The Last Knight

by Candice Proctor

  Damion stood beneath the small porch of the empty chapel, his gaze narrowing as he stared through the open wicket gate to the castle gardens. The rose-tinted golden light of the setting sun spilled down the network of brick pathways and turned the surrounding beds of rosemary and lavender and apothecary roses into darkly shifting shadows, worried by the growing wind.

  She sat on a turf-topped stone bench built against the garden's eastern wall, an elegant young woman in a rich crimson gown. Pushing away from the chapel's stonework doorway, he walked toward her.

  It seemed strange to realize he had never seen her dressed as a lady before. He had imagined she would look like this, cool and slender and remote. And he thought what a wonder she was, this pale, delicate-looking woman. For he knew well that her porcelain-like air of fragility was deceptive; she was strong. Strong and brave and too beautiful, inside and out, for words.

  He left the shadows of the narrow path and walked up to her. She had her face tilted up to the sun, her eyes closed. A gleam of moisture shone against the pale flesh of her cheeks, and he reached to run one knuckle gently along the ridge of her cheekbone, catching her tear. “Ah, Attica,” he said softly.

  Her eyes flew open, her long lashes clumping wetly as she blinked up at him. He saw her chest hitch on a quickly indrawn breath, saw her press the fingertips of both hands to her lips in a gesture he was coming to know well.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, gripping her hands together and letting them fall to her lap.

  He wanted so desperately to touch her, to gather her in the circle of his arms and hold her slim, young body close to his. Instead, he sat down beside her, his back to the rough stone wall, and fixed his gaze on the gathering clouds highlighted with vivid shades of purple and cerise by the setting sun. “I asked one of the women in the yard. She said she'd seen you going into the chapel.”

  “I wished to give thanks for our safe arrival here …” He heard the slight hitch in her voice before she added, “And to pray for those still in danger.”

  He swung his head to look at her. The strengthening wind ruffled the light brown curls framing her face. He wanted to tangle his fingers in her hair. He wanted to lift her face to his and kiss away those tears. He wanted … Ah, God. What he wanted.

  He dug his fists into the turf at his side, his nostrils filling with the scent of crushed grass and night-blooming flowers and this woman. “And your uncle?” he asked, although he didn't think it was disappointment in Renouf that had brought those silent tears to her eyes.

  She raised her chin in that way she had, a faint hint of color staining her cheeks. “My uncle's reaction was everything I had hoped it would be. It was wrong of me to doubt him, even for a moment.”

  “I wasn't aware that you had.” He saw the confusion on her face, and let his lips curl into a smile. “Doubted him, I mean.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide and solemn. “I promised not to tell him about the breviary, didn't I?”

  “Ah. And now you're feeling guilty. Is that it?” He reached out to take her hand in his. “Don't.”

  Her gaze dropped to their linked hands—his so big and dark, hers pale and slender and bone-thin. He felt her tremble within his grip, but she made no move to slip her fingers from his. All around them the walls of the castle had taken on a fiery hue, lit by the last rays of the dying sun. In the distance he could hear the honking of geese and the lowing of cows being driven back into the castle for the night. It would be dark soon.

  “Will you walk with me?” she asked, looking up suddenly. “In the garden?” In the gathering gloom, the deep crimson of her bliaut seemed to emphasize the fairness of her skin and the unexpected contrast of her big brown eyes. She looked beautiful, and hurting.

  He brought her hand to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers. “With pleasure. My lady.”

  He watched the quiet smile spill over her face and bring a sparkle to her eyes, and he thought he'd never known anyone whose emotions and thoughts showed so clearly on their face. She was too honest, too transparent. It made her vulnerable. And it filled him with an unprecedented and wholly unwanted urge to protect that fragile vulnerability, to protect her from the ugliness that could be life.

  He stood and swept her a grand courtly bow that brought a gurgle of laughter to her lips. She was still smiling as she slipped off the bench and stepped toward him. Then the laughter died from her face as she stared up at him, her eyes deep and luminous now with some emotion he could not name.

  The last rays of the setting sun caught the honey-toned highlights in her light brown hair, making it glow like gold. He watched her suck in a quick breath that lifted her unbound breasts. Her breasts were small but high and firm, just the way he had known they would be. He wondered what they would feel like beneath a man's hands. Beneath his hands.

  And then he wondered if his thoughts showed on his face, for he saw her lips part, felt her hand clench in his. It was as if the very air between them heated, became tense with expectation and need.

  If they had been anywhere else, he thought. If they had been anywhere but in this garden, in the open, he would have bent his head and kissed her. This time, he knew, she would not have stopped him.

  He swung away, breaking the spell. He was aware of her falling into step beside him, although he was careful not to look at her again. Across the darkening castle grounds he could see a man lighting the torches that bracketed the gatehouse. The stiffening wind carried the hot, resiny odor across the yard to them.

  “I asked my uncle if he would allow his knights to act as my escort to La Ferté-Bernard,” she said after a moment. “But he said it would be too dangerous.”

  “He's right. Besides, you have no reason to go there now.”

  They passed between two rows of neatly espaliered pear trees that formed an allée. “I know. But …” She paused to pluck a leaf from one of the carefully pruned trees and stood for a moment staring down at it. “I would like to have been able to spend some time with my brother before I returned to Châteauhaut.”

  The wind gusted surprisingly strong, bringing with it the scent of coming rain and the low rumble of distant thunder. She had her head bent, her concentration seemingly fixed on the task of curling the slender green leaf between her fingers.

  “Attica,” he said, so near to her that he could see his breath wash over the bare skin at the back of her neck, raising the fine hairs there. “Delay will only make what you must do that much more difficult.”

  Her head came up, her eyes wide as she swung to face him, her lips open in surprise. He felt a sad smile tug at the edges of his mouth. “Did you think I couldn't guess why you don't want to go back to Salers yet?” Reaching out, he brushed her cheek, where a dried tear glittered silver in the vanishing light. “Did you think I wouldn't know what these are for?”

  She bowed her head and half turned from him, her shoulders held straight and rigid. “I was sitting here tonight, remembering when I was a little girl. My mother …” Her voice broke, and she had to swallow hard. “My mother has never made any attempt to hide the fact that she dislikes me. It's because I look nothing like her, you see; she's very small and dainty, with almost black hair and gray eyes. While I look like my father.”

  Damion rested one hand, lightly, comfortingly, on her shoulder.

  “At first, when I was very little, I couldn't understand why she didn't like me. I tried so hard to make her like me. But eventually I came to realize that every time she looks at me, all my mother can see is my father. And because she hates him, she hates me.”

  She seemed suddenly to become aware that she'd torn the leaf she held to shreds. Opening her fingers, she let the bruised pieces flutter down to the brick paved walkway. “Because of that, I avoided her as much as I could. My father was kind enough, in his way, but he was always awkward around females and I was, after all, a girl. The only person who ever had any time for me was Stephen, and I used to follow him everywhere, like a shadow.”

&
nbsp; She smiled sadly at the memory. “I must have been a sore trial to him, but he rarely told me to go away. I grew up running at his heels, playing rough boys’ games, swimming, climbing trees. I thought I made as good a boy as any of them, so one night, when I overheard my mother talking to Renouf about a possible betrothal, I went to my father and told him very seriously that I didn't want to be a knight's wife; I wanted to be a knight myself.”

  He shifted his hand to rub the side of his thumb, ever so gently, over the nape of her neck. “And what did old Robert d'Alérion say to that?”

  “He laughed, of course. But then he took me on his knee, and he was even kind enough to tell me that he was convinced I'd make a splendid knight. Only, he also explained that I couldn't become a knight, because I was a girl. Girls grow up to become gentlewomen, and gentlewomen serve their families not by fighting but by making strong and useful marriages.”

  He felt her quiver beneath his touch, and let his hand slip upward, his fingers tangling in the short curls at the base of her head. He heard her breath leave her throat in a low, keening sigh. She leaned against him, her head falling back against his shoulder, her gaze on the storm clouds gathering over the battlements.

  “So, you see,” she said, “ever since I was a little girl I've known that I could not expect to marry for love. Women of my station do not. But I grew up watching the hell that was my parents’ marriage and I used to hope—pray even—that the man chosen for me would be someone I could at least come to love.”

  “The heart is a wayward thing,” Damion said very softly. “It never loves where you would will it.”

  She turned her head until she was looking at him over her shoulder. He saw the surprise in her face, and the wonder. “I thought you said you don't believe in love.”

  He stared down at her, his gaze roving over the fine bones of her face. “Oh, I believe in the existence of love all right. But not as something beautiful and glorious. Love is a dangerous thing, Attica, a powerful, destructive force that can shatter lives. Far more lives than the two people involved ever imagine.”

  “It doesn't have to be that way,” she whispered.

  He cupped the side of her head in his palm, drawing her around to face him completely. “For the peasants in their fields and the artisans in their shops, perhaps not.” He gave her a wry smile. “It's ironic, isn't it? Their lives might be more harsh and precarious than ours, but at least they're able to love—and wed—where their hearts lead them. Whereas men and women such as you and I …”

  He let his fingers trail down her throat to linger at the point where her pulse beat hard and fast. She stood utterly still beneath his touch. “We marry for land,” he said, his voice a rough expulsion of breath. “For land and power and alliances. There's no room in those neat arrangements for love. And if love does come …” He brought his head down until his forehead touched hers, his hands framing her face, his thumbs brushing back and forth across her cheeks, their breath mingling hot and close. “If love does come, it brings tragedy, not joy. And death. Not life.”

  She leaned into him, her hands coming up to wrap around his wrists. It was as if he were falling into her, as if they were falling into each other. The wind gusted hard and fast around them, but he was lost in her, lost in the magic of this last, stolen moment with her.

  He tightened his fingers in her hair, tipping her head back so that he could look into her eyes. She stared up at him, her face pale and still, her slim arms sliding up to curve around his neck, drawing him closer, until their lips were but a murmur away from touching.

  He watched her nostrils flare on a quickly indrawn breath. Felt the fine trembling going on inside her, a trembling that matched his own as he whispered, “This is madness, Attica. It cannot be.”

  “No. It cannot.” She swallowed, her voice tight and raw. “Not tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after. For I will return to Châteauhaut and do what I must do. Yet for now—for this one moment out of time, it can be.”

  He saw the need in her dark brown eyes. The need and the want. With a groan, he surrendered to both.

  Pulling her up to him, he covered her mouth with his. He meant it to be a gentle kiss, a tender brushing of lips that would comfort her without frightening her. But her lips were so soft. So soft and warm and sweet as they moved beneath his.

  It was a virgin's kiss, untutored, yet unhesitant. He heard her breath leave her body in a low, keening rush, felt her hands roving over his shoulders, his back, as she pressed herself against him. He felt the warm, yielding flesh of the woman beneath the fine cloth of bliaut and kirtle, and all the desire for her he'd held in check for so long burst suddenly into flame.

  He tilted his head, slanting his mouth back and forth against hers as the kiss caught fire, became something raw and wild and all consuming. She opened her mouth to him hungrily, greedily, and he felt her quiver of shock and delight as his tongue entered her. She welcomed him, her tongue mating with his in a way that tempted him, tormented him with a need so great he was aching with it, trembling with it. Burning with it.

  The night wind moaned around them, dark and stormy and sheltering in its secrecy. She flung back her head, her eyes open wide to stare at the storm-filled sky above, her fists clenching the cloth at his shoulders as he rubbed his lips down the curve of her neck, pressed a kiss into the hollow of her throat. “Attica,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling his breath wash hot over her skin. “Je n'y puis rien …”

  His hands were at the small of her back now, holding her close, close enough that she could surely feel the heat of him, feel the hardness of him. But instead of pulling away, she pressed herself closer. And he wanted … he wanted to lay her down in a flower-strewn garden with the petals soft on her skin and her body naked to the sun and his hot gaze. He wanted to touch her warm flesh everywhere with his hands, with his lips and his tongue. He wanted to watch her neck arch, her lips part, her trembling body open to him in welcome as he entered her. He wanted … It was all wrong, what he wanted.

  “Attica … dear God.” A shudder wracked through him as he tightened his hands around her waist and set her away from him.

  She stumbled backward until she was leaning against one of the espaliered trees of the allée, her hands flung out to grasp the straight branches, her face pale and stricken, her lips swollen from his kiss, her eyes huge. Lightning flashed across the sky, vivid and jagged; the wind whipped at her hair, tossing it across her face until she had to put up one hand to hold it back.

  For a long moment, they simply stared at each other, her breath coming hard and fast, his chest heaving. He could see the pulse in her neck beating wildly, in time to his own throbbing desire. And somehow … somehow, he found his voice. “I'm sorry.”

  “No.” She shook her head violently, reaching out to him. He took her hand in a tight grip, although he did not draw her close. “Don't be sorry,” she said, her voice a raw ache. “Although it might have been better for us both, I think, if we had never met.”

  He ran his thumb along the back of her knuckles, his lips lifting in a tortured smile. “Easier, perhaps. But I would not wish for it.”

  He watched an answering smile touch her face. “No. Nor would I.”

  They stared at each other, sharing a long, silent moment. Then the sharp blast of the horn, announcing the meal, cut through the night.

  She swung her head to stare at the distant hall.

  “Come,” he said, linking his fingers with hers. “We must go.”

  She looked at him, her eyes deep and dark with pain. He saw a quiver pass through her, and it was all he could do to keep from sweeping her into his arms again and telling her that he never wanted to let her go.

  How had it happened, he wondered. It had begun so simply, as an amused liking for a brave, winning lad named Atticus. Then he'd discovered her secret and with that discovery had come a swift, unexpected rush of desire. And now, somehow, it had come to this, to this wanting that was more than liking, more than desire,
so much more than either of them had room for in their lives.

  “Yes.” Her hand clutched at his. “We must go.”

  He held her hand as they walked through the darkened garden. But at the wicket gate they moved apart, walking sedately side by side across the yard. As they turned to go up the steps, the flickering light from the mounted torches threw their shadows out before them, separate, contorted.

  And he thought, This is how we are both fated to go through our lives. Disjointed and alone.

  He knew something was wrong as soon as he entered the hall.

  The trestle tables had been set up and spread with fresh white cloths, the fire on the central hearth fed against the growing chill, the oil lamps suspended from their wall-mounted brackets lit against the night. Outside, the wind howled around the castle, billowing through the high wooden rafters of the hall and creaking the chains of the lamps until they swayed back and forth, their flickering flames casting grotesque shadows into the darkest corners. Damion glanced about, his gaze sharpening. There were too many men in the hall. Too many men simply standing around the door.

  And they were all armed.

  He pivoted warily as Renouf Blissot stepped forward, his face unsmiling, the draft-tossed light accentuating the point of his beard and the hollows beneath his cheekbones. His hand rested on his sword. “Are you Damion de Jarnac?” he asked, his voice a rough challenge.

  Ahead of him, Attica whirled about, her face white and startled in the flaring torchlight. “What is this, Uncle?”

  Renouf kept his gaze fastened on Damion. “Are you?”

  Regretting the broigne and sword he'd left in the Knights’ Tower, Damion rested his hands on his hips, and smiled. “Yes. Why?”

  Turning to the men-at-arms, Renouf gave a curt nod. “Seize him.”

  Attica lunged forward. “No!” Her uncle's hand snagged her arm, drawing her up short. “Mother of God,” she said on a gasp, struggling against him. “What is this?”