Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set

by Jill Elaine Hughes

  Sabina had sent a messenger off on horseback to the abbey at Glastonbury three days ago. She’d given the messenger—a pageboy from her father’s stable staff—a gold brooch from the cache of jewels she’d inherited from her mother to buy his cooperation and silence, along with a sealed scroll in Latin for the abbess explaining why she had no choice but to take the veil. Sabina had thrown in a promise of more of her mother’s jewels in her letter in the hopes that the abbess wouldn’t reveal Sabina’s whereabouts to either Sabina’s father—or even worse, the King—once she was safely inside its cloistered walls. If all went as planned, the abbess would be waiting for her, habit and wimple in hand, when she arrived.

  Sabina planned to take her vows immediately upon crossing the threshold of the abbey. Lord Reginald might be a filthy Norman, but he was still a good Catholic (or at least, he pretended to be), and Sabina knew that he would never violate a sworn woman of the cloth, betrothal or no betrothal.

  Lady Sabina of Angwyld was a proud Saxon noblewoman in a land infested with Saxon-hating, murderous Normans. At only twenty years old, she’d known nothing but Norman rule—William the Conqueror had already been king for almost twenty years on the day she was born. Her very existence had always been perilous. Only the combination of her mother’s half-Norman blood and her father’s political cunning had kept both the Angwyld lands and the Angwyld family and title safe from Norman peril. But now William the Conqueror’s docile son William II was dead, and his younger brother the ruthless, conniving, and vengeful King Henry ruled in his stead—having just stolen the crown from his brother Richard, who was away on the Crusades. King Henry had vowed to wipe the last of the Saxons from the land, and Sabina’s father, the Duke of Angwyld—one of the very last Saxon nobles still standing—had his back up against the wall. In a last-ditch effort to save the Angwyld land and title, her father had promised his eldest daughter in marriage to another powerful, ruthless Norman—Lord Reginald de Guillaume.

  Sabina was the eldest daughter in question. And she’d frankly rather spend the rest of her life in a stone cloister, whipping herself raw with a metal-studded penitence whip while she prayed in Latin and wove rough cloth by hand for her meager clothes than give herself in marriage to a filthy, old, humpbacked—not to mention evil and murderous—Norman who didn’t even speak a single word of English. She loved her father and the Angwyld lands dearly, but there were some sacrifices she just wasn’t prepared to make. Not for Angwyld, not for her father, not for anyone.

  A miserable and lonely life in the abbey was better than an even more miserable and lonely life as the wife of a Norman.

  Sabina kicked Arthur with the silver spurs she’d stolen from her father’s personal stables. She’d stolen the fine leather saddle she rode upon from him, too. The knowledge that she’d betrayed her father on so many levels made her head ache, even made her sick to her stomach with guilt. She would send her father a letter apologizing for all that she had done once she was safely inside the abbey walls. Then she would ask the abbey priest for absolution, and request the most severe penitence possible for her lies, theft, and disobedience. Then she would ask every nun in the cloister to pray for her mortal soul.

  And she would ask them to pray for her father, too. For Sabina knew that it wouldn’t just be herself who would suffer from her decision. Her father would suffer too. Her father, her sisters, all their servants and vassals, all the peasants who worked the Angwyld lands—they would all finally be crushed under the iron fists of Norman rule.

  For almost thirty years, Angwyld has escaped the fate of the rest of Norman England. But now its time of relative peace and prosperity was over. Once she stepped inside the abbey walls, Angwyld would become hell on earth. And it would be nobody’s fault but her own.

  Lady Sabina of Angwyld blinked back tears as she spurred Arthur to canter even faster. Her fate awaited her at Glastonbury, if only she could make it there alive. But a tiny part of her wondered if she and everyone she loved might just be better off dead.

  Chapter 2

  Angwyld Castle, later the same day.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” boomed the Duke. “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!”

  “Calmly, Your Grace,” soothed Sir Egbert, the Duke of Angwyld’s lead vassal. “’Tis no use to become so upset.”

  The Duke stomped his armored boot against the stone floor, then swept his plate and goblet off the table. Wine pooled at his feet, and the hounds pounced upon the untouched remains of his midday meal. “’Tis every use, Sir Egbert! My eldest daughter is missing from the castle! My eldest daughter who is bound to marry Lord Reginald in less than forty-eight hours, no less! Lord Reginald will have my head—and your head, and everyone in Angwyld’s heads—on a silver platter if he and my daughter do not wed!”

  Sir Egbert sighed. “Please don’t misunderstand me, Your Grace. I of all your vassals understand the gravity of the situation. I am merely reminding Your Grace that you—ahem—have a tendency not to think clearly when you are overwrought. And this situation calls for clear thinking, Your Grace. The clearest thinking of all.”

  The Duke took a long, slow, deep breath. “Of course you are right, Sir Egbert. At times I wonder if you know me too well.”

  “’Tis my bound honor and duty, Your Grace.”

  The Duke motioned for his servants to leave the room. The guards and pages all turned on their heels in perfect unison and left, bolting the heavy plank doors behind them. Once they were safely alone, the Duke turned to his most trusted vassal. “Please, Sir Egbert, sit down with me by the fire.”

  The Duke of Angwyld—a massive, grizzled tree trunk of a man who always wore a chainmail tunic, armored shoulder and leg plates, and metal gauntlets for protection, even while sleeping—placed a heavy hand on his sworn lieutenant’s shoulder and guided him towards one of the heavy carved-oak chairs that sat before the stone fireplace. Sir Egbert sat down first, then the Duke sat opposite him, his heavy mail rattling against the ancient, smokestained wood. “We must make a plan to find my daughter and bring her home,” he finally said. “And I’m afraid that plan must include Lord Reginald.”

  Sir Egbert blanched. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Your Grace?”

  The Duke sighed heavily and wrung his gauntleted hands. “I’m afraid it’s better than the alternative.”

  “And pray, what would the alternative be, Your Grace?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Now it was Sir Egbert’s turn to wring his hands. “I hope it would not be as bad as what befell Lords Aethelwulf and Elrod when they refused Lord Reginald’s terms.”

  “No, it would be worse.”

  Sir Egbert went white as lambswool. “Truly, Your Grace?” Neither man spoke aloud of what had happened to those two men, but it was common knowledge that Aethelwulf and Elrod’s estates had been burned to the ground, their lands poisoned with lime and salt, and their women and children beheaded, strung from oak trees, and set afire. Nobody knew for sure what had happened to Aethelwulf and Elrod themselves, but there were rumors upon the land that Lord Reginald had had them both roasted on spits and then fed their carcasses to his peasants. “What, pray tell, could be worse than that?”

  “If there’s a way in Christendom to do worse, Lord Reginald would know,” the Duke sighed. “Lord Reginald spent some time in the Holy Lands during the first Crusade, and lived among the Saracens for a time as a prisoner. The heathens taught him all manner of ungodly evil and mayhem, and once he returned to France, and then England, he learned to use the evil of the Saracens against us. He serves his Norman masters well in that regard.”

  “Indeed, Your Grace. And I daresay Lord Reginald is by far the most brutal of all the brutal Normans. I wonder how he never became their King himself.”

  The Duke scoffed. “Those prettyfaced Normans would never disgrace themselves with a humpbacked, blacktoothed King. They value their looks far too highly. Prissy milquetoasts, all of them.”

  “And yet they managed to conquer us, Y
our Grace.”

  The Duke spat into the fire. “Only because their soldiers fought on horseback. It wasn’t a fair fight. Put a Norman in straight hand-to-hand combat with a Saxon, the Saxon wins every time.”

  “And yet, a wise Saxon such as yourself still knows how to fight on horseback,” Sir Egbert remarked.

  “Aye, ‘tis the only thing that has kept these lands safe all these years. My father tried for years to convince King Edward, and then his worthless son Harald to create a cavalry division in the royal army, but neither of them would hear a word of it. And then Harald paid the price with his own head.”

  “Far more than his own head, Your Grace,” Sir Egbert observed. “The whole of England paid that price for him.”

  “There is no man so blind as he who will not see,” the Duke remarked. “So said Sophocles of Oedipus.”

  Sir Egbert was bewildered. “Oedipus, Your Grace?”

  The Duke laughed awkwardly. “Never you mind, Sir Egbert. Just some book nonsense that I know you footsoldiers can’t be bothered with. You really should learn to read. It’s never too late, you know.”

  Sir Egbert blushed. “I can read English, Your Grace. Enough to get by, anyway.”

  “Ah, but yet you have no Latin, no Greek. No man is truly educated without both.” The Duke rubbed his hands together. “But that’s for another time, another place. We must get a message to Lord Reginald as soon as possible. Know you where he might be at present?”

  “My scouts reported that he left his lands at Essex six days ago, and if he continued on his usual route, that would put him somewhere in South Somerset at present.”

  “Good. I shall dispatch a message in my own hand for your two best scouts to deliver by horseback to South Somerset. Stick to the high road, and likely you’ll meet him and his travel guard upon it. We shall inform him that my daughter is missing, and request that he use his own personal army to locate her and guarantee her safe return in time for their marriage. That way, we’re making it clear in both word and deed that Lord Reginald already has the upper hand where my daughter is concerned. I have already drafted the scroll.” He took the sealed roll of vellum from inside his doublet. “I entrust this matter to you, Sir Egbert. You and no one else. Complete the task as you see fit using whatever men from your garrison you choose, but for your sake and mine, it must be done exactly as I say.”

  Sir Egbert nodded. “It shall be done, Your Grace. And if I may say so, Your Grace, giving Lord Reginald the upper hand in this matter is a most prudent decision on your part.”

  “It’s the only possible decision I could make, Egbert, that would keep both you and me alive,” the Duke growled. “Not to mention poor Sabina.”

  Chapter 3

  Base camp of Lord Reginald de Guillaume’s traveling garrison, on the road from Somerset to Angwyld, the next day.

  Lord Reginald Guillaume sat sipping warm sheep’s milk in his private field pavilion. A torrential English downpour hammered the already-soaked oilcloth ceiling overhead, and a brutally cold English wind threatened to tip over the whole flimsy structure. Rain dripped through the old, worn fabric onto his wrinkled bald head and soaked all of his provisions.It was a typical early-spring storm in the West Country that coated everything with cold, misery, and damp.

  Lord Reginald had been in England for more than thirty years, but he was still unaccustomed to English weather. It reminded him of a whore with long-unwashed underclothes. His humpback ached and throbbed even more than normal during a cold rain, which now that he was in his sixth decade he could always feel deep down in the meat of his weak, gnarled bones. The horrid English weather was the main reason he’d never bothered to learn the language. That, and the fact that if the Normans had their way, English would be as dead a language as Old Latin and Ancient Greek were within another fifty years.

  Of all the many climes where he’d lived in his long life, Lord Reginald liked the hot, dry desert Holy Lands the best. It was the only place in the world where his deformity didn’t pain him, the only place in the world where other men and women didn’t look upon his twisted body with disgust. The Moslem Saracens were an often strange and enigmatic people, but they were also enlightened and civilized. Even the most refined noble Frenchman was an animal compared to a Saracen.

  Europeans might call the Saracens degenerate heathens, but the Saracens called Europeans illiterate, small-minded barbarians. And only the Saracens were right.

  The rain and wind pummeled the pavilion’s cloth walls that much more because Lord Reginald had directed his men to make camp on a high, barren hillside overlooking the King’s highway. An experienced military tactician, Lord Reginald knew better than to give the enemy the high ground—even if there were no enemies in sight. In Lord Reginald’s world, everyone was a potential enemy, even his own men, even his own family and friends. England might have been under Norman rule for almost forty years now, but it was still a conquered land. And in a conquered land, no one could be trusted.

  Lord Reginald’s field pavilion was faded blue oilcloth decorated with the French royal fleur-de-lis. Which might make a naïve onlooker think he was a member of the French royal family, but nothing could be further from the truth. Lord Reginald was a common mercenary by birth, the illegitimate son of a corrupt Catholic bishop and a common prostitute. The Church had paid handsomely for his education (and to keep his true parentage a secret), then had sent him out into the world with nothing but his sword and his wits to earn his living. He’d earned his title thanks to a combination of successful military service and sheer cunning, had amassed lands and a vast fortune thanks to both.

  Lord Reginald had purchased his old French royal field pavilion secondhand a number of years earlier from a minor French noble whose lands bordered Paris. He’d done it partially as a joke, and partially to intimidate his Norman rivals into thinking he had royal blood. Lord Reginald could afford far better accommodations these days, but he didn’t see the need to expend his hard-won gold and silver on fancy field gear. Nobles who travelled about the countryside lugging impractical satin and velvet field pavilions and wearing cloth of gold did so only because they were desperate to impress.Lord Reginald didn’t need to impress anyone. His reputation preceded him wherever he went. And if his reputation didn’t impress someone, the cool steel edge of his sword usually did.

  He emptied the wooden tankard of sheep’s milk and handed it to a servant. “Bring me my minstrels,” he ordered the servant in French. The servant stared at him blankly, not understanding. Lord Reginald gave the order again, louder this time. Still no response. Exasperated, he finally remembered that most of the low-ranking servants that travelled with him were conquered Saxons who spoke only coarse English. He made motions indicating that the lowly Saxon bring him his head footman, who was Norman, and therefore civilized.

  His head footman Pierre appeared a moment later. “Oui, mon seigneur?”

  “Pierre, what news from the road?” Lord Reginald asked him in French.

  “Rien, sir,” Pierre replied. “Nothing of importance in from any of our scouts. Only this scroll from your future father-in-law, arrived about an hour ago on horseback. The messengers carrying it said it was urgent, but when pressed did not know what it contained. Most likely just wedding wishes, Sire.”

  Lord Reginald looked at him sternly. “Mais non. It is indeed an urgent message. The Duke of Angwyld would never dispatch messengers in this horrid weather otherwise. Read me the message, Pierre.”

  Pierre broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. He scanned the carefully inscribed words, but did not understand them. The letters were not Roman, but some strange hieroglyphics. “It seems to be written in a secret code of some kind, Sire,” he sputtered.

  “Give it to me,” Lord Reginald snapped, and snatched the vellum from Pierre’s hands. He glanced at the note and chuckled. “He has written it in Greek, likely for secrecy. The Duke of Angwyld is a very learned man, which makes him unique on this island of ignoramuses.” But when he s
tarted reading the letter in earnest, his mirthful expression quickly melted into something angry and sinister. “She is gone!” he boomed. “My beloved betrothed is gone!”

  Pierre rushed to his lord’s side, his whole body quaking with fear “What do you mean, Sire? Our spies at Angwyld Castle last reported that Her Ladyship is alive and well, and ready to become your bride.”

  “The spies were wrong,” Lord Reginald sputtered. “Clearly something was afoot which they did not detect.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Sire?”

  Lord Reginald waved the scroll in Pierre’s face. “Apparently Her Ladyship is missing, whether by flight or capture it is not known. The Duke dispatched this message to inform me of this dire emergency.” The grizzled old humpback grabbed his heavy wooden cane and used it to pry his misshapen body out of his chair. Once he was upright, Lord Reginald’s strange-yet-powerful physique was still enough to make Pierre quake in his boots, especially now that the old man was about to explode with rage. Pierre might have been Lord Reginald’s faithful servant for almost twenty years, but that didn’t mean there weren’t times that he didn’t fear for his life in his master’s presence. And now was definitely one of those times.

  “What shall we do, my lord?” Pierre asked, not even trying to hide the fear in his voice. Lord Reginald was known to kill the bearers of bad news, after all. “Whatever I can do to be of service, it shall be my honor to complete.”

  His master crumpled the scroll into his fist. “Bring me the captain of my mounted guard,” he snarled. “Bring me Robert de Tyre.”

  Robert de Tyre was at the south end of Lord Reginald’s camp, tending the traveling garrison’s horses. Lord Reginald maintained a fine collection of both Arabian and English steeds, the former of which were descendents of a herd of horses that his lord and master had acquired thanks to the benevolence of his former Saracen captors. The Arabians were all magnificent animals, even when you factored in some of the coarser English horseblood that had mixed itself in with their fine Eastern bloodlines over several generations of foaling. Try as his master might to keep the bloodlines separate, a stallion was still a stallion, and there was no stopping a stallion from mounting a mare in heat, be she Arabian or English. Some things were just part of the laws of nature.