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The mail rings bit into her cheek despite his surcoat, which still smelled like the damp wool of his mantle. She touched her throat as she swallowed. It felt raw inside and tender on the outside. Harness jingled, and she heard the restless stamping of several horses. She peeked out of the corner of one eye.
At least five men waited. They did not appear pleased at the delay. She kept her forehead pressed against the Englishman. He was all that stood between her and the others. She hoped he could control his men. If he had wanted her for himself, she reasoned, he would be pawing her already.
“Let me take the wench for you, my lord,” someone said.
Ceridwen trembled involuntarily.
“Nay.” The knight plucked her arm from his neck and made her stand. “Can you ride pillion and hold onto me from behind?”
Clutching her middle, she looked up at him. At least his un-smiling expression did not belittle her weakness. But those eyes…dark blue, like the sea on a sunny day. Cold and glittering. She shivered. The very timbre of his voice increased the wobble of her knees. She didn’t think she could hold on to anything for much longer.
“Right.” Without waiting for her reply, he deftly unsaddled his horse. She realized he meant her to sit before him, for the war saddle would have left no room. Then, to her acute dismay, he reached down between her ankles. Gathering up the bottom of her skirts, he pulled the back towards the front and on upwards. He thrust the wad of fabric into her hand and boosted her onto the sweaty back of the tall, black destrier.
Astride the horse, Ceridwen wanted to double over in pain, but the snug binding the knight had fashioned for her wound prevented it. Her legs were not covered and she could not help but feel exposed before the foreign warriors. But she was in their lord’s debt.
“I owe you thanks. I owe you my life,” she whispered, and huddled miserably, clutching the horse’s mane with both hands as the animal tossed its head.
“You owe me nothing.” He swung up with ease to sit behind her. “Shift forward a bit. Do not expect me to keep you from falling. I may need both hands free, if we find more trouble.” Thankful for his matter-of-fact tone, Ceridwen obeyed. She stifled a moan as the horse lurched into a canter. The knight slowed the eager animal to a brisk walk.
“Wace.” His words carried despite their low pitch.
A young man’s voice replied, “My lord?”
“Ride ahead. Send someone back for my saddle. And tell Alys to prepare for a belly wound.”
The Englishman’s breath disturbed Ceridwen’s hair and warmed her neck. His resonant voice vibrated from his chest through her back, sending a ripple of sensation up her spine. But even as she felt it, he leaned away and broke the contact.
“Aye, milord.” Wace galloped off, his master’s shield bouncing at his back.
Ceridwen glimpsed the coat of arms. A white stag upon a split field of green, a black dragon coiling below. Her heart faltered and with her sudden intake of breath came a fresh stab of agony in her middle. She bit back a moan. God help her, she was already in the possession of men in the service of Alonso. A black dragon…she must know for certain the identity of the one who held her.
“What do I call you?” Painfully, Ceridwen twisted her head around to look at him. At this range, his features were perfectly clear. Glacial eyes stared straight ahead. His compelling face held no expression. He tipped his head to the side and lifted his chin, avoiding touching her. She saw an old scar in the soft area under his jaw.
Apparently he did not want to answer. Whatever his name, he was just another warring border-lord. But she was fooling herself. Deep inside, she knew exactly who he was.
“Raymond.” He growled the name and still did not meet her gaze as he spoke.
Ceridwen’s heart felt as though it curled into a tight, protective ball, and renewed embarrassment leaped to compete with her fright. She represented her people, and she looked like a ragged mendicant. It was shameful. Beauchamp had picked her up under the most undignified of circumstances. Her good intentions of carrying through with the marriage dwindled in the terrifying face of his physical reality.
She was afraid to tell him who she was. No matter what reassurance her father had given, she had no reason to disbelieve the rumors. And she had heard them aplenty. Bards and wayfarers passing through her father’s lands told tales. Lord Raymond’s reputation was that of a ravening wolf, the worst of the pack headed by his elder brother, Alonso. A cursed, dark knight, folk said.
She stole another glance at his face. Stiff and grim. As though it were set in granite. He had barely glanced at her, and she was grateful for his disinterest. He had wed a lovely maid, so the story went, until one cold night her body was found floating among the reeds in his moat. It was said he caught her with a lover, and in his rage hurled her from the top of the keep. The dead girl had probably been close to her own age. A shudder convulsed Ceridwen and she pressed her arm against the rising clamor of her wound as the horse’s motion rocked her to and fro.
Raymond wrapped his woolen mantle more closely about her body. She shrank from his touch and yet relished the warmth. No doubt he could be charming when he chose to be. Charming but so very wicked. When he gathered up the reins, she saw that the fingers of his gauntlets were soggy and dark. Blood-soaked.
Her blood as well as the villein’s. Her heart protested, but there was no escaping the truth. This man had saved her life, and she was beholden to him. She also belonged to him, even if he did not yet realize it. But for a little time, she could pretend freedom.
For hours they wound through the hilly forest, climbing slowly. She tried to avoid resting against him, but it proved impossible. Her head fell back onto his shoulder when she was too tired to hold it up, and after the first few times he stopped shrugging her off. Her fear gradually eased with the soothing rhythm of the horse’s walk, and her own exhaustion. She drifted in and out of wakefulness, watching the bright sky pale above the silhouettes of swaying treetops.
The daylight waned, and the thick smell of damp leaves gave way to a fresher crispness as they traveled higher. The wind sang through the rowans. If she had not been in such pain, or known who held her, it might have been a pleasant journey.
The harsh caw of rooks and the hollow thud of hooves on a drawbridge startled Ceridwen into alertness. Men shouted greetings. She looked up in time to see a corpse gently swaying. It hung in an iron cage from a gibbet on the outer curtain wall of what must be Sir Raymond’s keep—Rookhaven, and well named. A row of ravens perched on the battlements above the body. Ceridwen covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut until they were past the gruesome sight. A prenuptial Welsh patriot, perhaps. A fitting adornment to the castle of a Beauchamp.
They passed beneath the spikes of the portcullis and into the main ward of a dark, crumbling edifice. Not what she expected of such a lord. Anxiety mixed with the dread already churning in the pit of her stomach. Like the tower before her, her promise to marry him loomed as an impossible monstrosity.
Men bearing hissing torches hurried to meet them and held the bridle of his restive animal as Raymond dismounted. He caught Ceridwen and carried her with long, rapid strides across the cobbled courtyard and up the narrow stairs of the keep.
Heavy, ironclad doors opened before them as servants and men-at-arms scurried to seek their master’s will. There were bows and murmured welcomes, all of which he ignored. His attention, it seemed, was now fixed upon her alone.
Sir Raymond’s arms were hard beneath her shoulders and knees, his steps sure and silent. A faint smell of roasted fowl lingered in the air above the reek of the hall, and despite her pain and weariness, Ceridwen’s mouth watered. She looked up past Raymond’s face, avoiding his frowning gaze.
The upper reaches of the large hall disappeared into gloom, and though a fire crackled in the center of the floor, it made little impact on either the cold or the dark. A stout, wrinkle-faced woman hurried over and touched Ceridwen’s cheek with the back of her hand. The crone peered at her in the light of the fat candle she held.
“Welcome to Rookhaven, lass. ’Tis Alys am I, and who’ll see ye to bed.” The woman’s gap-toothed smile vanished as she turned her attention to Raymond. “What have ye done? Her neck’s purple. Her face is all bruised. Hmmph!”
The knight exchanged looks with the old woman. Hers was one of disapproval. His was unreadable, except for the unrelenting tightness around his mouth. He swept past her and took Ceridwen into a small chamber, fragrant with mint. Carefully he laid her on a narrow bed, but her relief was short-lived. Raymond threw down his bloodstained gauntlets and began to unbind her wound.
“You are overly familiar, sir. Take your hands from me,” Ceridwen whispered, too drained to meet his eyes. Under the circumstances, he was not likely to believe her if she claimed to be his betrothed. But it was her duty to tell him the truth, and he had no right to manhandle the daughter of Morgan ap Madog.
Raymond paused at her objection, threw her a quelling look as she opened her mouth to reveal her name, then continued with his task. He gave up on her lacings and simply ripped the fabric, using the hole his sword had made as a starting point.
Ceridwen shrieked and tried to pull away.
“Jesu, woman! You’re worse than any eel.” Mercilessly he held her to the position he desired, using his knee on her thighs and his elbow across her chest. “I would see for myself what damage I have done. I do not trust the reports of others.”
Ceridwen gritted her teeth as his fingers probed her wound.
“I am sorry to hurt you. But have no fear for your modesty. I look upon thee as I would any wounded creature.”
“I am not a creature!” She squirmed and bucked in spite of the pain. “I am—”
“Tsk. My lord Raymond. ’Tis but a young lass here ye have. She’ll not be understanding yer ways,” the crone chided, her chins wagging.
“Nor has she any need to understand. Her only duty to me is to lie still.” He directed his last two words to Ceridwen, writhing beneath his hands.
“She has no duty to ye a-tall!”
“Alys, you try my patience.” His eyes gleamed a warning to the old nurse.
She glared back. “Be that as it may, young master Raymond, ye’re not needed here. In fact, ye’re in the way.”
Ceridwen marvelled at the woman’s familiar treatment of her sinister lord. She thought she heard a low growl sounding from Sir Raymond’s throat, but her own pain distracted her. Abruptly his warm hands left her abdomen, and his knee lifted from her legs. The large bulk of Alys overshadowed her, clucking and muttering as she applied a pungent salve to the wound.
Ceridwen turned her head and fixed her gaze on the retreating back of the dark knight. The play of candlelight glanced off the mail covering his arms. The heavy, deep blue fabric of his surcoat rippled dully. As he reached the door, he pulled his coif from his head. With a small shock she saw that he was fair. Thick, brassy hair, with a tawny brown beneath the light outer layers, like an animal’s pelt, tumbled past his shoulders.
Similar to Alonso, yet wholly different. Haughty, aye. But Ceridwen was surprised to sense no vanity in this Beauchamp. He was neither as tall nor as broad as his elder brother. But he commanded a powerful, forbidding presence that had nothing to do with size. A fair-haired knight. A black horse. Bloody hands. She swallowed as her memory stirred. Long ago Owain had told her a story, of a maiden who met just such a man. At the time, she had thought it a tale of his own imagining. But Owain had known of things to come, and saw things hidden—had it been a warning? Now she could not remember how it ended.
Raymond turned and regarded her over his shoulder. Their eyes met, and for an instant Ceridwen thought she felt compassion sing across the room to her. Then his handsome face shuttered, the light extinguished like a candle snuffed out by a cold wind.
She blinked, and Raymond vanished into the darkness beyond the door. Tomorrow. She would tell him her name tomorrow.
Chapter Four
“Damn. Damn. Thrice be damned!” Raymond cursed his way up a dank stairway of his ancient fortress, his wolfhound padding alongside. He had never bothered to improve upon the meager comforts of his keep, and drafts blew freely in the stone halls. Cobwebs were the only hangings to soften the chill.
The wench was trouble. A whole realm of it. A shudder of longing coursed through him at the remembrance of her fine features and delicate bones. Just as Meribel’s had been. Raymond pushed his lady’s visage back and it merged into that of the wounded maiden. She was exquisite, despite the fact she was dirty and bedraggled, her long hair all in rat’s-nests.
It was the kind of hair he loved, soft and fine and black. And those upslanted eyes, deep with unspoken sorrow, shifting from sea-green to emerald. Eyes that sometimes glowed, lit from within by a pure fire, whether born of a fighting spirit or fever, he could not tell. Aye, a comely bundle, much too lovely for comfort. Why had he bothered spitting a perfectly able man to save her skin in the first place?
Perhaps it had been young Wace’s look of anguish at seeing a girl about to be ravished. Perhaps because by saving the virtue of one maid, he could partially make up for the multitude of despoilings his brother perpetrated in the name of his rights as lord. A laughable thought. Who was he, Raymond, to pretend honor after what he had done to his own wife?
Her image leaped to torment him, as ever. Meribel, floating in the noisome moat. Her eyes, once sparkling with both merriment and malice, now dull, open and staring. Heedless of the strands of green water-weed tangling in her long lashes. Beyond caring that her gown drifted up her white thighs, gleaming through the murky water.
Raymond groaned and with an effort that cost him dear, willed her away, his eyes tightly shut. Slowly she faded to a mere shadow on the periphery of his mind. Faint, but never fully banished.
The cur he had dispatched had not deserved such a clean, swift stroke. Raymond hoped he had not also ultimately killed the black-haired maid. He had seen no viscera emerging through her wound, and only good, red blood flowing, nothing green or foul-smelling. Hopeful signs, but it was too soon to tell.
“Wace!” Raymond reached the landing, kicked open the door of his solar, and the squire hurried to his side. “Disarm me and bring some hot water.” He tossed his gauntlets and coif onto the bed, where his huge dog was already circling to settle down for the night. For some reason, the sight did not bring its usual satisfaction.
Silently Wace unstrapped his master’s sword and dagger. He lifted off the flowing surcoat and sighed when he saw the ruined lining. Raymond ignored the small censure and leaned forward as if to touch his toes. The heavy mail hauberk slithered down over his head into Wace’s waiting hands. The boy then untied the mail chausses, and Raymond shook them from his legs.
He should have gone to the armory to remove his harness, to save Wace the work of hauling it down, but it was too late now. Raymond started to unlace his haqueton, then hugged the padded under-jacket to his sides. “I will wait ’til the water arrives.” Their breath plumed in the room and an awkward silence fell. Raymond stepped to the brazier to poke the fire back to life.
“My lord.” Wace fidgeted.
Raymond looked at his squire. The rangy boy was new to his service, and still a bit shy of him. Wace’s former lord had lived as violently as he had died, and the lad bore the scars to prove it. His auburn hair hung thick and straight about his solemn face, and his eyes were serious.
“Speak your mind, lad.” Raymond sat on his bed, leaned back upon his elbows and stretched his wool-clad legs.
“I was wondering…what will you do with the maid?”
Raymond stroked his beloved Hamfast, and the dog raised an eyebrow and licked his hand. No woman could offer such devotion. “Do with her? I shall do nothing with her. Or to her, or for her. Does that answer your question?”
“Nay, milord.”
Raymond responded with a mirthless sound, part grunt, part laugh. The boy looked displeased, if he was not mistaken. “I see. Are you concerned with the fulfillment of knightly vows? Do not be. She’ll not starve.” Not with a face like that.
“But is it not true, that once you’ve saved a person’s life—even that of a woman—you’re bound together from that moment forward? You have a responsibility to her now, and she owes a debt to you, does she not?” Wace insisted.
Raymond sat up, rubbing his scarred knuckles. “I hold her to no debt. She is free. The sooner she goes, the better.”
Wace’s brow creased into a frown. “She displeases you.”
“Aye, so she does. I wish never to have sight of her again. She is a distraction, when I am bound to wed another.” Raymond jumped to his feet. “Enough! By Abelard’s ballocks, where is that water?”
The boy stepped back, his eyes wide. Raymond wiped his forehead with his palm and took a deep breath. “Wace, I shout a great deal. Do not take it to heart. Whatever ill-use you have suffered, you, at least, will never feel my hand in anger.”
Wace nodded, and executed a slight bow before leaving the room. Raymond sank down again and put his head in his hands. God help me. Breaking in a new squire was like settling a high-strung colt. So much potential needing care.
He knew firsthand how best to encourage traits of value, and how to quell the rest without ruining a boy’s spirit. It was a lot of work. And he already had a lot of work. To gather a body of trained men, arm them, and go forth to raze Alonso’s keep to the ground. It would be a bitter disappointment to Wace, when he shattered the boy’s idealism on the proper conduct of a knight to his lord. But then, neither I, nor my lord brother are proper knights.
Ceridwen knew she still dreamed, on the brink of awakening. Strong arms held her tenderly, featherlight kisses rained upon her face and neck. It was no one she knew, yet she had known him forever. He was warm, solid, and all hers. She kept her eyes closed, reluctant to break the fragile spell of pleasure.
But fingers of sunlight plucked at her lids, demanding that she wake. Her arms stuck damply to her sides and she was too warm. She slid the scratchy blanket down her torso. Pain stabbed through the drowsiness as her wound pulled, and she gasped. Someone next to her coughed. A deep, male sound.
She opened her eyes, and a small cry of dismay left her lips. From his seat beside the bed, Sir Raymond surveyed her. Ceridwen dragged the blanket back over her breasts and up to her chin. He was distressingly handsome in the morning light.
He had shaved, and wore a simple tunic of undyed linen beneath his sleeveless surcoat. The bland color accentuated his bright hair and healthy skin, though his fathomless eyes were shadowed with fatigue. She could not tell what he thought of her, and tried not to care.
“How do you feel?” The smooth voice was neutral.
“I am well, sir.” She felt herself redden and clutched the blanket tighter. “I need no checking of my bandages, thank you,” Ceridwen added, hoping to forestall any delicate ministrations he might have in mind. She shivered as a chill swept her body.
“Of course not. I have already done that while you slept. Unless you want Alys—” Raymond half stood.
“No thank you, my lord.” He’d attended her while she slept? And what else? Ceridwen stared at him, willing his departure. He resumed his seat. His gaze lingered on her face, then he narrowed his eyes before looking away.
Ceridwen felt a surge of relief to be free of his inspection. But no one had the right to inspire such dread at the mere mention of his name, then be so…quiet. She had expected a bellowing, red-faced, brutish sort, and instead, she found him graceful, wasting none of his movements, with strong hands and a lean, muscular frame. Thus far Sir Raymond had impressed her with his air. Not one of contentment or ease, but of something powerful lying in wait, holding itself in check.
He returned his dark gaze to her. “What is your name?”
“Ceridwen.” She bit her lip, awaiting his outrage at the poor bargain he’d made for the return of his dog.
“That explains it.” His stare grew more intense.
She swallowed. No reaction. It dawned on her that he might not have bothered to learn the given name of his bride-to-be. That was how little he thought of her. Ceridwen’s knuckles whitened on the edge of the blanket. “Explains what?”
“How you are so small and dark, in a land of fair Amazons.”
Ceridwen looked at Raymond in bewilderment. What did her size or coloring have to do with her name…unless he meant she looked as many Welshwomen did? A spark of anger ignited within her breast as his cool eyes appraised her, then dismissed her. She would far rather be small and dark than some lumbering blond troll. Especially if the latter was his preference.
“How came you to be wandering in the wildwood? ’Tis no place for a man on his own, let alone a woman. There are things there, best left undisturbed,” he warned her sternly.
“The wildwood is lovely in its own way, but aye, I wish I had not disturbed that man who tried to throttle me.”
“I, for one, have only found trouble in those woods. That is why I race through them. I might easily have not seen you. Especially with that great lout blocking my view.”
“I am sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
“Think nothing of it. ’Twas my pleasure.” Raymond stifled a yawn, and stretched his arms behind him.
Ceridwen’s eyes widened. His pleasure? To kill a man, justified or not? He spoke of it so casually. Just another bloodletting—good sport. But what else could she expect? His fame had grown from the merciless fury he displayed, never accepting defeat at the hands of his enemies. Her people.
It was said he routinely destroyed farms and hamlets on his raids of acquisition. Rumor even had it that churches had burned by his command, to demoralize rebellious vassals. All to satisfy the greed and blood lust typical of his whole family.
She must not let his present mildness lull her into forgetting who and what he was. Ceridwen eased herself deeper under the covers. She had no defenses against him, in her weakened state. Why did he not go away and leave her alone?
Raymond spoke again, still not looking at her. “Who is your father, or husband? To whom do I return you?”
