Dark Warrior (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Julie Shelton

  The high table had been removed from the dais, but their chairs were still there. For a few minutes the three of them stood on the dais, acknowledging the enthusiastic reception. Then Nicholas raised his hands and immediately the crowd fell silent.

  “My friends,” he began, only to be interrupted by another round of applause that drowned out his next words, until he raised his hands again, grinning at the jubilant crowd. “If you keep interrupting me, we’ll find ourselves still here this time tomorrow night.”

  There was a lot of good-natured laughter, but it quieted when Nicholas stepped forward to the edge of the dais. “We have achieved a stunning victory here tonight. And we have achieved it with only one casualty to our side.”

  The room went deathly still.

  “Young Matthew Vyne,” Nicholas went on, “one of my special fosters. He was to take his oath as a knight in less than a fortnight. He was not of noble blood, but he was definitely of noble spirit. He died bravely and honorably, and he will be sorely missed.”

  He waited for the murmurs to die down. “I want to thank each and every one of you who came to our aid with your bows. This victory belongs to you. Tomorrow morning you may pick up the pay you have coming to you and return to your homes and lives.” He looked around the crowded Hall. “But, first, we have a bit of unfinished business. Bring in the prisoner!” he intoned in a voice like rolling thunder.

  The double doors burst open and Robert Walford was led in slowly, his gait shuffling. The knights on either arm were there more to hold him up than to prevent him from escaping. As they brought him forward, a word from Nicholas to one of his squires produced a chair for Walford to sit in.

  Sneering, he scorned the offering and stood, swaying, on his own two feet, still supported by the two flanking knights.

  “Robert Walford,” Nicholas boomed out. “You stand before me in total defeat. Your army is even now being rounded up by mine, led by the Earl of Lyndsley, the Earl of Fairbourne, and the Duke de Brienne.” He moved his mouth in a grimace that was never meant to be a smile. “I am certain that you recognize all of those names. You married a daughter from each of these distinguished families. All three women died mysteriously at your hands, and so far you have refused to disclose where their bodies are buried. These grieving fathers have joined this effort against you to avenge the untimely deaths of their beloved children. So, before this night is out, you will tell them where their daughters may be found, so they can bring them home for reburial.”

  Nicholas looked around the assembled throng before once again raising his voice. “That concludes my remarks. However, that does not conclude these proceedings. There is someone else here tonight. Someone whose stake in tonight’s victory was even greater than mine.” He looked the Duke of Pemberton straight in the eyes. “Someone you know quite well, Walford.”

  There was a trumpet fanfare and twelve fully armed knights marched into the room. They were wearing the surcotes and carrying the red and white parti-colored banners with the English lion and the French fleur-de-lys embroidered in gold. The knights parted behind Robert Walford, half marching to the left, half to the right, to stand evenly along both sides of the Hall.

  A low murmur passed around the room as a tall, regal figure appeared in the doorway, wearing a blue velvet, ermine-trimmed mantle over the parti-colored surcote that matched the banners. There was a gold crown on his blond head.

  The crowd gasped and everyone fell to one knee and bowed their heads as Edward III, King of England, strolled into the room. He was tall, well-proportioned, and handsome, with curly blond hair and a blond beard. He was the tall pilgrim.

  Nicholas was the only one who remained standing, holding Kathryn at his side.

  “Nicholas!” the king cried jovially, striding right past Robert Walford without even sparing him a glance.

  “My liege,” Nicholas grinned. The two men embraced, laughing and clapping each other fondly on the back. Then the King pulled back to turn his attention to Kathryn.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, sweeping into a deep curtsey and bowing her head gracefully.

  “Here, here, none of that, ma fille. C’est moi who should be honoring you.” He pulled her up to stand before him. “After all, ’tis you we have to thank for disarming Walford and taking him prisoner.”

  He leaned forward to place a kiss on both of her cheeks. The watching crowd erupted in whistles and cheers.

  Kathryn smiled up at her monarch. “I knew you weren’t just an ordinary pilgrim,” she said accusingly, her sweet smile removing any sting from her words.

  He smiled back. “What gave me away?”

  “You were too arrogant by half, Your Majesty.”

  “Arrogant!”

  “Oh, aye,” she repeated. “I fear my husband suffers from the same affliction.”

  “Your Mmmajesty! Ccousin Edddward!”

  All heads turned to look at Robert Walford, who was having difficulty forming words with his sagging mouth, lingering over the various syllables as if unable to release them. “I am heeere to arrrest thhhese twooo—her for attemmpted murrder, hhhim for hhharboring a fuuugitive.” Each word was spoken slowly, with great effort and violent twisting of his drooping mouth. He was drooling like a teething baby. It was excruciating to watch.

  “I hhaaave wwwwarrants, duly swooorn and ssigned bbby my authorrrrity as crooown mmmagistrate!” He swallowed with great difficulty.

  The room seemed to sigh as if releasing its breath.

  King Edward turned regally and faced his cousin, fixing him with a baleful glare. “As usual, Robert, you have it all wrong. The only person under arrest in this room is you. First for assaulting this beautiful young woman standing by my side. Second, for theft of lands and properties belonging to men whose names you are not fit to utter. Third, for treason. For attempting to usurp my power and seize the throne of England. You had the audacity to think you could plot against me?” He pounded his breast with one fist. “Me? Your sovereign and liege lord? How dare you?” he roared.

  The King walked up to his cousin and leaned his face closer to Walford’s. His eyes glittered as his lip curled with contempt. “You overstepped yourself, Robert. You presumed too much. No one takes my throne from me. Do you hear me, Robert? No one!”

  Jabbing Walford’s chest with his fingertips, the King pushed the older man into the seat he had earlier disdained. Walford fell heavily and would have continued falling if Nicholas’s knights hadn’t grabbed his arms and righted both him and the chair.

  “And fourth, Robert,” the King continued, turning from his cousin and returning to stand on the dais between Nicholas and Kathryn. “You are under arrest for murder.” The crowd gasped. “Aye, Robert, murder. You killed Matthew Vyne, a fine young knight, in cold blood. And you killed Lady Elinor Montague, the Duke de Brienne’s daughter. You remember her, don’t you Robert? Your third wife? Well, we found her yesterday, you bastard. You beat her and cut her all over her body—after raping and sodomizing her first, of course. That seems to be a recurring pattern with you.”

  “Youuu lllie!” Walford blustered, his entire body jerking uncontrollably. “She’s bbbeen dead fooor three monnntths! Her bbbody has rrrotted away byyy now. You hhhave no prooof of sssuch chhharges!”

  “We have all the proof we need,” Edward countered, his calmness a total contrast to Walford’s furious ranting. “The day after you buried her there was a hard freeze. The ground has been frozen ever since then. Until yesterday.”

  Walford blanched as Edward approached him again. Grabbing him by the front of his robe, Edward jerked him to his feet. “Her body was perfectly preserved, Robert. Revealing every cut, every bruise, every tear in her tender young flesh. She was but fourteen, you bastard! Why did you have to kill her?” Edward shook his cousin, then released him abruptly, sending him staggering backwards into the chair. Again the two knights righted him.

  “She ggggot what ssshe deservved!” Walford shrieked. “Ssshe defiiied meee. Mmmme! Hhher lawfff
ul hhhusband!”

  “No fourteen-year-old deserves to die like that,” Edward responded coldly. “No one of any age deserves that. You are a brute, Robert. A monster. The world will be a better place without you in it. You will hang at Tyburn for your misdeeds, and your head will be placed on a pike, where it will remain for all to see until the flesh has melted from your bones. I for one will be glad to see the end of you.” Face twisting with disgust. Edward turned away from his cousin, unable to look at him another second.

  With a snarl of rage, Walford reached over with his right hand and snatched a knife from the belt of the knight holding his left arm. Raising it above his head, he lunged toward the King, intending to plunge the blade in his sovereign’s back.

  But before he could harm the monarch, Rolf, still kneeling in front of his chair on the dais, snatched one of the heavy swords from his baldric and threw it in one smooth motion, end over end, slicing Walford’s hand cleanly from his wrist.

  Blood shot like a fountain up in the air.

  With a shriek of pain and rage, Walford grabbed his spurting wrist in his left hand as his severed right hand, still gripping the knife, flew a few feet away and fell to the floor with a quiet thud. The nerveless fingers finally released the knife, which skittered harmlessly to a stop halfway across the room. Someone snatched up a linen table cloth and threw it toward one of Walford’s guards. He grabbed it and wadded it up, pressing it against the spurting stump as Walford continued to scream in agony.

  Kathryn’s knees gave way, but Nicholas had been waiting for just such a reaction and he scooped her up against his chest before she could fall.

  “Ahh, Your Majesty?” He hesitated. “Kathryn has fainted. Have I leave to tend to her?”

  “D’accord,” said Edward with a gesture of dismissal. “Va. Je viens tout de suite, mon fils. After I see to the cleaning up of this mess.”

  But, already, servants were there, placing towels over the blood on the floor so no one would step in it and slip, directing other servants to bring hot soapy water and scrubbing brushes. Edward was barking orders and knights were rushing about, carrying out those orders.

  By the time the King arrived in Nicholas’s old solar, Kathryn was standing on her own two feet and was in the process of being thoroughly kissed, by both her husband and Rolf. Nicholas’s hands were gripping her upper arms as if he would never let her go. Rolf was simply holding her against his hard body, his arms around her from behind.

  As their monarch cleared his throat ostentatiously, Nicholas lifted his head with reluctance. Rolf’s arms tightened around Kathryn, holding her against him like a vise.

  “I just came to tell you, Your Grace,” Edward addressed Kathryn quietly, “that the charges against your father have been dropped and he has been returned to Carrolton. But he is a broken man, ma fille. He is barely clinging to life.”

  “Thank you for telling me, Your Majesty. But I care not. He sold me to Walford to honor a gambling debt. He gambled away all of our wealth, our family possessions and our lands, and with them our honor. Thanks to him, we have naught left, not even our good name.”

  Edward winced at the hardness in her voice. “Mais, il est ton père, ma petite. He is your father.”

  But she shook her head. “He knew what Walford would do to me, and he didn’t care. My memories of that last night in my father’s castle are just too—they’re—” She shuddered. “I wish never to see it, or him, ever again.”

  He bowed his head in acquiescence. “That, of course, is your choice, ma petite.” The King lifted her hand to his lips, then patted the back of it with his other hand. “Et maintenant, I shall say, adieu, ma belle, ma petite duchesse.” As he stepped away, Nicholas followed him.

  “Your majesty, surely you will stay the night—as our guest,” Nicholas entreated. “Surely, you cannot mean to leave this late in the evening.”

  The King smiled. “Merci, mon fils. Mais, non. Il faut que je reviens à Londres tout de suite.”

  “I know not how to thank you for coming to our assistance this day.”

  “Pas de quoi, mon fils. N’importe.” The King waved his hand in dismissal. “When Thomas Parsons told me what was happening, I knew I had to come and do my part. Disguising all your messengers as pilgrims was an inspired idea. And that archery display was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.”

  Nicholas grinned and looked smugly back at his wife. “See? Did I not tell you I had a plan?”

  She just giggled. And giggled. In fact, she couldn’t seem to stop giggling. Rolf turned her in his arms and just held her, stroking his hand soothingly up and down her back.

  Her giggles were rapidly becoming uncontrollable, rising in pitch, making her chest hurt. A stricken look crossed her face. Her hand flew to her breast as she struggled for breath, lungs heaving. The giggles turned to sobs.

  Rolf bent and lifted her easily up in his arms. Gasping, she let her head drop to rest against his neck. Her body was wracked with shuddering sobs and hiccupping giggles.

  “Thank you again, Your Majesty,” Nicholas murmured as the King led the way out into the hall. “We’re taking her upstairs. I’m not sure we should leave her.”

  “Of course you are not going to leave her,” the King said reassuringly. “She needs you, mon fils. Take care of her. Elle est un trésor.”

  “Aye,” Nicholas breathed, following Rolf as he carried their love easily down the dark stretch of hallway. “Elle est notre trésor.”

  When they got back upstairs, Rolf carried her over to the fireplace and sank down into one of the cushioned chairs, holding her sideways on his lap. Nicholas knelt down beside the chair, holding and kissing her hands.

  Rolf kissed the top of her head, stroking tendrils of golden hair back off her moist face. He held her until she was finally lying quietly against his chest.

  “I’m sorry to be such a baby,” she said softly.

  “You’re not a baby,” Nicholas reassured her soothingly. “You’ve just had a very trying day.”

  “So have you,” she pointed out, “but you’re not crying and carrying on.”

  He reached up and cupped her cheek in his large hand. His mouth quirked. “I am on the inside.”

  She smiled and nestled more closely against Rolf’s hard chest. “’Tis truly over,” she breathed on a note of wonder as Nicholas released her hands. He rose and began undressing. She watched him from the haven of Rolf’s lap.

  “Aye, my love. ’Tis truly over. That bastard will never be a threat to you or anyone else ever again.”

  She sighed. “You should be downstairs joining in the celebration.”

  “I am celebrating.” Still partially dressed, he bent down and brushed his lips across her cheek. “I’m celebrating you.”

  “Aye, yndling.” Rolf pushed her head farther out on his shoulder to feather a line of kisses across her brows, her closed eyes, down her cheek, along the line of her jaw. “Thou art the only celebration we need.” He turned her in his lap so that her back was against his chest. Nicholas moved forward, pushing Rolf’s legs apart as he did so. As Rolf’s lap disappeared, she found herself sitting with her buttocks on the front edge of the chair, held tightly between the Dane’s powerful thighs. His cock was a hard ridge rising up along her spine.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to join the others?” she persisted.

  “We are doing exactly what we want to be doing.” Kneeling in front of her, Nicholas touched the corner of her mouth with the lightest of kisses.

  “Won’t His Majesty miss you?” she asked against his mouth.

  “His Majesty will get over it.”

  She opened her mouth for his exploration. His tongue slipped inside, seeking, questing, excavating her honeyed depths. His lips nibbled, tasted, discovering her secrets with a reverence that seized her breath in her lungs. The entire time he was kissing her, he was slowly pushing up her skirts, lifting her hips as he eased the material up over them, baring her to her waist.

  Rolf grabbed h
er knees and spread her legs, lifting them high and wide. Nicholas bent forward, placing his nose against her curl-covered mound. “Christ, beloved, your scent is so sweet.” Parting her labia with his thumbs, he blew on her hot, pink skin, wet and shiny with her gushing juices. And then his tongue was on her, suckling, licking, stabbing into her hot opening as the breath left her body in shuddering little moans. And she gave herself up to her two men, knowing they had an entire lifetime of loving ahead of them.

  Epilogue

  Nine Months Later

  “Laddie, you must stop pacing,” Thomas Parsons admonished soothingly. “You’re wearing a groove in the floor.” They were in Nicholas’s old solar, having been banished downstairs until after the birth.

  “Oh, aye,” Nicholas retorted. “And I suppose you weren’t pacing the floor in your solar just four months ago, waiting for little Roger Nicholas to be born?”

  Thomas gave him a shamefaced grin. “Oh, aye. You have me there, lad. Even though he was my seventh, ’twas no easier than my first. I was frantic with worry for every one of my beautiful babes until I could see them and my darlin’ Sorcha for myself and know that they were all right. I figure that’s just the lot of us poor husbands, eh?” He grinned over at Rolf, slouched in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. The Danish knight was not wearing any of his weapons. He had not worn them since attending the public execution of Robert Walford at Tyburn the month before.

  King Edward had been quite generous with the Duke of Pemberton’s fiefdoms, offering the duchy, along with Pemberton Castle and all lands pertaining thereto, to Rolf, who had turned him down flat, wanting nothing to do with anything that had belonged to the late Robert Walford. In truth, he was perfectly happy being first knight to Nicholas Herron, the Duke of Berwick, and equal beloved of Kathryn Herron, Duchess of Berwick. Pemberton’s lands and titles had ultimately gone to others. Nicholas’s reward had been the king’s promise to prevent the Church from interfering with their unique living arrangement.