And she knew it.
But Rhoswyn was also a woman of exquisite beauty. Her hair was long and thick and straight, hanging to mid-waist, in a shade of auburn that looked like the shimmering color of leaves when they changed in the autumn. It was all shades of burnished reds and golds. She had the face of angels, her mother had said, and big brown eyes with a fringe of dusky lashes. With a dusting of freckles across her nose, she looked like a fine porcelain statue and incapable of anything other than softness and love.
That was what most men thought before she drove a sword into their bellies.
Aye, Rhoswyn was both his exquisite creation and his disaster. Finding a husband for her had been impossible because no Scotsman in his right mind wanted a wife who could best him in a fight. And it was that thought alone that caused Keith a good deal of sleepless nights until he’d heard that de Wolfe had taken over Monteviot Tower.
Then, an idea had struck him.
Keith knew he couldn’t beat de Wolfe in a fight. A show of force wouldn’t do. But perhaps an alliance of sorts would. If he couldn’t run the man off his lands, then he really had no choice but to join with him. If he could only trick de Wolfe… that is, convince de Wolfe into accepting Rhoswyn as a wife for one of his men, or better, one of his sons, then he wouldn’t have to worry about de Wolfe on his lands at all. Rhoswyn would be married into the man’s family and, therefore, they would all be considered family. It might even make his snobbish cousin, the Kerr, respect him just a little. An alliance with de Wolfe would make him more powerful in his cousin’s eyes.
But, in truth, an alliance like that wouldn’t be for respect. It would be for survival. It was far better to be at de Wolfe’s side than in his path.
Of course, Rhoswyn didn’t know any of this, nor would she until the time was right. Until then, Keith had to keep his scheme to himself. He couldn’t even tell his men, because he knew it would get back to his daughter. Nay, he had to bide his time on this one. He had to make peace with de Wolfe because he didn’t have the numbers to stand against him.
Rhoswyn was that peace.
“I am not sure we can,” Keith said after a moment. “Lass, ye know old angers die hard. The Kerr has never forgiven me for takin’ yer mother away from him and whenever he looks at ye, he sees her. Ye remind him of what he lost.”
“Then ye willna even try?” Rhoswyn asked, exasperated.
Keith held up a quieting hand. “It seems tae me that de Wolfe isna a threat,” he said. “He’s held Wolfe’s Lair for more than twenty years and the only threat he’s ever had, aside from an occasional Scots raid, is attack from the English. Ye were just a wee lass at the time but nigh ten years ago, Carlisle marched on de Wolfe and laid siege tae the Lair.”
Rhoswyn had heard of that battle, many years ago. It had something to do with Simon de Montfort at the time, and the fact that de Wolfe supported Henry, but she didn’t care about foolish English feuds. They were a ridiculous lot, anyway.
“I remember bein’ told,” she said impatiently, “and I dunna care. All I care about is gettin’ the man off our lands. If ye willna make amends with the Kerr, then what will ye do?”
There she was again, challenging his authority in all matters. Keith glanced to the men around him; his younger brother, Fergus, and Fergus’ sons Artis and Dunsmore. Fergus was even more of the passive type – the man didn’t like confrontation – while his sons were much more like Rhoswyn. The younger generation had the fire of ambition in them and the fuel of inexperience to feed it.
“I will do what needs tae be done, Daughter,” he finally said, with a firm tone that told her she’d better still her tongue. “Trust that, in all things, I will do what is best for us all.”
Rhoswyn heard the warning tone but she’d never been one to back away. “And what is that, Pa?”
Keith eyed the woman. He knew she wasn’t going to leave this alone unless he gave her a satisfactory answer. Rather than let her continue to publicly humiliate him, he stood up, straight into the haze of smoke that was hanging around the room. His eyes stung. But his gaze was sharp on his daughter.
“With me,” he said.
He was motioning to Rhoswyn and she immediately went to him, following him out of the hall and into the bailey beyond.
It was a small bailey, crowded with men and animals, and smelling like a barnyard. Sibbald’s Hold was a small but highly fortified tower that had been built about sixty years before by a man named Sibbald Kerr. As Keith’s father, he’d passed the fortress to his son and it became Keith’s permanent home after his falling out with his cousin. It was comprised of a tower attached to a hall that used two of the exterior walls of the fortress as part of the structure.
Everything was packed in so tightly into the bailey that there was little room for anything more than what they already had, including people. Keith turned to his daughter when he sensed they had a nominal amount of privacy.
“I’ll not have ye questionin’ every move I make,” he said, his tone low. “I have tae do what’s best for our people. If I charge de Wolfe, he will destroy us. Do ye not understand that?”
Rhoswyn did, deep down, but it wasn’t in her nature to relent. “But Pa,” she said. “If ye dunna challenge him, then mayhap the next time, he’ll come for Sibbald. What will ye do then? If ye let him gain more of a foothold than he has, then he’ll walk over us before we know it.”
Keith cocked a dark eyebrow. “Then what would ye have me do?”
Rhoswyn blinked in surprise; he didn’t usually ask her opinion. Even so, she was ready with it. “If ye send tae the Kerr…”
Keith cut her off. “I will not send word tae me cousin,” he said flatly. “He wouldna come, anyway. Ye can put that thought out of yer mind. Tell me again what ye would do.”
Truth be told, Rhoswyn didn’t have much of a backup plan. “What of yer allies?” she asked. “If ye send word, they will help ye.”
Keith shook his head. “’Tis a fool ye are, lass,” he said. “Do ye really believe the Elliot and the Armstrong would send men tae purge de Wolfe from a tiny outpost? And risk the wrath of all of the English lairds along the border? Nay, lass, they wouldna. Tae fight de Wolfe, we must be smarter than he is. And wolves are smart animals.”
Rhoswyn knew what he said about their allies was true; they wouldn’t risk angering de Wolfe because the man could very well take it out on them. But she hated feeling so alone and so helpless.
“How would ye be smarter than him, then?” she asked.
Keith held up a finger as if a grand thought had occurred to him. “By attackin’ the English the only way we can.”
“And do what?”
There was a glimmer in Keith’s dark eyes. “We can pick away at them,” he said. “I could send men every week tae pick at the outpost, tae steal their horses or their cattle, tae make their lives miserable. I may not be able tae bring a massive army tae their door, but I can make their lives uneasy. Now, by all accounts, de Wolfe is a reasonable man. He’s not given tae fits of fury or madness. Mayhap, I will invite de Wolfe tae Sibbald and discuss a truce. If he doesna agree, then we will pick at his men like vermin. There willna be many of us, but enough tae give them no peace.”
Rhoswyn was shaking her head, even as he spoke. “That willna matter tae them,” she said. “With their numbers, we would simply be flies buzzin’ around their heads. It would be annoyin’ and nothin’ more. They may even swat at the flies and kill one or two. Do we want tae risk our men like that?”
She had a point. Keith crossed his arms thoughtfully. “Ye have another idea, then?”
Rhoswyn thought on the situation seriously. Her only plan had been to send for allies, but clearly that wasn’t the answer. She had to come up with something else, something to hit the English where it would do the most damage.
Something to damage that fragile male ego. An idea took hold.
“The English have considerable pride, Pa,” she said after a moment. “I dunna suppose they could
turn down a challenge, could they?”
He looked at her strangely. “What kind of challenge?”
She gazed at her father intently. “Would they accept a challenge that had yer best warrior against their best warrior?” she asked. “The winner would name the terms, and when I won, I would tell them they had tae leave Monteviot.”
Keith’s brow furrowed. “Yer terms?”
She nodded eagerly, thinking she was on to something brilliant. “Aye,” she said. “We could go tae Monteviot and challenge them, but I wouldna reveal meself until the battle. Once the English warrior sees I am a woman, he has tae fight me. It would shame him if he dinna.”
Keith scratched his chin thoughtfully. In truth, it wasn’t a bad scheme. Perhaps, he could coerce and insult the English enough that they would take on a single-combat challenge, winner take all. It would most certainly be a matter of pride. The only negative point to that entire plan was the fact that Rhoswyn was determined to be the warrior facing the English. Although his daughter was good – very good – he wasn’t sure he wanted to pit her against an English knight.
Still, she had an excellent point – not revealing her identity until it was too late. The English knight would have no choice but to go through with it simply to save his pride, woman or no. Or… he could surrender because fighting a woman would be beneath him.
One way, Keith might lose a daughter. The other way… he’d gain back his outpost and keep his child intact.
It was a difficult choice to make.
“And what happens if ye lose?” he asked quietly. “What then? They could name their terms, too.”
Rhoswyn wasn’t one to entertain defeat in any case, but she had to be realistic. “What is the worst they could do?” she asked. “Demand we go home? Demand we leave Monteviot Tower to them and never return?”
Keith was much older and much more experienced. He knew that a counter-demand could be much more serious than she was making it out to be.
“They could demand ye,” he said. “Or, they could demand we turn over Sibbald.”
Rhoswyn thrust her chin up. “Then we would be without honor because they couldna have me or Sibbald. We would run for home and hope they would not catch us.”
She was serious; Keith could see it. In his opinion, she wasn’t being reasonable. Still, in her suggestion, he could see that she was more than willing to sacrifice herself and that was the mark of a noble warrior. He appreciated that.
After a moment, he sighed and put his arm around Rhoswyn’s shoulders, giving her a squeeze. For just a moment, she was his little girl again and she hugged her father, tightly. But it was only for a moment; she quickly released him, embarrassed to show any emotion.
“Ye understand that I must do what I feel best,” Keith said to her, fingering a tendril of her hair. “In spite of what ye think of me, de Wolfe’s incursion will be answered. I willna cower from him. The man is on me land and I must let him know that I know.”
Rhoswyn nodded. “I know.”
“But I’m not sure I’m a-wantin’ ye tae fight their best warrior for the prize of Monteviot Tower.”
“There is no one better than me. Ye know that.”
Keith snorted softly. “There are a few, lass.”
“But they willna have the advantage I have – of being a woman.”
“That is true.”
“Then we will go on the morrow?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Now?”
She nodded firmly. “Why should we wait? The sooner we go, the sooner they leave.”
Hesitantly, he nodded, and the plan was set. As much as Keith didn’t want to entertain the possibility, the more he thought on it, the more sense it was starting to make. Having his daughter challenge the English, winner take all, and then revealing her sex when they accepted the challenge. Those foolish English knights with their sense of chivalry might very well lay down their weapons rather than fight a woman. In fact, he was willing to bet that would be the case.
He was about to stake Rhoswyn’s life on it.
As Keith glanced at his tall, proud daughter, he began to think of the terms they would relay once she triumphed over the arrogant English. Not a few minutes earlier, he was thinking on offering her to de Wolfe to create an alliance. He still thought it was a good idea. And if the winner was the one to set the terms of victory, Keith had a different idea of terms set forth than his daughter did. His terms wouldn’t be that the English should clear out and leave Monteviot Tower.
His terms would be that the loser marry his daughter. He’d have his alliance, his daughter would have a husband, and all would be well in the world – even if her husband was English.
Rhoswyn’s plan to challenge the English was looking better and better.
CHAPTER THREE
Monteviot Tower
The great hall of Monteviot smelled like smoke and burned flesh, but they were all so exhausted and hungry that no one seemed to care. Three days after the burning of the tower, the restoration of the grounds was already underway.
The bodies of the dead Scots had been piled outside of the walls of Monteviot and, at William’s request, Troy had sent to Jedburgh Abbey for a canon to come and pray over the departed souls. They waited two days for the holy man to come but at the end of the second day, the stench of the dead was so bad that Troy ordered the funeral pyre lit.
Of course, it was appropriate that the canon should come just as the sky filled with black, greasy smoke from the burning bodies and the wiry man with his skull suitably shaved to denote his piety arrived on an old palfrey and promptly launched himself from the horse to berate the English who were disposing of the bodies.
Hector de Norville, Paris’ eldest son, had been the first to receive the holy tongue lashing because he happened to be standing closest to the priest when he arrived. But Hector was much like his father in that he didn’t take most things too seriously; he knew his duty, he knew what was best, and he simply brushed the priest off when the man tried to tell him that burning the dead without a priest’s blessing was condemning the souls to Purgatory.
As Hector walked away, Troy watched from his position across the pyre. The frustrated priest seemed to be scolding any English knight he came in contact with but the knights were all following Hector’s example and either ignoring the priest or walking away.
As the priest came close to a tantrum as the flames of the dead burned brightly, Troy made his way over to the man who was now trying to berate the soldiers who were piling up the bodies. With the knights gone, the soldiers were the next targets, but the soldiers looked at the priest as if they had no care for his ranting. They continued their duty of stripping the dead and then throwing them onto the pile. They had their orders and no one, not even a Scottish priest with a heavy accent, was going to stop them.
“You,” Troy said as he walked up behind the frantic priest. “Are you from Jedburgh?”
The man whirled around, his eyes widening at the sight of the very big, very dark knight. “I am,” he said, breathless. “Ye sent for me. Now I am here and I find ye burnin’ the bodies of the dead?”
Troy held up a hand to calm the man. “We had no choice,” he said. “Some of them were burned already because they had been caught in the fire that burned out the tower. For the rest of them… it was starting to smell very badly around here. We had to do something.”
The priest threw up his hands. “Then bury them!”
Troy eyed the man before kicking at the ground. “In this?” he said, pointing. “Look at it; there is more rock than soil here. We could never dig through this. Or did you have in mind that we should take them in a caravan to Jedburgh so that you and your fellow priests could properly bury them?”
That seemed to bring some pause to the priest. His gaze lingered on Troy before looking to the ground, seeing what the knight had meant. It was extremely rocky ground, meaning it would have been very difficult to dig out a mass grave. Soil such as this was nearly impossible to cut t
hrough. Unhappy, the priest sighed.
“Then why did ye send for me?” he asked. “Ye’ve already burned the men. Ye’ve already done what needed tae be done.”
“I sent for you to pray for these men,” Troy said. “It was not by my choice, I assure you. My father requested it. All of these men are thieves and murderers, so prayer will not do them any good. Their paths were set in life and they are set in death. But my father requested that a priest pray for them just the same. It is a merciful gesture, I suppose.”
The priest scratched his head, fingers digging into thin hair that stood up like straw in places. He seemed to be calming after his initial flare up.
“Then yer father is a pious man,” he said, eyeing the big knight. “Who are ye?”
“Troy de Wolfe. My father is William de Wolfe.”
That brought a reaction from the priest. “The Wolfe of the Border?”
“Aye.”
Now, the priest wasn’t quite so irate. In fact, he seemed to be more interested in his surroundings. “A de Wolfe battle in Scotland?” he asked. “What goes on here, then? What happened?”
Troy looked up at the burned-out tower, at his general surroundings as the sky darkened into night overhead. The stars were starting to come out.
“This place was a haven for reivers,” he said. “We have eliminated the threat. My father is taking over command of this outpost and it will become English property. In fact, this tower is located between my father’s seat of Castle Questing and his major outpost of Wolfe’s Lair. Have you heard of the Lair?”
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