The de Lohr Dynasty

by Le Veque, Kathryn

  Daniel put a hand on Easton’s shoulder. “His shortcomings are not your own,” he said softly, insistently. “That is why I was reluctant to tell you the truth. You and Caston have become good friends and allies. I shall always be grateful for the generosity you have shown. You are great and honorable men, and your friendship will always be treasured.”

  Easton forced a smile, patting Daniel’s hand. “You are most gracious,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must find Caston. He must know what has happened.”

  “Would you have me go with you?” Daniel asked.

  Easton shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “I will tell him alone.”

  With that, he stood tall with as much dignity as he could muster and walked away, heading down the stairwell that led to the entry level. They could hear his footfalls moving away but there was a heavy sense of sorrow that he had left behind. They all felt a good deal of pity for him. When the footsteps faded, Daniel looked at his father.

  “I know we did the right thing by telling him, but I am still sorry that we had to,” he said. “It makes me hate Brighton all the more that he has hurt his father so. Easton is a truly good man.”

  David lifted his eyebrows, pondering the situation. “It had to be done,” he said simply. “A man has a right to know of the death of his son.”

  Daniel nodded reluctantly. “I suppose.”

  He started to say more but movement in the chamber abruptly caught his attention. Daniel could see the legs on the mattress moving, which meant Liselotte was moving. Surprised, he bolted into the bedchamber with David and Maddoc close behind him.

  As soon as the men entered the warm smelly chamber, they could see that the Liselotte was awake and speaking. She was holding Glennie’s hand and Glennie was hovering over her, smiling and whispering. But when Glennie saw Daniel enter the room, she pointed to him.

  “Look!” she said to Liselotte. “Here he is. Wonder no more about him.”

  Daniel rushed up to the side of the bed, falling to his knees and taking Liselotte’s hand from Glennie. Daniel gazed at Liselotte as if there were no one else in the room; he drank in her pale complexion, her tired eyes, but to him, she had never looked more beautiful. He put a big hand to her forehead.

  “You are awake,” he whispered, kissing her hand. “How do you feel?”

  Liselotte smiled weakly at him. “Tired,” she said. “As if someone tried to cut me in half. My body is sore.”

  Daniel snorted at her attempt at humor, kissing her hand again. “I was fighting a battle and suddenly, some madwoman was throwing herself on the man I was trying to kill,” he said. “Was that you, perchance?”

  Liselotte’s smile faded. “It was.”

  Daniel’s humor faded, as well. He kissed her fingers again. “Why, Leese?” he asked softly. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  Liselotte fought off the cobwebs in her mind, struggling to think back to that moment in time when she gored Bramley with her father’s dagger. She felt incredibly weak and nauseous, but the same strong sense of determination swept her. She remembered everything that happened, exactly as it happened. She would have done the same thing again if given the chance.

  “Is he dead?”

  “He is.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “I am glad,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “I am so very glad.”

  Daniel tried to soothe her. “But why did you kill him?” he asked. “I had the situation under control.”

  Liselotte gripped his big hand with both of hers, an intense and desperate gesture. “I did it because the man had done so much to try to destroy me,” she explained. “My father is dead because of him, my brother is dead, and all of Shadowmoor suffered. I had no control over that… there was nothing I could do to stop him. But as I saw you battling him, I suddenly felt like the moment to take back my life was upon me. For everything he’d done, he deserved to be killed. I needed to do it; not you. It was not your right to exact vengeance against him. It was mine.”

  Daniel understood a great deal in that softly uttered sentence. “So you sought to punish him?”

  “Aye.”

  He nodded his head, comprehending her need for justice. “I can understand why. I suppose it was your right more than anyone’s.”

  Liselotte nodded in agreement. “I think so,” she muttered. “I am sorry if got in your way. I supposed I was only seeking the opportunity and not thinking on the consequences. You were so brave and strong in battle, Daniel. Papa once said he thought you were sent from God as our avenging angel, and I still believe that. After seeing you fight Bramley, I believe it all the more.”

  He smiled at her, kissing her hand again, reverently. “It is over now,” he said. “Bramley is dead and it is over. You and I shall be married as soon as you are strong enough and the rebuilding of Shadowmoor will continue in earnest. I will have the best fortress in West Yorkshire by the time we are finished.”

  Liselotte’s smile returned as well. She could hardly believe that after everything they’d been through, the trials and tribulations, that their marriage would be a reality, something she’d dreamed about since nearly the first moment she had met him. But it was more than the marriage; it was the love she had for him, the respect and adoration for this man who had risked everything to save her and her people. It was this man who had fought, and won, for love.

  This man, her savior.

  “Then I shall will myself to recover very soon,” she said. “I do not want you to change your mind.”

  “I will not let him,” David said from the foot of the bed. When Liselotte looked at him, puzzled by the sight of a stranger in her room, David smiled. “I am Daniel’s father, my lady. You cannot know what a pleasure it is to meet you. I heard Daniel say he intends to marry you and I will hold him to it, at the tip of a broadsword if necessary.”

  Daniel grinned at his father. “It will not be necessary, Papa,” he said. “I will go willingly.”

  David lifted a dubious eyebrow. “Swear it?”

  “I do. My wandering days are over.”

  With that, he leaned in to Liselotte, kissing her more sweetly than he had ever kissed her before. As David stood at the foot of the bed and grinned, Glennie fixed on Maddoc and inched her way over to him, wanting to stand next to the handsome husband of her dear friend.

  Maddoc saw her coming and simply winked at her, having come to know a rather silly and sweet woman over the past several days. He could see why his wife had liked the woman so.

  “Do not believe what he says,” he whispered to Glennie. “We must go find the broadswords so he will not go back on his word.”

  Glennie giggled. “Can I help?”

  “Indeed, you can.”

  “Good!”

  But broadswords were not necessary when the wedding eventually came. Daniel never made it to the tournament at Skipton later that day, choosing instead to remain by Liselotte’s side as she recovered from her battle injury.

  Caston, however, did compete. Even after learning of his brother’s death and the circumstances surrounding it, he did not hold a grudge. He understood Brighton better than most and he knew what the man was capable of. He chose to compete in the tournament and donate any winnings to Shadowmoor, just as he had agreed to. Five days after Liselotte’s brush with death, Caston returned to Shadowmoor on a dark and stormy night and delivered into her hands a fairly valuable purse.

  It was an impressive and thrilling gift, one that would help bring Shadowmoor back to its glory. It wasn’t really necessary any longer with the addition of Daniel’s personal fortune to the l’Audacieux family, but it was more the value of the gesture; much as his father had, Caston hoped that Daniel and the de Lohrs would someday forgive Brighton his actions, but Daniel assured him that Brighton had long since been forgiven. Easton and Caston’s generosity towards Shadowmoor, since the beginning of their association, had seen to that.

  Now, Shadowmoor, and the House of de Lohr, h
ad strong new allies in the House of de Royans and it would be a bond that continued on for generations to come.

  The wedding finally came. Nearly three weeks after Liselotte’s injury, she was strong enough to stand in the doorway to the cathedral in Bradford and recite her vows before the priest. David, Maddoc, Caston, Easton, Glennie, Gunnar, Marc de Russe, and even Ares the horse were in attendance to witness the vows. Liselotte and Daniel only had eyes for each other or they would have noticed Glennie sidling her way over to Marc de Russe, who was seemingly quite interested in the lovely blond. Love bloomed again on that sunny breezy day as Daniel de Lohr took a bride.

  And Daniel never saw the hint of a broadsword at his back through any of it because it was never needed, not once. He was exactly where he wanted to be, gazing into the face of the woman he had sworn to love forever and beyond.

  Finally, the wanderer had come home.

  EPILOGUE

  Year of our Lord 1238 A.D.

  January

  The snows were fierce this year, worse than he’d ever seen them. They were so bad, in fact, that they’d slowed down the construction on a new tower at Shadowmoor significantly because the men were having difficulty keeping ahead of the snow that would build up on the stones.

  More than that, the mortar was having a difficult time setting in such weather. The master stone mason that Daniel had hired from Carlisle was trying to get the mix right so the mortar would harden and hold fast, not simply freeze up. The campaign to build Shadowmoor’s massive new tower on the northwest corner of the wall had been ambitious, and arduous, from the start.

  Daniel was looking at the tower at this very moment, watching the snowfall build up on it. It was sunset although it was difficult to know that with the sky filled with pewter-colored clouds. There was a slight amount of illumination, however, enough to see the tower that was nearly three-quarters finished. There was much building and growing going on at Shadowmoor these days and the tower was only part of it.

  It was Daniel’s particular point of pride.

  But he had one more source of pride currently going on at the moment; his wife had been in labor since yesterday, struggling to bring forth their first child, and Daniel could no longer stomach being by her side. Certainly, he didn’t tell her that, but she was pale, and in pain, and the child seemed unwilling to be born any time soon, so he would take a break from sitting with her every now and again to try and clear his head while Glennie and his mother, Emilie, would sit with her.

  His mother and father had traveled all the way from Kent a few months prior to be present for the birth. They already had several grandchildren – four girls and one boy – but this birth was special. This was to be Daniel’s first child, their only son’s offspring, and they would not miss it for anything, not even for David’s health which had never really recovered from the chest infection he’d contracted a couple of years ago. He tended to get tired easily, and he would get sick easily, but only sheer determination and perseverance kept the man going.

  He was a de Lohr, and de Lohrs did not fold.

  Even now, David sat by the fire on the chamber that adjoined the chamber where Liselotte was laboring. He had warmed wine in hand and he sat close to the blaze, watching his son gaze from the window overlooking his building project. His gaze lingered on Daniel, tall and strong and proud. His son, his greatest achievement in life. He could not have been prouder of the man, in every aspect.

  Daniel had gone on to do wonderful things.

  Life had been good to him over the past year. The wanderer had become an attentive husband, deeply in love with his new wife, and even though Shadowmoor was not his fortress, as it technically belonged to Gunnar, Daniel still treated it as if it was his very own. Over the past year and a half, walls had been rebuilt, better and stronger than before, the keep had an extra story added to it, all of the huts where the inhabitants of Shadowmoor lived inside the fortress had been torn down and rebuilt with stronger stone. Everything was strong and new, made better than it had ever been.

  But that wasn’t all. The shepherds were in business again with great flocks of sheep Daniel had purchased in Leeds, and they even had a herd of long-horned Scottish cows that were skittish when the children tried to chase them. The portions of the moor where crops used to be grown before Bramley’s scorch crusade were now blooming once again with oats, barley, and wheat. Commerce had returned to Shadowmoor, as had prosperity, and Shadowmoor was once again strong and respected in West Yorkshire.

  They were also irrevocably allied with Netherghyll to the north; Caston had found a young woman in Skipton he was fond of and Glennie was still quite fond of Marc de Russe, who still served Christopher de Lohr on the marches, so it was very much a long-distance relationship. But everything in West Yorkshire was bucolic and peaceful for the most part. After the horror of Bramley, that was exactly what everyone wanted.

  Daniel had been the catalyst by which all of it had been accomplished.

  “How did you stand the wait, Papa?” Daniel asked from his position by the window. He finally turned to look at his father. “How did you stand any of this?”

  Jolted from his reflections by his son’s voice, David smiled faintly. “What other choice is there?” he asked. “What you are doing has been going on for centuries, Danny. Women labor, men wait, and all you can do is pray for a healthy child. It is the way of things.”

  Daniel nodded in resignation, still standing at the window. “I have been thinking,” he said. “You know that my son will not inherit Shadowmoor. It belongs to Gunnar and his children will inherit it. Although this fortress is not mine, I do have two small castles as part of my lordship – Whitehill and Norton Ash. The village of Faversham is in my lordship and it is growing tremendously, at least it was the last time I saw it. I think that I will start a building project on Whitehill Castle, since that is the most strategic of my castles, and make it as big and grand as Rochester. It will be a fitting legacy for my son.”

  David thought on the small motte and bailey castle that was part of the Thornden lordship that belonged to Daniel. “It will take a lot of effort,” he said. “It is a small place.”

  Daniel nodded, turning to look at his father. “I know,” he said. “But you are close to it; you can help oversee the building while I am here in Yorkshire. I do not see myself living there any time soon, so there is no need to rush the project. But I do want to expand the castle and give my son a fitting legacy. They are good lands. It is a rich lordship.”

  David was watching him closely, trying to figure out what the man was driving at. There seemed to be something on his mind as he spoke of a lordship he had largely ignored over his life.

  “It is, indeed,” he said. “I gave you the best of the Canterbury earldom, you know. I know very well what you have. But why wait to live there, Danny? As you said, Shadowmoor is not yours, yet you are spending a great deal of money on it. You continue to live here. Why?”

  Daniel crossed his big arms, moving away from the window. “Because it is my wife’s home,” he said. “This was a powerful and prosperous place, once. It shall be again. I’m doing this for her and her alone, because I want her to know that the Saxon settlement that is her home will continue to survive. And we live here because we cannot leave Gunnar alone. He is only eight years of age, Papa. We cannot simply leave him while we retreat to Kent.”

  David nodded his head. “I know,” he said. “I suppose it is still shocking to me that you haven’t left this place to resume your wandering. I know you love Leese; we all love her. But I cannot remember you staying in any one place, unless you were forced to, for more than a year or two.”

  Daniel grinned. “It has been an adjustment, I will admit it,” he said. “There are days when I stand on the battlements and watch the horizon to the north, thinking on what is happening that I cannot see. Life is going on; people are trading, and buying, and fighting, and towns are alive with drink and song, and everything is happening that I am no longer a
part of. But it does not matter; I could not leave Shadowmoor or Leese. I feel as if my feet have grown roots here. I am here to stay.”

  I am here to stay. Those were sweet words to David from his wandering son. “But you are happy?”

  “Happier than I have ever been in my life.”

  David sighed. “Good,” he said. “Because if you want to know the truth, I was going broke paying off all of those fathers as a result of your randy escapades. I am glad you stopped when you did or I was seriously considering locking you in the vault until your lusty veins cooled.”

  Daniel laughed softly, making his way over to his father and leaning on the chair, hugging the man and kissing his head. “I will miss making those veins pop out on your head,” he said. “That was one of my few joys in life.”

  David snorted, pushing Daniel away by the face when the man tried to kiss him again. “You are rascal,” he growled. “But you are my rascal. I am more content than you can ever know to see that you are finally settled and with a family. You are my sun and my moon, Danny. God blessed me the day you were born.”

  Daniel smiled at his father, his affection for the man evident. But he was prevented from saying anything further as the door to the chamber suddenly opened and his mother emerged.

  Lady Emilie looked pale and worn as she came from the warm, stale room, and her gaze was fixed on her son. She went straight to him, reaching out to clutch his hands. It was then that Daniel heard a baby wailing in the room beyond and he nearly collapsed surprise and relief.

  “The child has come!” he gasped. “My son is here! It is a son, is it not? How is my wife?”

  Emilie shushed him softly, squeezing his hands. “Your wife will recover,” she said. “It was a difficult birth, Danny, and I must speak to you before you go in. Will you listen to me?”

  Daniel nodded but he really wasn’t listening; he was trying to push past her but Emilie pulled on him, bringing him to a halt. David, sensing something was wrong, stood up from his chair and reached out to get a grip on his son. Something in Emilie’s expression told him that the situation was not as joyful as they would have hoped.