Lady Betrayed
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Tamara Leigh Novels
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
THE AWAKENING Excerpt
Tamara Leigh Novels
About The Author
For new releases and special promotions, subscribe to Tamara Leigh’s mailing list: www.tamaraleigh.com
LADY BETRAYED
A Clean Read Rewrite of BLACKHEART
TAMARA LEIGH, USA Today Best-Selling Author
A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
England, 1195 ~ Lady Juliana Kinthorpe is no longer the fanciful young woman who embraced the notions of romance and chivalry nurtured at Queen Eleanor’s Court of Love. Wed to a desperately bitter man, she is forced to steal from the knight who betrayed her husband during the Holy Crusade. But even to save her sister, can she do the unthinkable? That which will cost her dignity, her heart, and perhaps her soul?
A KNIGHT TO DECEIVE
When Sir Gabriel de Vere receives an invitation to tourney from his old friend, he declines, well aware Baron Kinthorpe blames him for his laming at Acre. But the ransoms to be won prove too tempting. Accompanied by his tournament partner, Sir Erec Wulfrith, Gabriel journeys from France to England. Though he finds the fair Juliana much changed, still he is drawn to her—until he uncovers her deception and determines to take back what she stole from him.
Certes, there will be more than ransom to pay…
TAMARA LEIGH NOVELS
CLEAN READ HISTORICAL ROMANCE
~ THE FEUD: A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE SERIES ~
Baron Of Godsmere: Book One
Baron Of Emberly: Book Two
Baron of Blackwood: Book Three
~ LADY: A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE SERIES ~
Lady At Arms: Book One
Lady Of Eve: Book Two
~ BEYOND TIME: A MEDIEVAL TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE SERIES ~
Dreamspell: Book One
Lady Ever After: Book Two
~ STAND-ALONE MEDIEVAL ROMANCE NOVELS ~
Lady Of Fire
Lady Of Conquest
Lady Undaunted
Lady Betrayed
INSPIRATIONAL HISTORICAL ROMANCE
~ AGE OF FAITH: A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE SERIES ~
The Unveiling: Book One
The Yielding: Book Two
The Redeeming: Book Three
The Kindling: Book Four
The Longing: Book Five
The Vexing: Book Six
The Awakening: Book Seven
INSPIRATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
~ HEAD OVER HEELS: STAND-ALONE ROMANCE NOVELS ~
Stealing Adda
Perfecting Kate
Splitting Harriet
Faking Grace
~ SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT: A CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE SERIES ~
Leaving Carolina: Book One
Nowhere, Carolina: Book Two
Restless in Carolina: Book Three
OUT-OF-PRINT GENERAL MARKET TITLES
Warrior Bride 1994: Bantam Books (Lady At Arms rewrite)
*Virgin Bride 1994: Bantam Books (Lady Of Eve rewrite)
Pagan Bride 1995: Bantam Books (Lady Of Fire rewrite)
Saxon Bride 1995: Bantam Books (Lady Of Conquest rewrite)
Misbegotten 1996: HarperCollins (Lady Undaunted rewrite)
Unforgotten 1997: HarperCollins (Lady Ever After rewrite)
Blackheart 2001: Dorchester Leisure (Lady Betrayed rewrite)
*Virgin Bride is the sequel to Warrior Bride; Pagan Pride and Saxon Bride are stand-alone novels
www.tamaraleigh.com
LADY BETRAYED Copyright © 2017 by Tammy Schmanski, P.O. Box 1298, Goodlettsville, TN 37070, tamaraleigh@comcast.net
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogues are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1-942326-27-4
All rights reserved. This book is a copyrighted work and no part of it may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or any information storage and retrieval system) without permission in writing from the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the author’s permission is illegal and punishable by law. Thank you for supporting authors’ rights by purchasing only authorized editions.
Cover Design: Ravven
At last, a story for Maxen, my littlest love.
May your path be built upon lessons learned
and laid with dreams come true.
~ Blackheart dedication, 2001
PROLOGUE
Barony of Wyverly
England, 1187
Son of a whore.
Over and over the words resounded through Gabriel. Consumed his being. Inflamed his soul. Quaking, he turned from the Baron of Wyverly and pressed his hands to the sill.
In the bailey below, the garrison stood at their posts, castle folk went about their duties, and a large cat stalked its next meal. As befitting the burial two days past, the mood was solemn, and as different from that which tore through Gabriel as a legitimate child was from a misbegotten one.
Son of a whore. Whoreson.
He ached to bloody his knuckles. Were he alone, he would make an enemy of the first thing come to hand.
“I am sorry,” said the man at his back. “You have been as a son to me.”
Gabriel swung around. “I am your son!”
Arnault de Vere’s gaze wavered. “The Lord knows, I wish it were so.”
“It is!”
“Perhaps, but Giles shall succeed me.”
The third son, whose strong De Vere looks could not be questioned. It was the same for the fourth son, nine-year-old Conard. In contrast, Gabriel and Blase favored their mother’s family. The two eldest were tall, big-boned, dark-haired, and possessing faces so plain as to defy description. But Gabriel had one thing Blase did not—their father’s blue eyes. Still, it would have no bearing on his claim to legitimacy.
“Did Mother…” Such bitter disappointment there could be no question her blood coursed his veins. “Did she say I am of another man?”
Sunlight slanting through the window lit the silver amid his father’s thick hair and beard. “She did not.”
A muscle at his jaw spasmed. “On her deathbed, she confessed only to cuckolding me ere your conception. And afterward.”
It was no secret the Lady of Wyverly had engaged in adulterous behavior during the latter years of her marriage. In the summer of Gabriel’s tenth year, he had happened on her in the arms of a man not his father.
He glanced at the canopied bed against the far wall of the lord’s solar and recalled what he had seen there. How he had loathed Clemencia de Vere. And now it was known her indiscretions went further back, he was gripped with something so terrible it made that loathing seem mild.
“Then she did not know if it was you or another who sired me?”
“I did not ask.”
Gabriel’s stride scattered the herbed rushes, causing the scent of mint to spring upon the air. He halted before his father. “Why did you not ask?”
“Her confession was made to the priest. She was unaware I heard.”
Gabriel’s fists shook with the effort to keep them at his sides. “For this you set me aside?”
The baron’s mouth tightened. “When I leave this world, I shall do so knowing Wyverly is in the hands of a De Vere, just as it has been for over a hundred years.”
The self-control Gabriel’s knighthood training demanded of him containing the tempest, he silently cursed the woman who birthed him. Because of her, he would be set out like a flea-infested dog, everything that was to have been his forfeited—title, lands, betrothal, the son who would one day succeed him.
Knowing if he stayed he would do something he would regret, he stepped around his father.
“You will be provided for,” the baron said with such desperation his voice was hardly recognizable.
Gabriel turned. “On the chance you are wrong?”
Arnault de Vere rarely showed the depth of his emotions, but pain and regret grooved his brow and convulsed his mouth. “You are a son any man would be proud of. Though you may not be of my body, it does not change my feelings for you.”
“Of course it does! It changes all.”
“Not if you allow me to provide for you.”
Gabriel had no intention of taking the scraps his father offered—and despite all that was unholy, Arnault de Vere was his father. Still, he said, “What do you propose?”
Hope glimmered in the older man’s eyes. “When your training for knighthood is complete a year hence, I shall give Shard Castle into your keeping.”
The greater of Wyverly’s lesser castles. Had his future not once held all, he would grasp at the opportunity, but prideful anger undid many a man. “What would you have me say to those who ask why I am reduced to a vassal? My father suspects me of being a whoreson?”
Briefly, Arnault de Vere closed his eyes. “Say you do not want the responsibility of ruling so vast a demesne.”
“So all shall know me for a liar?”
“I wish it could be”—his father’s voice caught—“otherwise.”
As much as Gabriel wanted to renounce his sincerity, he could not. Always more was demanded of the eldest son, but never had he doubted his sire loved him as best he could with a heart scarred by a woman’s infidelities.
“Why did you not send her away, Father? Why did you allow her to dishonor you time and again?”
The baron averted his gaze.
Gabriel was not the only one suffocated by pain. Beyond all foolishness, Arnault de Vere had loved his beautiful wife.
“Take what I offer, Gabriel. Still you will be a lord.”
And vassal to his younger brother. Gut twisting as if to wring the life from him, Gabriel said, “Do you not fear I will seek Giles’s death?”
The baron jerked, stared, then heaved a sigh that so lowered his shoulders he seemed ages older. “I know you, Gabriel. You are angry, but in time—”
“You do not know me! Did you, you would not squander your breath. Keep Shard Castle. I want naught from you.”
His father caught his arm. “Think! You are twenty years old. What else is there for you?”
Gabriel looked down. Though Arnault de Vere was not a small man, his son was larger. Perhaps another had sired him.
He rejected the thought. He was a De Vere. “I shall complete my training at Wulfen Castle.” That imposing fortress where he had spent twelve years laboring to become one of England’s greatest defenders. And where he would earn a coveted Wulfrith dagger that would ever proclaim him worthy. “After Lord Wulfrith knights me, I will live the life you deal me this day.”
He pulled free and continued to the door, paused. “What of Blase? Will you tell him he is misbegotten? Also disavow him?”
Looking older yet where he stood at the center of the solar, the baron said, “There is no need. He is destined for the Church.”
So Blase was though he struggled to reconcile his hands to prayer rather than the sword. Regardless of the effort Friar Jerome expended, his pupil had yet to accept it was the Bible with which he would battle the ills of the world.
Gabriel nearly inquired into his sister’s fate but set his teeth. Five-year-old Avice no more resembled the baron than Gabriel and Blase. But unlike her brothers, she was blessed with a pleasing combination of Clemencia de Vere’s looks and those of the man who sired her, whomever that might be. No reason to cast more speculation on the little girl than that what had surrounded her since birth.
Gabriel threw open the door, traversed the corridor, and descended the stairs. As he stepped into the great hall, he was struck by the heat pulsing from the hearth. He stopped to stare at the cavernous fireplace, then looked to splendid tapestries hung ceiling to floor, plastered walls painted with bold colorful patterns, and the dais upon which an immense table sat.
There being no question all this would be his, he had never considered it through the eyes of one without hope of attaining such wealth. Now for the sins of his mother, he looked upon his home as if a stranger.
“What is it, Gabriel?” Blase called.
He swept his gaze to his brothers gathered to the left of the hearth. Upon the death of Clemencia de Vere a sennight past, Giles and Conard had also been summoned from the households of those from whom they received knighthood training. Blase was the only son who resided upon Wyverly. Were he not to commit his life to the Church, he would now be a squire.
Giles stood. “What did Father say?”
Gabriel looked from his younger brother’s golden hair to his distinctive brow, from modest cheekbones to a generous mouth. There was no doubt from whose loins he sprang, but as tempted as Gabriel was to resent his brother for displacing him, he could not. The boy was barely twelve—an innocent. Clemencia de Vere was the guilty one.
“Tell us,” young Conard entreated.
That their mother was more a harlot than thought? Make them despise her as much as he did? Nay, let Arnault de Vere do the telling.
Though it was two years since all four brothers were together, and Gabriel had been able to spend little time with them, he could not bear to pass another moment here. “I am leaving.”
Blase rose. “This day?”
“Now.”
“But it is a sennight ere you must return to Wulfen.”
“That has changed.”
Followed by Giles and Conard, Blase crossed to his side. “Why, Gabriel?”
He considered each. No matter how many times Clemencia de Vere had strayed, these were his brothers. No matter how great his anger, he would not loose it upon them. “Father will explain.”
Minutes later, he bent low in the saddle and sped over the land before the castle. Only when leagues separated him from the home he had lost did he dismount and let his emotions make a boy of him.
In the sight of God, tears spilled, blood pounded in his ears, and every muscle strained as he cursed Clemencia de Vere and the men who had abetted her in cuckolding his father. When he finally exhausted himself, the setting sun cast long shadows across the land.
Kneeling beside a stream, he splashed water over his face and vowed he wou
ld never be made a fool like his father. Would never fawn over a woman as his friend, Bernart, fawned over his betrothed.
As he sat back on his heels, a vision of the fair Juliana rose before him. He had met her months past when Bernart persuaded him to pause at her home following completion of a charge given them by the Lord of Wulfen Castle. Though young—no longer a girl but not yet a woman—he had liked her. Until she began espousing courtly love.
The fanciful notions of romance and chivalry her mother had learned at Queen Eleanor’s Court of Love and passed to her daughter sickened him. Based on the pure and noble love of a man for an unattainable lady—be she wed, of higher rank, or physically distanced—the concept of unconsummated love was dangerous, as evidenced by those who went beyond the bounds of bittersweet suffering. Women like Clemencia de Vere who had served the queen prior to wedding Arnault de Vere.
Gabriel had done his best to hold his tongue, but the moment Bernart read his discomfort, the effort was doomed. Ever loath to let pass an opportunity to tease his friend, Bernart had encouraged his betrothed, reducing her to fluttering lashes, gasping smiles, and chest-clutching sighs.
Gabriel had been like dice in his friend’s hands. A grunt of disgust here, a dissenting comment there, and soon the air between Juliana and him was strained. By the time Bernart and he departed, what had been fairly affable had become mutual dislike.
When Juliana grew into her woman’s body, would she prove no better than the one who had borne him—selfish, deceitful, wanton? If she continued to believe it a beautiful thing to steal time from the blessings in one’s life to yearn for the forbidden, she could easily become a Clemencia de Vere.
God help Bernart Kinthorpe.