Defiant (43 page)

“Holy God,” he whispered. “You are Everoot.”

In the subsequent roaring silence, his whisper bounced off the stone walls.

“Christ on the Cross,” muttered one of the men around the table. They all got to their feet, shifting in amazement and tension. After twenty years, the missing heir had finally shown himself, and he’d been amongst them all along? It was almost too much to take in. Particularly as some of these men had been here to bid on Everoot themselves.

“How could I not have known?” John’s voice was hushed. He searched Jamie’s face. “But then, it has been so many years. So many years since your father died.”

“Was murdered.” Jamie leaned forward, so that only the king could hear his guttural rasp, “You forget, my lord:
I was there.
”

John jerked as if struck.

“Should you require a reminder, I have one.”

Jamie drew Peter’s drawing from the bag and unfurled it under the king’s nose. John froze. The implications lay there, splayed out like dominoes: John had murdered Jamie’s father. Jamie had witnessed it. Jamie could bring John’s kingship crumbling down with a few spoken words. At this distance, with a dagger thrust.

Fear raced back onto the king’s face. Fear made him unstable, like a bridge on sandy shores. Fear made him attack.

Then from Jamie’s side came an unexpected thing. “Sire,” said a feminine voice, quietly, as though speaking to a panicked animal. “Jamie displayed naught but fealty in Gracious Hill. And before.”

It was Chance.

Jamie was so battle-ready, so primed for death, he could not feel anything about the startling development of Chance defending him. Except perhaps the desire to hurt her, for seeing to Father Peter’s death. But all that had to wait. Everything had to wait, to see how the king would choose to settle this matter of one of his greatest nobles coming back from the dead.

“I should kill you,” the king whispered hoarsely.

Someone stepped forward from behind. “No, you should not.” Brian de Lisle strode to stand beside Jamie. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, not yet drawn. “We need Jamie, and we need Everoot. The rightful one.”

Brian did not look at Jamie, and Jamie did not look at him. But surely his two greatest lieutenants, standing shoulder to shoulder, one of them now revealed as rightful lord of one of the greatest earldoms in the realm, had a moderating effect on the king’s rage.

Perhaps the roomful of witnesses helped as well.

Slowly Jamie drew out the other documents Peter had given him and tossed them on the floor. They rolled a little, back and forth, then lay there, curled at the edges. The king stared.

Silence expanded. It pushed into the corners of the room.

“I can never trust you again, Jamie,” John said, looking up.

Jamie crossed his arms and almost smiled. “My lord, I am the only one you
can
trust. I have had your life in my hands a thousand times. If I wanted you dead, dead you would be.” From the table came grunts of shock, shifting boots. John’s jaw tightened, but he did not interrupt. “That makes me the safest person in the world for you, sire.”

The king glanced at the table of nobles, then back to Jamie. “If I invest you with Everoot, you will ally with me in good faith?” he said cautiously.

Jamie uncrossed his arms. “If you give me what I want.”

John looked confused. “I am giving you Everoot.”

Jamie bent his head slightly, a nod to his king, an admission of authority. But his next words answered any questions about whether Jamie was making requests, or stating terms.

“I am
claiming
Everoot, my lord. I require only one thing in return.”

“What?”

“Eva.”

John inhaled sharply, then slowly gave an unamused smile. Jamie could see him reckoning with the Exchequer of his heart, accounting the cost and benefits of giving Eva to the heir of Everoot. Great lord wed to a princess bride, striated history of loyalty, deadly. It had to be a difficult decision.

The king looked at Eva. So did Jamie. So did everyone else in the room, and he had to assume they saw what he did: a slim, pale woman with flowing dark hair in a blue tunic, whose eyes never left his as she held out her hand to him.

“You will serve me?” the king said quietly. “Faithfully?”

“I have always served you faithfully, my lord,” Jamie said, already striding across the room. He did not ask leave and he did not look back. He reached for Eva, who was walking toward him, and pulled her to him. He was fairly certain people were speaking to him, but it was all dim beneath the brightness of Eva’s being here, in his arms. He cupped the back of her head and kissed her. It was only one kiss, but it was thorough, her arms around him, his fingers in her hair. He tipped her face up. “Can you be content with a castle instead of a cottage, Eva?”

“But of course,” she whispered. “If you are able to resist the urge to lock me up—”

He drew back.
“Me?”

“—then yes.”

He looped his hands together behind her back and eyed her. “Fine, yes. I will take that.”

“But this putting me with one-eyed Scotsmen for my own protection, it will not do. While I am most gratified to see how deeply you care, I am not the sort to appreciate such unexpected protections. I prefer to choose them myself. Such as when I am bathing in a river and do not wish to be accosted by men or otters, this would be helpful protection.”

“Ah. The otters. I shall recall that to mind.”

“And if knives are being poked at me, I would like to be protected at such times.”

“One would assume.”

She adopted a stern look. “But, Jamie, you cannot put me in places and walk away. For one, I will leave. For two, I will follow. For three, I do not like someone else deciding on the matter of where my bones are. It is only that for so long, I have made those decisions myself. Do you see?”

He nodded. He thought he heard someone distantly saying his name. “I see.”

“I realize this is not to be borne. Yet I ask you to bear it. Will you?”

“I will. For you. Now, for my terms.”

She brightened. She hadn’t realized they were discussing terms. She settled her hands on his shoulders and nodded encouragingly. “I am prepared.”

“One.” He brushed the curve of her jaw with his hand. “You will share with me your thoughts.”

She affected a sigh. “You drive a difficult bargain, sir, but I accept.”

“You will share with me your body.”

“This I have been doing since the moment you dragged me into a tavern.”

“You will additionally stay away from docks, roosters, alehouses, and anywhere that men are fighting. And you are
never
to handle a rope again.”

She pushed up on her toes. “I have scared you,” she whispered. “Jamie the fearless knight is frightened.”

“Terrified.” He ducked his head, brushing his cheek against hers. “I promise, I will get you your cottage one day, Eva.”

“This is not a thing to worry on, Jamie.”

He entwined their fingers. Someone was most certainly calling to him now. “Everoot does not have a red roof, but you can grow turnips in its soil.”

“See, you are so clever, to seduce me with vegetables.” She smiled up at him. “A man with a sword who is willing to repair roofs, and a place to grow my turnips. How could I not be very happy?” Her eyes were shimmering at him.

“What more could a princess want?” he murmured as he turned her to face the others, to begin living the life he’d held at bay all these years.

“Only you, Jamie. Nothing but you.”

20 October, 1216
The Nest, principal castle of the Everoot earldom

E
va was in the orchard of the outer bailey, rescuing wrinkled apples from the late bite of autumn. It had been a glorious harvest, enough to soften up many of the hard edges of her heart in regard to England.

She was happy. Everoot was a strong home, and Roger was only a half day’s ride away at Endshire, wrestling with the tasks of running an English estate. It was quite different from running through French forests, so Ry was often there, helping unwind the mess ten years of absentee lordship had wrought. Angus was sent back and forth between the two estates, muttering that the English were a lot of fools, and he’d be better off in Scotland, but he never went. Eva plied him with a plethora of meat pasties and very good ale, and in the end, he stayed.

“Only ’cause I’m not sure the debt’s settled,” he’d mutter.

“Oh, it is not,” she’d assure him, patting his arm, and this made them both happy. Jamie rolled his eyes.

Everoot was filled with knights and retainers who were turning out to be fiercely loyal and rather too admiring of their rediscovered lord. Eva worried all the adulation would go to
Jamie’s head, after all the years of loathing and wariness aimed his way. It hadn’t happened yet, but one never knew. Eva kept him in check by engaging him in the most mundane of tasks with great regularity, claiming incapacitation. A child on the way gave her the right. Jamie
doted.

No one knew her true identity—she and Jamie and the king had agreed to this—and Eva did not wish it any other way. She was Jamie’s wife and wanted nothing more.

She gently poured the little apples she’d been holding in her skirts into a basket, and saw Jamie striding toward her, coming from the exercise yard where he trained with his men.

His long legs swung with his confident stride. He threaded his fingers impatiently through his hair, pushing it off his face. His face was scraped as clean as Eva could get it, but she secretly did not mind when they missed a few days. She enjoyed the dangerous way he looked and the gentle way he touched her.

Well, sometimes gentle.

She was fortunate that he was home, for civil war had broken out. The charter hadn’t held. Barely three months after it had been signed by all the great barons save Jamie—“It will not hold,” he’d said when they’d asked him to sign. “I will serve, but I will not sign”—war had broken out again.

The Nest remained a refuge, though. Couriers and messengers and barons used the Nest as a base for the ongoing negotiations, a place of calm amid the madness.

Jamie reached her side. He took her hand and kissed it absently as he peered into the basket of apples. He picked one up. “Apples?” he asked as he bit into it.

She shook her head. “Berries.”

He grinned as apple juice trailed down his chin. She leaned up to kiss it away. That’s when they heard the rider, coming up the hill to Everoot.

“The king is dead!” he shouted from dozens of yards away. “King John has died!”

The news spread quickly. King John had died from a surfeit of lamprey eels. Nine-year-old Henry would be crowned in Westminster. William the Marshal had vowed to carry the boy on his shoulders from sea to sea, if need be, to make the country pledge. The most powerful men were forming a regency government to advise the young king. Jamie’s presence was called for. They planned to re-issue
Magna Carta.
The rebels would heel. The war would end.

Everyone gathered in the bailey. Villagers, knights, merchants on delivery. It had become the scene of celebration. Jamie gave a quick order to bring drink, in honor of a kingship begun. When the first barrel of ale was rolled out, a great cheer went up. More people poured in. Children were sent scurrying home to gather cups. The revelry reached new heights, with frequent cries of “Long live the king!” and “Long live Everoot!”

“Eels,” Jamie mused and looked down at Eva. “Did we not recently send a shipment of eels to the court?”

“Did we?” she replied vaguely, slipping her arm through his. “I cannot recall such a small matter.”

She felt him staring at the side of her head. “You recall where the wash buckets are stored, and the anniversary of Cook’s mother’s passing. Nothing escapes your attention.”

She tapped her rounded belly. “It is your son. He muddles my head.”

This distracted him. He looked at her belly. “
He
might be a
she.
”

Her smile grew slowly, but it grew so large it hurt her cheekbones. “Yes. She might.”

The celebration continued apace. A lute was produced. Children and adults danced. Dogs barked. Someone overturned a bucket and drumbeats were heard. From the ramparts above, cheers drifted down from the soldiers on the walls.

“Your father is dead,” Jamie said quietly, looking down.

She nodded, then quickly shook her head. “I suppose that is so, but it does not feel that way. What mourning had to be done was done a long time ago. Now, the war will end, the harrying will cease, the winter will be easier. I feel no grief for these things.”

“Have you grief for other things? Such as spending a cold winter in the north of England?”

She waved her hand. “Parts of France are very cold indeed, both the places and the people. I am happy here, with you.”

He slung his arm around her shoulder. “And I with you.”

She smiled. “My only sadness is that it will be months until the babe is born.”

“Aye, well, I did the best I could.” He tipped forward and kissed her belly. The sight of their lord kissing the heir-bearing belly of their lady occasioned an outpouring of cheers. He tilted his head to the side and grinned up at her. “They like when I kiss you.”

“They have very good sense, these people of yours. They like when you make me have babies.”

He laughed and straightened. “As do I.”

Eva reached for his hand. “Come, remind me why I want to have many children with you.”

“We cannot make any more just yet, Eva.”

“I think of it more as practice,” she assured him.

He laughed and grabbed for her hand. The slanting rays of autumn evening sunlight shone down on the celebration as Jamie took her inside to practice for the only thing she’d ever wanted: a family of her own, with Jamie at her side.