The Warrior's Wife (11 page)

Confidence welled in Rafe. Nor would it be a forced wedding. After all, by her own words Rafe was the husband God intended for Kate Daubney.

 

“There, my lady,” Albreda said, settling Kate’s golden circlet on her veil to hold it in place. “You’ll be the loveliest of all the gentlewomen this day, you will.”

Seated on her cot, Kate lifted her precious hand mirror. No larger than her palm, the bit of silvered metal set in a horn frame had been a gift from Lady Adele upon their parting. Starting with the mirror aimed at her middle, Kate maneuvered it to slowly reveal herself from waist to shoulders.

Because no man had yet tendered an offer for her hand, Lord Bagot dictated that his daughter wear a new overgown today, the one he’d purchased for Kate’s upcoming and as yet unscheduled second wedding ceremony. The garment was styled in the height of fashion, with a raised waistline and sleeves so long their hems brushed the ground. Made of silk dyed a pretty shade of blue, she wore it over her pale yellow undergown.

Now the mirror reflected Kate from shoulders to chin. One of her ribbons had gone missing after yesterday’s riding accident, even though she, Ami and Sir Josce had searched the whole hillside for it. Because Kate needed the remaining ribbon to give to Warin this morning, she’d refused to let Albreda use it in her hair today. At the moment it was hidden inside the narrow sleeve of her undergown—this, even though she very much doubted she’d have a chance to meet with Warin before the joust started.

With no other hair ornaments to use Albreda had braided Kate’s hair into a single plait, then wound this into a great knot. The hairstyle drew the beholder’s eye to the thick golden necklet set with amber that Lord Bagot had given his daughter to wear.

At last Kate gazed upon her face, framed by the sweep of her fine white veil. She smiled, pleased. All in all, she thought herself an elegant affair. In fact, she looked every inch a woman who had two champions, each trying to take the day in her honor.

From the recesses of her memory came Lady Adele’s voice warning that a true lady only ever had one hero at her beck and call. Adele claimed that only an ill-mannered woman gave tokens to more than one man. Doing so, she warned, could lead to more fighting between the champions than against their opponents.

That gave Kate pause. God knew that there was plenty of animosity between the two men who loved her. Then again, she hadn’t actually given Rafe a token. And she had promised Warin that he would be her champion. Kate made a face at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t certain it was Warin she wanted as a hero.

Once again that whirlpool of emotions set to turning in Kate. All on its own, the need to be near Rafe woke. Before she caught herself, the corners of her mouth had lifted against a sudden, startling and wonderful pressure in her heart.

What was wrong with her? Kate forced her mouth to flatten. She shouldn’t be encouraging these sorts of thoughts. It was a lady’s God-given duty to keep the relationship between herself and her courtly lover chaste, and Kate had badly failed in her duty. Rafe had been honorable enough to heed Kate’s anemic rebuke yesterday and refuse to kiss her, but what had she done? Why, she'd kissed him!

There could be no more of that. But how was she supposed to stop herself from touching Rafe when even the memory of his kiss could set her heart to pounding? Lord, but just the trace of his bare fingers up her naked arm had left her lost in the most glorious rush of heat. Who would have guessed a man’s touch could be so pleasing?

Not all men’s touches. Kate shuddered at the thought of Sir Gilbert forcing his mouth onto hers.

In disgust’s wake, wicked curiosity arose. Rafe was a man she barely knew and hadn’t yet come to love, at least Kate didn’t think she had. If his kiss was so marvelous, shouldn’t Warin’s kiss be even better? After all, Warin was the man she’d loved for all of last month.

“What do you think?” Albreda demanded, interrupting Kate’s inappropriate musings.

“I think I’ll do well enough, Albreda,” Kate replied, banishing as best she could the remains of her sinful thoughts as she busied herself returning her mirror to her jewel chest.

“Now, my lady, don’t you fret,” Albreda replied, mistaking her mistress’s lusts for disappointment. “Some fine knight will make an offer for your hand soon enough.”

Kate hoped not. Placing her tiny chest beneath her cot again, she straightened. As she brushed her veil back into place Albreda leaned forward to put her head near Kate’s. The maid shot a swift glance at the blanket that divided the tent in twain.

“If I were a bolder woman,” the servant whispered, “I’d be telling your lord father that’s he’s too impatient. These things take time.”

“Do they?” Kate asked, turning so swiftly toward Albreda that the servant shied back from her. Oh, how she prayed it would take weeks, months, even years before she had to marry again. “Are you certain?”

“Indeed, I am,” the maid replied, offering a confident smile. “Why years ago, your maternal grandsire kept Lord Bagot waiting nigh on two years before the marriage to your lady mother finally came to pass. Of course, that was partly because there were entanglements with another family that had to be broken. So too, did your lady mother need time to settle her affections,” she added.

The past clouded Albreda’s gaze for a moment, then she smiled. “I know it’s hard for a young thing like you to believe when you look upon him now, but your sire was quite the stallion then, roaring for his mare. He would have no other woman. Lord, but I thought he’d eat his heart out of his chest, so deeply did he long for his lady.”

Albreda paused, her lips lifting against some long almost forgotten scene. “She was a beauty, your lady mother. Although your coloring is your sire’s, you have the look of her, you do.”

That startled Kate, as did her sudden longing to hear more of her forgotten dam, especially about her mother’s connection to the Godsols. “You knew my dam well?”

“I did indeed, my lady. I was only one of Bagot’s seamstresses then, but--” Albreda fell silent as the drape separating father and daughter lifted. It was Peter, Lord Bagot’s manservant.

“Albreda, since you’re finished with Lady de Fraisney, Lord Bagot awaits you,” he said, a note of warning in his tone. His stern expression left no doubt he’d overheard the maid discussing his lord with that man’s daughter and sought to stop any further confidences.

Chastised, Albreda bowed her head. “I come,” she said, leaving her charge without a backward glance.

Stewing in frustrated curiosity, Kate slipped around the blanket to stand near the tent’s open flap. Once again the rising sun filled the tent’s interior, the long, lazy rays reaching all the way to the back wall. Today, the light teased metallic glints from her sire’s chain-mail hauberk and leggings where they lay draped across Lord Bagot’s armor chest. Since her father had no squire at the moment, Peter did the duty of checking the armor for loose and rusting links.

At the far end of Lord Bagot’s cot lay a basket of breads and cheeses, delivered not long ago from Haydon’s kitchen to break her sire’s fast. A square of greased fabric now covered the tent’s rush flooring. Near one corner stood a bucket filled with steaming water. Haydon’s tiny bathhouse was too small to accommodate the many knights who wanted to use it that morn. Thus some men opted to bathe in the river while others, like her sire, made do with a scrubbing and a rinse in the privacy of their own tent.

Lord Humphrey, dressed in naught but his skin, sat on his stool at the cloth’s center, face aimed toward the tent’s doorway. Any hope of meeting Warin died. It was as if her father knew his daughter planned to slip out from under his eye this morn and intended to prevent it.

Kate sighed, only to startle herself when she realized she was relieved. She didn’t want Warin to be her champion or have her ribbon. Her hand curled about her opposite wrist and the ribbon hidden in her sleeve. Why hadn’t she given this to Rafe yesterday?

Rushing now, Albreda grabbed the cloth from the lip of the bucket, wetted it then laded on soft soap from the wee cask of the stuff they’d brought from Bagot. Moving around her lord, the maid began to wash the nobleman’s back.

Without Albreda to block her view, Kate stared at her father. Resentment flared. By all rights she should have been the one bathing him; it was the duty of a man’s nearest female relative, whether wife, daughter or sister, to perform that service. Why, many a time in the past had she bathed Sir Guy de Fraisney, her father-by-marriage, with Lady Adele at her side. That her father didn’t require the same of her only proved how little he cared for her.

Across the tent from her Lord Humphrey’s eyes narrowed. His jaw tightened beneath his beard. “Haven’t you anything better to do than stare at me?” he demanded, his voice harsh.

Kate started in surprise, unaware that she was still looking at him. More resentment followed. What did he expect her to do for the two hours before the jousting began? Sit on her cot and twiddle her thumbs?

“Nay, my lord,” she said in truthful answer.

Irritation flashed through her sire’s eyes then he loosed a fiery sigh. “I suppose you don’t. Well the last thing I need is you underfoot when I must concentrate on what awaits me this day. Go on,” his wave shooed her toward the tent’s open flap. “Take yourself off to the hall and break your fast with the other ladies. Go, waste your time in whatever useless occupation idiot women like yourself use to fritter away their day.” There was nothing but sneering contempt in his voice.

Kate gaped at her sire. Just as Warin had predicted, he was sending her away from him. So great was her surprise that the words sprang from her lips, “By myself?”

Peter came upright from his task, his brows raised in surprise. “My lord, Sir Warin has gone to the river to bathe. Shall I escort Lady de Fraisney to the hall in his place?”

Lord Humphrey gave a curt shake of his head. “You have your own tasks to perform. Besides, it’s not necessary. What harm can come to her between here and the hall or garden door? With the joust only two hours away, even those snake-eating Godsols will be too busy arming themselves to bother her. Go,” her sire commanded, again motioning Kate out of the tent, “seek out Lady Haydon, who no doubt will happily take you under her wing once more calling me abuser as she does so.”

Kate didn’t wait for him to change his mind. Turning, she stepped outside the tent, only to find herself in the midst of unexpected traffic. A page pushed past her, his lord’s helmet cradled under one arm. Two servingmen swerved to avoid her, buckets of steaming water suspended from the yokes that crossed their shoulders.

Kate stepped out of the stream of servants and paused. For one foolish instant she considered seeking out Rafe instead of Warin. Even as the thought formed, she dismissed it. She could never approach a Godsol without drawing comments that would wend their way to her father’s ears. Nay, if she wanted a champion in the joust it had to be Warin, who was waiting for her right now. Besides, she owed Warin the honor, having promised it to him first.

Kate strode off through a rainbow of tents, their pennants snapping in the breeze. Up she climbed Haydon’s hill until she reached the massive inner gateway leading to the castle’s heart. Once through that tunnel-like opening, she stopped to catch her breath in the inner courtyard.

Unlike the bailey, which occupied a broad swath of land between Haydon’s outer and inner walls, the area within the second of these thick stone defenses was tight and cramped. The scents of baking bread and roasting meat wafted from the kitchen which lay to the right of the gate. In the corner directly across from the gateway, the square keep tower rose a full four storeys above the courtyard floor. A conical roof, its slate tiles gleaming in the new day’s light, perched atop the keep’s uppermost storey and made the tower seem taller still.

Haydon’s hall, its roof made of the far less permanent thatch, sprang from the keep’s side, using the length of the castle’s defensive wall as its back. At the hall’s end nestled the garden, a wealth of summer roses tumbling over its low enclosing wall.

The postern gate, the exit outside of which Warin waited, cut through the thick wall at the garden’s end. Just now its arched oaken door was thrown wide, the customary porter gone for the time being. This allowed any knight who needed it easy access to the river, just as it gave Kate access to Warin.

A cunning smile took possession of Kate’s lips. Would Warin’s kiss make her throb with joy as Rafe’s had? The sinful thought carried her all the way from where she’d stopped in the larger of Haydon’s inner gates to the postern, only to abandon her before she exited through that smaller opening.

From deep within her came Adele’s disapproval, along with her former mother-by-marriage’s many warnings of rape and debauchery for any woman who left the protection of her menfolk and her walls. It was wicked to seek out Warin for the sole purpose of encouraging an intimate interlude, especially when she was no longer certain that she truly loved him. If she did this, how could she ever again call herself a virtuous woman? Better that she retreat to Haydon’s chapel and pray that sense be restored to her.

In the next moment shouts and laughter echoed in through the open gateway. A group of youths appeared, their downy jaws proclaiming them squires while their shining faces and wet hair pronounced them well bathed. They made their entrance into Haydon’s inner yard dressed in naught but their shirts, which left their legs bare from knee to toes. As they passed Kate, they offered her good morrows.