The Recruit

by Monica McCarty

  Darkness had fallen while she was in the church, and as they rode down the hill into town Mary started to pay more attention to their surroundings. She’d never been in town this late at night, and there was an unsavory element that seemed to have replaced the merchants and tradesmen of the day.

  Sir John must have sensed her unease. “You have nothing to fear. You are safe with me. No one would dare attack the king’s men.”

  Mary wasn’t so sure. Many of the rough-looking men they passed looked as if they would dare quite a lot. But she was somewhat relieved to see a number of women in the crowd as well.

  The crowds were getting thicker on the high street. It was almost as if something big were about to happen. A performance, perhaps? Some kind of festivity?

  Her suspicions were confirmed when she heard a large cry go up, the roar of a crowd exploding in applause. “What is that?” she asked.

  Sir John’s eyes narrowed as he held his hand up for his men to stop. He scanned the row of tall buildings and narrow wynds. It wasn’t hard to see where the noise was coming from. There was a large pool of light shining from down one of the wynds. “I don’t know, but we are going to find out.” He held his hand out. When she hesitated, he added, “This won’t take long.”

  Somewhat curious and bolstered by the presence of Felton’s half-dozen armed and mailed men-at-arms, Mary allowed herself to be helped down, careful to protect her stomach to keep anyone from learning her secret. As with her first child, Mary had put on a relatively small amount of weight. In her heavy gowns, she looked more plump than pregnant. Although with the child due in less than two month’s time, she was much more uncomfortable of late and easily tired.

  Another cry went up as they entered the wynd. It was dark between the two buildings, but there was enough light coming from ahead of them to enable them to see.

  As they drew near, she could see Sir John’s mouth harden.

  “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “It’s as I expected.”

  It didn’t take her long to figure out what he meant. By the time they reached the source of the light, everything was perfectly clear. The narrow wynd opened up before them into the space of a small square courtyard. A building had once stood there, she realized, and in the bowels of that building two men were fighting.

  Like a circle of fire, torches had been hung on the structures around the makeshift pit, casting the entire area in blazing light. The crowd was dispersed around the pit on a haphazard mix of old walls, stones, and planks of wood set out like stands. People were also watching from the tops and windows of the adjoining buildings.

  “A clandestine tourney?” she asked.

  Sir John nodded. “The king will be very pleased to hear what we’ve discovered. He’s been trying to put an end to all the unsanctioned combat tourneys in the Borders—if you can call the crude brawling of common ruffians a tourney.”

  She’d heard of the illegal brawls before but had never seen one. They were essentially a melee of two. A no-holds-barred, no-rules fight that was supposed to end when one person uttered “craven,” but often ended in death.

  The crowd was chanting something. It sounded like “ice.” Curious, she edged forward a few feet, trying to get a better look at the contestants.

  She gasped in horror. Both men were helmed but stripped to the chest, wearing only their braies and chausses. Sweat and blood stained their broad, muscled chests as they attacked each other with a ferocity she’d never witnessed before. There was nothing elegant, nothing noble. It was a contest of raw strength and brutality. Each man wielded one crude weapon in addition to his fists. The taller and more leanly muscled of the two had a crude-looking hammer; the heavier-set man, with a neck as thick as his head, held a stave with a mace. Unlike in regular tournaments, the weapons were not blunted.

  The sight of such brutality alone would have made her knees go weak. But that wasn’t what made her stomach lurch to the ground and her legs turn to jelly. Despite the steel helms they wore to mask their identities, Mary instantly recognized the taller of the two men as her husband. She would know those arms and chest anywhere.

  Any relief she might have felt from discovering that he wasn’t in some tawdry tavern with a woman was overwhelmed by the more immediate concern of the danger he was in both from the man trying to kill him and from Sir John, were it discovered that he was fighting in an illegal tournament.

  The question of why he was fighting here and not with the other English soldiers floated to the back of her mind to be answered later. She had to get Sir John and his men out of here.

  She spun around on her heel to insist that they leave, accidentally bumping into the man next to her. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been of any circumstance, but at that moment something happened in the pit that caused everyone to lurch forward. Unbalanced, as much from the movement as from her pregnant stomach, Mary cried out and started to fall.

  She would have fallen backward into the pit a dozen feet below if Sir John hadn’t caught her.

  She was still leaning toward the pit, her arms latched around his neck, when their eyes met.

  His were stunned. “You’re pregnant!”

  Something was off tonight. For nearly a month Kenneth had fought twice—sometimes three times—a week in the Pits of Hell, as the secret combat tourney was called. He knew it was risky to fight in the illegal tournaments, but Felton’s taunts had only worsened as the weeks passed, and his control where his wife was concerned was stretched to the breaking point. The fighting had provided both the outlet he needed to take the edge off his anger and a means of preparing himself for the upcoming war and his place in the Guard. Ironically, it was MacKay’s hidden-identity appearance in the Highland Games that had inspired him.

  He was undefeated. A champion and a crowd favorite. Normally, the shouts of Ice—the war name he’d jestingly given himself as a reminder of why he was here—invigorated him. Got his blood rushing and made his muscles flare with anticipation.

  But not tonight. Tonight he felt none of his usual excitement and bloodlust. He exchanged punishing blow after blow with his opponent, more with an eye to ending the fight as soon as possible than to savoring victory.

  His thoughts weren’t on the fight but on the conversation earlier with Mary. She’d been trying to tell him something, but he’d been too focused on what he needed to do to listen. Time was running out, and he had to get her to safety. Removing her from the castle would be the first step. But of course, she hadn’t understood. How could she, when she didn’t know the truth?

  Distracted, his head snapped back when his opponent’s meaty fist connected with his jaw. A swing of his mace followed. Narrowly evading the sharp points in his ribs, Kenneth realized he’d better focus on the thick-necked brute doing his best to kill him.

  He’d just landed a rib-crushing blow of his hammer on his opponent’s side and followed it with a leaping kick that sent him careening to the ground, when a cry pricked his senses. A woman’s cry.

  His gaze shot in the direction of the sound. He saw a flash of movement—a woman lurched toward the pit before being pulled back by a man.

  Not just any woman. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t possible. But every flared nerve ending in his body told him it was his woman.

  He didn’t know whether it was the delayed panic of almost seeing her tumble into the pit, knowing that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop it, that made him snap or the fact that the man who did stop it—and who now held her in his bloody arms too tightly and for too long—was Felton.

  He looked as if he were about to kiss her, damn it.

  Catapulting out of the pit by stepping on a piece of the broken wall, he launched himself at Felton. “Get your hands off her!”

  Felton looked up at him in shocked recognition.

  “Kenneth, no!” Mary cried, extracting herself from the other man’s embrace.

  But he was too far gone to heed
her plea. His frustration. His heart-knotting confusion of feelings for his wife. His fear that he might lose her. Seeing the man who’d been taunting him for weeks with his hands on her. All came together in one mind-numbing rage.

  The bastard was going to have the fight he’d begged for. One fist connected with the steel of Felton’s helm, the other with his mail-clad gut.

  Felton’s men would have rushed forward to the knight’s aid, but someone in the crowd shouted “soldiers” and the crowd surged toward the wynd. Thinking they meant to attack, Felton’s men drew their swords, and then did find themselves under attack as the crowd reacted to the threat.

  Felton tried to grab his sword as well, but Kenneth anticipated his movement and knocked it from his hand.

  Felton was fully armored in chain mail and Kenneth was naked to the waist, protected only by the steel of his helm. But it didn’t matter. There was nothing knightly about the way Kenneth fought. He used his fists, elbows, legs, feet—whatever he need to win. Felton used his shield—until Kenneth wrenched it from his hands—his dirk, whatever he could get his hands on, but his weapons were no match for Kenneth’s fierce skill and brutish strength. He’d been hit so many times the past few weeks that his body had become almost immune to pain. In less than a minute, Kenneth had the victory he’d been craving for months. He had Felton on his back, pinning him to the ground with his foot pressed against his throat.

  “Put your hands on my wife again and I’ll kill you.”

  Felton’s eyes burned hatred through the steel of his helm. He wanted to say something, but Kenneth’s foot prevented it.

  The crowd had given them a wide circle, but he was aware of only one gaze on him. Mary stared at him in wide-eyed shock, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Please,” she said, her soft voice soothing him like a balm. “I’m fine. It’s over. He was helping me.”

  Kenneth clenched his jaw, primitive instincts warring with honor. He wanted to kill Felton, but just enough rationality penetrated the haze. The bastard might have been holding her too long and too close, but he’d saved her. Kenneth had plenty of reasons for killing the man, but this wasn’t one of them.

  He lifted his foot off Felton’s neck and stepped back. Heedless of the blood and grime, Mary raced into his arms, burying her face against his chest. His arms automatically closed around her. It felt so perfect, so right, that at that moment he recognized the truth.

  Concentrating on soothing his sobbing wife, he watched while Felton struggled to his feet.

  “I’ll see you thrown in the pit prison for this,” Felton seethed, rubbing his neck.

  Kenneth’s gaze narrowed. “If you value your place as Percy’s champion, you won’t say a bloody thing.”

  “Clandestine combat is illegal.”

  “With war coming, do you think Edward will imprison one of his best knights for long? Especially after it becomes known that I bested Percy’s champion? Perhaps I shall choose to have my trial by challenging you to a wager of battle and we can let the entire castle witness your dethroning.”

  Felton’s face was livid with rage. “You bastard! What happened to your arm injury? Why are you fighting here but not at practice? What are you hiding?”

  Kenneth swore inwardly but appeared nonchalant. “This is part of my recovery. I was ensuring that I was back to full strength before we met in the yard.” He smiled. “But I guess we’ve established that I’m ready. This is a different type of fighting experience, one you can’t get on the lists with knights.”

  Felton swore again, but Kenneth was finished with him. They both knew he would keep what happened to himself. “Find your men and return to the castle.”

  Mary had lifted her head from his chest and was blinking back tears as she watched the verbal duel between the two men.

  Felton held out his hand. “Lady Mary.”

  Kenneth stiffened, but before he could reply, she shook her head and tightened her hold around his waist.

  His chest swelled. “I will see my wife safely returned.”

  With a look hard enough to cut steel, Felton turned on his heel and left.

  Kenneth knew he’d made a mistake. His loss of temper had given Felton even more reason to want to discredit him. But he didn’t care. Mary had chosen him.

  Twenty-two

  Kenneth would have been content to hold her here forever, but the crowd was too unruly. He cupped her chin, tipping her face to his. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, and the emotion swimming in her big greenish-blue eyes made his chest squeeze.

  It seemed to take an interminable amount of time to fetch his belongings, change his clothes, and locate his horse, which he’d given a coin to a lad to watch. But eventually, he and Mary rode in silence back to the castle, her safely seated before him. When he thought about how close she’d come to falling …

  What the hell was she doing there? And why was she with Felton? The questions kept pounding through his head on the ride back to the castle.

  Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a guard to greet them as they rode through the gate. Felton prized his place as champion too much to risk losing it when he couldn’t be certain of the outcome. But Kenneth knew like a cornered dog that Felton would be looking and waiting for his chance to strike back.

  Despite his victory, Kenneth did not delude himself; by losing his temper, he’d given Felton an axe to hang over his head.

  But it was the questions about Mary’s role that ate at him. By the time they reached the solitude of their chamber, he was fighting an ugly bout of jealousy and suspicion.

  The door had barely closed behind them when he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. His heart clenched to see her tear-ravaged face, but he steeled himself. “Why, Mary? Why were you in town with him?”

  She drew back in shock. “You can’t be accusing me of something?”

  His mouth fell in a hard line, the muscle below his jaw ticking. “Do I not have a right to be suspicious when I find my wife with another man in the middle of a damned melee, where she could have fallen to her death? Were you following me, or is there another reason you and Felton traveled to town together?”

  The spark returned to her eye. “Your suspicions? What of mine? You knew what I thought you were doing every night in town. But you let me believe you were with other women, when instead you were fighting in an illegal tourney that could get you killed or imprisoned.”

  His eyes burned into hers. “I thought you didn’t care.”

  She pursed her mouth. “Well, I do. I care very much, and I’m afraid you are going to have to accept that.”

  He was so surprised by her admission that it took him a moment to reply. What did she mean? He was slightly dumfounded. “You do?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t following you, and it is your fault I was with Sir John in the first place.”

  “My fault? I believe my instructions were for you never to leave the castle without my permission.”

  She gave him a look that told him just how seriously she’d taken that particular order. “I assumed you didn’t mean that, of course. You spoke in anger.”

  He’d meant every bloody word of it. If he had his way, he’d lock her in a high tower on some remote western isle until this war was over.

  But he listened as she explained how she’d received a note from the monk about the nun who had looked like her. She’d come to him to accompany her, but when he turned her down, she’d accepted Sir John’s offer instead.

  Ah hell. He hadn’t realized. Guilt pricked him. For the first time, she’d come to him for help, and he’d turned her away.

  “On the way back,” she continued, “we heard the commotion, and Sir John decided to investigate.”

  “He should never have taken you with him.” When he thought of what could have happened to her—what had almost happened—that sick, helpless feeling knifed through him again. “My God, you could have been killed!”

  She s
tudied his face as if trying to discern the sentiment behind the words. “It was an accident. In my effort to leave before Sir John recognized you, I stumbled. I know you might not like to hear it, but Sir John did me a service.”

  She was right on both counts. He gritted his teeth. “I may have overreacted—”

  “May have?”

  Kenneth continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “But don’t tell me he didn’t take advantage of the situation. He was holding you too damned long. He looked like he was going to kiss you.”

  The fact that she looked like she was fighting a smile didn’t help his rationality any. “I think he was shocked more than anything.” She put her hand on her stomach, smoothing the fabric over the swell. His chest swelled, seeing how much she’d changed in the past month. “He realized I was with child.”

  Kenneth felt the urge to smile himself. “Good. Maybe that will make him see that you aren’t going to change your mind.”

  Their eyes held. “There was never a danger of that.” Before he could ponder what she meant, she added, “Why were you there, Kenneth? Why are you fighting like a common ruffian in an illegal combat tourney and not in the yard with the other knights?”

  “It’s as I told Felton, I’ve been trying to build my strength back up in preparation for giving him the challenge that he’s been clamoring for.”

  It was a poor excuse, and he could see that she didn’t fully believe him, but what else could he say? His mission wasn’t over. He couldn’t tell her the truth. Not until she was safely in Scotland. He couldn’t risk it. Not when he’d begun to realize just how much of a betrayal this was going to seem to her.

  But this was nothing like what Atholl had done to her. At least that was what he kept telling himself. Aye, he was making decisions for her—decisions that would put her in danger—but he’d had no choice. His course was already set when he’d discovered that she was carrying his child. And unlike Atholl, he would protect her. Though he was no longer confident she would see the difference.