Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

“Hear me well, Alex. I don’t like being talked about. And I certainly don’t want anyone to start speculating about things that happened nine years ago. If Milo or anyone else happens to mention me again, just you keep your counsel.”

  He shook his head scornfully. “Always looking out for your precious reputation, eh, Nicki?”

  “And why not?” she asked as she turned to leave. “‘Tis all I’ve got anymore.”

  * * *

  Halfway through the noon meal—another lavish feast, this one provided in the Tour de Rouen’s great hall rather than outdoors—Gaspar set before Alex a beaker containing something noxious.

  “What the devil is this?” Alex pushed the tall goblet away, his stomach roiling. All that fortified wine had poisoned not only his head, but his stomach. He’d neither broken his fast nor partaken of the sumptuous dinner being served to the many guests staying on at the ducal palace for the days of celebration to come.

  “‘Tis a physick, milord,” Gaspar said. “Pimpernel boiled in wine. ‘Twill purge your morning head and cool the heat in your belly. My lady Nicolette instructed me to make it for you.”

  Alex glanced down the table to find Nicki looking at him. How stunned he’d been to be awakened this morning by her scent tickling his nostrils...roses and some elusive spicy note. He’d opened his eyes to find a face blocking the worst of the sun’s scalding rays. Shielding his eyes for a better look, he’d seen her, crouching over him. Her face, despite its being cast in shadow, had been luminous as alabaster, her eyes translucent. Her diaphanous white veil, anchored by a silver circlet, billowed in the breeze from the river, giving her an angelic aspect. Nothing could have kept him from reaching for her.

  And then they’d quarreled, badly. Christ, he’d all but molested her, inexcusable regardless of how much he’d drunk the night before. Given that, it astounded him that she would bother to do him this kindness. He imagined she’d ordered many such elixirs prepared for her husband through the years. Thinking of Milo made Alex wonder where he was. He hadn’t seen his cousin all day.

  “Alex has a morning head?” Faithe asked skeptically.

  Luke, sitting next to Alex, clapped him on the back, making his gorge rise. “Overdid it last night, did you, brother? That’s not like you.”

  “Not at all,” Faithe said. “In all the years I’ve known you, I don’t think I’ve once seen you truly in your cups.”

  It gratified Alex on some petty level for Nicki to hear this and know how wrong she was to have compared him to Milo.

  “Go ahead, Sir Alex,” said Gaspar, standing behind him. “Drink it. ‘Twill do you good.”

  “I hate tonics,” Alex groused, knowing he sounded like a petulant little boy. “They taste awful.”

  Gaspar chuckled. “This one’s no worse than the taste that’s already in your mouth, I’ll wager.”

  Everyone was looking at him. Grimacing, he grabbed the beaker and swallowed the vile stuff down in a few swift gulps, then excused himself from the table and left the hall.

  The midday sunshine, although it stung his eyes and made his head pulse, was a refreshing change from the dimness of the keep. Moreover, he was spared the suffocating press of humanity, the only other person in the courtyard being a jongleur. Alex recognized him as the fellow who’d sung Nicki’s tale of the holy Grail yesterday. He sat on a step beneath the wide stone archway that provided entrance to the ducal chapel, absently strumming his lute.

  Alex slowly crossed the courtyard, shielding his eyes against the sun until he reached the cool shadows beneath the chapel arch.

  “Good day, milord,” greeted the jongleur as he looked up from his lute. Eyeing the coin Alex withdrew from his pouch, he asked, “Is there anything in particular you’d care to hear?”

  Alex flicked the coin to the young fellow, who caught it with practiced ease and slid it into his boot. “You sang yesterday of the search for the Grail.”

  The jongleur brightened. “Ah. You’ve a good ear. ‘Tis a remarkably beautiful chanson. You don’t mind if I sing it sitting down, do you? I’ve got blisters from all this standing.”

  “Not at all.” Alex leaned against the arch, his arms crossed, and lost himself in the tale of a holy quest in a far distant time. The jongleur was right. It was an exceedingly fine song, lyrical and moving and told for the most part with an elegant economy of words.

  Nicki wrote this, he thought, as the song danced around him, entered him, transported him. Her gift with verse had always vaguely perplexed him, given his lack of learning. Now he felt not so much confused as awed. There was a kind of magic in sitting down with a quill and a horn of ink and turning a blank sheet of parchment into such a marvelous tale.

  Little wonder she’d preferred Milo to him. A good, sweet boy, she’d called him. Good and sweet and pathetically ignorant.

  By the time the song ended, Alex’s headache had dissipated, and he no longer felt quite so woozy. Perhaps Gaspar’s physick actually worked; after all he had trained as an apothecary. Or perhaps it was the tranquilizing effect of the music.

  The young musician bowed and excused himself, explaining that he was expected to perform in the hall during the final course. As he left, Alex turned and discovered Milo leaning on his cane not two yards away, nursing a wineskin. How long had he been standing there?

  Milo made his halting—and obviously drunken—way to the steps and lowered himself with a grunt of effort. He took a leisurely swallow of wine and said, “You wanted her nine years ago. You can have her now, with no obligations at all.”

  Alex turned in disgust and gazed out at the bright courtyard. Except for a goat that had wandered in from one of the merchant lanes surrounding the castle, prowling for food, he and his cousin were completely alone.

  “Your wife doesn’t want me discussing her,” Alex said. “I’m just as happy to oblige.”

  Milo’s eyes looked very dark and wide in the shadowy archway. “You’ve spoken to her?”

  “Aye.”

  “You didn’t tell her...what I asked of you, did you?”

  “Hardly. ‘Tis an unholy proposal. It sickens me.”

  Milo raised an eyebrow. “Since when has it made you ill to bed a beautiful woman?”

  “Since the moment her husband broached the idea,” Alex shot back.

  “‘Twould hardly have affected you so you nine years ago, would it?” Milo’s gaze was too sharp, too discerning for Alex’s comfort. “You wanted her then. She told me so.” His eyes sparked with amusement. “Chaste young pup though you were, you tried to make her your leman. I’m impressed!”

  Alex shook his head. “That’s her version of it.”

  “You didn’t want her?”

  Alex rubbed the little scar on the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t say that. But...” Careful, now. Don’t reveal too much. Nicki is right; ‘twill only make matters worse. “Wanting her...’tisn’t the whole story.”

  Milo smiled wryly. “It never is.”

  Alex had been stunned at the riverbank when Nicki pointed out the implications of his not having asked her to marry him. Why hadn’t he? He’d loved her, considered her spiritually united to him ever since that first day in the cave. The simple answer was that landless young knights were unmarriageable. But if he’d been willing to give up soldiering, could he have found a way to make her his wife and provide a home for her? Possibly; probably. He could have learned a trade, or become a master at arms, teaching swordplay to other young men. But he’d never once paused to consider such alternatives, hungry as he was to test his mettle in battle. What an arrogant, misguided young fool he’d been, to think he could avoid the painful choice between his two passions—Nicki and soldiering.

  “You can have her,” Milo said, his voice low, almost seductive, “with no ties or responsibilities of any kind. Isn’t the Lone Wolf tired of tumbling serving wenches and whores? Think of it. You could have Nicolette de St. Clair, with her soft skin and her golden hair, and you wouldn’t have to give up anything for her. I’
m offering you a liaison with a woman of exceptional beauty, a clever, learned, highborn woman, and when it’s over, you can simply return to your former life as if the whole thing had never happened.”

  Alex watched the goat as it snuffled and searched. In his mind he saw a white silk shift neatly folded on a crimson pillow. “‘Tis an ill-conceived plan, you know. You claim to have thought it all through, but...well, what if your wife is barren? After all, you tried at one time to get her with child, but it didn’t work. You did have a baby with Violette, though, so the problem can’t be yours.”

  “Nicolette is fertile,” Milo said shortly.

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  Milo regarded him speculatively for a moment, as if weighing his answer. Finally, with a sigh of resignation, he said, “On our wedding night, when we lay together for the first time, it felt—”

  “Christ, Milo.” Alex turned away. “I’m leaving. I don’t need to hear—”

  “There was no resistance, no blood. And she didn’t even try to pretend there was pain.”

  Alex turned slowly back around.

  “I questioned her, and she admitted the truth. Not only had she lost her virginity years before, but she’d already been with child.”

  Chapter 8

  “Who’s next?” bellowed Vicq, the biggest of Gaspar’s two apes, at the audience of men who stood gathered around a circle of beaten earth in the sporting field. Alex sat in the grass on a nearby knoll, where he had a good overhead view of the fighting circle, but could observe the matches from a distance.

  “Who’s man enough to fight Gaspar Le Taureau this fine afternoon?” yelled barrel-chested Leone.

  Gaspar himself stood unmoving in the middle of the circle, his bloodied fists resting nonchalantly on his hips, as his underlings paced around him, goading the crowd. A pair of sweat-soaked linen braies covered his legs to the calves, and his feet were encased in heavy boots. Half-naked, he was a daunting specimen, and Alex didn’t wonder why so few men were willing to take him on. His chest was a wedge of pure brawn, heavily furred. He had the back of an ox, arms bulging with veined muscle. Sweat and blood dripped from him, soaking the packed dirt beneath his feet. Alex would not have stepped forward. He marveled that several already had.

  “He’s taking on all challengers!” Vicq shouted. “Come on! Where are your ballocks?”

  “I’ve got a pair,” came a voice from the spectators. Alex sighed and shook his head.

  The fellow stepped into the ring, peeled off his tunic and shirt, and threw them to a companion. He was young and strong, but he’d be no match for The Bull.

  The youth put up his fists. Gaspar slugged him in the head and he hit the dirt. The crowd groaned as one. Laughing, the big man kicked him in the side as he shielded his bloody face with his hands. “Come on, get up. Give us a fight. You said you had a pair. Prove it.”

  The young contestant tentatively uncovered his face. His nose was misshapen, and blood stained his lips. With a shaking hand he reached into his mouth and extracted a shard of tooth. “You win,” he said nasally.

  “So soon?” Gaspar said with exaggerated disappointment. “Wasn’t much sport to that. Are you sure you’ve got anything in here?” he asked, yanking on the drawstring that secured his opponent’s chausses.

  Some of the onlookers laughed nervously. Others just watched in silence as Gaspar untied the hose and pulled them down. When he reached for the underdrawers, the poor fellow began to struggle, so Gaspar order Vicq and Leone, howling with laughter, to pin him to the ground.

  Alex had seen enough. Rising to his feet, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “What a noble display, Gaspar!”

  Heads turned. Gaspar, hunched over his writhing victim, glowered up at him.

  “Three against one!” Alex yelled. “But, then, that’s the way you like it, isn’t it?”

  The audience looked toward Gaspar. Grimacing, he backed away from the young man and ordered his underlings to do the same. The fellow’s friends helped him to his feet and hauled him, his chausses around his ankles, from the ring.

  Gaspar nodded to Vicq and Leone, who set up the appeal for more challengers. To Alex’s dismay, another youth stepped forward. Alex turned away in disgust, thinking he’d walk to the river and seek out the solitude of the old longship, when a glimmer of yellow in a nearby meadow caught his eye.

  It was a woman, sitting with her back to him in a saffron-dyed silk tunic—Nicki, for he’d seen her earlier in that gown. Faithe, with whom she’d become friendly, sat across from her on a blanket spread on the grass, baby Edlyn at her breast. Robert and Hlynn flanked Nicki, the three of them bending their heads over some activity that seemed to engross them.

  Shielding his eyes against the afternoon sun, Alex studied the distant figure in yellow as he ruminated over Milo’s astonishing revelation yesterday. Thinking back to that summer in Périgeaux, he recalled his excruciating chivalry with Nicki, his reluctance to take liberties that would shock her. Just holding her hand had thrilled him immeasurably. How utterly laughable she must have found him. Of the two of them, he’d been the blushing virgin. She’d lost her innocence three years before.

  She’d become pregnant at sixteen, she’d confessed to Milo, and lost the babe. With tears in her eyes, she’d begged him not to tell anyone, lest she be ruined. Milo had agreed not to reveal her secret to a soul, and he hadn’t, until yesterday. He’d made Alex promise not to tell anyone, including Nicki, what he had confided beneath the shadows of the chapel arch.

  Judging by Milo’s account, he’d been remarkably sanguine about his bride’s past, and certainly more understanding than Alex would have been. Milo hadn’t pressed her for details, and she had not seemed disposed to offer any. When Alex asked his cousin how he could have taken it so calmly, Milo replied that he was in no position to judge her, having hardly been a paragon of chastity himself.

  Milo’s worldliness about such matters had always mystified Alex. It struck him as unfathomable to regard women—women of their own class and position, at any rate—as being entitled to the same sexual liberties as men. A man had a right to expect his bride to be pure and untouched on their wedding night. A high-ranking maiden’s virtue wasn’t something a man should ever feel compelled to question. He had certainly never questioned Nicki’s. In retrospect, although he knew she’d been no angel, having used him to manipulate Milo into proposing, he’d been as certain of her virginity as he was of his own.

  How well he’d thought he’d known her; how foolish he’d been. Luke had realized something was amiss. Alex remembered his brother remarking that Nicki looked like a woman with a secret. Hadn’t she as much as told him so herself? I’m not the woman you think I am. There are things about me you don’t know.

  Out in the meadow, Faithe noticed him and waved; he waved back. Nicki turned toward him, but offered no greeting. Robert and Hlynn leapt to their feet and raced toward him. Faithe called after them, and started to rise—awkwardly, given the baby she was nursing—but Nicki waved her back down and strode across the grass after the children.

  When little Hlynn tripped over the hem of her tunic, her brother helped her up and held her hand the rest of the way. Alex smiled, remembering how combative they’d been the night he came looking for Luke’s wine flask.

  “Look, Uncle Alex!” Robert exclaimed, waving something—a wax tablet. Hlynn carried one, too. “Aunt Nicolette’s been teaching us to write!”

  “Little Hlynn as well?” Alex asked doubtfully. She hadn’t yet seen her third birthday.

  The children scampered up the knoll, Hlynn thrusting her tablet proudly into Alex’s hand. “She’s still learning her alphabet,” Robert said, pointing to the crudely scribbled letters gouged into the wax. “Aunt Nicolette says she’s doing very well for her age.”

  Hlynn beamed. Alex ruffled her hair as he returned her tablet to her. “Good work, Mouse.” She giggled, as she did whenever he called her that.

  “She’s a very quick-witt
ed little girl,” Nicki said as she joined them, slightly out of breath, her cheeks flushed. Her gaze connected with his for a breathtaking moment before she looked away; in that brief instant, he sensed a universe of feelings roiling beneath the surface. Her hair was caught in a snood of golden gauze today. She glowed like the sun. “Her brother is very clever, as well. He wrote a poem today!”

  “Mummy had already taught me the alphabet,” Robert confided, handing his tablet to Alex. “And Aunt Nicolette told me how to spell the words. But I made it up all by myself.”

  Alex looked down at the little rows of words—meaningless to him—inscribed with painstaking care into the wax.

  “Aunt Nicolette says it’s excellent,” the boy bragged. “Do you like it?”

  Heat crawled up Alex’s throat. Feeling Nicki’s gaze on him, he would have given anything at that moment—anything—to have been able to read what was on that tablet. “I’m sorry, Robert,” he said, giving the tablet back, “but I can’t—”

  “Here,” came a breathless voice from behind. “Let me have a look.”

  Alex turned to find Milo toiling with his cane to ascend the little hill. He was surprised his cousin had made it this far from the castle without help.

  Robert handed over the tablet to Milo, who squinted at it, swaying slightly; drunk again. “Why, this is splendid.” Clearing his throat, he recited, “‘We sing our praise, For summer days, And almond cakes, With honey glaze.’”

  Alex couldn’t help but smile at the things a five-year-old boy found worthy of extolling in verse. “That’s excellent, Robert.”

  “Come,” said Nicki, rounding up the children. “Robert, you may return to your mother. Hlynn, I promised Mummy I’d take you back to your chamber and put you in for a nap.”

  Hlynn held her chubby arms up beseechingly. Nicki smiled and hefted the little girl, who promptly shoved her thumb into her mouth and went limp.

  Quietly Nicki said to Milo, “You shouldn’t have walked all this way. You’ll exhaust yourself.”

  “I’m sick to death of that blasted castle,” Milo griped. “You know that, damn you. Leave me be.”