Fay wiped at her tears, only to have them replaced by more. Exhaustion had won out over everything else. Her voice came out petulant as she sobbed. “But he does not wake.”
Robert harrumphed, clearly uncomfortable with all the weeping. “The women gave him enough poppy-juice to bring down an ox. Come away, now. All of you. Merry, you attend him.”
He looked about the room, filled with all manner of villagers in their sleeping clothes, and said with authority, “Prithee good folk, drag pallets over to the other hearth and try to get some rest. D’Agostine, to me.”
“I assume Annandale knows nothing of your whereabouts?” Robert sat her down on a bench as the angry Norman laird approached.
Suddenly fearful of a return to the dungeon, she shook her head no and searched the faces in the room. “Is he here?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “That devil? Not very likely.”
The black-haired gypsy returned with a babe on one hip and a toddler on another. Two youngsters rode the legs of a giant of a man who obviously loved them all. Fay had a hard time making sense of it.
Robert Bruce helped her to stand. “Allow me to make some introductions. This is Lady Ann of the Meadows and her husband, Sir Marcus Blackwell, the Beast of Thornhill.”
Lady Ann pushed Robert Bruce aside, as if a naughty child. “You know he hates that name. Now. Let her be. Can’t you see she’s about to drop?”
The angry D’Agostine crossed his arms over his chest and faced Lady Ann. “Just a moment, m’lady. Before you start ordering everyone about …”
He turned to Fay, “Tell me, lass. Why did you shoot my wife’s brother?”
Fay wiped a dirty monk’s sleeve across her face. How could she make them understand what went on all day just outside their walls. “I swear I didn’t know. He was at the front of Huntercombe’s men. Helm down. In truth, I thought I shot The Ax.”
Lady Ann frowned at all gathered and said, “This will not do one whit. Look at the poor dear. You will interrogate her later.”
Fay shot her a look that she hoped spoke of eternal gratitude.
Ann tugged Fay into the kitchen while shouting, “Stoke the fire, warm the bread, and bring cheese. Re-heat the stew. Someone, bring the girl a fur. Bring me a kirtle. Put a bathing barrel right here.
“You, Robert.” She pointed to the future Earl of Annandale. “Stoke the outside hearth and put water to boil.”
Fay’s mouth dropped open, astonished. The woman was a general, a king, mayhap the leader of a great cause. “Have you nothing to say, Fay? That is your name, isn’t it? Very well. Sit there. Nay, rather, on that bench. I will put the babes here.” She handed them into Fay’s arms.
After the water boiled, a small army of men poured it into a big barrel. It constantly amazed Fay how all jumped when the Lady Ann spoke. “How do you do that?”
The lady sat, loosed a sleeve off her shoulder, and took a fussing babe to her breast. “Do what, dear? Sit, sit. And take off those rags. All you men, clear out of the kitchen. Wait. Jacob, be a dear, and get me a large linen for when she’s washed.”
The black man nodded, looking relieved to have a reason to be off. Then Fay put the one remaining child on the bench, head resting on his mother’s lap. When she stepped into the steaming barrel, her jaw unclenched for the first time in days.
“There, now. Tell me everything.” Ann burped the child, and allowed it to latch onto her other breast.
More women, preparing the meal, leaned in, so as to better hear.
Fay sighed and again related everything from the first time she’d seen Nicholas in Scarborough to the moment she let the arrow fly. She had to stop several times, refusing to say another word until she knew that he still breathed. Somewhere in the middle of her story, his sister had sat down and listened in as well. She held a sleeping boy in her lap.
Eventually, the water grew tepid and Fay’s fingers wrinkled. She reached a long leg over the barrel and eased out on tiptoe. Lady Meredith quickly brought over a thick linen towel. Then Lady Ann placed the babe in a cradle and helped to dry her hair, rubbing vigorously. They dressed her in layers of soft warm wool. She had not been so attended since she was a child.
“I heard nothing in your tale about wedding vows.” Ann studied her face.
Fay was too tired to care. She blurted out, “He does not love me. He just seduced me for his grandsire’s ambitions.”
“If you do not wed, the child will be bastard. I will not have it.” Lady Meredith shouted into the main hall. “Thomas, call back the priest. We are to have a wedding.”
“The groom is not yet conscious, dear heart.” D’Agostine’s voice boomed from the other room.
Lady Ann shouted back. “It makes no matter. We will have it done.”
Blackwell spoke in the doorway and poked his head in. “Best you do as our ladies say. There’ll be no sleep until the deed is done.”
“I’m glad we are in accord.” Lady Ann grinned at him and he winked.
“Wake the priest,” echoed D’Agostine.
An elderly tonsured man, holding a Bible in one hand and a glass of mead in another, tottered into the kitchen. “I’m here. Never left.”
Fay stared at them all, aghast. A wedding? To Nicholas de Bruce?
Chapter 30
The fog in his brain lifted, his shoulder throbbed, and Nicholas struggled to move.
Christ’s wounds. Ropes bound him flat to the tabletop. He opened his eyes wide, focused, and there sat the she-devil who’d pierced him with her arrow. “You. What are you doing here?”
With thick white fur acting as a halo, she had the audacity to give him an angelic smile and look magnificently beautiful. “You told me to meet you here. Don’t you remember?”
“Nay. Just what did you tell them while I was out? And why am I bound as a wild boar? It should be you.” He tried to scowl, but his head ached and the room spun in circles.
She pointed to where a small crowd gathered across the hall, dressed in their Christmastide finery. “Shush. We’re about to be wed.”
His thoughts cleared a mite more and he recalled rushing toward the keep, stunned that she’d tried to kill him. “I will not. Has everyone lost their good senses?”
His brother-in-law, D’Agostine, emerged from the far side of the room with a cozy arm around Merry. “Feeling better, are we now, Nicholas?”
“Untie me. I have no idea how we feel, but I feel like merde. That, you should understand, you Norman bastard. I will not marry the likes of her.” He flashed daggers of pure hatred in her direction as he struggled to loosen a hand out of the ties. Why in hell were they trying to marry him to, to a murderess?
His twin sister, Merry, chuckled, dressed in a red wool kirtle. “Lady Fay told us the whole story. I must say, Niko, your intrigues amaze. A monk? Seducing a queen?”
“You don’t understand.” He clunked his head back onto the pillow, closed his eyes, and groaned. Did they all forget he was almost killed by the woman who sat on the tabletop beside him? His father’s mumblings grew closer.
Christ’s bloody palms. Not him, too? Opening one eye, he turned to Thomas. “Did my father tell you that he plans to take my child? Put Lady Fay in a nunnery? Have me killed?” Had the whole of the world turned mad?
“Hold on, son. That was your grandsire’s plotting. Not mine.” The man who sired him loomed overhead and frowned as if he truly had an ounce of guilt.
“Say, for God, and for all to hear, that you did not approve.” Nicholas glowered, but was difficult to maintain while his stomach threatened to spew. Perhaps he had returned to hell, and this devilish nonsense would go on for eternity.
His father sighed, paced around the trestle table, and stopped to pick a berry out of the forest greens on the mantle. “Approve? Nay. But until the old fart dies, Annandale is lord and I owe him the same allegiance as you do.”
“You could’ve spoke up in my behalf.” Nicholas fought with his binds so as to sit up straight and lo
ok his father in the eye. He would not forgive so readily.
The next Earl of Annandale merely shrugged. “We’ll discuss what comes after when you’re not lying in piss and blood. Someone, clean him up.” He motioned for Fay to stay and the rest to depart with him to the other side of the hall.
The would-be murderer neared. ’Twas no perfume, no soap, nothing other than scent of her that drove him wild. He’d given up everything to have her, and at every turn she’d betrayed him.
Carrying a mug, she leaned over the table, held his head close to her sweet breast, and insisted he drink the cool water.
Despite his thirst, he spit it out. “You would poison me?”
She scowled and patiently put it back to his lips. “Stop being such an arse and drink.”
It was too much to bear. He loved a woman who wanted him dead. “Are you irked because you must wed? Because your fate is to a nunnery? Or because you carry my bastard seed?”
She let out a sigh, gently placed his head down, and clasped her hands together. “Verra well. Your father has given me a full account of your quest. Regardless, because I may be carrying your child, all in attendance have decided our fate. We are to be married before the sun rises.”
She motioned, and D’Agostine, with the help of others, brought a bucket of water to where he lay.
“Ready?” His brother-in-law smirked and helped to set up a panel that would shield them from the rest while he bathed.
“Do you jest? Untie me.” Nicholas would beat him to a pulp as soon he was let loose.
Laughing heartily, D’Agostine held up his hands and said, “The ladies have decided you wed. I would not dare interfere.” He turned to Fay and handed her a blade. “Let me know when you’ve finished.”
Nicholas’s ears pounded and he shouted, “Christ’s blood. Don’t give her a knife.”
D’Agostine walked away, still chuckling.
She held the metal in front of his face, pointing and glowering. “A pox on all your saints. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to cut away your bloody clothes and give you a bath. Don’t be such an infant. I would cut your binds, but to do that, you would need to agree, on your honor, not to escape. But you have no honor, do you?”
The barb met its mark. He was, after all, a bastard, an outlaw, and a liar. “I give you my word. I will lie here gentle as a lamb.”
Their eyes locked and he had never known more despair. He wanted desperately to marry her. He wanted her body and soul.
She wanted him dead.
After his bindings dropped to the floor, she smiled sadly, and handed him the knife. “I swear, I did not wish to harm you. Here. Do your worst.”
His heart ached worse than the hole in his shoulder. He sat up to comfort her, the room swirled, and he succumbed to the darkness.
When he woke again, he was fully naked and fully hard. A warm set of hands lathered his body with a lavender soap and rinsed him with warm water.
She gave him a shy, yet worried smile. “I’m almost finished. Can you lift? I have a clean tunic for you to wear.”
He tried to sit, but his arms gave out. Even his voice was weak. “Can you push my cot away from the fire? ’Tis too hot.”
“The fever worsens.” Worried, she motioned an old healer over.
“Was the tip of the arrow poisoned as well?” he asked.
She slapped a linen to his face. “And I was about to forgive you.”
“Forgive me? You’re the one who intended murder. Look at me.”
She stamped her foot. “Blood and bones of Christ himself! Enough, Nicholas! ’Tis no longer amusing. I thought you were Huntercombe, you, you, jester-head. What was I to think? You were in the lead, wearing his colors, with helm down.”
He moaned. She was right. He’d found the The Ax near the keep, fought with him in the woods, and raced to save her. How could I forget?
Again he’d said and done all the wrong things and trampled her heart into the mud.
His brother-in-law approached with new clothes in his arms. His frown indicated that he’d heard much. “Did your head get damaged, as well? Put these on.”
Nicholas raised his arms halfway and his new stitches tugged against raw skin. “Damnation.”
After they pulled the garments over his head, he stared up at the rafters and said, “My thoughts are beginning to clear. Did you round up Huntercombe and his men?”
“Didn’t have to. They ran off.” D’Agostine waved across the room and the familiar form of the Beast of Thornhill approached.
“And the men of Man?”
“We’re escorting them to the coast. Sending them back home. We’ll discuss this more, later. Marcus is ready for the knighting. Lady Ann has already re-arranged the whole of my keep. My house, already in disarray for Christmastide is now fully chaotic. Nothing personal, but I’d love to end this and have a bit of normalcy. And you all gone.”
Nicholas grinned as the huge shadow of his friend came into focus. “Marcus? I’ve not seen you since that unfortunate incident in Scarborough. Is your lady here? The boy, Marc, is he growing?”
“My boys are well, as is the new little lady.” He leaned over and whispered, “Takes after my wife. Very loud and very bossy.”
“So you finally had your girl.” Nicholas’s heart went into his throat, thinking how he may soon be a father. He glanced where Fay stood sullen, and wished for nothing more than to turn back time to those few days in Scarborough. He should’ve wed her then, and taken her far, far, away.
Clearing his throat, Marcus pointed to Bruce and D’Agostine and said, “Get him upright.” He ignored Nicholas’s moans, and that his head lolled when lifted off the table. “I would have you kneel but if your stitches come undone, Ann will have my head. Under the circumstances, I’m afraid we’ll also need to forgo the fasting, interminable mass, falderal, and so on.”
He raised his sword, and lowered cold steel to each shoulder. “I dub thee, Sir Nicholas Bruce de Nord, knight of the Green Meadows.”
Green Meadows? What?
Nicholas gasped. He now owed fealty to Sir Marcus Blackwell, not Annandale? The three men helped him across the room to where a priest stood waiting.
Lady Fay, her red hair shining against a mantle of fur, bit at her lower lip. White knuckles clasped a few sprigs of holly in front of a red kirtle that hugged her perfect form. A Christmas angel. One he did not deserve.
But he could not flee and give her the freedom she deserved. Weak as a babe, his father and D’Agostine held him up on either side.
Marcus smirked, nodded to a tonsured man, and crossed arms over his chest. “You may begin. Start with the annulment of her marriage to Huntercombe, followed by the new vows. And make it short.”
After some unfamiliar Latin, the priest began the familiar vows of matrimony.
Nicholas must’ve nodded off because D’Agostine shook him and said, “Say aye.”
He gazed at his soon-to-be wife. “Aye. Adore. You.”
The rest of the ceremony was lost in fog, similar to the one he’d experienced on Man, except this time, he rested in sweet clouds of heaven, with an angel in attendance.
Chapter 31
Nicholas’s upper body, which she had attended for six weeks now, taunted her every time he removed his tunic. Beautiful rows of strength lined his naked chest, then navel, then an arrow of red hair that pointed to her want for him.
She swapped his bandages even though not necessary, hoping her touch might fire his old desire. When he made no move to kiss her, she sighed heavily, bit her lower lip, and slipped out of his grasp. What good would more words do? He was forced into a loveless marriage and now they were stuck. Soon they would travel to their new master, near London Towne, and no doubt, Nicholas would go off to war, and she would never see him again.
He pulled her onto his lap, where they sat cross-legged, by the old-fashioned center hearth. Outside, the winds blew, causing the flames to jump. Shadows of their bodies danced on the red
brick walls. “Is something bothering you, angel?” He shoved aside his wood plane.
Since his injury, his hands were always busy at night. Today, he worked on an astounding longbow. She fingered its smooth surface as she thought how to answer. She would not beg. For days and days she’d been waiting for him to make love to her. Every time she’d tried to kiss him, he had claimed he was tired, or hurting, or some other excuse. Last night it was the Sabbath. That had been her undoing.
“Do you want the truth?” Without thought, she rubbed the small mound beginning to show in her belly. At least their child would have a good start at life, born of Sir Nicholas and Lady Fay de Nord. Only Edward, Robert Bruce, and the D’Agostines would know their real identities.
“I asked, didn’t I?” Now clean-shaven, he raked his hand over his evening growth, and eyed her moves with a fond smile. He must care somewhat.
This gave her the courage she needed. “Because last night was the Sabbath.”
“Huh?”
“And the night before, we went to bed too late. And the night before, there were too many people about, and so on and so on. I am guessing that now that you are saddled with me, I am not so appealing. The fun was in the getting.” When her lip popped out in a pout, she quickly sucked it back in.
“Is that what you think?” His kissable mouth dropped open into a frown and his brows lifted.
“What else could I think?”
He pulled off her tunic, rubbed her round belly, and kissed her navel. “I cannot, angel. Because of him. Or her.”
Shocked beyond measure, she managed to sputter, “What? You think you may not reach? From what I remember, you were plenty large and that should not be a problem.” She looked down. Surely she was not that rotund. Not yet.
He looked so sad at her outburst she took his hand to make it easy for him. “Just tell me if you no longer find me desirable.”
“Nay. Of course not. I asked the priest. He said no more. Umm. No more coupling until the birth of our child.” He grasped both her hands, then kissed them.
“Whhaaattt? Now I know you are addled. What does a priest know of bedding?” Still holding his hands, she lay back upon the thick furs, and pounded the back of her head against the hard floor. Of all the reasons she’d considered, that was not one. “Did you ask D’Agostine, or Blackwell?”
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