BOUNDLESS: A Medieval Romance (AGE OF CONQUEST Book 6)

by Tamara Leigh

  A thought struck. “Mayhap he did not turn back. Perhaps he merely happened on the fire.”

  Hendrie frowned. “Still, where is the rest of his pack? Unless…”

  Hoping whatever occurred would render Theriot D’Argent blameless, she leaned in. “What?”

  “Unless he served as a scout and set those Normans after the Aetheling.”

  Knowing Sir Theriot was a warrior of the battlefield rather than the shadows, she nearly rejected that. However, had not his brother, Dougray, been a scout?

  “Lord,” she breathed.

  “Lord, indeed. We were mindful of the contingents, but of a single Norman versed in stealth?” He shook his head. “Our own scouts mapped the Normans’ movements, ensuring they remained distant, then a great force came at us. If your D’Argent sent them, he is as responsible for the fires as Edgar.”

  Her resolve threatening to wither, she raised her chin. “Still I will tend him. That is how it must unfold.”

  Chapter Five

  You live!” It was not the first time the King of Scots said it, the second, nor third. And still he held to her. When he eased back, it was just enough to kiss her brow. “Almighty, you live, Marguerite!”

  She tried not to cry, but tears flowed over his rejoicing of her return that had coincided with his own from the North where he had put down an uprising.

  Mostly, the people of Scotland were united under one king, unlike England with Saxons aplenty rejecting Norman rule, but this country had its disagreements which must be resolved by the blade when negotiations failed. Though Malcolm was feared, far more he was respected by the Scots than ever King William would be respected by the English.

  Sadly, sometimes even a good king must rule by fear those who will not be ruled any other way, Marguerite’s sire had explained the need to bear arms against one’s own. But those who first seek the good of their countrymen, requiring only wise guidance beneath a firm hand… Aye, Daughter, they have earned the right to be ruled by respect.

  As she believed Malcolm did, though ever she was troubled by his raids into England. Albeit on a far lesser scale than William’s harrying, her king harassed those same people who offended or stood in his way. Hopefully, if he wed Princess Margaret and she was as devout as told, her influence would make him a better neighbor to the English.

  He pulled back, and she thought the man who neared his fortieth year more handsome than ever. Having ignored all save she who bounded from the wagon when she saw he rode before his army, he studied her tear-streaked face.

  “What is this, Sparrow?” he said in the Gaelic spoken at court somewhat more than the Saxon and Norman-French of those who had served him long before the conquering of England. Then giving her no time to answer, he said, “Ye have suffered badly these months.”

  She swallowed. “Other than what happened on my grandfather’s lands, not badly.”

  His brow furrowed. “You are not going to take me to task for slaying that old man, are ye—not after what he did to my men and your Cannie?” At her hesitation, he said, “Before we slew all, we had them dig up those they murdered so we could bring them home with your mother for burial.”

  Marguerite gasped. “She is at my sire’s side?”

  “She shares with her husband hallowed ground I denied those who put arrows in the backs of my men.” His brow lowered further. “Aye, we made good use of that foul, mass grave, and to ensure your grandfather suffer longest, he went in last.”

  Imagining that, she closed her eyes.

  He gave her a shake. “Task me not, Sparrow.”

  She considered asking after Claude who had saved her, Gerald who may have been the one to escape the Rebels of the Pale, and her cousin, Pepin, but it could wait.

  “I task you not.” she said softly.

  He grunted. “Be assured, I hear enough from my Margaret and dance to her disapproval.”

  My Margaret. She liked that for the happiness and reverence with which he spoke it. “Then it is certain you shall wed the Aetheling’s sister?”

  “Indeed, though ’twas difficult to persuade her, so set was she on becoming a bride of Christ. Fortunately, Edgar understood the advantage of our union. As he is head of the family and the princess was moving toward love for me, he came to my side and she agreed.”

  Hopefully, it was true Edgar had not forced her to abandon her vocation.

  “I see you worry over she who is a pearl to me,” Malcolm said. “Fear not. She has set her heart and mind on serving God by furthering my knowledge of His word so better I honor and grow His Church in Scotland. Once you are further acquainted, I believe my Margaret and Marguerite shall become great friends.” He frowned. “Your name and hers are so close, there will be confusion.” He chuckled. “Ah, here my excuse to more often name her Meg—better yet, My Pearl over which she blushes so prettily.”

  By his glances, stares, and how near he had drawn to her when first she arrived, Marguerite had known he was attracted to the woman of twenty and five years, but he had not spoken of it as he did now—as if the formidable King Malcolm, whose only love was Scotland, were half his age and the Aetheling’s sister his first love.

  “Dubh will be glad to see you.”

  He spoke of the hound gifted her three months before she departed to bring her mother home. Averse to dogs for making her nose itch, she had tried to return Dubh, but the king did not like her and Cannie living alone in the cottage and had given much thought to which of his hounds best suited her.

  The relatively small three-year-old female, who could no longer pup for having taken a boar’s tusk to the belly, had seemed as indifferent to Marguerite as she was to the hound, and as determined to return to the palace as her mistress wished she would—until that last month when both began to accept what could not be changed.

  “Dubh may not remember me,” Marguerite said.

  “Aye, she will.” The king glanced past her. “We are chilled and travel weary. Let us settle before a fire with refreshments, and My Pearl and I shall listen to the tale I am more eager to hear for how you came to be in the company of my betrothed’s brother.”

  Marguerite followed his gaze to the wagon beyond her three escort. “I am eager to tell it, though I would do so in the privacy of your apartment once—”

  “Who are those men?” he asked after the Saxons who peered at them over their shoulders.

  “My escort from Derbyshire, which I shall explain after your physician tends Hendrie and one of the Saxons who—”

  “Hendrie is injured?” That Scots nearly as dear to Malcolm as her sire had been, he thrust back the plaid cloak draping one shoulder and with long-reaching strides moved his muscular bulk up the incline. Marguerite nearly had to run to stay his side, and moments later groaned when Edgar urged his mount toward his future brother-in-law.

  When she and the king reached the wagon, Hendrie rumbled, “Your Grace.”

  “Who harmed ye, man?”

  Hendrie jutted his chin. “He whom I blinded—a Norman.”

  Malcolm stepped nearer and looked down at the unconscious D’Argent. “For what is he here? For what does he live?”

  Marguerite set a hand on his arm. “I shall explain when we speak.”

  “Much danger Lady Marguerite has escaped,” Hendrie said. “Pray, do not further indulge her lest this Norman proves her undoing.”

  The king grunted. “Aye, best we speak in private, Sparrow.”

  “Brother!” Edgar called.

  Marguerite was glad her gaze was on Malcolm. Though the emotion shifting across his eyes was fleeting, it was annoyance. But whereas he did not long suffer that dealt by others, likely his tolerance was greater for the brother of his pearl.

  “We must speak,” the Aetheling said as he neared.

  Malcolm placed a hand on Marguerite’s arm. “This long lost lady has first claim on me, but we shall talk—if not this eve, the morrow.”

  The Aetheling’s mouth tightened. “Best soon, Malcolm,” he said an
d reined around.

  “The morrow ’tis!” the sovereign of Scotland corrected he who was a dispossessed prince to a king no longer dispossessed.

  Though the Aetheling’s back stiffened, he continued forward.

  “He has become more difficult and demanding now I am to wed his sister,” Malcolm said. “As once my birthright was denied me—and for it the foul Macbeth and his stepson are dead—I sympathize with him, but my forbearance nears its end.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  He smiled crookedly. “An end which lies beyond the day I make his sister my queen.” He turned her aside. “Ye shall ride the remainder of the way with me so I may begin knowing your tale.”

  When she was seated before him on his destrier, she began to relate all that had happened, beginning with her arrival on her grandfather’s lands and the grave to which she had been led.

  All was agreed, though likely only because the princess who had sat silent throughout finally spoke.

  Holding to the crucifix around her neck, setting her other hand atop Malcolm’s which impatience had made into a fist, Edgar’s sister had vouched for the D’Argents. Though she admitted to having met none of that family, she had heard enough of their character and deeds to believe that were there any good Normans, they were among them.

  The King of Scots had mulled that nearly as long as Marguerite’s testimony that covered most of her experiences with the D’Argents, then slid his fingers between his beloved’s.

  Marguerite having remaining standing, he had told her to sit. Perched on the edge of a chair, relief had nearly slumped her when he agreed to claim rights to the prisoner by way of Hendrie. Regarding her request to be given care of the Norman, his nay had become aye. With conditions.

  No apartment within the tower would be afforded Theriot D’Argent—instead, this hut inside the stone walls surrounding the palace. The prisoner would be bound to the bed, and under no circumstance was she to release him unless the watch outside were inside. She would sleep at the door, and her hound who was less than overjoyed by her return was to remain at her side.

  Marguerite had accepted the conditions. Though this Norman was a D’Argent, she did not truly know him beyond the feeling she knew him. And even were he of the same cloth as the others, under these circumstances his weave could prove snagged—or irreparably torn.

  Leaning against the door she had closed behind the physician, she raised her moist gaze to the rafters. He who had first tended Hendrie in the tower and assured her the Scotsman would live had said the same of Theriot D’Argent. That had been welcome. As for the chevalier’s eyes…

  She had not asked for Colban’s diagnosis, but as he of good face and figure examined them, she had heard his sighs and seen the shakes of his head as of one who believes a task insurmountable.

  Throughout, the chevalier had moved only to breathe and groan over probings, the kick to his jaw surely having further rattled him.

  He will live, she reminded herself. But how?

  Lowering her gaze from the smoke wending through the hole in the roof that also served as a giver of light in day and a window on the stars at night, she considered the pit at the center of the open room. The warming fire was a good one, its consumption of well-cured wood creating as little smoke as possible.

  Next she looked to the corner opposite her pallet laid alongside the door and through the light haze considered the warrior. He was rendered helpless, and not only because his wrists were roped to the bed posts.

  Herself bound, albeit by guilt, silently she pleaded with the Lord to restore his sight, for what was a warrior who could not see? Though being of the family D’Argent he would not be reduced to begging for coins and scraps from passersby, likely he would suffer lifelong care by loved ones or those of the cloister.

  She pushed off the door and, trailed by her hound, crossed to the chevalier who was propped on pillows to allow her to slide drink between his lips.

  All the D’Argents she had seen were fit with good faces, raised to good heights and, excepting their fair-haired half-brother, had dark hair shot through with silver as if God had marked them as special. This D’Argent was no exception. Indeed, even more—

  “Be not fanciful, Marguerite,” she rebuked and started to turn away.

  “Marguerite,” he rasped, sweeping her back to when first he had spoken a name not quite her own and she had marveled over feelings not due one who but assisted in getting her astride. Now she searched the chevalier’s face, but unable to look beyond the cloth covering his eyes, could not know if he had awakened or merely questioned what he heard her speak across his dreams.

  “Marguerite?” he repeated harshly, causing Dubh to rumble and draw near.

  She lowered to her knees. “Oui, Lady Marguerite,” she said in his language, repressing her Scots lilt as much as possible. “You are in Scotland at the court of King Malcolm.”

  His head jerked, nostrils flared.

  “Can you hear me, Sir Theriot?”

  “A dog is here,” he slurred. “I smell it. More, I smell you. And not…for the first time.”

  Recalling when she led him distant from what she believed a child, she wondered how he had caught her scent—had she even one in particular—since she had been unable to draw near when Hendrie dropped him.

  The wagon, she realized. Though he had been unconscious while she tended him, she had been near enough that were his sense of smell keen, her scent might have gone behind the veil between them. What of her voice when she conversed with Hendrie in their own language? Was it well enough heard he had known a woman tended him during their northward journey?

  She prayed not since she must distance this lady of Scotland from the village woman who was both bait and trap.

  If only I had accepted the princess’s offer to bathe in her apartment! she silently rued having made do with a basin of water and towel.

  “You do not like I know your scent,” he said.

  What had revealed her? She might yet carry a recognizable scent, but what had delivered her disquiet unto one lacking sight?

  “Why does it bother?” he asked thickly.

  She shrugged, then remembering he could not see, said, “It seems an intimate observation. I can hardly be comfortable with it though that knowledge was surely gained while I aided the physician in tending you.”

  “Am I ill?”

  Then he did not remember what was learned before Hendrie’s kick? Because of further injury to his head? “You are, but you will be well again in time.” It was not a lie. It was possible he would recover fully, but if he did not, he would live.

  If in spite of what is lost to him, he considers it living, her conscience stabbed.

  “It is dark,” he rasped and tugged at one hand then the other as if to explore his eyes.

  Fearing when he realized he was bound he would remember the reason for the darkness, she held her breath.

  But he groaned and said, “Soon the dawn, Marguerite?”

  Tears stung her eyes. “Oui, soon.” Though she knew that for a lie in one way, night having only descended, God willing it would not be in the way that mattered most to this warrior.

  Hearing his dry swallow, she retrieved a cup and set its rim to his lips. “Drink, Theriot.”

  As he sipped, she was glad only she was here to question what possessed her to be familiar with his name.

  He eased his head back and, as she returned the cup to the table, once more tugged at his wrists. “What—?”

  Marguerite covered his right hand with her own. She meant only to give it a reassuring squeeze, but he turned his palm up and gripped her hand hard.

  “Soon the dawn?” he said with such desperation tears flooded her eyes. “You are certain it comes?”

  Swallowing a sob, she nodded, then forced words he could hear. “It comes. Now sleep.”

  He exhaled long, his head rolled to the side, and his breathing deepened.

  His hand did not immediately go lax, and when i
t did, she firmed her hold on it. “Lord, Lord,” she whispered, emotions threatening to spill, “heal him. Make him whole. Pray, undo what I did.”

  Once more stifling a sob, she released his hand. As she drew back, she swept her gaze over his relaxed face, then his hair. And reached. Gently, she pulled through her fingers strands darker and silver brighter for the sheen of oil accumulated these past days, and might have lingered longer over them had not the hound thrust her snout near.

  “Dubh!” she gasped and dropped back on her heels.

  When the dog was satisfied with what could be learned of the Norman’s scent, she trotted to the fire pit.

  To keep her hands from once more touching what they ought not, Marguerite clasped them in her lap. Beyond this tearing guilt, too much I am drawn to you, Chevalier, she silently lamented. Though I knew Michel’s kisses, never did I feel this much pull for him, and here we are only at the beginning.

  “Of what is also the end,” she said and retreated to her pallet where, over and again she reminded herself of why she was here and what she must do to ensure the chevalier did not reject her care—beginning with a thorough bath to wash away whatever reminded him of the woman who Edgar told was part of the trap.

  It was wrong, she knew, the same as her prayers for the Lord’s forgiveness in advance of lies and half-truths, but she saw no other way to gain the trust necessary to aid in this man’s recovery.

  Moving her thoughts elsewhere, she recalled her meeting with Malcolm in which she had learned the barest bones of the vengeance he had worked on her kin. “Oh, Claude,” she breathed. “I am sorry for your death, but much grace shown that you passed ere my king’s coming.”

  As for Gerald, Malcolm had told he was not present when vengeance fell upon her grandfather and his people. Thus, likely that uncle had died at the hands of the Rebels of the Pale.

  But he may be out there, perhaps even his son, fear whispered. Beware of the unseen more than the seen, Marguerite, daughter of Diarmad the Mad. Beware.