Loving the Knight: Book 2: Eryndal & Andrew (The Hansen Series: Rydar & Grier and Eryndal & Andrew)

by Kris Tualla

  Drew wagged his head. “Jamie said ye had fallen very ill with a catarrh, and I feared ye would look feckless.”

  “I was quite sick,” she admitted. “But I’m better, now. Much.”

  “Ye look… well, ye look so bonny, I can no’ believe ye spent a single fevered day.” He pulled her against his chest. “I missed ye so, Eryn.”

  She snuggled against the broad expanse of his hard body and didn’t say anything. Her heart felt near to bursting with his words, and—in spite of all the silent chastising her mind threw at it—that stubborn organ was happy. And hopeful. Foolish heart.

  She sighed.

  Drew’s knuckle tucked under her chin and lifted it. Eryn met his gaze.

  “I said I’d be back,” he whispered.

  “Ye shouldn’t have come,” she murmured, knowing the emotions bursting out of her negated her words.

  “Are ye glad to see me?” he purred.

  In answer she pulled him into another kiss.

  Their first kiss unleashed the pent-up passions that their month-long separation had constructed and corralled. This kiss was tender; it promised more. It promised a future. Eryn dissolved into it. Her world narrowed to Drew’s tongue, the scratch of his whiskers on her cheek, the scents of horse and cold on his skin, the small pleasured grunts she pulled from his throat. For that moment, nothing else in the world existed. Not her lies. Not his position. Not what must come next.

  Only him.

  With her.

  “What in hell is going on here?”

  Eryn gasped and whirled to face Geoffrey. His anger surged across the room even faster than he did. “I said, what in hell is going on?”

  Eryn moved away from Drew, wiping her mouth with the back of one shaking hand. She couldn’t speak, even if she had a clue of what to say.

  Drew was silent as well.

  Eryn shot him a look. His chin was raised and he looked down his nose at Geoffrey. His hooded gaze clearly indicated that he didn’t feel any explanation was needed.

  Geoffrey kicked a chair out of his way. He glared at the knight, then Eryn, and the knight again. But his words were for Eryn. “Will ye tell him? Or should I?”

  “Geoff!” she cried. “No!”

  His gray eyes were stormy and his glance as hard as steel. “I’m giving ye the chance to tell him the truth yourself.”

  Drew waved one hand. “That’s no’ needed. I—”

  “Eryn?” Geoff interrupted.

  “Please stop, Geoff,” she begged. “I will.”

  “Eryn—there’s no need,” Drew injected.

  Geoffrey glared at the knight. “She’s no’ who she says she is. She’s not the Lady Bell.”

  “Stop!” Eryn shouted. Panic reddened the edges of her vision.

  “I’ll no’ stop!” Geoffrey taunted. “And I’ll no’ be cuckolded!”

  Eryn’s eyes widened so far they hurt. “What are you saying?”

  Geoff threw a pointed finger in her face. “Ye are promised to marry me! What I saw could only lead to your deflowering, and I’ll not allow him to do that to ye!”

  Eryn’s heart flailed against her ribs. She dare not look at Drew. Everything that had transpired between them would spill into the Hall if she did. And then Geoff would know.

  “Constable McDougal,” Drew growled. “Calm yourself afore ye say something ye should no’!”

  “Like what?” Geoffrey looked like a man possessed. “That she is a nameless orphan? Someone’s unwanted by-blow? And she has no rightful claim to the name Bell, nor the position she currently holds?”

  “Geoff! How could you?” Eryn screeched. She covered her face with her hands and fell to her knees, unmindful of the bruises the stone floor would raise. Sobs squeezed her so hard she couldn’t breathe. How could she ever think to marry a man who acted so spitefully?

  Howls contained in her cupped hands were the only sounds in the room; she expected blows.

  “I ken.” Drew’s deep growl rolled over her.

  What? Eryn’s head popped up and she stared at the knight. Tears chilled on her cheeks.

  “Wh—what?” Geoff stammered.

  “I ken that Eryn was no’ the Lady Bell. And I ken she was raised by the nuns at Elstow Abbey after her mother left her there.” He looked at her then. His expression blatantly asked her forgiveness.

  “How?” was all she could manage.

  “I stopped there on my way to London,” he said softly, as if his tone could ease the impact.

  Drew’s actions felt every bit as cruel as Geoff’s. These two men were wantonly destroying her, and for their own self-centered reasons.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  Drew knelt in front of her so that his regal bulk was all she could see. “Ye had a secret and ye would no’ trust me. I asked ye to, but ye refused.”

  “I had good reason!” she exclaimed.

  “I fought for ye,” he continued, ignoring her outburst. “With King David.”

  “He knows?” she gasped. Terror boiled her blood.

  “I won him over. Ye are safe.” He gripped her arms. “Do ye hear me?”

  Eryn’s mind wouldn’t accept what she thought she heard. Did he say safe? She looked blankly at Geoff.

  Her friend was obviously shocked. His mouth worked wordlessly in a white face. He reached for the chair he had kicked and sank into it.

  “Eryn, look at me.” Drew shook her a little. “There’s more.”

  More? Speak aloud.

  “More?” she breathed.

  His changeable eyes bore into hers. “I found your father.”

  “Is he—” she blurted.

  Drew wagged his head, his features displayed frustration at misspeaking. “No, he was a soldier and he died in the Crusades. But I found his family, the Hansens.”

  Eryn pressed fists over her ears. This was too much. “No.”

  With one hand Drew pulled her fist away from her head, with the other he reached inside his tunic. “I have a letter from your mother. She wrote him when she knew of ye.”

  Eryn shook her hand free of his and pressed her fists harder, hurting her ears. “No.”

  Drew placed the letter in her lap.

  “NO!” she screamed.

  She grabbed the old parchment and held it up, crumpled in her fingers. “You had no right to do this!”

  Drew sat back on his heels. “Eryn—”

  She stumbled to her feet. “You. Had. No. Right! Just because you are a powerful ‘Knight-Of-The-King’ doesn’t give you consent to go digging into another person’s pain—past!”

  Eryn turned toward the Hall door. It blurred and shifted through her tears. She wobbled in its direction while she tried to conjure words to express her fury at both men’s betrayals. Did neither of them respect her? Did neither of them know her? How could they think that digging into and bandying about her private—private!—situation for public perusal was in any way acceptable?

  This felt like the worst thing that could ever have happened. Worse than being an orphan. Worse than the Death. Her anger and humiliation flamed through her and she thought she might turn to ash on the spot. She could never look Drew in the eye again. Not now. Not when he knew every thread of her shame.

  When she reached the doorway, she gripped it with her free hand and spoke over her shoulder.

  “Drew, leave. Now. Do not come back. Ever.” She pulled a shuddering breath. Her fingers tightened on the doorjamb. Her future happiness dissipated like so much smoke with each spoken syllable. “Geoff. I will marry you. In five days. If you will still have me.”

  A moment of murdering stillness nearly stopped her heart.

  “Aye.”

  She nodded and ran up to her chamber as quickly as she could.

    

  Eryn had no idea how much time had passed when she rolled over on her bed, but the room was pale gray and she still had the letter in her hand. Her nose was stuffed, her eyes ached, and her head pounded.

  Her hear
t was wounded so badly, her chest was numb.

  That Geoff would reveal her secret, and display her shame so blatantly and with no apparent compunction, shocked her. She thought he was her friend. She thought he loved her. Why would he deliberately hurt her so?

  Because he was hurt, of course.

  She could only imagine how she would feel if their positions were switched. If she walked in and saw Drew kissing another woman. To be honest, she would probably lash out in the same way. Try desperately to inflict mortal pain. And end up damaging her own status in the process, just as Geoffrey had.

  She sniffed and ran a hand under her nose. I truly cannot fault him.

  But Drew was another matter entirely.

  Eryn never expected him to act as he had; to go to Elstow Abbey and ask about her life there. What did he hope to accomplish? Nothing good, that was clear. He obviously wanted to prove her a liar. And then to speak about her to King David? He might as well have hung her before he left! That would have been simpler and saved them all quite a lot of effort.

  Why he searched out her father’s identity was beyond her ability to think at this point. Her emotions had been catapulted from glorious elation at his arrival to deadly despair at his betrayal in a matter of minutes. Just to breathe through the remainder of this day felt an oppressive burden.

  Eryn looked at her fist. The parchment she gripped was dirty with rust-colored stains. What did Drew say it was? A letter from her mother to her father?

  How did he find this? Where had it been for twenty-seven years?

  Eryn pushed herself up and leaned against her pillows. She stared at the missive. There remained enough light in the room to read the letter. Wise or not, she unfolded it slowly, mortally curious and terrified of what it might contain. The letter was dated in August, four months before she was born.

  My dearest, darling Rolf ~

  Rolf. Hansen. Her father’s name was Rolf Hansen. Eryn whispered the name; somehow it simultaneously stirred and soothed her tattered emotions.

  I must tell you that I am carrying your child.

  He hadn’t known. When Rolf Hansen left for the Crusade, he hadn’t known he was to be a father. That was something. Eryn heaved a sigh, less fearful now of the letter’s contents.

  We can marry and raise our child in Norway—

  Norway? Her father was a Norse soldier? No wonder she was so tall. And blonde. With such pale eyes.

  “I look like my father,” she murmured. Tears stung her eyes again; she never in her life expected to be able to utter such a statement. So she said it again, “I look like my father.”

  She closed her eyes and let that realization course through her. She suddenly felt anchored to the world—and only then understood that she never felt anchored before. Eryn opened her eyes and refocused on the parchment.

  …at your home in Arendal.

  “Sweet Mother of God!” she yelped, then clamped a hand over her mouth.

  Arendal? Eryndal?

  “My name was a clue!” Eryn sat still, barely breathing. She felt as if a door she waited outside of all her life had just swung open—a door that was closed, but never locked. If there was one clue, were there more?

  Eryn leapt from the bed and ran to her trunk. She opened it and tossed aside her yarn and needles and all the carefully folded fabrics until she reached the embroidered blanket at the bottom. She pulled it out and laid it on the floor. Then she stepped back and examined it with new purpose.

  The first square was England and the North Sea. And Norway. What Eryn had always thought were random decorations, she now saw to be an “A” where London was and an “R” on the southern coast of Norway. Was the A for Annais? And the R for Rolf?

  The second square was a knight in armor, holding a sword. Why had she never thought anything about the blond hair that flowed from under his helmet? Father.

  The third square was the blond knight and the dark-haired woman. Mother.

  On the fourth square, the bodies were intertwined. Passion.

  The fifth square held an Easter banner curving across the top, and a Christmas banner curving along the bottom. The two banners nearly met on the left side, held apart by the year 1327—her birth year.

  “Conceived at Easter, born at Christmas,” she whispered.

  On the sixth and final square, the two figures faced away from each other, each moving in a different direction. Separation. How talented her mother must have been to be able to capture the sorrow on both faces using only scraps of yarn.

  This unusual blanket, its design seeming so odd and disjointed, was a deliberate telling of her story. Her mother created it for her and left it with the nuns. She wanted Eryn to know, even if she wasn’t there to tell her.

  Eryn ran back to the bed and grabbed up the letter. What words remained unread confirmed all that she deciphered on her own. And explained that her mother returned to London to wait, hoping for her lover’s return.

  “But he was killed,” Eryn said aloud. “He would have come, but he was killed.”

  Suddenly the rusty stains made sense. Blood. Eryn gasped and dropped the parchment. It fluttered to the floor. It was her father’s blood that blotted the missive.

  Had her mother seen this? How did Drew find it? And why hadn’t anyone ever given it to Eryn?

  She sat on the edge of her bed and stared absently at the little woven blanket on the floor. So much information had been thrown into her lap—literally—that she was exhausted. Spent. Overwhelmed.

  Both reassured and destroyed by one man’s actions.

  Eryn didn’t see how she could concentrate on anything else—even her wedding in only five days—until she had time to sift through all the emotions she knew would swamp her on the morrow. She barely had the inclination to undress or eat before she climbed into bed for the night.

  She frowned and looked at the blanket again, now with intent. “What…” she breathed.

  It was there, in the blanket.

  The last clue.

  She could never see them close up. But from across the room they became obvious. The design in each block formed a letter.

  The two land masses with a dark blue sea between. The water was in the shape of an “H.”

  The soldier knight with his legs spread wide and his massive sword crossing from hand to hand: “A.”

  The knight on the left, the woman on the right, the sword extended downward between them: “N.”

  The swirl of man and woman: “S.”

  The “E” puzzled her until she realized the Easter lilies were the top, the Christmas garland the bottom, and the date in the middle, the crosspiece.

  The knight’s body and downward sword made half of the second “N” and the woman completed the letter.

  Hansen. The letters spelled her father’s surname. Eryn sat, stunned and staring.

  Afraid to move.

  Afraid to dispel the feeling that for the first time in her life, she was not an orphan.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  February 6, 1355

  South of Falkirk, Scotland

  “That’s it there?” Kennan asked.

  “Aye.” Drew stared at his father’s estate and reconsidered the wisdom of his path yet again.

  Two days ago a stunned and furious Eryn ordered him to leave Castleton and never return—and then agreed to wed the constable. Drew was stunned as well. He never imagined that, once he told Eryn he knew her secret and that she was safe, she would toss him out on his arse. In his mind’s theater, she threw her arms around him in gratitude and agreed to marry him.

  The only bit of the fiasco he did understand was that his heart—not his pride, this time—had been shattered. Sharp shards lodged in his chest and cut him with every breath. He hadn’t felt this bad since Danny died.

  And that memory was what turned his path north. He gave Eryn her history. Now a month past thirty, it was time to face his own.

  He refocused his attention on the scene before him. The grounds looked
essentially the same as they had when Drew was fourteen. Some of the trees were bigger. And there were fewer people visible at their tasks. Both of those things could be anticipated.

  What Drew could not anticipate was whether he would be welcomed at his family’s estate. Or who might still live to receive him—or send him away. He nudged his stallion forward. Kennan followed silently. The day was still and cold as well, holding back its breath, waiting to see what would transpire.

  Once inside the walled courtyard, Lord Andrew Drummond, powerful knight and courtier of King David II of Scotland, dismounted, handed his reins to his vassal, and knocked on the door of his childhood home. His heart now thumped a different discomfort. He planted his feet at shoulder’s width and rested a palm on his sword’s jeweled hilt. He lifted his chin defiantly. He drew a deep breath that swelled his chest.

  He was as ready as he could be for whatever appeared on the other side of the carved wooden portal.

  “My lord, please enter,” a steward he didn’t recognize beckoned. Drew followed him into the Great Hall.

  “I’ve come to see the lord and lady of the estate,” Drew said, deliberately not using names. “On behalf of His Majesty, King David II.”

  The steward bowed. “Please comfort yerself. I’ll let them know ye’ve arrived.” The steward rushed from the room.

  Drew strolled the Hall’s perimeter, examining the accoutrements. Most were familiar, a few prompted clarity of remembrance. Scattered bare spots spoke of missing items and hard times.

  He snorted. What else is new?

  The quick patter of leather soles in the entryway announced a woman. Drew turned to face the door, again standing tall and stern.

  The woman who halted in the doorway looked to be in her mid-twenties. Her hair was light brown, her widening eyes, dark green. She was obviously with child, but her confinement wasn’t imminent.

  Drew tilted his head. “Maggie?”

  “Drew…” She blew the name out like it knocked the very breath from her. “Is it you?”

  “Aye, little sister.” A lump choked any further words.

  Maggie ran across the Hall—her lightness of foot surprising in her enlarged condition—and wrapped her arms around Drew’ neck. She was either laughing or crying, he couldn’t tell; but her gulping whoops against his shoulder echoed in the big stone room.