his distant stare returned to the handmaid I was certain he had quite forgotten she was there. Releasing her, he retreated into himself, as if somehow this news were personal to him. Had he guessed something I had not? Something sinister that Brangien too had missed? I looked to Palomides to see if he had the same reaction, only to find him staring at Drustan with a brow as furrowed as mine.

Whatever the issue, it would have to wait as the sun was sinking fast to the west and Father would be expecting me soon. “Drustan, see that Sir Palomides finds a place at the table this evening. Brangien, come help me change.”

I nudged the handmaid to get her attention as Drustan led Palomides off to acquaint him with the House. For a breathspace, I had seen the look of a hunted deer in Drustan’ eyes. Then that flash of panic passed to be replaced by a haunted expression so uncharacteristic of him I blinked to see if I had mis-seen. Whatever he’d reacted to, however, would need wait now till morning at the earliest before I could question him about it.

“Who is he?” Brangien asked as we made our way to the wing of private chambers and the small room I called my own.

“Sir Palomides? An errant knight out to prove himself, so he says.”

“He’s breathtaking, isn’t he?”

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Hadn’t—?” She caught my grin and ducked her head. “Apologies, my Lady. I forget myself.”

“Nonsense. You have eyes. He’s made to be appreciated. Him and Drustan both. Having them both around could be quite taxing on a girl’s… senses.”

“Ah, to be so taxed, day in, day out, day in…”

It was my turn to blush.

She took my hand as we walked. “If you were to choose between them, which would it be?”

The earnest pressure on my fingers told me this was not idle chat. Until now I honestly hadn’t considered that my dreams of freedom and choice to love who and where I wanted might be equally shared by Brangien, born into a position of servitude. Dalliance was the best she could hope to attain if she insisted on aiming above her station. Or in giving herself to someone who could never give back both heart and soul. Only heartbreak could come of that.

“In truth, I would hate to choose. By looks, Palomides has the face of an angel, so far beyond mortal beauty it is.”

“Very like an angel,” Brangien agreed, but she bit her lower lip, nervous that I might express a preference for the errant knight.

“In body and character, I would say Drustan has strength of both. In fairness, though, I’ve only known Palomides a few hours and Drustan a few days. I really don’t know them well enough to judge them against each other.”

Brangien pouted, clearly unhappy with my non-answer. Maybe it
was
simply a game to her and I’d disappointed her by not playing along. Or maybe she was pretending it was a game to avoid facing the truth of the situation. If the former, I could happily giggle and size the men against each other with her. If the latter, then nothing good could come from my indulging her.

I chose to believe the latter, thinking only to protect the feelings of a friend dear to me. But I was young still, though twenty winters seemed an eternity then. How arrogant to offer advice where one has never walked.

How much more prideful to later ignore that same advice myself.

“You do understand Palomides is beyond your reach? That even if you bed him, naught could ever come of it?” My lecture tone was gentle; even so, Brangien dropped her teasing and her pout became a deep frown, nearly a scowl I would have said if I didn’t know her as I did. “Better you forget about him.”

“Better for whom, my Lady?” Why had her voice turned so cold when I was merely trying to help now to keep her from making a mistake later? “Better for him who needn’t be bothered by a silly handmaid? Or better for you so you can play the two men against each other until you decide which of them better suits your fancy?”

We had come to the antechamber where Brangien slept and she pushed the door open with extra bile. Once I passed through, she followed and slammed it shut again. “So you can always have everything and I can have nothing? Not even dreams? I am no more a fool than you. I know what is beyond my grasp. But sometimes just the reaching is enough. Yet you would take that away as well.”

“I only meant there is no future—”

“And if I don’t care about the future? If one night of bedding would be enough to satisfy?”

“If you’re smitten, one night will never be enough. Your heart will hope and hope and die with the hoping for something that can never be.”

“At least it
can
hope—and be happy for as long as that flame may stay kindled. But you would deny me even that. Can you truly be so cruel?” Her eyes went wide when she realized what she’d just said, and to whom. “Your pardon, my Lady! I over-stepped myself.”

“Which precisely proves my point. I’m not so cruel as to punish you for speaking your mind in the privacy of our chambers. But I am also not a knight with a temper and a sword. Do you see what peril you might place yourself in? You are thinking with your heart, not your head.” I sighed as I pieced through the dresses in my trunks looking for one that would best set off the flecks of blue in my eyes. “I only wish to protect your heart, Brangien, nothing more.”

Oh, how those words, this entire conversation would return to haunt me.

“Some things don’t need to be protected like a chick in the nest, my Lady. Some things need the freedom to fly.”

She opened a trunk and held up the overdress I had been rummaging for. A blue as clear as the bluebells blooming in the meadows. A damask supple enough to shape itself around my many assets and set off breast and waist and hips. Contrite, I offered, “Choose a dress for yourself too.” She would be at the servants’ table. No reason she shouldn’t look nice as well.

She knew my wardrobe better than I. She went at once to one of the trunks and pulled out a deep emerald gown that complemented her pretty eyes and would look striking against the red of her hair. “My Lady is generous. If you have no objection…”

“None at all. It will look splendid on you.”

“I hope so,” she murmured, almost too low for me to hear, though I’m sure her intent was that I not hear it at all. After all that had been said, she was still trying to catch the eye of Sir Palomides.

I sight in anticipation of her broken heart. Not even guessing at the heart grief that lay ahead for me.

~ ~ ~

Father and Mother were already both at table when Brangien and I walked into the hall. A half score of his favorite knights as well as a stranger I guessed to be the Cornish messenger sat with Father at the head of the great room near the hearth. Another ten or so knights with their ladies sat at various other tables, along with a score of nobles and their families. With the servants at their long table in the back, the hall was filled to capacity, stuffy and smelling of sweat, rosewater and roasted pig.

Drustan and Palomides sat near the servants’ table with two minor nobles I knew by sight though not by name. A cluster of handmaids already crowded as close as possible to the men as their table allowed. The wave of disappointment from Brangien was almost tangible. Crafty as she was, though, I had no doubt she’d find a way to Palomides before the night was out.

Leaving her to her devices, I approached the high table. Smiling wide, Father beckoned me up. We had a good relationship, he and I, but the eagerness he showed at my arrival was beyond the pale. One glance at Mother’s sad and serious eyes only deepened the mystery.

“Yseult, come, sit beside me!” Father turned to the vacant seat at his side and would have pulled out the chair himself had not Patrice, his favored knight, claimed that honor first. I had come to expect all sorts of courtesies from the knights and knew many expressed more than a passing interest in me for all the obvious reasons, but none of my father’s favored had ever caught my eye. And I was more than willing to wait till one did.

With a smile toward my mother, who didn’t return the greeting, I took the proffered seat. At once a trencher and cup appeared. When Father didn’t sit but banged a dagger hilt against his plate to get the hall’s attention, I took a hasty sip of the watered wine. And at mother’s continued stern look I took another.

“My dear guests,” Father began rather expansively, making it obvious he had been enjoying his wine for quite some time.

Settling in for whatever speech he was about to make, I looked for somewhere easy to rest my eyes. Drustan and Palomides were seated together on a bench with its back to the high table. Palomides had turned to straddle the bench to get a look at the king, but Drustan’ back remained steadfastly turned our way. I frowned at that, until my father’s words distracted me.

“King Mark of Cornwall”—he waved a dismissive hand at the angry grunts the name produced among those gathered—“has made an interesting proposal. In good faith, he has sent the man second dearest to his heart to deliver it, his nephew Baron Andret.” He gestured toward the man at the table I didn’t know who nodded curtly at the introduction.

“I’m sure,” the baron said, “you’ll understand why King Mark sent me rather than his first dearest nephew, Sir Tristan.”

It was a deft way to get out in the open what we all knew—that it was Tristan who slew The Morholt and brought grief to all of Whitehaven. Tristan would never have been welcome within these walls. As it was, the baron was barely being tolerated as evidenced by the murmur that grumbled its way through the hall. By all, that is, save Father who seemed rather pleased at hosting Mark’s man.

Father held up a hand to stave the noise. “Cornwall and Ireland have had a long history of taxation, oppression and outright war. For fifteen years King Mark has refused to pay tribute to Ireland as law demands. His interpretation of the treaty, however, has always been that it ended with his father’s death. I sent the queen’s brother—The Morholt, Sir Marhaus—to Cornwall to extract the levy. When Mark refused, Sir Marhaus proposed a challenge to settle the law for once and all. Mark offered up Tristan as his champion. And you know the rest.” Father lowered his eyes for a moment along with everyone in the hall, save for the three strangers—the baron, Palomides and Drustan. Then he raised a cup in silent toast to Marhaus.

“The challenge has been fought and the law struck down,” Father continued. “And now it is time to mend our differences and strengthen the bonds between Cornwall and Ireland. That is why I’ve gathered you tonight—to bear witness to my acceptance of King Mark’s proposal. He has asked for Yseult’s hand in marriage, to which I am agreeing.”

The room spun. I gripped the edge of the table to keep from spinning with it. My heart pounded in my chest and I could feel three score pairs of eyes staring into my torment. I tried to be a queen, accepting the sentence—for that is how I thought of it—in public with gracious passivity. God knows I tried. But how does anyone with a heart and soul accept the death of all their dreams with stone-faced silence?

I did not collapse or swoon, though had I been standing, I’m not sure my knees would have held me. But emotion overwhelmed me. I swallowed hard, shook my head, shut my eyes and let the tears flow for all to see. I stifled the sobs as best I could but they were all I could hear in the moments after my father betrayed me. Betrayed my mother too. Though he wasn’t giving me to the man who’d actually killed her brother, he
was
giving me to the man who ordered the trial go on when he could have refused it or stopped it with a word.

Duty alone held me to that table as surely as it held my mother. How desperately I wanted her arms around me, to cry together in commiseration, she who had been given to my father who now gave me away for the good of Ireland.

My father’s speech didn’t go on much longer, though I was beyond caring what more he might say anyway. I could only feel relief when he at last slammed down his cup at the end and ordered more wine for everyone. I had embarrassed him, but I didn’t care. That I’d embarrassed myself didn’t concern me either. Not in that moment with my world crumbling around. My reputation was not my first care—which likely meant I was not worthy to be a queen. Maybe when King Mark heard from his messenger, the baron, how I’d reacted, he wouldn’t want me.

No. I knew better. It was a political marriage, naught to do with want but with need. When I got to Cornwall, Mark could simply lock me away where I’d have no chance to embarrass him. Keep me in a room where he’d visit me daily till I was great with child, then once an heir was ensured, spirit the babe away to be reared as a proper king and never see me again. I’d die broken-hearted, alone, and not yet twenty-two winters old.

Eventually the tears dried, my future faded away, and I opened my eyes. Most everyone who had been watching me with pity quickly dropped their stares, focusing them studiously elsewhere, when I looked out over the guests. Only Palomides watched me still, his expression a queer mix of rage and sadness and confusion. I fell into that gaze, grateful for any connection that didn’t shout with pity. Emboldened once again, I dared seek out Drustan. He sat still with his back to the high table, but I caught him casting covert glances over his shoulder. No pity in the way he avoided my eyes, but rather what seemed a curious guilt. And a curious need to not be seen.