Lady Rowena's Ruin

by Carol Townend

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Draping the cloak over Rowena’s shoulders, Eric dropped a quick kiss on her nose before she had time to duck away. His lips twitched. ‘Allow me to mount you, my lady.’

  His tone was more than a little suggestive. Rowena’s toes curled. Cheeks hot, she bit the inside of her mouth to hide her smile. Heavens, the man was incorrigible. While drawing on her gloves, she made a show of tapping her foot. ‘Stop it. Eric, you must stop this at once, or I shall refuse to ride with you.’

  Green eyes gleamed. A dark brow lifted. ‘Stop what?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. The double entendre. Flirting, I suppose. It might work on the maids at Jutigny, it won’t work with me.’

  ‘Dommage,’ he murmured. ‘What a pity.’ Grasping her by the waist, he lifted her into the saddle. His hands lingered.

  ‘Sir Eric, please!’

  Eric grinned. Alard heaved on the manor gates and they groaned open. The horses surged forward, trotting side by side away from the manor. Eric had been right about the wind, it was keen for May. Overhead, clouds billowed in a blue sky. In the topmost branches of an ash tree that was a swaying froth of green, rooks were cawing.

  ‘We will stop at the smith’s first, I think,’ Eric said.

  Rowena shot him a sharp look. ‘If you are thinking of asking his wife to act as your housekeeper, I truly would like to help.’

  ‘Rowena, you are my guest.’

  Firmly, she shook her head. ‘If we are to test each other’s mettle before coming to a decision, we must do it properly. How else will you know whether I will make a good wife?’

  Eric’s mouth went up on one side. ‘Rowena, you have nothing to prove here. I want you already.’ A gloved hand reached out and briefly squeezed hers. When she frowned, he shook his head. ‘There’s no need to glower. I mean it.’

  ‘You want my inheritance.’

  Wide shoulders lifted. ‘Only a fool would not want it.’ He held her gaze, face softening. Releasing her hand, he ran his gloved finger briefly down her cheek and cleared his throat. ‘Be assured that I want you. Rowena, you have become a very beautiful woman.’

  Rowena’s vision misted and she stared blindly at a passing cottage. ‘Don’t, Eric, please.’

  That gentle hand was back on her again. ‘What is it? Lord, Rowena, you’re not crying, are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m not crying.’

  ‘What did I say? What did I do? Bon sang, I thought to court you this morning. I meant to make you laugh, not cry.’ He leaned in, those warm eyes earnest. Dark.

  She held his gaze. ‘It’s all right, Eric, I don’t need courting.’

  He drew back, expression shocked. ‘Not need courting? You are deluding yourself, you need more courting than most.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘You’ve been over-protected. Rowena, I am not criticising your parents, they brought you up as they thought best. You are their only child and you are precious to them. However, you need to learn your value as a woman too.’

  Rowena held her breath as she listened. Eric was wrong in his assumptions about her parents. She wasn’t sure she was truly precious to them. To her mother, perhaps, but to her father? In her experience, her father treated her more as a commodity than a daughter—to him she was something to be traded to ensure that the family acres were passed into firm hands. She had rejected his first choice, Lord Gawain, and now she was presented with his second, a man he had trained himself.

  Rowena shot Eric a sidelong glance. She couldn’t deny that her father’s second choice suited her far better than his first. Of course, it could simply be that this year she was ready to consider marriage. Last year, with Mathieu’s death a scar on her soul, she most definitely had not.

  Eric’s handsome face was turned solicitously towards her, he was giving every sign that he was only thinking of her. However, Rowena was a realist and she knew otherwise. He was thinking about her inheritance. The inheritance someone like him—a foundling—could never aspire to unless he married Lady Rowena de Sainte-Colombe.

  She sighed. It had to be wrong that she—a woman who had entered a convent convinced she must become a nun—wanted him to want her for herself. Yet so she did. He had said that he had always liked her and that went both ways. As a child, she had liked him very much. Heavens, she had dreamed about him! She knew him and trusted him and felt at ease with him. And that was important. She could do far worse than marry Sir Eric de Monfort. Except...she couldn’t stop wondering whether Helvise’s child was his. Eric was such a flirt. Would he always be so? Was he capable of fidelity?

  ‘Why deny yourself the pleasure of being courted?’ he was saying softly.

  ‘Being courted is a pleasure, is it?’

  ‘It certainly should be.’

  Rowena thought of the maids at Jutigny; she thought of Helvise. ‘Sir, you are an expert flirt. I am not certain I can take you seriously as a suitor.’

  Eyes wide, he put his hand to his heart. ‘My lady, what can you mean?’

  ‘Your reputation precedes you. You enjoy women.’

  A dark brow lifted. ‘And that is a bad thing? I can see from your face you consider it so.’

  ‘If you are to court me, there is something I would know first.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Your views on fidelity.’ Jerking her gaze away, Rowena stared at the smoke rising from the forge ahead and twisted the reins round her fingers. ‘If we married, would you be a faithful husband?’

  ‘You would want me to be?’

  She nodded and her veil swirled about her. ‘Do you think you could manage it?’

  Eric blinked and stared at Rowena’s profile. The answer flashed almost instantaneously through his mind. Yes, I would be completely faithful.

  His gut knotted. The conviction behind that thought was unsettling. Eric did enjoy women and whilst he had hoped to marry some day, he’d never given much thought to what it meant when one promised one’s wife fidelity. He shoved his misgivings aside. It wasn’t as though his happiness would be resting entirely in Rowena’s hands. There wasn’t a woman on earth he would trust that far.

  Doubtless the idea of fidelity unsettled him because he had never seriously considered marriage before this. Stepping into new territory was always daunting.

  Rowena went on staring fixedly towards the forge, refusing to meet his gaze. As her veil danced in the breeze, he glimpsed a long twist of hair, bright as the sun.

  He cleared his throat. Marriage unnerved him. Observation had shown him that many men found it a penance to remain faithful to their wives when the world was full of pretty women. None the less, it was flattering to know that Rowena wanted fidelity from him. He would be faithful. The thought settled deep in his mind. He would be faithful to Rowena. He could do it, he knew. It was disturbing. Unsettling. And yet...

  We would belong together. There was a ball of tension in his gut and Eric was unable to identify its cause. Growing up at Jutigny, he had never felt as though he belonged. Even here in Monfort, in the manor that he had won through force of arms, he thought of himself as a steward, someone who was holding the land for the next incumbent.

  ‘My lady, you may have my oath, if you marry me, I will be faithful to you.’

  She turned her head, mouth going up at the side. ‘It would be worth it I expect, for the lands I would bring you.’

  ‘That is a cynical remark, but no matter.’ He smiled. ‘I see I will have to prove that I value you more highly than I value your inheritance.’

  Her blue eyes held him. Captain stamped a hoof and Eric realised they were at a standstill, the horses must have drawn to a halt sometime since and he hadn’t noticed. He held out his hand. ‘Rowena, I should like to marry you and I will do my utmost to prove myself worthy of your trust.’

 
When she reached across and put out her gloved hand, his chest eased. He squeezed her fingers before releasing her and gestured down the road. ‘Do you care to see the village?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I should warn you, it cannot compare to Provins.’

  Eric rode with her through Monfort and all began well. The villagers must have heard of the arrival of Lady Rowena de Sainte-Colombe and were curious to see her. In the field strips, people paused in their work to lean on hoes and spades and watch their passing. Heads poked through shutters. Doors opened. Women carrying water from the stream paused to stare. Rowena nodded and smiled easily at them and Eric’s heart warmed.

  ‘You haven’t changed. You are just as friendly as you were as a child,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘On the whole, I like people.’

  This from the woman who had intended to shut herself away in a convent?

  They trotted past the smith, heading further down the path that led into the forest. Forget-me-nots the exact shade of her eyes flowered on the fringe of the track. Somewhere in the dappled shade, a woodpecker drummed. Eric smiled to himself, he couldn’t have wished for a better day to show her his land.

  ‘You would care to see the chase?’

  ‘Certainly.’ She was peering deep into the forest as the horses clopped steadily on and the trees closed about them. Oak, ash, beech...

  ‘That’s odd.’ Her voice was puzzled.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Someone’s moving about, look, over there.’

  Eric couldn’t see anything unusual, just a shrub waving in the wind. ‘It’s probably a deer. We have good hunting, plenty of deer and quite a few boar.’

  ‘And poachers?’ She frowned across at him. ‘Eric, I don’t think it was a deer.’

  Eric’s skin prickled. As a warning it was far too little. It was also too late. Something whirred past him and buried itself in the trunk of a chestnut tree.

  An arrow!

  It had missed Rowena with barely an inch to spare. Eric’s insides felt as though they had dissolved. Time seemed to stop. That arrow had almost hit her! He stared at the white fletchings quivering in the trunk of the tree—they were as pale as Rowena’s face.

  He had but one thought—get her to safety. Whirling Captain round, he grabbed Rowena’s reins and spurred out of the chase. When they reached the first of the cottages and he judged they had put enough distance between her and whoever had shot the arrow, he slowed the horses to a walk.

  ‘I can ride, Eric,’ she said, voice shaking as she disengaged her reins from his grasp. Her hands were trembling and she glanced, wide-eyed, over her shoulder. Her face looked drained, her cheeks were white as snow. It had been so close.

  Gripped with cold rage and something else he hadn’t time to analyse, Eric focused on the forest beyond the village. He must find whoever had loosed that arrow. ‘Mon Dieu, you might have been killed. Someone must be disciplined.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the manor gates. ‘I will get you inside and organise a search party. I will find that archer.’

  He heard her swallow, she was struggling for composure, but her eyes were full of anxiety. ‘Eric, it seems likely it was a poacher. He will have realised his mistake, I don’t think he’s going to hang about in the chase for you to find him.’

  ‘My lady, I cannot let this pass.’ Lord Faramus had entrusted her to him and Eric wouldn’t stand for her to be terrorised whilst in his care. Once he had her safely inside his manor, he would scour the forest for whoever had loosed that arrow. He set his jaw. ‘Sadly our ride is over. I shall escort you to the stables and then I beg that you excuse me.’

  Chapter Five

  With Lily handed over to the care of a groom, Rowena trailed across the yard towards the hall. So much for her courtship, she thought wryly. Eric was bent on finding whoever had shot that arrow. Behind her, he was barking orders at his men. She paused at the top step. Hoofs clattered on the flagstones as men led out their horses; half-a-dozen foot soldiers were mustering by the gates; there was even a handful of archers. Well, she doubted they would find anyone. Any poacher worth his salt would be long gone.

  As she stepped into the manor hall it occurred to her that her bedchamber window looked out over much of Monfort Chase. Naturally, she wouldn’t be able to see it all, but she could see the path that trailed along the river past the village and the manor...

  Upstairs, Rowena pulled the shutter wide and leaned out.

  * * *

  It was after noon before Rowena saw Eric again. By then she was sitting on a bench in a sheltered spot in the manor garden, sewing. Sewing always calmed her and after the shock of that near hit with the arrow—it had missed her by a whisker!—she needed to busy herself. She had found some linen and was efficiently running up a side seam when the click of the garden gate alerted her.

  Thrusting the needle into the cloth, she folded up the linen to conceal what exactly she was making and smiled up at him. ‘Any sight of the archer?’

  Shaking his head, Eric crossed the grass and took his seat beside her. ‘As you suspected, he was long gone. I have asked the villagers to report back to the manor if they see strangers in the chase.’

  ‘I feel certain it was poachers,’ she said.

  ‘Most likely you are right.’ Eric looked curiously at the bundle on her lap. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Sewing.’ Rowena kept her hands on the linen and hoped she wasn’t blushing. She was making Eric a shirt and she didn’t want him to know what it was until it was finished. In Eric’s absence she had prevailed upon Helvise to allow her to inspect the household linens. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but Helvise told me that the spare linen was kept in a coffer at the back of the minstrel’s gallery. We have been tidying it. I was hoping to hem a cloth for the table, but there wasn’t enough fabric.’

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘I don’t expect there was. When the previous incumbent of Monfort left, he took most of the linens with him.’ He glanced at the shirt and covered her hand with his. ‘If it pleases you to sew, we can go into Provins and buy cloth. You did say you would need more clothes. And since it is my fault you arrived here without your belongings, I ought to make recompense.’

  ‘My father is more at fault than you. He forced your hand.’

  Eric grunted. His thumb was moving gently over her fingers, tracing their length. Slightly bemused, Rowena stared at it. Eric’s touch had the strangest effect on her and she was not yet used to it. It made her short of breath, as though she’d been running. The cross at her breast trembled. She licked her lips, saw that he had noticed and felt her cheeks heat. Saints, now he would think she was begging for his kiss...

  Thankfully, the breeze lifted her veil and toyed with a long wisp of hair, giving her an excuse to break eye contact with him as she made to tidy it.

  His fingers tightened on hers. ‘Leave it,’ he said.

  She shot him a glance. His gaze was dark, far too heated for comfort.

  ‘I don’t like being disordered.’ Pursing her lips together, she fixed her gaze on a butterfly dancing past an apple tree and continued trying to free her hand.

  ‘In my view you are not disordered enough. My lady, I like you very much as you are, but I am certain I would adore you if you allowed yourself to become a little more disordered.’

  He was such a flirt. Rowena wondered if he even knew he was doing it. Then she caught herself up.

  Of course he knew it. Eric had warned her he was going to court her and this was his way of doing it. It meant nothing. He wanted to win her so he could have her lands. He must remember that she’d liked him when she’d been a child, and obviously he was under the impression that she was attracted to him now she was a woman. Which she couldn’t deny. Any woman with blood in her veins would find him attractive. Sir Eric de Monfort was h
eart-stoppingly handsome. So masculine. And the way he had of looking at her, his eyes seemed to smoulder, they seemed to say that she was the only woman in the world. Yes, Eric was undeniably attractive. She just wished he didn’t know it. She also wished he hadn’t twisted half the women of Champagne round his finger. Was one of them—Helvise—even now living under his roof?

  Releasing her hand, Eric pushed her veil over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed and he subjected her to a glance so searching she felt it in her toes. Glancing towards the gate—no one was in sight—he stroked her cheek. Her stomach felt fluttery and her mouth dry. Rowena’s breath hitched. It wasn’t fair. The combination of glossy dark hair, green eyes and natural charm was well-nigh irresistible. And when he fixed her with another of those intense stares, she could almost feel she was the centre of his world. Did he know how compelling it was?

  ‘Eric, please.’ Her protest sounded weak, even to her own ears. She braced herself for what he might do next. I must arm myself against him. I must resist. He is using his charm because he hopes to persuade me to his will. However, if we are to marry, I need to know that his methods won’t change. Leaving the convent for ever was a big step, she had to know she was making the right decision. She wasn’t going to be bullied.

  For now, that would be enough. It would be good to think that one day she might find love again, but Eric wasn’t Mathieu. Eric had never shown the slightest inclination to form a deep bond with any woman. Mathieu had been gentle, he’d been kind and thoughtful. Her gaze skittered over Eric’s wide shoulders, his strong arms. Mathieu had been a boy compared to Eric, but he had taught her something of great importance. Not all men dominated women by virtue of their muscles. Eric, as she herself knew, used charm. What would he do if he was crossed?

  Eric tipped his head to one side. Her veil shivered as he slipped his fingers beneath it and found her plait. Slowly, he drew it out. It was an innocuous gesture, yet somehow it felt otherwise. The air between them seemed to sizzle in a way it had never done when she’d been with Mathieu. The glint in Eric’s eyes and the tilt of his lips made it feel as though they were in his bedchamber and he was undressing her. Her body tightened. Her breath was flurried.