At the bottom of the trail, the foliage was far too heavy to penetrate with the horses and Quinton leapt off his animal, motioning for his brother to follow. Pursing his lips with the greatest irritation and reluctance, Christian did as he was asked.
The bushes were nearly as tall as he was and Quinton vigorously motioned for his brother to crouch low to the earth. Folding his tall frame, Christian crept up behind his brother and grabbed the man by the ear. Quinton bit off a yelp as he came face to face with Christian’s searing gaze.
“What are we doing here?” he demanded, a hissing whisper. “We’re on de Gare lands!”
Quinton yanked himself free of his brother’s brutal grip, rubbing his ear. “Nay, we are not. This is still disputed lands,” he pointed in the direction he had been moving. “Come on; it’s not far.”
Christian had had enough of his brother’s mysteries. Following the brown-haired man into a particularly thick cluster of bushes, he opened his mouth to tell him precisely what he thought of his foolery when Quinton suddenly hissed with delight.
“Thank God,” he whispered. “We have arrived in time!”
Christian’s irritation turned to genuine curiosity as he attempted to locate his brother’s source of glee. “In time for what?”
Quinton’s delight turned most seductive and he pointed through the cover of leaves. “In time for her,” he said with satisfaction. “As I promised, dear brother. You shan’t be disappointed.”
Christian followed his brother’s lead, peering through the sheltering branches. Across the body of a small pond, shimmering weakly in the dim light, his ice-blue gaze fell on a lovely dappled palfrey partially concealed by a cluster of bushes. Clearly, he could see a blond head on the opposite side of the horse, bobbing to and fro as it went about its business. It was a woman, he could tell. His interest took a deeper foothold and he shifted in the bramble to gain another, more revealing look.
As the blond-headed figure stepped out from behind the palfrey, Christian’s irritation vanished as he found himself gazing upon the most beautiful woman he had ever had the fortune to witness. It had taken him a mere second to deduce that she was by far the most magnificent female he had ever beheld; it was not an uneducated conclusion considering he had seen more than his share of women in his young life.
Enough experience to know that the beauty before him was unequaled by anything he had ever encountered. An odd warmth settled in his limbs as he observed her fluid movements as she ran her fingers through her hair, speaking softly to the palfrey when the animal drank from the body of water. Her voice, sultry and faint, bolted through him like a turbulent fire.
Christian knew he had to meet her. Lacking any hesitation, he moved to stand; he was consumed with the idea of announcing himself to the woman with the silky blond hair, as glistening and lovely as the gossamer wings. But a sharp grasp upon his arm halted his intentions as Quinton yanked him hard enough to cause him to lose his balance. Crashing to his knees, Christian turned his furious attention to his brother.
“What are you doing?” Quinton hissed sharply.
Icy-blue eyes blazed. “I am going to introduce myself.”
Quinton shook his head sharply. “You will not. I forbid you to spoil my surprise.”
Christian jerked his arm free of his brother’s biting grip, moving to regain his footing. “What are you talking about? You have presented your surprise, as is evident by the angelic woman at the water’s edge. And I intend to….”
Quinton cut him off. “If you introduce yourself, you will spoil everything. She will never come here again.”
Christian’s eyebrows drew together. “You’re not making sense, Quinton. Is she not the surprise you intended for me? Why do you not allow me to make my presence known?”
Quinton opened his mouth to contest his brother’s statement but something from the opposite side of the pond caught his attention. His expression softened. “Because you will miss the performance if you do,” he said softly.
Puzzled and mildly annoyed, Christian turned to the source of his brother’s preoccupation, and all of his irritation vanished in one awestruck moment.
The woman with the incredibly beautiful hair had removed her simple gown, leaving her clad in a fine linen shift. As she moved to the water’s edge, the faint light that had managed to penetrate the canopy filtered through her thin garment, giving her admirers an ample view of her shapely legs.
The men watched, impressed with wonder, as she daintily dipped her toe into the water to test the temperature. Deeming the climate mild enough for her needs, she proceeded to strip off the shift in a single effortless movement. Tossing the garment aside, she dove into the crystal-clear waters without reserve.
Christian could scarcely breathe. His entire attention was riveted to the mysterious woman as she frolicked about in the water like an exotic fish. Even as he watched her graceful movements, her long arms as they carved easily into the surface of the pond, his attention repeatedly returned to the brief moment by the water’s edge when she had been completely nude, void of all hindrance and shame and protection. She was magnificent. If Christian hadn’t known himself any better, he would have sworn he fell in love with her at that very moment.
But to love someone based purely on appearance was foolish. Love was foolish. He had been the recipient of enough “love” over the years to know that for fact; silly, giddy, irrational of all emotions, it was acid to a man’s ears and a syphon to his strength. He couldn’t count the number of women who had declared themselves in “love” with the powerful knight known as the Demon of Eden, heir to the rich barony of the same name, nestled between the shires of Cumbria and Durham. It was a barony that had been at war with its closest neighbor for over seventy years.
Certainly there was little difference between love and war; the most volatile of all states, a fine line separating the two as if to commonly divide and commonly unite them. Although he had no use for one state, he’d never known reprieve from the other.
In fact, even now he was considered upon enemy land as he gazed upon the delightful nymph settled in the water before him. Her blond hair was slicked back on her head as she paddled about, and Christian and Quinton found themselves ducking low when she unknowingly turned in their direction.
Through the shielding foliage, Christian found himself staring at a face that matched the perfection of the body. Large, almond-shaped eyes reflected the deep blue of the pool with mesmerizing beauty, and his gaze raked over dramatically arched brows set within a pleasing oval face. Lips as full and ripe as summer cherries hovered over the water as she swam gracefully, completely ignorant of her appreciative audience.
The entire picture was enrapturing. Christian sank to his buttocks, settling in for what he hoped to be a lengthy exhibition of flesh and beauty. Tempting glimpses of slender legs or delicate shoulders would assault his senses, causing him to lick lips that had been sucked dry by his heavy breathing. Never in his life had he harbored such a reaction to any female, clothed or unclothed.
Watching the woman as she splashed in the center of the pond, it was as if nothing else in the world existed.
“Tell me, Demon; what do you think?” he was vaguely aware of Quinton’s voice, low and suggestive.
Christian’s ice-blue eyes never left the bathing enchantress. “I think I am in love.” When he heard his brother’s soft snickers, he tore his gaze away from the woman long enough to slant the man a wondrous gaze. “How did you come by her?”
“On patrol,” Quinton whispered. “A few weeks ago, before you returned from London, I happened across her while securing the disputed lands. She comes here every week, every Thursday, about this time. She has never missed a date.”
“Nor shall I from now on,” Christian murmured fervently. “Who is she?”
Quinton shook his head. “I have no idea. But she comes from de Gare lands.”
A dark expression rippled across his brother’s chiseled features. “A servant, mayh
ap. Or even one of the family?”
Quinton shrugged. “I have never seen the family. I have been unfortunate enough to glimpse Alex de Gare during the course of small skirmishes or sieges, but I have never seen his eldest daughter or the two younger boys.”
Christian continued to stare at the woman as a hawk watches its prey. “Do you think she could be Alex’s daughter?”
Quinton shook his head. “Hardly,” he snorted. “Alex de Gare is a short, rotund little brute. She’s far too exquisite to be his offspring.”
Christian didn’t say anything for the moment as the lady disappeared beneath the glassy waters, only to reappear moments later as she burst through the surface as if intending to launch herself to the sky above. Water cascaded from her magnificent torso as she hung suspended for a brief moment, exposed to the heat and elements and probing eyes of the astonished brothers when gravity gracefully forced her into the shielding confines of the pond.
But the fleeting display had been enough; Christian was left speechless by the vision of the sun as it reflected off her wet skin, erotically caressing her glorious breasts, probing gently along her slender ribcage, embracing her narrowed waist.
“Do you still believe my trek into disputed lands to be foolish?” He was barely aware of Quinton’s taunting whisper.
After a lengthy, dazed moment, he simply shook his head. “Not at all,” his voice quiet. “In fact, I shall never doubt you again. Forgive me for ever questioning your wisdom.”
Quinton snorted. “Well that you have come to realize my brilliance.” Glancing at the canopy overhead, he tugged at Christian’s arm. “We’d better be leaving. Father will wonder where we have gone to.”
Christian never took his eyes from the fairy-like vision in the pond. He couldn’t imagine leaving her alone, performing her sensual ballet for the fish and the birds as if they could appreciate her display. Her entire presentation was meant for him and him alone, and he would not be so rude as to leave before she was concluded. He was determined to stay until the end.
“I shall come in a moment.” He waved his brother on; in fact, he was hoping Quinton would leave. He wanted to savor her exquisite beauty alone. “Tell father I shall be along shortly. Tell him… tell him I am securing the disputed territory.”
Quinton cocked an eyebrow, his gaze trailing to the distant female figure as she floated on her back in the water, exposing her delightfully ripe breasts to the trees above. He groaned softly. “Christ, I would forgive her even if she was Alex de Gare’s daughter.”
Christian had powerfully erotic visions of himself atop the supine form, already semi-aroused as he pondered the feel of her silken skin beneath his calloused hands, the taste of her female musk upon his tongue. He imagined the long, shapely legs as they wrapped about his narrow hips in passion to draw him deeper and deeper still. He was unaware that his breathing had quickened into shallow gasps as his pulse raced in rhythm with his fantasies. He glanced at his brother.
“I would forgive her if she was the daughter of Lucifer himself,” he said.
He meant it.
‘That name… I cannot remember when I did not abhor it.’
~ Chronicles of Christian St. John
Vl. II, p. CLVII
CHAPTER ONE
Winding Cross Castle
Cumbria, England
One month later
The acrid smell of smoke was harsh upon the dusky sky as twisting plumes of brown fog and the shouts of battle intermingled in the fresh atmosphere of the spring. An apocalyptic mood permeated man and beast alike as the bodies of the dead lined the filthy moat of Winding Cross like a macabre army of buoys. One could literally step across them to reach the battered fortress on the littered island, separated by the assaulting forces by little more than a damaged drawbridge. The scent of surrender was in the air.
Christian was eager to be done with it. Mounted atop his magnificent charger, he stood at the edge of the moat while hordes of his men finished the final elements of the platform they had spent two days constructing. Another few feet and they would be level with the battlements to begin the final aspect of their assault on Alex de Gare.
This would be the end of it, Christian vowed silently as his brother came charging through the shallow moat from the opposite shore where the massive platform was nearly complete. Over to their left, his cousin Jasper was launching a powerful offensive against the drawbridge that had been partially burned. It was a drawbridge that had been burned and reconstructed more times than Christian could count.
The de Gares and St. Johns had been waging the same war year after year, decade after decade, until the combatants could hardly remember how the hostilities began in the first place. All that mattered was that, somehow, ancestral honor was at stake and war had to be waged until they were either completely victorious or completely obliterated. There was no other way of life for the descendants of the original antagonists, a family honor that had been at stake for seventy years.
Christian always wondered what it would be like to have perpetual peace. No disputed lands, no sieges, no ambushes nor border skirmishes. No death, no pain, no grief. He could remember his carefully guarded childhood; he was not allowed outside of the enclosure of Eden, his ancestral fortress that had stood near the banks of the Eden River for over one hundred years.
The entire bastion was constantly on a state of alert, ever-vigilant for the roaming bands of de Gare patrols that so often seduced Eden into a night of flame-arrows and siege tactics only to withdraw abruptly come the dawn.
Hit-and-run tactics that the St. Johns were well aware of; in fact, they employed the same strategies against the de Gare holding of Winding Cross. Back and forth, the skirmishes and the assaults were a never-ending conflict, a constant state of brutal existence. There was no other way of life.
Christian had grown up viewing the de Gares as another would view the Devil; to the House of St. John, the de Gares and Lucifer were one and the same. From a protected childhood to a life of fostering spent at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border, Christian had pledged his servitude to King Henry III upon his initiation into the knighthood. He’d spent nearly twenty years away from his native home, situated in the beautiful wilds of Cumbria, but even that span of objective time was not enough to quell the inbred hatred of the de Gares.
A hatred that was fully cemented into his soul by the time he had reached his thirty-third year. While basking in the glory as one of Henry’s most powerful knights, he had been summoned home by his father, demanding he return home to assist in finally obliterating the de Gares once and for all. Duty to family superseded devotion to his king, and Christian found himself home once again to do battle against his family’s loathsome enemy.
An enemy who even now was as dangerously close to crumbling as Christian had ever witnessed. Shifting his attention between the nearly complete platform and his cousin’s successful violation of the fortified drawbridge, he was almost startled when Quinton reined his snorting destrier along his flank.
“Can you believe it?” he demanded with excitement. “This is as close as we have come to breaching Winding Cross in years. The Demon of Eden has triumphed!”
Christian disregarded the reference to his nickname as his ice-blue eyes grazed the scene before him; there was a good deal of smoke trailing from the bailey and he surmised correctly that several of their flame-arrows and flaming catapult projectiles had met their targets. His cousin was gleefully hacking away at the crumbling drawbridge, a powerful indication that infringement of the keep was imminent and Christian raised his visor with cool pleasure, wiping at his grimy face.
“I shall show the proper joy when and if this event occurs,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to the cluster of tents that had been pitched in anticipation of a lengthy, successful siege. “I wonder if any progress has been made on the de Gare soldiers we captured earlier.”
Quinton’s gaze trailed to the tents in the distance. “I am sure that our father would have
notified you if anything of importance had been discovered,” he said, returning his attention to the drawbridge. “God’s Beard, look at the drawbridge; I had better get over there lest I miss my opportunity to violate the bailey.”
He spurred his charger forward but Christian abruptly halted his brother’s advance, clobbering the man’s warhorse on the side of the head when the excited animal snapped at him. “You will remain here for the moment and oversee the final assault.” Gathering his own reins, he turned for the cluster of white, green and gold St. John tents. “I would see if Father has discovered anything of use from our captives.”
Quinton shrugged. “Very well,” he acknowledged, then shouted after his brother as he charged off. “But don’t be long! I will not miss my opportunity when the bailey has been breached!”
If Christian heard his zealous brother, he didn’t respond. Galloping across the partially destroyed clearing that separated Winding Cross from the forests beyond, he thundered into the small encampment and dismounted with graceful ease. Armor clanging and mail grating, he pushed boldly into his father’s tent.
Jean St. John looked up from the duty of securing a worn leather boot. His massive son stood in the open tent flap, from head to toe the most fearsome warrior he had ever been fortunate enough to witness. Even though he had fathered the man, he could scarcely believe God had blessed him with an heir of unequalled power and intelligence. Intelligence that even now had been successful in compromising Winding Cross and Jean expected a full surrender before dawn.
“Well?” he demanded as he rose to his feet. “Is she down?”
Christian shook his head, taking a moment to unlatch his helm. Removing it with a grunt of satisfaction, he set it to the nearest shabby table. “Not yet, but soon. Jasper is nearly complete with his destruction of the drawbridge.”
England's Greatest Knights: A Medieval Romance Collection Page 163
