Knight of Love

by Catherine LaRoche

  But it was already too late. Becker couldn’t fight the dozen heavily armed men on his own, nor could she escape them. She had her foot in the stirrup to pull herself into the saddle, but a burly government soldier rode up fast and snatched her reins. He dismounted and plucked her from the saddle as if she were a rag doll and tossed her to the side of the road. Winded, she scrambled to her feet to get to her dagger. Blast it! It was in her saddlebag, useless to her now.

  The soldier grabbed her from behind. The tight band of the man’s arms around her chest squeezed the breath from her. She was vaguely aware of the clash of steel against steel as Becker and the soldiers drew swords and fought in the crossroads. Cries of pain and confused shouts rang out. Her lungs burned and darkness crept to the edges of her vision. Deliberately, she fell limp until the soldier released her on her feet. Then she dragged in a deep shuddering breath and drove her elbow up high and fast behind her. Gratification surged through her as her elbow smashed hard into his face.

  “Bitch!” he roared. He cursed foully and grabbed at his nose as blood began to flow.

  She seized the moment to fling open her saddle bag and reach for her dagger. This would teach her to never leave the blade off her person again!

  Her hand connected with the hilt a moment before another man grabbed her from behind and yanked her back. As he swung her around, her blade flew from her hand and fell uselessly to the ground.

  She yelled, clawed at this new soldier’s eyes, and stomped down on his instep. Becker’s voice bellowed in answering rage. A quick glance showed him fighting three of the soldiers at once, swords flashing.

  Her new assailant threw her hard to the ground. The blow knocked the air from her lungs. She watched blood ooze from a deep scratch down her forearm where a rock on the road had cut her. The man aimed a kick at her back. Straining to breathe, she rolled away just in time for the blow to graze her legs.

  She scrambled for her dagger, which was lying in the dust of the crossroads dangerously near her panicky horse. As her fingers almost closed over the hilt amid the horse’s dancing hooves, her first attacker grabbed her boot and dragged her backward. She twisted over to see his rage-filled bloody face looming over her.

  Despite her determination to fight bravely, she cowered back. Dear God, how—why—did men battle like this? The horror of it froze her. The earl and his men had fought numerous skirmishes such as this one, but she’d never exchanged blows with anyone in her life.

  She scrambled backward in the dust, kicking at the man as he advanced. He laughed at her panic.

  “Don’t worry; I’ll go easy on you, lad,” he said, sneering the last word. Her cap had long ago fallen from her head. Her braid hung loose about her shoulders and her jacket was ripped open. Anyone could easily see she was no boy.

  He reached toward her, hand drawn up and fisted for a backhand blow. She braced herself with eyes screwed shut.

  Only to feel a sudden rush of air. She opened her eyes to see the man’s boots lifted clear from her field of vision. The ground shook as horses galloped by.

  Ravensworth’s roar filled the air. “To me, men!” he yelled. “For freedom!”

  The earl and his men raced by. Her assailant dangled at the side of Ravensworth’s saddle, the earl’s arm wrapped around the man’s neck.

  A quick twist and snap, and the man dropped to the ground. Ravensworth pulled his horse to a rearing stop and dismounted at a run. He rushed, sword drawn, toward another soldier closing in on her from the other side.

  The soldier turned at Ravensworth’s approach. He was near Ravensworth’s height but didn’t have the earl’s breadth of shoulder and back. Not many men do, Lenora thought as she scrambled off the road and out of their way.

  Battle raged all around them. She heard Johann, the youngest of their crew, scream after a fierce clash of steel. Ravensworth kept his attention on the soldier. The two men circled each other cautiously. The soldier struck out in a lunge, and her heart quaked, for she could see the man had skill and the long reach of arm to match the earl’s.

  Not that she cared, of course, except that the devil already known was surely to be preferred.

  Yet, when the soldier drew first blood as he cut deeply along the earl’s shoulder, she had to bite her cheek against the cry that rose up from her breast. It was the same arm on which Ravensworth had been wounded last week, with that cut only barely closed up.

  Blood flowed down his arm, but the next two blows came from Ravensworth. He stood back, sword down, when the soldier fell to a knee, grasping at his bleeding side.

  “Surrender your sword,” Ravensworth ordered, “and I’ll take your word that you will fight for the king no more.”

  “Never!” spat his opponent. “I know who you are—the mighty Black Knight. You think you fight for the people, but nothing will ever change!” The man slashed out in a fast undercut. Ravensworth deflected his blow easily. Within seconds, the soldier lay on the ground, dead.

  “Damn,” Ravensworth cursed, looking down at the slain body. “The fool didn’t need to die.”

  She staggered to her feet and over to his side. Blood streamed down his sword arm in a steady flow. It soaked through the sliced shoulder of his coat and dripped at their feet. Dimly, over her pounding heart and panting breath, she heard the sounds of the battle winding down around them as the revolutionary militiamen swiftly subdued the remaining king’s men.

  “Wolfram.” It was the first time she’d used his Christian name: der Wolfram, the Wolf-Raven, as they called him here.

  The hunter, predator of death and carnage.

  The Black Knight.

  He lifted his gaze to hers. She swallowed past the bile burning her throat. “I am not your damsel in distress.” The words came out raw. “You are not my rescuer.”

  “And yet here we are.” His eyes burned into her with the intensity of hottest blue fire. “A man lies dead at our feet. His throat is slit instead of yours. Would you have it otherwise?”

  She looked away, swallowed hard. “There are many, many things about this hellish year I would have otherwise. This cur’s death is not among them.”

  “Then in what way, lady, have I failed you yet again?”

  Was it merely wounded pride or some deeper pain that sharpened his tone to that pitch?

  Either way, what cared she? She raised her chin in defiance and fought to steady her voice. “I could have killed him myself. I almost had my dagger. You enjoy too much this self you’ve fashioned as my protector and champion.”

  “Enjoy?” he said, snarling. “You think I enjoy killing a man?” He stepped toward her, over the dead body between them, dripping a trail of blood. “I do it to protect you, because I am your husband, your shield.” He lifted his bloody sword, the blade pointing upright, to brandish it inches from her face. His hand and the hilt were slick and red.

  Her own hands came up instinctively to ward him off. He grabbed her wrist and wrapped her fingers around the sword’s leather grip, trapping her hand under his, the sword tight between them.

  “Wolfram, cease this farce!” Horrified, she tried to pull back, but might as well have tugged at a mountain. The acrid smell of blood and sweat swirled about them. The ooze from her scratch and the heavy flow of his wound smeared across the front of her coat.

  “I swore this sword arm to you only last week,” he hissed. “Our blood—yours, mine, and that of any enemy you might have—are one now. You are mine. I will fight to the death to keep you safe.” His voice rose as he shook the sword they held between them. “I slay whoever dares stand against you. This blood, this bond, is no farce. Do you know your Bible, lady, your Song of Solomon? Love is strong as death and fierce as the grave. Its coals are flames of fire.” He released his grip, and she staggered under the sudden weight of the sword. “Until my death, my troth to you stands. I live by it and will die for it, mock me as you will.” He stalked away.

  Her head spun with the gruesome sight they presented. Bodies littered the c
rossroads—four of the attackers, two of their own band. Ravensworth joined Becker in checking their men, applying compresses and tying bandages. They covered the body of one of their fallen comrades with the earl’s own greatcoat, and Ravensworth passed a bloodied hand over his eyes.

  “Strong as death,” she whispered to herself. “Fierce as the grave.” A hard shudder racked her, and she almost dropped the sword. She didn’t want any such love as that, didn’t believe in it. He couldn’t love her. He didn’t know her. This wasn’t love, surely. It was violence and fury and the random sick chance of killing or being killed as the world went mad.

  She should walk away—nay, run. Right now. She glanced around. The men were occupied. Becker had an arm around his cousin’s wall of a back. A group of villagers began to arrive from the direction of Ingolbronn, offering aid and bearing bandages and makeshift stretchers.

  “Freiherr,” she overheard one of them say, as he bowed deeply to Ravensworth. “You have helped liberate our town in this Springtime of the People. If it should please you, we are preparing quarters for you. We would be honored to put up you and your men in the tax collector’s home. He was the king’s man and ran off at the first sign of troubles. We’ve commandeered his house for your use.”

  She heard the earl give his assent. He gestured toward her. The words “. . . and my lady wife as well” reached her, as he made her a mocking bow.

  Yes, she should run. But then she looked down into the dead man’s eyes. He stared sightlessly at her as he lay stretched and cooling in the road. His blood, her blood, and Wolfram’s blood stained her clothing. She couldn’t travel like this. Bile rose up fast and she turned to retch out her stomach into the ditch.

  When it was over, she wiped at her mouth with a bloody sleeve. Sweet Lord, she needed a bath, now. She would go into town with them and clean herself up.

  Was it only an excuse? A reason to stay bound to this fierce man?

  Fierce as the grave, indeed.

  Her arm muscles quivered as she picked up the sword again, bloody with death. Or was it life?

  Ravensworth had stained their wedding sheets with her blood. Now here was her blood again, mixed with that of a man who called himself her husband and who stood ready to give his life for her.

  A woman he barely knew, but whom he claimed, like a fool, to love.

  Chapter 8

  She stayed for three days.

  The tax collector’s home proved a spacious haven, well padded with the spoils he’d bilked from the townspeople. Upon arrival, she had her bath in a lovely bedchamber upstairs and, with her nerves settled to a shaky calm, went back down to help with the wounded. The earl was lumbering about in the downstairs parlors, trying to tend to his men while blood still oozed thickly from the sword cut across his shoulder.

  “He won’t sit to be tended himself”—Becker shook his head at her in exasperation—“until they are all cared for.”

  Their medic, Krause, was among the wounded, with a nasty gash to the thigh. He hobbled about, doing what he could. Their young comrade, Johann, had a long sword cut along his forearm. With the chaos of the revolution and skirmishes throughout the Bavarian countryside, no doctor was available in town. Lenora sighed, rolled up her sleeves, and set to work.

  She found the supplies she needed in the well-kept home. Trained by her mother, she had the knowledge and skills to tend the men’s hurts; she wouldn’t begrudge a wounded man the succor of basic nursing. Not trusting herself to speak to the earl, she folded a thick pad of linen and pressed it against his shoulder over the wound. She slapped his own hand against it to hold it in place. When he hissed in reaction, she merely gave him a tight smile before turning to the others.

  After stitching up Krause and Johann, she cared for the other men. The earl followed her about, glowering silently over her shoulder as she worked, apparently no more inclined to converse with her than she was with him. When the final man was bandaged and made comfortable on a couch, Ravensworth finally spoke. “My thanks for your nursing,” he said grudgingly. Then his eyes rolled back and he fainted to the floor with a crash.

  It took Becker and three other men to get him upstairs into the tax collector’s bed. They cut him out of his ruined and bloody coat and shirt and brought her hot water. Lenora cleaned the earl’s shoulder carefully, stitched up the long cut, applied a healing poultice, and bandaged it with clean linen. Then she fell into an exhausted sleep in the room across the hall.

  By morning Ravensworth had developed a fever. Despite her care, it spiked dangerously high. He tossed in the huge tester bed of their absent host, quieting only when she sponged his chest with cool water and dosed him with laudanum and feverfew.

  For three days Lenora nursed them all. She welcomed the tasks, as it gave her time to think. Becker was often out scouting and gathering information amidst the mayhem of the student protests and the government’s confused response; he seemed content to give her the freedom of the town. In the mornings, when the earl’s fever was less fitful, she walked to the apothecary for supplies and collected healing herbs from the roadsides.

  And she planned her escape.

  Ingolbronn, she discovered, lay no more than a couple of hours’ hard ride from Schloss Dremen, a small holding in the south of Bavaria. The castle was the ancestral home of Count von Dremen, an old family friend of her mother’s. Lenora had visited as a child and young adult, on her family’s regular summer trips to Germany after the Season had wound down in London. She’d heard last year from her mother that the countess had died and the count remarried. If Lenora could get to Schloss Dremen, she could seek sanctuary there. The count would surely help her get to Frankfurt and home to England.

  The road from Ingolbronn to Dremen was reputed to be a safe one and clearly marked. All she needed was one of their horses, which were currently stabled at the village inn. With her boy’s clothing, now washed and mended, along with fresh linens she’d purloined from the tax collector’s household and a saddlebag of basic provisions, a predawn departure could get her to Dremen in time for a late breakfast. Ravensworth and his men would have no way of knowing where she’d gone.

  On the day after the battle, a delegation of the revolutionaries had arrived at the house. It seemed that riding into Ingolbronn and fighting off King Ludwig’s men at the crossroads had cemented the reputation of the Black Knight as hero of the revolution. Der Wolfram had upheld the free knights’ ancient tradition as protector of the people. The entire town stood ready in deepest gratitude to serve the Freiherr. The delegation presented to Becker a revolutionary tricolor flag with its stripes of red, black, and gold sporting a black wolf and raven both rampant with bloody claws. Lenora shuddered at the gruesome ensign, but Becker thanked the fighters and assured them that the Black Knight would fly it proudly as his battle standard at their next skirmish for the people.

  That evening a good Hausfrau of the town, her strapping figure overflowing her tightly laced bodice, also called at the tax collector’s home to offer her services to “the brave liberator of Ingolbronn.” The woman’s demeanor left Lenora little doubt those services would happily extend to any needs or desires der Wolfram might have.

  Lenora tossed the woman out.

  For three days Ravensworth’s fever raged. When he woke to half consciousness from a fitful sleep, she brewed more feverfew tea for the high temperature that gripped him hard and fed it to him by spoonfuls, holding up his head on her lap and coaxing him to swallow.

  “No more,” he muttered. He turned his face to the side and snuggled into the pillow of her breast, where he lay his head heavily with a sigh. Wounded, feverish, stricken abed as he was now, he was a very different man.

  By the third night of this routine, his fever broke. He slept calmly for the first time in days. With his wound healing nicely—no sign of infection, edges pink and healthy and scabbing over well—she decided she could leave with a clear conscience. The other men she’d been nursing were nearly back on their feet as well.
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  The time had come to put her plan into action. By morning she must leave Ravensworth.

  She dosed him one last time with laudanum, as she didn’t want him to wake before she was well away on the road to Dremen. Besides, his huge size and commanding ways were much less intimidating when he was immobilized in bed. Alone in the dead of night and the quiet of the house, she could admit to herself how overwhelming she found him to be.

  But now he was the one stretched out helpless in the bed, with her standing over him, watching and in charge.

  Something unfurled within her. It would be her last night with this man, likely her last time ever to see him.

  Moved by some instinct, she stoked the fire high to warm the room and prepared another sponge bath for the earl. Then she drew the bedsheet down. Candlesticks in silver holders cast a golden light over his huge body, sprawled dark and lightly furred against the white of the sheets.

  She tugged and shifted his weight to ease off his smalls. And why not? Was she not supposedly his wife?

  Such a glorious and bizarre thing was a male in his prime. Like some barbarian Goth giant of yore, one of his heathen ancestors from the north who stormed and ransacked Rome.

  Far too big, with wrists twice the size of hers, a chest like an oak barrel, and that curled serpent at his groin. Yet beautiful as well, all slashing cheekbones and jutting jaw, with well-proportioned limbs and a dark scruff of beard and hair growing back on his head.

  Uncommonly pleasing to the eye, she had to admit—if one didn’t mind a giant.

  And, for now, he lay supine, quite harmless. One might even say in her power.

  It unfurled again, that feeling low in her midsection.

  She wrung out her cloth and trailed it slowly across his furred velvet chest, tracing the path of her eyes.

  At his groin, she paused. But that juncture of his thighs radiated heat. She could feel it warming her hand even as she hovered over him. Prodded by some demon, she parted his legs and sponged him slowly. She gently lifted that saclike part of him to slide and rub the cloth across the tender skin beneath.