Lady of Valor

by Lara Adrian

  “Milady, are you unwell?”

  “Nay, Bea, I'm fine. Actually, I was on my way to the women's solar. I brought some wool up from the village this afternoon. We've a fine grade again this year--clear and rich as cream. I thought I might spin some of it.”

  Emmalyn rather hoped that Bea might find the idea appealing as well, for she could do with a little company. Alas, the maid frowned. “Spinning?” she asked hesitantly. “At this hour, milady?”

  At the young woman's look of desperation, Emmalyn relented with a soft sigh. “Don't fret, Bea, I won't insist on your help this time. But will you bring some candles to me there so that I might work awhile?”

  “Of course, milady,” the maid replied, hiding none of her relief at having escaped the task. With a quick curtsy, Bea hastened off to carry out the request.

  The women's solar, a veritable haven of books and textiles and peaceful ambience, was situated on the second floor of the tower, at the opposite end of the keep from the Great Hall. If she shut the thick oak door, Emmalyn knew she could close herself off from the rumble of conversation emanating from the large banquet room. But, after igniting a small rushlight from the flame of a torch burning in the corridor, she left the solar door open a crack to await Bea's return. In the dim, flickering illumination of the sconced torchlight, she set about gathering the tools she would need to spin the wool.

  And it was fine wool, she thought with pride as she plunged her fingers into the basket of soft, creamy fluff. She could hardly wait to see what the harvest would yield at market this year. Fallonmour would be well-stocked and healthy for two winters if her estimations were correct. Pleased to be holding the tangible results of her dreams to strengthen Fallonmour on increased wool production, Emmalyn grew anxious to work some of the fleece.

  Where was Bea with those candles? Emmalyn thought she remembered tucking some away for safe-keeping on one of the shelves that lined the west wall of the solar. She dragged a ladder from the corner of the room and climbed up, stretching as she reached for the supply. Her fingers closed around several cool wax columns just as footsteps neared the solar. “Never mind, Bea, I found some myself.”

  “'Tis not the girl, my lady.”

  At the sound of Sir Cabal's deep voice, Emmalyn startled and nearly lost her balance. Only the knight's strong hands now encircling her waist kept her upright on the ladder while her candles clattered to the floor and rolled to the four corners of the room.

  “I've got you,” he said from behind her. “Are you all right?”

  Still clutching the ladder in tight fists, Emmalyn did not turn to face him. She could not, for then he would see the heat suffusing her cheeks at the sensation of his strong fingers pressed against her. Shaken, not only from the near fall but also from her strange reaction to his touch, she could only stand there mutely, her lungs refusing to draw air.

  “Are you all right, my lady?” he repeated, sounding a bit more concerned.

  “Yes,” she hissed at last. “I am fine.”

  Cabal's hands lingered at her waist a heartbeat longer than was seemly, as if he were testing the feel of her in his grasp. Emmalyn stiffened, sensing the strength and power in each curved finger that rested atop the flimsy fabric of her gown. It had been a long time since a man touched her, even to catch her from a spill. Remembering her husband's hands on her, Emmalyn decided she did not like the sensation overmuch.

  To her relief, Cabal's grip eased and he released her. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

  “'Tis all right,” she muttered, scrambling down the ladder and past him to snatch up the first errant candle, and then the next, wondering wildly what had just happened to her and why she should always feel so unlike herself in his presence. Flustered for his watching her, she bent to retrieve the last candle...at the same time Cabal reached out to do the same. Their fingers brushed; an unanticipated, momentary contact that Emmalyn found entirely too warm, too exhilarating. She drew her hand back as if she had been burned.

  “Please!” she gasped, bewildered and desperate. “I don't want your help--I don't need it!”

  She could not raise her eyes to look at him after so irrational an outburst, nor could she summon the strength to come up from her knees on the floor. Breath hitching and shallow, face burning with embarrassment, Emmalyn sat unmoving, clutching the lot of broken candles to her bosom. She wanted nothing more than for Cabal to turn around in that next moment and leave the room. She prayed that he would say nothing, that he would simply abandon her to her solitude, now, and for the rest of his time at Fallonmour.

  To her dismay, he remained standing beside her.

  Worse, he ignored her anger altogether, placing his hand under her elbow and helping her to her feet. Without saying a word, he collected the candles from her grasp and set them aside, leaving Emmalyn with nothing to cling to, nothing at all between them. Her empty hands were trembling as she brought them down to her sides and fisted them in the thin fabric of her skirts. She felt a rush of panicked anticipation as Cabal came to stand before her, closer now, his intense gaze far too penetrating to be trusted.

  “W-what are you doing?”

  She had meant why had he come to the women's solar, but to her chagrin, the stammered question seemed more a terrified query about his present intentions. In large part, she had to admit that it was. Feeling much like a fly being lured into a spider's web, Emmalyn took a hesitant step backward.

  Sir Cabal moved so subtly she was not even aware he had advanced until his broad chest loomed scant inches from her nose. With the back of his curled hand, he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Why do you fear me so?”

  “I...”

  She was about to deny that he frightened her, but the words would not come, and she knew that her inability to voice it could only further weaken his estimation of her. In truth, she was afraid of him, terrified, but for reasons he would never understand. Reasons she would never reveal. Speechless, Emmalyn could only shake her head feebly, staring up into those silver eyes, made flinty in the dim torchlight.

  “Do you think I have come here to hurt you, my lady?”

  “N-no.”

  “No?” he echoed. “What then? Ravish you, perhaps?”

  Emmalyn swallowed hard, her eyes widening. “Please, my lord, do not--”

  She tried to take a step backward and nearly stumbled. Cabal caught her, righted her with a gentle hand. “You're trembling,” he said quietly.

  She could scarcely breathe. “Please, don't touch me.”

  “No,” he soothed, “not if you don't want me to.” A long moment passed before his voice rasped like rough velvet in the near darkness. “Why are you so mistrustful? Did Garrett make you skittish around men? Was he inattentive, my lady? Unskilled in loving you?”

  Emmalyn looked away, unable to deny it, yet desperate that he did not unearth the shame of her marriage. “My lord, you go too far.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, his reply devoid of apology or repentance. He reached out and swept an errant tendril of her hair behind her ear. Tilting her face up, he forced her to meet his hooded gaze. “But I'm not Garrett,” he whispered.

  Emmalyn could not answer. Heaven help her, she could scarcely summon her breath under the blaze of his compelling, seductive stare.

  “Mayhap you think me no better than he,” Cabal suggested with a grim smile. “Mayhap you think me worse. Do you see me as some sort of villain, Lady Emmalyn? Perhaps much the same as this beast you so despise--this Blackheart?”

  “Are you?” she asked breathlessly.

  His lips quirked with wry amusement. “Some days,” he whispered, letting his warm, hard fingers skate along the slope of her cheek.

  Emmalyn shivered with the subtle contact, thrilling to his caress in spite of the danger she felt at being so near this darkly enigmatic man, so vulnerable to him. So unwillingly aroused by him.

  Perhaps it was the dim, watery light that made his face so handsome now, made the harsh cut of his
mouth seem less cruel. Perhaps it was her own loneliness that made his touch seem so enticing, made this hardened warrior seem somehow tender.

  It was madness, surely, that compelled Emmalyn to stay when every fiber of her being warned her to flee. Only madness would have allowed her to hold his gaze when it grew dark and heavy-lidded with hunger. Only madness would have allowed her to remain unmoving when his mouth began to descend slowly toward hers....

  “Beg pardon, milady...I have your candles?”

  Bea's uncertain voice in the doorway shattered the moment like a hammer on glass. Emmalyn broke from Cabal's spellbinding gaze as if physically torn from it, backing away from him in sheer astonishment at what she might have allowed to happen had they been left alone any longer. A kiss, an illicit embrace--Heaven help her, but she might have allowed him even more....

  His indecent stare remained fixed on her, full of awareness, potent with knowing, the embers of hunger still smoldering in his eyes. Their penetrating intensity stripped her bare, left her shaking. He knew she desired him. He knew that in that moment she had been his for the taking. Worse, she could tell that he knew she still was.

  Emmalyn swallowed hard. She pressed her fingers to her lips, which, to her dismay, still burned for his kiss. Without acknowledging the maid or uttering a single word of excuse, she spun on her heel and ran, not daring to so much as stop for breath until she was safely inside her bedchamber with the lock bolt slammed home.

  Chapter 7

  The mass to honor Fallonmour's fallen lord began at dawn that next day, and despite Cabal's curiosity to discern the extent of Lady Emmalyn's grief over her husband's death, after last night's encounter, he decided it best to keep his distance. Instead, he occupied himself with training exercises in the bailey, pleased to avoid the swarm of mourners now making their way out of the chapel.

  Cabal sensed trouble brewing when he spied a group of Fallonmour's knights heading his way, all of them grinning smugly as they approached. Shuffling along at the center of the pack of men was a long-limbed commoner who looked utterly lost and more than a bit fretful of where he was being led.

  “What goes, Taggart?” Cabal asked the knight at the fore, a giant of a man whose girth well exceeded his brawn.

  “If I recall, ye said to us, bring any man from his field and ye'd make him a battle-worthy warrior, did ye not?”

  Cabal saw the challenge glittering in the men's eyes and met it with like attitude. “I did.”

  “Well, then, here he is. Yer first peasant pupil, ready to be made a knight.”

  Chortling, the crowd of soldiers broke, and Cabal's eyes lit on the skinny lad in dirt-smeared, tattered homespun. The young man swiped his felt cap from his head, and, eyes downcast, began to nervously twist the scrap of moth-eaten wool in his trembling fists.

  Taggart laughed, his voice filled with mirth. “Petey here is not the strongest man in Fallonmour's fields, I'll grant ye.”

  “Ain't too smart, either,” added another knight, snickering.

  The peasant glanced up nervously, looking from Cabal's face to the knights around him, clearly unable to understand a word of what they said. His throat bobbed, then he went back to mangling his cap, his gaze trained on his mud-encrusted, ragged shoes.

  “Are you a planter, lad?” Cabal asked him in the common English tongue. “A mower, mayhap?”

  “Cottar, milord.”

  Cabal nodded, not altogether displeased with what he had been dealt by Taggart and the men. As cottars were generally called upon for many hand tasks around the village and fields, perhaps this trainee would prove agile, if not stouthearted. “How old are you, Pete?”

  “Seventeen this past spring, milord.”

  Taggart cleared his throat over the brief exchange, evidently anticipating a challenge of his selection. “If I recall, lord, ye said naught about brains nor brawn--”

  “No, I did not,” Cabal agreed. “I said any man, Taggart.”

  “Mayhap ye spoke in haste,” the big man suggested.

  “On the contrary. In fact, give me a short while with Pete and I expect he will prove an excellent fighter. Easily better than you.”

  Several knights choked in obvious disbelief. Taggart himself looked too incensed with the insult to give any reply at all. He stood, fists clenched, his great head taking on an unhealthy purple hue, from the top of his freckled pate to his quivering, corpulent jowls.

  “Ye want a wager, Sir Cabal, then so be it,” he said at last, his voice tight with insult. “Train yer lackey as best ye can, and at week's end, we will indeed see who's the better.”

  “Two days,” Cabal amended.

  Taggart gaped at him as if he were mad. “Two days to train that daub-head to wield a blade?”

  “Two days to make him better than you.”

  “All right, then,” the knight growled. “But mind, lord, when I fight, I fight to the finish.”

  Cabal shrugged, unfazed, and remained unblinking as Taggart and the others regrouped and shuffled on toward the keep for the morning meal. Taggart paused in the shade of the pentice and looked back. His expression was one of pure malice as he spit into the dirt, then, chuckling, continued on within the dark corridor. Only after the clink of spurs had disappeared into the yawning darkness of the stone walkway did Cabal face Pete anew. Though he did not want to admit it, Cabal felt fairly certain he was looking at a dead man.

  The thought of losing this contest did not sit well. If he only had a short time to train Pete, he had better get started. Cabal reached down and drew his broadsword from its scabbard with a smooth, efficient swish of unsheathed steel. To his aggravation, when he looked to Pete, he found the lad quaking in terror, his eyes screwed closed, chin pulled low into his shoulders as if he thought he might lose his head in the next heartbeat.

  “Open your eyes,” Cabal instructed the trembling young man as he came to stand before him.

  Pete's head only shrunk lower into his chest. “Whatever I done, milord, I'm sorry!”

  Cabal heaved a sigh of frustration. “For God's sake,” he clipped in irritation, “just put out your hands, lad.”

  Nearly blubbering with fear now, Pete extended his shaky fists. “Have mercy, milord, I beg you!”

  Cabal seized the lad's right wrist, pried open his hand and slapped it around the hilt of the sword. “Take it,” he ordered.

  Pete opened his eyes then, frowning in total confusion. “Milord?”

  “Take my sword.” He let go, and the heavy blade immediately slipped out of Pete's grasp and fell to the ground. “Now, pick it up.”

  The peasant shook his head desperately. “Milord, I beg you, do not make me fight--”

  “I said, pick it up, boy.” Cabal's staccato command sent Pete to his knees in the dirt. With one palm under the hilt, the other flat under the blade, Pete rose and held the sword out to Cabal, presentation style. “How does it feel in your hands?”

  “M-milord?”

  “Can you raise it?”

  Pete blinked at him as if he were engaged in some perverse brand of test he did not fully understand. “I--I've no wish to raise it against you, milord.”

  Cabal scowled. Already the lad's arms trembled under the strain of the heavy blade. Saints' blood, but it would take more than two days to condition Pete's body for such a weighty weapon, let alone teach him any sort of skills in handling it. Cabal raked his hand through his hair in frustration...then he remembered something.

  “Don't move,” he instructed Pete, turning and heading back into the keep, up to his chamber where he kept one of his few souvenirs from his time in Jerusalem.

  This particular treasure--a deadly arc of polished infidel steel--was wrapped in a swatch of linen and hidden away under the mattress for safe-keeping. The weapon gleamed with lethal beauty, unveiled for the first time since Cabal had arrived back on English soil. He only hoped young Pete would wield it with more good fortune than had its previous owner.

  Cabal returned to the bailey, somewhat sur
prised and frankly encouraged to find that his pupil had not fled for the hills in his absence. He strode forward with the lighter blade in hand.

  “Try this one instead.”

  As a test of the peasant's reflexes, Cabal tossed the blade at him. Without pausing to think, Pete reached out and caught the hilt cleanly in his fist. The curved Saracen sword seemed a good fit for the young man and Pete seemed intrigued with the gleaming weapon--if he yet remained outwardly discomfited with the purpose of his having been given it.

  While Pete held the blade before him in two hands, marveling at its deadly beauty, Cabal retrieved his own weapon from the ground. Without warning, he made to strike at the lad. The clank of steel on steel reverberated in the bailey as Pete brought his blade down to meet the blow. The peasant looked more surprised than Cabal reckoned he was himself.

  “Very good,” he commended the lad. “Now look away from the weapon. Keep your eyes trained on mine, Pete, and let yourself feel where I will strike next.”

  “Milord, please--”

  Another strike, and another solid deflection. Cabal swung his blade at him, again and again, pleased that Pete was able to block nearly every blow.

  “Now, you come at me, Pete.”

  The lad stared, befuddled, and made no move to raise his weapon against Cabal. “Milord, please! I cannot!”

  “Do it.”

  Pete swallowed hard, then gripped the blade in both hands, switching his slight weight from foot to foot. “All right,” he said, “if I must.”

  He raised the sword and let it fall in a wild, artless arc that sliced the air with the hiss and song of sharp, deadly steel. Cabal met the blade with the flat of his own, the force knocking Pete's weapon from his grasp. Cabal advanced without pause, his sword poised to strike, and was pleased to see Pete scramble to retrieve his blade in time to deflect the ensuing blow.

  It had been delivered with a deliberately heavy hand, a test of Pete's heartiness that did not yield the most promising results. Pete stumbled out of the way of the blade and fell on his behind in the dirt. He looked up at Cabal, more confused than frightened.