Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “You’ll have a chance to judge that for yourself,” said Matthew, making his first move. “She’s asked Olivier to arrange a supper in your honor.”

  Thorne stared at the grinning prior. “In my honor?”

  “You’re a hero. The savior of Blackburn.”

  “Good God,” Thorne muttered.

  Matthew chuckled and pointed to the board. “Your move.”

  Thorne couldn’t concentrate on the game, and Matthew won easily. When the Saxon asked for a rematch, the prior begged off, wanting to get in some sleep before matins.

  So as not to wake Martine, Thorne undressed down to his drawers in the hall before slipping quietly into their chamber. For a time he stood over the bed looking down on his sleeping wife with a sense of amazement. We’re wed! he thought. Martine and I are wed!

  She lay on her side, her arms and shoulders exposed by the sleeveless shift she wore, her palms together as if in prayer. Her breasts were soft and round beneath the thin linen. He recalled how they felt cupped in the palm of his hand, how they tasted when he took her firm pink nipples in his mouth. His pulse quickened and his loins tightened.

  Aye, we’re wed—in name only. For now. He slid quietly beneath the covers, summoning all the patience, all the self-control at his disposal.

  It was chilly between the linen sheets, but Martine’s body radiated warmth. She had her back to him, and he very softly touched the bare skin above the neckline of her shift, feeling her heat flow up his arm and spread within him. When it reached his throat, something caught inside, and he swallowed hard, astounded to feel himself suddenly on the verge of tears. Closing his eyes, he commanded himself not to cry. The last time he did so was when he found out about the fire that took Louise and his parents, and then he had been out of his mind with grief. The time before that was too long ago to remember, so it must have been when he was but a baby. Drawing in a deep, calming breath, he mentally chided himself for his weakness. This was what came of caring. His reactions were reduced to those of an infant.

  Rolling away from Martine, he closed his eyes, but it took him a very long time to get to sleep.

  * * *

  Bernard of Harford quivered with frustration and rage as he stood at the window of his chamber, looking down upon his father emerging from the hawk house with Azura on his fist. He could live for decades more. Decades. I’ll be an old man before he’s dead. At this rate, I might die before he does. Harford will never be mine.

  Who would ever have thought that damned woodsman, that upstart lowborn Saxon, would have the gall to marry Martine of Rouen—a cousin of the queen, for God’s sake? Martine of Rouen, who’d been promised to him, who should have been his—warming his bed, bearing his sons. The falconer’s audacity knew no bounds. He’d stolen her from him, pure and simple, and now he was laughing at him. They were both laughing at him, thinking they’d gotten the better of him.

  Damn him! And damn the impudent, cold-eyed bitch he’d taken to wife! Damn them both to everlasting hell! She was to have been his—his—she and her lands, valuable lands that had once been part of Harford, that should have someday gone to Bernard...

  That still might, if he was clever. He had an idea, an exquisite idea, an idea of great beauty and promise, a way to avenge his humiliation at the hands of Martine and Thorne Falconer and recover his rightful property. But it was an idea that would have to wait until Queen Eleanor next left the country; not only was Eleanor Martine’s cousin, but it was rumored that she knew and actually liked the woodsman. Should she choose to shield the couple with her royal protection, Bernard’s plan would come to nothing. So he would wait until Henry summoned her to his side, as he frequently did. Once she took the royal smack across the Channel, he could make his move.

  “Sir?” came a timid voice from beyond his chamber curtain. It was that hopeless little maid of Estrude’s, Clare. Instead of returning to her own family after the death of her mistress, she’d stayed on at Harford Castle, mooning over him with her watery little eyes and generally getting in the way.

  He sighed. “What is it?”

  She parted the curtain and came to him, a cup in her outstretched hand. “I brought you a brandy.”

  With a lightning-quick backhand, he slapped the cup into the rushes, spattering its contents all over her satin tunic. “Did I ask for brandy? Did I tell you to come in?”

  “N-nay,” she mumbled, wringing her hands. “I’m sorry.” She looked like a little white rabbit with a twitching pink nose. “I should have known not to disturb you, after everything you’ve been through. You must be sick with grief. First your brother, and then... then my lady Estrude.” She crossed herself with a shivering hand.

  “Then why did you?” he ground out.

  “I just wanted... I don’t know. To comfort you. To let you know you’re not alone.”

  Christ. “Did it ever occur to you that I might want to be alone? That I might prefer it that way?”

  “No, sir. I’m sorry.” Her eyes were filling up with tears, her chin trembling. “I should have known better. I’m a fool. It’s just... oh, God!” She dropped to her knees and grabbed his hands. Appalled, he yanked them out of her grasp. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I know it’s too soon after... after my lady’s passing, but... I can’t help it. I had to come. I had to let you know how I feel about you.”

  “Dear God, get up. This is disgusting.”

  Sobbing, she seized the front of his tunic and pressed her face into it. “Please don’t order me away. Please! I love you! I can’t help it, I do! It nearly killed me when I found out you wanted to marry Lady Martine. She doesn’t love you as I do. You wouldn’t have been happy with her. Marry me, please!”

  Bernard laughed incredulously. Marry this homely, quivering little rodent? But then a thought occurred to him, and he asked, “Are you heir to any lands?”

  She looked up at him, her face wet and red. “N-nay. M-my older sister—”

  “Is she married?”

  She hesitated, her eyes filled with hurt. “Nay, but... but she’s fat.”

  Bernard considered that and shrugged. “I’m tired of skinny women.”

  “And she has fits,” Clare added hopefully.

  “Fits,” he hissed. He thought about it. Fat and fits. No, he wasn’t that desperate. And who was to say her father would approve the union anyway, given Bernard’s unfortunate reputation?

  “You don’t understand!” Clare wailed, shaking his tunic with her fists. “You mean everything to me! Everything! You’re the sun and the moon and the stars to me. My heart weeps for love of you. I’d be whatever you wanted me to be. I’d be your slave if you’d only let me. I’d be good, I’d be obedient. I’d do anything for you!”

  “Anything?” he asked, reflecting on the fascinating potential of such devotion as she crushed her tear-stained face against him.

  “Anything!” She started to rise, but he clamped his hand over her head and pushed her back down to her knees.

  “Nay,” he said, reaching beneath his tunic to untie his chausses. “Don’t get up.”

  * * *

  On a frosty morning in mid-March, dozens of the queen’s men and their horses descended upon St. Dunstan’s to be billeted in monastery buildings and fed on monastery provisions. Many more traveled with Eleanor to Blackburn Castle itself, where Olivier would host them for perhaps a fortnight.

  The servants and lay brothers regaled Thorne and Martine with breathless descriptions of the queen’s arrival at the castle. First a procession of armed guards on horseback drew up, followed by a string of curtained litters bearing the queen, her ladies, the royal children, and their nurses. Mounted knights rode behind, accompanied by their falcons, hounds, squires, and packhorses, then a handful of plainly dressed clerks, and following them on foot, a rather curious contingent of animated folk in particolored costumes—most likely entertainers of some sort. Finally came a rumbling parade of hide-covered carts filled with beer, wine, and food, as well as open wagons loaded
with kitchen utensils, linens, plate, and rugs. One seemed to contain a small altar, another an enormous, disassembled bed—undoubtedly Eleanor’s own.

  Later that day, one of the queen’s clerks delivered a written message to Thorne, formally summoning him, his lady wife, and Prior Matthew to Blackburn Castle the following evening for the anticipated supper in his honor.

  “But I have nothing suitable to wear,” Martine fretted.

  “Wear the blue tunic with the little pleats,” said Thorne. “The one you wore your second day at Harford.” He smiled. “The one that’s the same color as your eyes.”

  The next afternoon, as she pulled the indigo gown down over her head and adjusted its long, fluttering sleeves, she reflected on the strangeness of her relationship with her husband. Not once since their marriage a week before had he attempted to bed her. This was uncomfortably reminiscent of Edmond’s unwillingness to consummate their marriage, but she knew the reasons were different. Edmond’s reaction to her—in the beginning, that is—had been fear. In Thorne’s case, it was more likely indifference.

  He treated her kindly enough. And from time to time he would look at her or touch her in a way that seemed to indicate he wanted her—but then he’s turn away, seeming troubled and withdrawn. She supposed his disinclination to bed her had to do with her admonition that they were to be honest with each other and not pretend to feelings that didn’t exist between them. He’d taken her at her word. Caring little for her, he would have no particular interest in bedding her, Norman gentlewomen not being particularly to his taste. No doubt he would soon enough resume his liaisons with his whores and kitchen wenches.

  Her stomach burned with jealousy, and she mentally scolded herself. She ought not to care. This was a marriage of mutual convenience. He’d gotten all he wanted from her—her land—and now he would leave her alone. It was for the best. She knew that, yet had felt unaccountably sad when her courses came and she realized she didn’t carry Thorne’s babe in her belly, as she had half hoped ever since that night in the cottage. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted a child. It was that, inexplicably, she wanted Thorne’s child. She imagined telling him, pictured his rapturous response, his pride, the feelings that might grow in his heart for her if she were to give him an heir.

  She sighed and proceeded with the tedious business of plaiting her hair with golden ribbons. Little good it did to wish that things were different. Fate held her tightly in its silken bonds. It was pointless to struggle against it.

  * * *

  Martine’s mouth went dry as she rode across Blackburn Castle’s long drawbridge and through its massive curtain walls, flanked by Thorne and Brother Matthew. Above them rose the remarkable keep which she had, until now, only viewed from a distance. Having been whitewashed in honor of the queen’s visit, it glowed brilliantly against the dusky sky. It was really quite an extraordinary structure, perfectly round save for a rectangular forebuilding, two large turrets, and a tower, from which flew the royal flag. The tower had no roof and, here and there, a gap in the stonework reminded her that this extraordinary castle had been left unfinished when Neville had Baron Anseau and his pregnant wife killed.

  They were greeted in the courtyard by a pinch-faced clerk who led them up a stairway in the forebuilding, which opened onto the great hall. Martine stifled a gasp as she entered the enormous, brightly lit room, festooned with colorful silks and Saracen carpets, and swarming with courtiers, jugglers, acrobats, harpists, drummers, servants, and several small, darting children. What the great hall at Harford lacked in majesty, its counterpart at Blackburn more than made up for. It was entirely round, with a carved balcony that spanned its circumference halfway between the high, vaulted ceiling and the rush-strewn floor. Directly ahead of her, on the far side of the room, a fire blazed in a massive fireplace built right into the thick stone wall, the only one of its kind Martine had ever seen. To one side of the hearth stood a huge, canopied chair, and sitting in that chair, laughing at the antics of the baby on her lap, was the Queen of England.

  She looked different than Martine had expected, much younger than her eight and thirty years, and much prettier, with a round, soft face and glittering eyes. Her ivory damask tunic was sumptuous and fur-trimmed, and on her head she wore the expected barbette and veil. She locked eyes with Martine and smiled, then beckoned to Thorne, who, guiding his wife with a hand on her back, led her and Brother Matthew to the queen.

  Numb with panic throughout the introductions, Martine could barely manage a curtsy, thinking, I hope I’m doing this right. Thorne sank to one knee with surprising grace, considering his recent injuries, and kissed Eleanor’s offered hand. It occurred to Martine that her husband, despite his humble birth, was much more in his element here than she, as he had some experience of court life. He appeared properly respectful of the great lady, but not overwhelmed, and Martine could tell from Eleanor’s warm greeting that she remembered him fondly.

  He does remind one a bit of Charlemagne’s elephant, Martine thought, comparing the Saxon knight to the dozens of other men in the room. In stature alone he was unique, a colossus among all those slender, soft-spoken young men with their highly polished manners. And unlike them, he was dressed simply, in a blue tunic with no ornamentation, and black chausses.

  Eleanor handed her baby to a waiting nurse, then gave orders for the other children to be gathered and put to bed, the tables to be assembled, and dinner to be served. Rising, she reached a hand out to softly touch Martine’s cheek. “So you’re Jourdain’s little girl.” This open reference to her father startled Martine, considering her illegitimacy. But the queen, although she certainly knew the circumstances of her cousin’s birth, apparently did not choose to pass judgment. “I’m delighted to meet you at last, my dear.”

  “And I you, my lady queen,” Martine managed. Thorne patted her back, and she smiled at him, grateful for his support in spite of everything.

  The food served that evening was surprisingly ordinary, but it was nevertheless a unique experience. Martine, Thorne, and Matthew sat before the hearth at the high table, along with Eleanor, Olivier, the earl’s wife, and several of the more favored knights. The other tables were arranged not in rows, but around the edge of the hall, leaving a large central arena in which musicians, jongleurs, dancers, and mimes joined the jugglers and acrobats in providing suppertime entertainment.

  When dessert was served, Eleanor dismissed the entertainers and nodded to Olivier, who rose and made a fulsome speech extolling Thorne’s skill and bravery during the siege of Blackburn. Then the queen herself stood and led a toast in the Saxon’s honor. She praised not only his character and military talents, but his reputation as a falconer and scholar. “Birds of prey and learning are both particular interests of the king’s,” she said. “Many times he has told me that the rest of a born nobleman is whether he can train his own mind as well as he can train that of his hawk.”

  Thinking on it later, Martine came to realize that the queen’s purpose in repeating this statement of her husband’s was not merely to compliment Thorne. In setting him up as the king’s ideal of the true nobleman, she would forestall any objections, based on his humble origins, to the stunning announcement that followed.

  Indicating for the Saxon to rise, she said, “I had another purpose in bringing you here than simply to honor you with this supper. I daresay you deserve more reward than a bit of food and song for having single-handedly recovered Blackburn. Your courage saved countless lives, and for that King Henry and Lord Olivier are eternally grateful. Blackburn is an immensely valuable barony, but it is a barony without an heir. Its disposition being a matter of great concern to the realm, Lord Olivier wisely sought the counsel of the king, who in turn put the matter into my hands. Having given it the gravest of consideration, it is my pleasure to award this fief, along with the title of baron, to the man who liberated Blackburn Castle... Thorne Falconer.”

  A deafening roar filled the hall. Thorne looked toward Martine, who cou
ld merely gaze back in dumbfounded amazement. When the cheers died down, he simply said, “I’m most grateful, my liege.”

  She said, “My clerks have already drawn up the deed of conveyance. If you will return here on the morrow at midday” —she nodded toward Martine— “with my dear cousin, your lady wife, we will attend to the necessary ceremonial matters, and perhaps indulge in a celebratory feast.”

  Thorne bowed his head briefly. “Of course. Thank you, my lady.” Meeting Martine’s eyes, he smiled. She returned the smile, wondering at the strange and mysterious workings of fate.

  * * *

  “Lord, I become your man,” Thorne said, kneeling in the tree-shaded courtyard of Blackburn Castle with his clasped hands between those of the earl. “I will be faithful to you and will maintain toward you my homage entirely against every man, saving the faith of my lord Henry, King of England, and his heirs.”

  The Saxon rose and, delivering the kiss of homage to Olivier, was transformed from Sir Thorne, a knight of the realm, to Lord Falconer, Baron of Blackburn.

  Chapter 22

  Queen Eleanor and her entourage vacated Blackburn Castle a week later, closely followed by Olivier and his men. When, on the morning after Easter, Martine and Thorne arrived to claim their new home, they found a dozen house servants lined up in the courtyard to greet them. They were male and female, young and old. The only thing they all had in common, Martine thought, was that they seemed nervous, though none of them could have been more nervous than she. Here she was, an eighteen-year-old girl with very little experience of castle life, suddenly the mistress of one of the greatest baronies in England. She felt like a little girl all dressed up in her mother’s kirtle, playing princess.

  One of the servants, a rather dignified-looking man of advanced years, stepped forward. “My lord, my lady,” he said in English-accented French, “welcome to Castle Blackburn. My name is John Burgess. I was my lord Anseau’s steward. If it please your lordship, I will be yours.”