Halloween Knight

by Tori Phillips

  “A snail?” he snarled. The minx had not changed one jot in the last eight years. She was still as impossible as ever. “So be it!” He rose, carrying her with him. “We have dallied here too long as it is.”

  Belle beat against his chest with her fists. Though her blows had none of their former strength, Mark was hurt by her lack of cooperation.

  She grimaced. “Unhand me, you purple-headed malt-worm!”

  He tucked the cloak under her chin. “Tut, tut. There is no need to thank me now, Belle. Later on, of course, you may shower me with your proper gratitude.”

  She bit his thumb.

  He almost dropped her.

  “Belle!” He shook her to gain her full attention. “As much as I have enjoyed this pleasant chitchat with you, do you not think it wise that we quit this dank cell and make a swift exit into yonder woods?”

  She wriggled out of his arms. “Nay!” She sank down onto her reeky pallet.

  Mark thought of a number of dastardly things he could do to speed along this frustrating enterprise but he rejected all of them. If Belle didn’t kill him afterward, Brandon would. Then it would be good-bye forever to Mark’s future estate. He dropped down beside her.

  “In plain words and simple sentences, pray explain to me why leaving Bodiam is not to your liking?” he asked stretching his patience to the limit

  Belle shook her hair out of her face. “Because this castle is mine. Is that simple enough for your understanding?”

  Mark failed to comprehend her obtuse logic.

  She sighed. “Oh, why am I infected with you?”

  He attempted a dash of levity. “Because I am the most wonderful man you have ever known?”

  She jabbed him several times with her finger. “Don’t you dare give yourself airs with me, you gull-catcher! I am not one of your hot wenches dressed in flame-colored taffeta.”

  A warm flush of embarrassment crept up Mark’s neck. Belle knew him far too well for comfort. “I never thought—” he began.

  “Ha!” she cut him off. “Of course not! Tis why men like you fill this poor world with ill-favored children!”

  Mark counted to ten before he trusted himself to reply. “Let us forget my past sins for the moment, Belle. Instead, let us attend to the matter at hand before daylight takes us by surprise. If you refuse to leave here because Bodiam is your home, then exactly how do you expect me to rescue you?”

  For once she allowed her defenses to drop. “Papa was supposed to come with an army,” she replied in a voice filled with despair.

  She took his hand in hers and held it close to her heart. Her gentle touch sent hot blood rushing through his veins. Mark took several deep breaths to steady himself. His nose tickled.

  “You have no idea what it is like to be a bastard, even one that is as well-loved as Papa loves me,” she said softly. “There is nothing in this world that is mine by right—not my name, nor a title, nor acceptance in society, not even the motley rags I wear. I have nothing—except Bodiam. My sweet stepmother deeded her castle to me for my lifetime.” She lifted her chin a notch. “And I will never relinquish it, especially not to that double-dealing sot of a brother-in-law who seeks to wrest it from me.”

  She leaned closer to Mark. “If I steal out of my own home like a thief in the night, Mortimer will claim that I abandoned my property and that he, as the brother of my late husband, could take possession according to the law. By God in His heaven, Mark, I swear I will never leave Bodiam.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Even if you die for it, chou-chou?” he asked in a gentle voice.

  “Aye,” she answered.

  Mark put his arm around her and drew her against his side. Again he was struck by how thin she had become. He could feel each one of her ribs. His anger at Mortimer increased a hundredfold. Killing was too good for the scullion.

  “Methinks you are going to cause me a heap of trouble—again,” he remarked in a rueful voice.

  She snorted. “You once told me that I excel in trouble-making.”

  Mark chose to ignore that jibe. “Then if you will not leave the castle, we must find a way to make Mortimer go,” he reasoned aloud though he did not know how he could effect this miracle before Belle died from the cur’s maltreatment.

  Instead of pushing him away, she snuggled inside the crook of his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “How many men did you say accompanied you?”

  He swallowed. “Only one—though he fights like ten…and my squire,” Mark added as an afterthought. Belle would kill him if she knew that Kitt slept within Bodiam’s unhappy walls.

  Her lips curled into a weak smile. “Is your squire’s name Bertrum by any chance?”

  He blinked at her. “How the devil did you—?” He rubbed his itching nose.

  For the first time, Belle actually laughed. The music of her mirth filled his ears like a summer’s song.

  “Don’t tell me you are Griselda’s unfortunate suitor?”

  Mark shrugged. “Twas not a bad idea for gaining entry into the castle though I must confess I was not prepared for the woman herself. Zounds! Mother Nature did not fashion Mistress Fletcher well. And may the good Lord amend her voice or render it silent altogether. She squeals like a stuck pig!”

  Belle gave him an arch look. “My spy tells me that you sang to her, paid her loving compliments and kissed her hand.”

  “Twas all in counterfeit, chuck. I swear!” Why did he feel like an impaled worm on a fish hook? “Trust me, sweet Belle. Twas all for you.”

  Belle rapped him on the chest with her knuckle. “Ha! I have heard you whisper that watery vow in a trusting maiden’s ear too many times.”

  Mark rubbed his nose again. “Do you think I enjoy playing Griselda’s swain?”

  A mischievous smile curled her lovely lips. “After all these years of chasing skirts, methinks tis a just punishment for you, Marcus.”

  He pulled his handkerchief out of his sleeve and blew his nose before giving her an answer to her cruel observation. “I had only intended to enact the role one day before I carried you out of this den. The mere thought of Griselda’s company is enough to curdle any man’s ardor—even mine.”

  Belle chuckled. “Poor Marcus! I fear you must continue to act the love-struck fool for a while longer.”

  He swore into the depths of his handkerchief. Either the dust or the moldy straw made his nose run and his eyes water. “Until when?” he asked groaning inwardly.

  “Until I can devise a plan to send Mortimer and his ill-favored sister fleeing from Bodiam forever.”

  Mark sneezed. “Forsooth, you are a wicked lass to wish this fate on me, Belle. By the book, what plagues my nose?”

  In answer, Belle lifted a corner of her blanket. An overweight feline regarded Mark with large amber eyes. “I had forgotten that you cannot endure the company of a cat. Tis Dexter, my best friend.”

  Mark sneezed again by way of salutation. “Does he reside with you here?”

  She nodded. Then she lifted the great hairy brute out of his nest and plopped him on her lap. “Aye, he keeps me warm at night and brings me bits of food now and then—also the occasional rat, quite dead, of course.” The creature purred in a loud, bragging manner.

  Mark shuddered. “How delightful!” He regarded the cat with open disgust. “Belle, forget this foolish whim. You should not sleep another night in this hole with a rat-bearing cat!” I would make you a far better bedfellow if I could. Taken aback by this thought, Mark hurried on. “Once in the safety of Wolf Hall we will plot against Mortimer and his ungodly sister.”

  Belle hugged the cat closer to her. “Never! You may as well go home, Mark, and leave me in mine.”

  With a muttered oath, he stood and brushed bits of straw from his dark blue hose. As a child, Belle had been as stubborn as a jackass. Why did he think she had changed now? “Very well! I am a fool of all fools but I will do what you ask of me, though the cost is high. That shameless jade tried to lead me to her bedchamber after supper
this evening. Aye, and we had only met a few hours earlier!”

  Belle whispered into one of the cat’s pointed black ears. “Poor Griselda must be very desperate indeed!”

  “She breaks looking glasses with her toothy smiles,” Mark muttered.

  Belle waved him away. “Begone, Marcus. Get your beauty sleep so that you may be even more enticing to the fair Griselda on the morrow.”

  “This is not what I had bargained for,” he grumbled. He sneezed again.

  Belle peeled off his cloak and held it up to him.

  He shook his head. “Keep it. The night is cold. Twill warm you better than that ball of fur.”

  “Nay, I cannot,” she insisted. “Mortimer visits me daily. He would spy it at once and guess your true intentions. The knave may look like a toad, but he has a quick mind. Be warned. He hides a thousand daggers in his thoughts.”

  Mark retrieved his cloak with great reluctance. “Sleep well, chou-chou,” he said with forced cheer. “I will come again tomorrow night.”

  “May your angel protect you till then,” she replied.

  He put his hand to the latch, then paused and glanced over his shoulder at her. In spite of her miserable condition, she tossed him a challenging look, the very same expression she had worn just before she had pushed him off the tree branch. The memory of that last encounter simmered in his mind. Why not?

  He put down his lantern, crossed the space between them in three long strides, then bent over her. Before she could utter a startled objection, he kissed her full on her lips.

  His broken arm and the eight years’ wait had been well worth it. Belle tasted of paradise. He ducked her flailing fists.

  “Where,” she sputtered with delectable anger, “in your great heap of knowledge, did you locate that idea?”

  He winked at her. “Been thinking about that for a long time, ma petite chou-chou.”

  Humming a bawdy tune under his breath, he let himself out of the little chamber. Once on the other side of the door, he sobered. With great reluctance, he relocked Belle’s cheerless prison.

  Dexter mewed in Belle’s ear then patted her face with one of his forepaws. Slowly she awoke to a gray day. Fat raindrops plopped on the stone ledge of the open window.

  “Go find a rat, Dexter,” she groaned as she snuggled deeper in the delicious warmth of her blankets.

  Blankets? Belle shook the cobwebs of sleep from her mind. Dexter sat down and stared fixedly at her. His long white whiskers quivered. Barely believing her sudden good fortune, Belle counted three blankets where last evening there had been only one. The topmost was her familiar filthy covering that had kept the winds at bay. It hid two plain brown blankets made of thick wool—clean and free of rents.

  “Oh, Dexter! What kindly spirit visited us last night?”

  Mark’s kiss still tingled on her lips. She banished the disturbing memory. Nay! He had left her long before she fell asleep.

  “Besides he hates me,” she explained to the cat. “He nearly lost the use of his sword arm because of my childish prank. That kiss of his was merely…unfinished business.”

  Dexter got up, stretched then pawed at a loose pile of straw. He mewed once or twice for Belle’s attention. His claws scraped against something unfamiliar.

  Belle investigated. Dexter had unearthed a covered crock that was still very warm to the touch. When she raised its lid, the aroma of stewed meat and seasoned vegetables wafted in the chill breeze.

  “Oh most blessed spirit!” Belle cried with joy. Lifting the pot to her mouth, she drank greedily. “Kat would chide my lack of proper manners if she saw me now, but tis a goodly broth! Heaven-sent to be sure!’

  Dexter licked his lips with a long pink tongue by way of reminding Belle to share her wealth as he had shared his with her. She poured a little gravy into the lid.

  “Someday, Dexter, you will overeat and explode,” she observed with a smile. Then something red in the straw caught her eye. “More wonders?” she asked the cat.

  She picked up one of her stepmother’s precious roses, its stem plucked free of thorns. The last bloom of this year, Belle surmised as she inhaled its rich perfume. This gift, more than the blankets or the stew, brought rare tears to her eyes.

  No one had ever given her a flower before, not even Cuthbert.

  Belle brushed the velvet petals against her cheek. “I wonder, Dexter, if Sondra’s tales are true. Does the ghostly knight of Bodiam really exist?”

  Not for a moment would she allow herself to believe that Mark Hayward, the bane of her childhood, was her mysterious benefactor. She must put that lunatic idea out of her mind at once before it had a chance to take root there.

  “Tis not Mark’s style at all,” she told the purring cat.

  Chapter Five

  Mark overslept the next morning and the rain-plagued day only went downhill from there. When Kitt appeared with his shaving water, it was merely tepid instead of steaming hot the way Mark liked it. He opened his mouth to chastise the boy but held his tongue when he saw a fresh bruise under his eye.

  Mark touched the injury. “More of that beslubbering cook’s opinion?” he asked.

  Kitt turned away. “I fell over my own feet,” he replied. “Indeed, I have been informed that they would make a fine pair of shovels,” he added in an undertone.

  Mark stropped his razor while his anger grew warmer. “What pignut told you this witticism?”

  Kitt shrugged his shoulder then turned his attention to his bedmaking. “Tis none of your concern, Mark. Jobe says that a man must fight his own battles.”

  Mark considered this bit of wisdom as he lathered up his face with cold soapsuds. “You are still in the schoolroom, Kitt.” he remarked. While he shaved, he observed his apprentice squire in the looking glass.

  Kitt tossed his head. “Not now. I am on the road to a new beginning, Jobe says.”

  Methinks Jobe says far too much in this stripling’s innocent ear!

  Kitt shook out Mark’s hose, then laid his other clean shirt across the lumpy bed covering. “How fares my sister?” he asked in an off-hand manner.

  In the mirror, Mark saw that the boy cast him a penetrating look. “As well as can be expected,” he answered, rinsing his razor. “Belle was never fond of small dark places.” He chose not to reveal her true sad state to her brother. Being blessed with a strong dose of the Cavendish temperament, the lad would no doubt hurl himself headlong into some rash deed.

  Kitt polished one of Mark’s boots with his sleeve. “Then why do we tarry in this fetid place? You told me that we would be in Hawkhurst by now. Let us grab Belle and be gone.”

  Mark dried his face with a scrap of hucktoweling. Mortimer Fletcher was a parsimonious host. “There are complications. Your sister refuses to leave Bodiam and thereby hangs the tale.”

  Kitt’s jaw dropped. “She’s addlepated!”

  “Agreed,” Mark growled under his breath.

  “I will shake some sense into her woolly head,” Kitt announced. “Lead me to her!”

  “Nay.” Mark pulled his shirt over his head, then held out his arms to the boy. Kitt stared at them. Mark pointed to the bandstrings that hung down from each cuff. “A good squire ties up his master’s laces.”

  With a snort, Kitt attended to his new task. “Belle is my sister,” he continued in a low tone. “As her brother, tis my sworn duty to—”

  Mark grabbed a handful of Kitt’s collar and backed the boy against the wall. “Listen to me well, my little minnow. I am caught between two people who are hell-bent to destroy each other: your sister and Mortimer Fletcher. We must tread our way carefully between them if we expect to quit this place with the minimum of bloodshed. Tis no schoolboy game that we play here, but one in deadly earnest. You will do exactly as I say. For the time being, Belle is not to know you are at Bodiam. Have I made myself clear, pudding-head?”

  “Marvelously much,” Kitt snarled. Then he nodded. “I will obey you—for now. But I like it not!” With that bit of defian
ce, he banged out of the chamber with the basin of soapy water.

  Mark shook his head at his reflection. Why did God make the Cavendish family so stubborn?

  Mark planned to snatch a quick breakfast, then ride into the forest where he would meet Jobe. Instead, Griselda pounced on him like a cat at a mouse hole.

  “Good morrow, Sir Mark,” she squealed in that ear-piercing voice of hers. “You slept well?”

  He fixed a painted smile on his lips. “All the night through, sweet dumpling.” He forced himself not to choke on his words. Of all the many maids he had wooed in the past thirteen years, Griselda was the most unappealing and perversely the one wench most anxious to invite him between her sheets.

  “I would have warmed your dreams,” she simpered through her nose as she latched onto his arm like an apothecary’s leech.

  “I fear I did not dream at all,” he murmured. His stomach gnawed for food.

  Griselda caressed his cold fingers. “Then I shall make it my duty and my pleasure to give you sweet dreams every night, my dearest love.”

  Twould be nightmares! Mark widened his smile. “I look forward to that happy time, my dainty duck.”

  Griselda pulled him back from the stairway where he could smell the aroma of roasted meats and baked breads in the hall.

  “Why wait?” she whined. “We have already agreed to the match. Tis nothing but a few words in front of the church door between us and our bliss.”

  Mark dug his heels against the paving stones. “Nay, my sportful honeycomb! Twould be a most unseemly haste. I have not yet spoken with your brother, nor signed a betrothal agreement.” Nor given you a kiss to seal the bargain, he added to himself with a shudder. Nor will I ever! I would rather dance a galliard in hell first!

  Griselda stuck out her thin lower lip in a ghastly pout. She reminded Mark of a well-dressed gargoyle. A man should not have to face such sights on an empty stomach.

  “Then find Mortimer!” she shrieked as she practically threw him down the stairs. “For by my troth, sweet Mark, I shall not go cold to my bed again this night! Seek him in one of the storerooms for he spends much time down there in the dark.”