The Warrior's Maiden (The Warriors Series Book 2)

by Denise Domning

  Standing behind her sire, Adelm's features twisted into an expression that urged caution. Elianne ignored him.

  "Please, please don't send me to stay with them," she pleaded, her words fraught with fear. Rightly so. In less time than a blink of an eye, Sir Josce had gone from a handsome knight who needed her to a powerful and hostile man who craved her sire's blood.

  "That bastard offers you no threat. What you heard from him was naught but grief's ravings. Think no more on it."

  As he spoke, Reiner looked away from his daughter. It didn't work. Her father's tone told the tale. Reiner didn't believe a word he'd just spewed. Nor did he care that Sir Josce might be a threat to his daughter. He had some purpose for keeping his daughter at Coneytrop with Lord Haydon's dangerous son.

  Outrage tore through Elianne's fear. "God take you, but you've at last found a way to use me, just as you've used my sisters, my mother, and that poor wee lass who was my stepmother," she cried.

  In scheme after hare-brained money-making scheme, Reiner strove to generate wealth for himself. Of them all, the most horrid had been his second marriage to a lass younger than Elianne. Reiner had used Isabelle's dowry as collateral for another loan, only to have both wife and son die in childbed. That left Isabelle's dowry once more in the hands of her family and Reiner owing even more.

  Reiner's hand flew. Pain exploded on Elianne's jaw with the crack of flesh against flesh. She reeled, staggering sideways, her hand cupped to her burning cheek, until she collided with the guest house wall.

  Her father wrenched her around to face him. "Drop to your knees and beg my forgiveness, else I'll cut out your tongue to end your insolence." That he held his voice low testified to the depths of his rage.

  Elianne raised her head in defiance. He'd have her apology when she had his. His face twisted, his eyes narrowing in vicious purpose. But then, brutality was all he had left to shield himself from the wreck he'd made of his life.

  "Hear me now, vixen. Haydon's bastard comes to my home at my invitation. There he'll stay, with you tending to him and his lady as you would any visitor. Fail me, and I'll have your hide for it."

  "Take my skin," Elianne shot back. "What care I for my hide when you've left me without a future?"

  Again, her sire raised his arm. Before his blow could fall, Adelm laid a forestalling hand upon his master's shoulder. "My lord sheriff," he said, his voice smooth and cool, "this is neither the time nor the place for such a correction."

  Reiner whirled on his captain, no less stunned than Elianne by Adelm's intervention. It was every man's prerogative to discipline his womenfolk as he saw fit, nor would Adelm's interference prevent Elianne's beating. Once Reiner settled on using his fists, he might postpone it, but he never relented.

  "Injure Mistress du Hommet and she can hardly tend to Lady Haydon or your house." There was an odd insistence to Adelm's words.

  A new and far more painful betrayal scoured Elianne. Adelm knew! He knew how her father planned to use her, and was jogging his distracted master back onto that preassigned path.

  "You're right," Reiner agreed, his gaze shifting back to his daughter. "Listen closely, vixen. You'll tend to Lady Haydon as if she were your own accursed dam. If I hear you ignored her or in any way slighted Haydon's bastard, I'll disown you. You can beg for your daily bread before these walls, or any walls you choose. Aye, or whore if you like, with my blessing."

  His threat delivered, Reiner yanked at the body of his gown, then smoothed his fingers over the bulge of his belly as if to soothe the insult he'd just done to his gown's costly fabric. He pivoted on his heel. "I'm for my office," he called over his shoulder to Adelm as he started toward the guest house corner.

  "I'll be by to speak with you when I return from Coneytrop," Adelm called after him.

  Elianne stared at her friend. For the first time in all the years she'd known him, Adelm addressed her sire without any of the deference he usually employed.

  Reiner whirled, the surprise on his face giving way to something akin to worry. "I won't have time until late this evening. I've better things to do than waste my time in idle chatter with you." Then, as if he realized his snub lacked teeth, he rudely turned his back on Adelm and strode away without waiting for a reply.

  "You know what he intends," Elianne said, her voice trembling with the force of Adelm's betrayal. "You're helping him, when I thought there was some affection between us."

  Adelm watched her, his gaze guarded, his features expressionless. He said nothing.

  "Since you know all," she continued, "I pray you spill his purpose to me. How can a man use his daughter, fully intending to toss her aside when he's done like some bone gnawed clean?"

  Adelm's shook his head. "If you mean his purpose in inviting Haydon's widow and bastard to reside with you, then I tell you true, I don't know his plan. Would that I did." The exasperation in his voice was so honest and unexpected that it gave credence to his claim of ignorance.

  Shame rose in Elianne. How could she have doubted Adelm? She should have trusted that he had no other reason for intervening between father and daughter save his care for her.

  "What I do know," Adelm continued, all emotion banished from his expression, "as you do, even better than I, is that once your sire sets himself on a path he never leaves it. Any attempt to change him will only result in pain for you. No manipulation of yours will change that."

  "True enough," Elianne said with a soggy huff.

  Adelm touched his hand to his own jaw at the approximate spot her father's blow had bruised. "Are you hurt?"

  She moved her jaw. The pain this caused promised blackened skin, but that was the least of her worries. "Only a little," she replied, then sighed. "Oh Adelm, tell me I'll survive staying alone at Coneytrop with a knight and noblewoman who both thirst for du Hommet blood."

  Her friend only shook his head. "You make a mountain out of a molehill, little sister," he said, using the endearment he employed only when she was at her most distraught. "Your father is right to suggest the knight's threats are but grief's ravings."

  "How can you say so when you weren't there when he spewed them?" Elianne demanded, wanting desperately to be convinced.

  A quiet amused gleam took fire in Adelm's eyes, then died. "You of all people know the sort of experience I've had with those who hurt others for their own pleasure. Trust my judgment on this."

  That Elianne knew any of Adelm's past was a point of pride for her, for he claimed he hadn't shared his tales with any other. In his twelfth year and at the behest of some rich benefactor, Adelm had left the abbey which had taken him in as a foundling to become the squire of a middling knight. The man had been a filthy brute who craved the coins training Adelm generated, while despising him as the bastard he was. Adelm had tolerated much to achieve his spurs.

  "Remember," Adelm continued, "that both the noble bastard and his lady stepmother are undone by their loss."

  As he spoke, pain darkened his gaze. He swallowed and looked away, grimacing. Once again, Elianne cursed those murdering thieves.

  "I think you grieve for the little ladies as deeply as their family does," she told him, offering him a brief, comforting touch upon his arm. Adelm had known and admired the noble lasses, having made their acquaintance through Sister Amabella, from whom the young gentlewomen took many of their lessons.

  Adelm bowed his head, a shielding hand keeping his face from her view. "They trusted me, and I," his voice broke. "How did I serve them?" This last was an aching whispered comment.

  "Nay," Elianne protested quietly, "you cannot blame yourself for their deaths, not when you rode rings through the shire in pursuit of those outlaws."

  In response Adelm only shook his head. A moment later when he raised his head, the grief she knew he suffered was well-hidden beneath his usual shuttered expression. There'd be no more discussion on the matter.

  "Enough of me," he murmured. "Be content with my assurances. Haydon's folk won't harm you."

  El
ianne tried to smile, wanting to repay his confidence in her with hers. "What will you forfeit if you're wrong?"

  Adelm smiled. Rather, his lips thinned and stretched, never quite lifting. "Here's one wager I cannot lose. Should either Haydon's bastard or lady attack you, you'll fend them off with the side of your tongue you just showed your sire. Trust me, they'll retreat. What better revenge can they have on Reiner du Hommet than to leave him trapped in a house with a harridan?"

  Despite her worries, Elianne laughed. "Your compliments make my head spin, sir knight," she replied, then sighed. "Well then, let's be off. The sooner they arrive, the sooner the lady will recover from whatever ails her and the sooner they'll leave me in peace."

  "I am at your command, mistress," Adelm said, with a bend of his head.

  Even with a donkey-drawn cart to slow their pace, it took only a quarter hour to lead Haydon's men to Coneytrop once they'd exited Knabwell's city gates. Coneytrop. Rabbit's village, that's what it meant.

  The corner of Josce's mouth curled. An apt name for the place. The folk du Hommet ruled weren't quite rabbits, but they were near enough. There were less than a dozen cottages, more hovels than homes, in the tiny hamlet clinging to this overgrown track. As Josce and his men rode past, filthy children, dressed in clothing that had the shape of rags more than tunics, appeared out of the surrounding landscape or dashed from dwellings to watch. The fields that supported them and their parents spread out over the rolling hills on either side of the pathway. On one side, goodwives and geese gleaned wheat from those plots that had already known the scythe. From the other came the songs of their husbands and fathers as the menfolk harvested. That no mill or oven stood within view said that those two essentials lay within the walls of the sheriff's home, and that the hamlet dwellers paid to use them.

  As Josce's party rounded the thrust of a hill, a bare stone wall rose up, nodes of flint gleaming black in its otherwise yellowish surface. The boundary marker of the sheriff's property, for that could be its only purpose. It was no defense, being too short for that, and had neither towers nor hoarding so soldiers might stand atop it. Again, Josce's lip curled. This wasn't a manor house, but a glorified farmstead.

  He glanced at Elianne, who rode pillion on the back of Sir Adelm's horse alongside him. After her bold racing through town an hour ago, there was something laughable about her present prim posture. As if she sensed his look, she raised her head from the study of her clasped hands. Their gazes met and her eyes shifted instantly to the side. Against the possibility it was guilt that made her do this, Josce lost himself to the puzzle of the his father's death and the sheriff's invitation.

  How had a ragged band of thieves decimated a battle-trained nobleman and six war-hardened soldiers? Why hadn't these same thieves absconded with his father's armor after they'd taken the day? Why would a man invite his sworn enemy into his home? Had Elianne's earlier touches and compassion been nothing more than mummery, meant to seduce him into trusting her?

  If that were so, then what of that new and darkening bruise upon Elianne's face? That Elianne came by her injury through her sire was a given; no other man had the right to abuse her. The only way this fit into the puzzle in Josce's head was if he reasoned her sire had had to beat her to win her compliance. If that was so, then did she know why her sire so badly wanted Haydon's kin at his home?

  No answers rose from his thoughts, so he let his gaze shift to Sir Adelm, who had introduced himself as the captain of the sheriff's forces. Whatever else Sir Adelm was, he was an ugly man, made so not by his features, which were harsh for certain, but by his lifeless expression; beneath the fall of his gray hair, the man's brown eyes were without spark.

  Aye, but at least the man was comfortable. Unlike Josce, the knight had stripped off the ankle-length formal tunic he'd worn at the convent, making this short journey in only his long shirt and chausses. Sweat trickled down Josce's back. As leery as he was about going to the sheriff's house, he couldn't wait for the chance to disarm. Between his mail and the woolen garments he wore to protect his skin from his metal armor, he fair roasted.

  Ahead of him, Sir Adelm pulled his horse to a halt before Coneytrop's narrow gate. One side of the gate's double doors stood wide so the hamlet dwellers could come and go as they needed. Elianne slipped off her perch on the captain's horse, then moved forward to give the closed door a push. Iron tenons groaning, it swung inward. The instant it reached its inner stop, she lifted her skirts and dashed back out of the doorway and into the fields outside the walls.

  It was no more than Josce expected, and as much as he dreaded. He had destroyed any chance of winning her cooperation, or even her explanations, by his threat against her sire.

  "Elianne!" Sister Cecilia cried after her disappearing hostess. She looked at her elder, Sister Ada, who perched across from her on the cart's edge. "Why does she leave us when we need her to tell her household to serve us?" the young nun complained, speaking the English tongue of this country's commoners.

  That Josce both understood and spoke her tongue when so many of his peers did not lay at the feet of his nurse, the woman who served as Josce's mother after his own dam's death in his first year. She'd been of the mind that a bastard, even one with noble blood, needed to master more skills than most if he were to thrive in this world.

  "Hush, sister," Ada warned her fellow nun in that same tongue, sending a chary glance at the men behind their cart. "We'll manage. Let her go."

  Rather than follow his master's daughter into the gateway, Sir Adelm turned his horse, walking the beast back to the cart. He stopped when his mount stood nose-to-tail alongside Josce's horse. For a moment the captain eyed his fellow knight, rudely studying him, then gave a brief nod.

  "I'll leave you to Coneytrop now, sir." His voice was as emotionless as his expression. Good to his word, the sheriff's captain put his heels to his horse and cantered off without a backward glance.

  Josce looked at the cart's driver, one of the convent's menservants. "Ply your prod, good man," he commanded. "My lady stepmother needs a more comfortable resting place than a cart."

  The servant did as he was bid, the snap of a lash above the donkey's ears startling it back into motion. Behind the wee beastie the cart jerked, jostling its occupant. There was no response from his stepmother.

  Beatrice laid as one dead atop the cushion of thick blankets borrowed from the priory's guest house. Her loosened plait, hair the same coppery color that she'd passed on to all her daughters, streamed across her shoulder and onto the bedclothes beneath her. In that moment his father's widow looked no older than Emma and more vulnerable than her own sweet baby, Alice.

  "How does she fare?" he asked of Sister Cecilia, who perched on the long edge of the cart.

  "She yet sleeps," the young nun responded, speaking in proficient French despite her English roots. As she spoke, she kept her gaze fixed to the side of his face, so it seemed she addressed the air beside him.

  "Aye, and about time, from the look of her," Sister Ada added, from her seat on the cart's opposite side. "Tell me, sir knight, when did she last eat or sleep?" This

  was a chide, as if the nun thought Beatrice's stepson might have withheld food and bedding.

  Startled by her question Josce frowned in thought. "I cannot speak for her sleeping habits, for she was given her privacy whilst we journeyed. As for meals, there was food at every stop." His words died off into silence.

  Aye, there had been meals, both before Lady Beatrice left Haydon and while on the road, only now Josce couldn't recall one where she'd done more than pick at her meat. In confusion he eyed the nuns. "Are you saying Lady Haydon is only starved and exhausted?"

  Sister Cecilia cocked her head at him. "Of that we cannot yet be certain, sir. However, even if that's all that plagues her, it's hardly petty, especially when she grieves so deeply. Until her heart mends, we must guard her health carefully, indeed."

  Considering this, Josce turned his attention to Coneytrop's courtyard. As they
entered, a cock crowed the alarm, then the geese took up the warning, alerting all within the yard that there were strangers at hand. As with most farms, Coneytrop's buildings clutched together, crowding each other. There were two barns, their roofs made of thatch, sheds and lean-tos cluttering their sides. Just as Josce expected, the mill and oven stood within these walls. At the mill, a grunting and sweating ox walked a never-ending circle, turning the stone that ground grain into flour.

  Standing not far from the ox and the stone was the oven, the wide hole at the top of its great mound allowing the fragrance of baking bread to fill the air. Purring and cooing, doves circled and swooped over their cote, the shape of their home echoing the oven's mound, while bees buzzed around hives of built in the same rounded form. The stable was small, no more than four stalls, but behind it was a wide and grassy paddock, cut through by a substantial stream. It was space enough to serve the needs of Haydon's horses for the short time they might linger at this place.

  Three lads, all of them dressed in brightly colored clothing far too large for them—castoffs no doubt—appeared in the stable door. At the sight of strangers in their courtyard, the tallest of them raced across the yard. "Mama!" he shouted as he went.

  Mama, or so Josce guessed, stepped out of the kitchen, a square shed with a tiny sheltered vent set atop its roof, the opening meant to allow the fire's smoke to escape while preventing rain from dousing the precious flames upon the hearth beneath it. A darkhaired woman of substance, she wore a gown the same cut and color as Elianne's, save that an apron topped it.

  Gathered around her were two pretty and well-endowed lasses with thick dark hair, also wearing blue, and a scrawny child whose sodden and colorless attire suggested the scullery. Mama's eyes narrowed as she watched so many soldiers and an armed knight riding into her world. Snatching the girls to her, she laid protective arms about them.

  "Go fetch your father from the house," she told her lad in their native English.