The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

  He bent close to her ear, his breath a caress, his words a threat.

  “Now, Guinevere, listen close, for this is the last time I will say it.” He pitched his voice low, and he could feel her body edge closer to listen. “I rode o’er this turf before you were born. I know these lands from York to the Welsh Marches, their every hummock and hillside. I have dreamt of them for eighteen years, a dream which has grown in my soul like a bracken weed, which was once a fair bloom. I could walk them in the dark, map them in my sleep, and I swear by God I know them better than I know how to breathe.

  “Do not ever ask me again how I know something about my home.”

  Their eyes locked, green on grey. One breath, two, and her pretty face was a study in shifting emotions, confusion and fear and sadness and…hate, for all he knew.

  She drew herself up, straight as she could. “Then, my lord, I hope you think I have done well by them.”

  Griffyn’s fingers tightened into the fisted rage that had been his only expression of thwarted desire for eighteen years. Done well? Done well? She had lived on his lands, ridden her horses o’er his hills, sniffed the breezes of his moors, while he’d been cast adrift in the world of politics and bloodshed, aching for home, and she had this placid, polite nothing to offer in return?

  Rage poured through him so hot and rabid he suddenly couldn’t see in front of his eyes.

  Done well by them?

  Gwyn stared in horrified fascination. From forehead to jaw, Griffyn’s face was taut, whiplashed with pain. All colour was washed away save for that in his hooded eyes, where a fever burned and blackened the smokey grey to opaque soot. A muscle thudded by his jaw, strained by teeth set so solidly against themselves Gwen thought she could hear enamel chip.

  And they were to make a marriage work?

  St. Jude, what had she said? That she hoped she had done well by his lands? She’d spoken in the hope of placating him, but all she’d done was send him tripping into a fit of rage. She could do nothing right in his eyes. They were doomed.

  Like a petrified rabbit, she held her ground, too scared to flee, too terrified to stay.

  He lifted his head—God in Heaven, why make such a comely thing so tortured?—and passed a frigid glance over her face, freezing her blood to ice.

  “How old were you when you came to the Nest, Gwyn?” he asked in a low voice. He ran the tip of his finger across the bare skin of her collarbone.

  He could have swung a battle-axe at her head and Gwyn would have been less terrified. The dangerous, controlled pitch of his words was blood-chilling. There was nothing more unnerving than this denied restraint. That he could rein in such a fury and bring it to heel bespoke a will so disciplined it sent another shiver down her spine. But most of her focus was on the thick forefinger he was now sliding up the back of her neck.

  “I was two, Griffyn,” she said in a choked voice.

  His hand finished its journey and cupped the back of her head, holding her in a gentle, inescapable capture. “I was eight when I left, Guinevere. And I have ne’er forgotten a thing about it. Or you.” His fingers slipped away. “Leave.”

  “What?”

  “Go. Go to your room.”

  “I have no roo—”

  “The solar. Go.”

  “What in perdi—”

  “Don’t say it,” he warned, his eyes glittering danger. He pointed to the door. “Go. Now. While it’s safe.”

  She backed up in tripping steps. Her hands felt behind her for the cool iron of the door handle and wrenched it open. The door swung out so swiftly she tumbled a few steps before righting herself. What had happened? What was happening, to him, to her, to both of them together?

  Before she turned and ran, she caught one last glimpse of Griffyn. He was standing with his head down, dark hair plastered to his neck, staring at the ground while his hands curled into fists that opened and closed in silent, unknowable depths of anguish.

  Chapter Twelve

  The storm didn’t come, but the winds did. They lashed against the castle and bent huge trees into submission. Small woodland creatures scurried for safety. The night had a curious luminescence, a greenish-black hue, with stark white clouds scuttling against the hectic colouring as if racing for a safe haven. But there was none. The storm looked to stretch for miles, across into Scotland, and they all, clouds and creatures and men, would do best to hunker down and weather it.

  Despite the gusting wind, Gwyn didn’t close the shutters. A low fire burned in the brazier. She ought go walk on the ramparts. That’s what she always did when restless and awake, when she should be well far into sleep.

  Having decided, she stood curiously still, breathing in slow, measured breaths. She stared out at the storm, her view restricted by the narrow window frame and the tears threatening under her eyelids.

  “Come.”

  The word rode like low thunder across the room. The sting of tears grew hot. How could his voice hold so much heat, when she was assured what awaited her if she turned around? Cold, frigid recriminations, benumbed rage.

  She turned, sending her skirts into a billowing flute around her ankles before settling back to docility. His eyes burned a path through the darkened room.

  “My lord?”

  “Come back.”

  She crossed to him without argument, stepping slowly and deliberately, and stopped when she reached his shadowy figure.

  “We are nothing but trouble together.” Her prediction was soft and tremulous.

  His dark head bent into a nod. “Nothing but.”

  “And yet you would have me with you?”

  “I would.”

  She stepped in front of him and felt his heat at her back all the way down the curving staircase, past the guttering torchlamps, through the cold stone corridors, and into the lord’s chambers, silent all the way.

  He closed the door behind them, its solid thud forbidding. But Griffyn didn’t spare her a look. He turned away and began undressing, not speaking to her at all.

  Gwyn wandered to the window and swung open the shutters in time to see a jagged spear of lightning cut across the stormy sky before leaving it to darkness again. A strangely cold wind sneaked through the window. The world smelled close to hand. The odour of the bailey and barns rode up to her nose, and the sweeter, subtle smell of dying grass on the meadows came calm beneath it.

  She turned. He was naked, his body a solid swipe of muscle and skin. Only one candle burned. Its flame leapt wildly in the wind.

  “Come to bed.” When she didn’t move, he spoke again, his words heavy. “I will not touch you.” He lay down without another word. The only sound was the moaning of the wind.

  Maybe it was an hour later, maybe less, when she finally curled into the bed beside him and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  It was still dark when Griffyn awoke. Still lying down, he scanned the bedchamber in his mind. He was home. Everything was as he’d dreamed. And it was hollow, like a gourd scraped and mashed. It was baffling. And infuriating. And he had the vague sense that Guinevere was both part of the reason and most of the cure.

  It was almost as if she sensed his thoughts, for she stirred beside him in the bed. She mumbled something, then quieted again.

  He looked over at her, tumbled beneath the furs, still clothed, her dress bunched up around her hips, her hair still in pins. A few strands had pulled free and were curled above her head on the pillow, like dark winding roads spied from a hilltop. She shifted again, flinging her hand out. It made contact with his chest but she didn’t wake. The back of her hand stayed on his chest for a moment, then slid down to the furs.

  What was he to do? Home with a mission denied and a wife who hated him, and he was starting to lose control. Guinevere was far too much woman for this marriage to be tranquil or predictable, but that was not the problem. The problem was, could he keep making the leap between the ledges of passion and respect, humour and hatred, when such dizzying chasms echoed below?

  And if
not, then what?

  More to the point, the problem was, she was de l’Ami’s daughter, and he did not know if he could ever forgive her for that.

  But he wanted to. Enough cold remove, enough of wanting and never finding. Guinevere was everything he’d never known to wish for.

  He rolled to his feet and pulled on his chausses. The air was cold. He placed another piece of wood on the fire and walked to the window. The shutters were swung wide, and he stepped into the stream of chalky light triangulated on the floor, leaning his shoulder against the wall. He stared out. The winds had passed, giving no rain, but leaving the world reverent and hushed in their wake.

  He must have stood there for half an hour. Only twice did he move, both times to glance at the bed. A candle flame flared up, crackling fiercely before settling into a steady burn. The stream of white moonlight moved slowly across the floor.

  “Griffyn?”

  He didn’t turn.

  “My lord?”

  He angled his head slightly in her direction.

  “Is all well?”

  The question was so sweeping, the realm of possible answers so vast, he had a sudden urge to laugh. Instead, he nodded.

  “Sometimes when I cannot sleep, I walk the walls.”

  Her voice was quiet but her words had none of the indolence of sleep. He looked over his shoulder. “How often do you find the need to disturb the sentries?”

  “Often.”

  He turned the rest of his body and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Oft enough that they have told me I must bring them something from the kitchen each time I do,” she said softly. “Thus I pay for my disturbance.”

  He flicked his eyes to the window again. “The storm does not come.”

  He heard the soft rustle of furs. “Will you walk with me, my lord?”

  She was standing in her rumpled green gown, her hair in utter disarray and falling down her back. He pushed off from the wall.

  Wordlessly he picked up his shirt and tunic and threw them over his head, then sat on the edge of the bed and began pulling on his boots. Gwyn was sitting on the other side, putting on her own shoes. He could feel the bed dip and shift in small movements each time she bent over. His side of the mattress lowered more significantly when she rose, and he glanced over his shoulder.

  Her back was to him. The loose sleeves of her tunic fell up around her shoulders when she bent her arms and fumbled with her hair to reassemble the mess of curls and knots.

  “Don’t.”

  Her hair spilled down over her shoulders as she simply dropped her hands and walked to the door. It was a brief climb to the doorway that led to the rooftop. The night was chilled, crisp and clear and full. Griffyn held the door for her, his arm stretched over her head as she ducked beneath him and stepped out onto the northern ramparts.

  “God’s in His Heaven when I am up here,” she murmured, pulling her cape around her shoulders.

  Griffyn ran his palm along the wall as they walked, feeling its cold solidness against his skin. It was a good castle, a good home. He let his gaze drift across the open plains. Curving in a smooth arc from west to east was a darkness that heralded the forests. But the trees were far ahead, and closer to hand stretched open fields and meadows, brown and russet in the darkness.

  Further down, below the crest his army camped on, he could see the darkened humps of village buildings. He thought he could make out the farthest one, the apothecary shop. It was one of two places he had most loved as a boy. The stables and the leech, he mused. Horses and herbs.

  A sudden memory leapt to mind. He’d been young, wandering on horseback on a lazy autumn evening after a hard day’s ride, his beloved pony Rebel under him, his dog Tor at his side. The smells of heather, dying evergreen needles, and the distant sea had been pungent, making him linger in the woods even when the sky began to turn purple. His father would be furious, his mother worried, but Griffyn didn’t turn his pony back yet. He was eight years old and set free upon the world. His father might have spawned him, his mother might have borned him, but ’twas this land that pulsed through his blood.

  He’d paused his pony in the river. He could still feel the bones of Rebel’s withers between his legs, the flat, firm feel of equine shoulder blades under his knees as the pony bent his muzzle into the cold water. Tor did the same, lunging into the water and splashing his reluctant playmate, barking and leaping in circles around the snow-white pony. Angling a dark, liquid brown eye at the nuisance, the pony swept her hoof through the burbling creek, drowning the puppy in an unexpected wave of water. The dog squeaked in amazement and sat down in the middle of the stream, puppy face dripping with water, utterly brought to heel. Griffyn had laughed aloud. He remembered knowing, even as a child, his life, at that moment, was as perfect as it might ever be.

  “I used to feel that way too,” he finally said.

  The longing in his words drew Gwyn’s gaze, but she didn’t speak. They walked across the ramparts from west to east, silent. The sentries they passed nodded wordlessly, and the only sound was the wind sighing at the stones and an owl winging down from a tree branch to chase a hare racing across the field.

  By unspoken agreement, they stopped near a merlon and let the wind pull at their capes. The moon was close to setting. Potent energy crouched both in the night and in the man beside her. Gwyn looked out over the distant hills, hills that she’d always thought of as her own.

  Upon a time, there had been no question of what had gone before her, of how many other eyes had once passed over the lands and seen what she saw, felt what she felt. There had been no past, no connection to anything larger or other. What was had always been. But now everything was changed.

  Griffyn had haunted these ramparts too, perhaps balanced on the stones in a perilous display of courageous idiocy as she had at seven years old, until her mother had pulled her down, holding Gwyn with one hand, her heart with the other.

  Griffyn had walked these ramparts long before she had, ridden across the moors and felt the breeze at his back, just like she had.

  Griffyn had surely watched sunrises from here, and laughed at thunderstorms, feeling secure in the bulwark of solid stone that lay underfoot. Just like she had.

  What a sad place the world was, spinning itself out while people played at God. If she were taken from this place, her heart would break into a hundred jagged pieces, sharp edges of sorrow that would poke at her forever. This was her home.

  And it was his too.

  “I am sorry,” she said dully.

  The dark head beside her lifted. He’d been resting his chin on his outstretched arms and staring across the plains, but at the sound of her voice, he turned.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For all of this.” She swept her hand in a wide arc, indicating the world around them.

  He paused. “For the nighttime, or just the fields?”

  His gentle jest confused her. “For the wars, for the taking and losing.” She waved her hand. “For what was done to you, because you had to leave this beautiful place.”

  A tear spilled over and sped down her face.

  “Why, lady,” he said in surprise, stepping closer. “’Tisn’t your fault. I mayn’t act it at times, but I do know that much.”

  “But if ever I was forced to leave,” she explained through the tears that were now tumbling down her cheeks, “I would be so heartsick I think I might die.”

  He looked at the tears, then back into her eyes. “Indeed, I thought I might. But I didn’t, and I am home again.”

  “And I am glad,” she said almost viciously, gritting her teeth. To snatch one small moment of happiness amid all the sorrow of the world was but a small victory, but good, and she felt possessive of it as she had towards Jerv earlier, only this was more primal.

  “You are glad?”

  “I am glad,” she vowed in a harsh whisper. “In all this wreck of a world, that one man can return to his home, ’tis a thing goodly beyond imagin
ing, and I am glad.”

  Grey eyes roamed her tear-stained face. “Well, lady, you have astonished me once again.”

  “Again?”

  “Again. As you did outside London, as you did in the bailey, as you did at dinner. I have known you for the length of two days, and you have already given me more to think about than a year of campaigns.”

  She gave a watery laugh. “Mayhap that is because there is not much to think about in a battle. Strike here, trample there. Let me see,” she pretended to muse, resting her chin on her curled fingers, “would it be better to cut his heart out, or stick his head on a spike?” She dropped her hand. “These are not the kinds of things I would think would greatly tax one with a mind.”

  “But you,” he said, reaching out to run the pad of his thumb along her jaw, “will tax me greatly, I suppose.”

  “I will try not to.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t?”

  He shook his head, a dark swing in the night air. “Just be what you are. I think I will enjoy getting to know you.”

  Whoever I am is changing swiftly, she decided, for I have never felt like this before. Except when I was with you.

  His beautiful, chiseled features were dark and dangerous, the scar slashed across his cheek even more so. Whenever he moved the slightest bit, a ripple of rock-hewn flesh disturbed the soft material of his tunic. But this she had steeled herself against when he first arrived, his raw masculinity. It could never have turned her heart. It was his eyes that were her undoing. His battered, beautiful eyes.

  “Griffyn. I did not…”

  “Did not what?”

  She stared out over the battlement wall. “Did not mean for them to capture you.”

  He absorbed this in silence. Then, “What?”

  “I did not send them after you, Marcus and his men. ’Twas a terrible accident. I did not tell them your name apurpose, nor where you were.”

  “You didn’t?”

  She shook her head, still looking over the wall. “I tried to…”

  “You tried to what?”

  “Stop them,” she said in a voice so small he could not possibly have heard unless he was standing directly at her back. Which he was.