Authors: The Bride Bed
Patrick shook his head. “None, my lord, I’m glad to say. At least none beyond a few of Rufus’s men-at-arms. Nothing more serious than a scrape.”
“That’s impossible!” Talia said, her heart still aching from the loss of two of her most well-loved and loyal men, their lives stolen in the battle between Rufus and Aymon, the guardian who’d held her wardship before him. After three weeks of siege followed by Rufus storming the walls, the blood had run freely in the bailey of Carrisford Castle.
“Collin!” Talia pressed through the throng of
warriors and found Collin standing on a bench. “Where are they, Collin—all the wounded?”
Collin shrugged, looking confused. “I waited here for them, my lady, but there aren’t any. ’Cept for Tunny’s skinned-up elbows. He tripped over one of those loose piglets and slipped on the rainy cobbles. Cook’s workin’ up a poultice for him.”
“Only Tunny? But that’s not possible. They’re probably hiding,” she whispered, hoping the man wouldn’t reveal where they were. “Gone to ground until the smoke settles.”
But Collin only shrugged again. “’Pears to be no smoke either, my lady.”
She’d seen that for herself: no smoke. No blood. No lasting terror.
No more new-made orphans to comfort and care for.
An unwelcome glimmer of hope flickered through her, tapped at her heart, a sensation she hadn’t felt in years.
A feeling not to be trusted.
Just as she couldn’t possibly trust de Monteneau.
Not with her careful plans to protect her people already in the works. The last thing she needed was a nosy, well-organized guardian to slow her progress.
“This way, madam.” The huge man ignored her protest, merely turned her and increased the pres
sure of his fingers around her arm and against her back.
He was courtly and proud as he strode with her through the crowd, as though he was about to partner with her in a dance and waited only for the music to begin.
“Have you no sense of timeliness, de Monteneau? You’ve obviously never taken a castle before. There are many things to—”
“That’s enough, madam.” He laid his sultry warning against the ridge of her ear, just long enough to raise a deliciously, utterly uninvited shiver along her nape, lasting long enough to make her stumble and grab a breath.
And follow him as he stalked toward the raised dais at the screen end of the hall, where green boughs and ribbons incongruously draped the arches and the sconces. Remnants of the wedding that the bullheaded beast had so miraculously interrupted.
Some miracle! Just let him stand here on the dais and try to claim her in marriage as Rufus had done.
She was about to remind him of just that, but he encircled her waist with his powerful hands and raised her up to stand on the bench, eye to eye with him.
“Behave yourself, madam,” he said on the end of a snarl. He then turned to his men, and they
quieted as though on cue, waiting for him to speak.
“Well done, men.” He’d barely finished this easy praise before another cheer filled the barreled ceiling, rattling the wattle between the timbered posts.
“To Lord Alex!” Hoots and hoorays and fists punched into the candle-smoked air.
De Monteneau raised his hand, and the cheering faded. “You’ve exceeded my hopes, as always.”
Their new cheers exceeded the previous thunder.
Oh, what a load of self-righteous pig wallow
.
“I am here, gentlemen, at the behest of His Royal Majesty, King Stephen, the true and just ruler of Britain.”
Yes, yes, more cheering, more table pounding approval from his rabble. More time wasting.
“In the king’s name, and with his express permission, I do hereby claim Carrisford Castle, and with it, the royal wardship of Lady Talia.”
Lord, curse them all, kings and guardians and men who encourage their crimes.
De Monteneau gave a flick of his brow, a humorless smile that she yearned to smack off his face. “There you see, Lady Talia, Carrisford is my castle now. Officially.”
Then you and I are officially at war, my lord.
He turned toward her as though he’d read her
thoughts. “Now you’ll announce your acceptance, madam, so that my men and your own people may hear and know that you will comply with my authority.”
“And if I choose not to accept?”
“Choose, madam?” The man arched a menacing eyebrow, as though he’d never before been thwarted, and now found a feral delight in the possibility. “Don’t ever think that you have a choice in the matter.”
Or that all your official blustering will give you power over my life.
He settled his broad, possessive hand low across the width of her back. “Now you’ll speak, madam, without condition, loudly and clearly.”
Tired of playing shuttlecock to every warrior who happened to pass by her castle, Talia turned her most innocent smile on the man.
“Very well, my lord…de Monteneau.”
The man’s strong, white teeth gleamed as he said, “
Now
, madam.”
Talia raised her chin to the nearly silent mob, marveling again at their easy discipline, wondering what their behavior meant about their leader.
Her guardian.
She stilled the trembling anger in her chest and cleared her voice. “I, Lady Talia, heiress of Carrisford Castle, do acknowledge the rights and privileges of Lord Alexander de Monteneau as official guardian over my wardship.” As the crowd
cheered, she turned to the impossibly tall man standing, fists against his hips, at her side. “Will that do, my lord?”
Instead of the red-jowled, flared-nostril anger that she’d come to expect from her guardians, de Monteneau merely said, “It’ll do well enough for now, madam.”
For now?
A marriage threat, to be sure. One that stirred a silky-hot memory of their first meeting, the breathless heat of him.
“Now this is finished,
my lord guardian
,” she said, her jaw aching with anger at the raw effect he had on her thoughts, “you’ll excuse me if I take your leave to see that my family hasn’t suffered at the hands of your garrison.”
“They haven’t. Now, sit, madam. We’re far from finished here.” He lifted her off the bench—his hands hot around her waist—and set her on the bench, her knees as loose as a joint-doll’s.
“And I should believe they are unharmed because…?”
“Because I said so.”
“I trust that information from Leod alone. I sent him to see to their safety when you came crashing through my gate, and I refuse to take your word—”
“Bring me this Leod person,” de Monteneau said to one of his eager pages, then scanned the crowd as he sat on the table, one boot on the bench
beside her. “Dougal, your security report, if you please. Assure the lady Talia that her castle remains intact.”
A tall, self-assured man strode from the crowd and stopped in front of Talia. He removed his leather helm cap, even dipped his knee toward her, in what could only be mock courtesy, because he was, of course, just another invader, though he wore a smile that one could almost trust.
“Dougal of Provence, my lady,” he said. “Carrisford Castle is as Lord Alex received it from Rufus.”
“Hardly a soothing recommendation, Dougal of Provence.” She sent the rest of her anger toward Alex. “A castle is only as safe as its ability to protect its people. You’ll pardon me if I am not convinced.”
Rufus would have backhanded her and sent her sprawling, de Monteneau only called up another tall, unhesitating sergeant for still another report.
“The food stores?”
“Intact, my lord.”
“The village.”
“Untouched.”
“The wells.”
“Pristine.”
And on it went. A litany of her castle’s inventory, as she forced herself to hold her tongue, to control her growing panic, disbelieving her new
guardian’s assurances that anything was well, let alone all of it.
Yet de Monteneau seemed far more intelligent than Rufus or any of the others, doubtless aware that sparing the castle would only add to his coffers.
Which made him all the more dangerous. The sort who would keep careful watch on everything she did.
“My lady! My lady!”
“Leod!” The agile old man boxed and protested every step as he was led by the elbows through the crowd. “Take care with him!”
“Are you all right, my lady?” Leod climbed up onto the dais, threw himself between Talia and de Monteneau, and glared up at the towering warrior.
“I’m quite fine, Leod.” She stood and put herself between Leod and His Lordship. “How are the children? Brenna can be difficult during these raids.”
“Oh, they all be fine, my lady. The young ones slept through it all.” Which, finally, soothed her fears, because Leod was a lion when it came to protecting her family.
De Monteneau rose and stood directly behind her, a wall of heat and smoke and leather, surpassingly tall. “There’s your proof, madam,” he said softly.
Leod glared up at de Monteneau, his hand at
his dagger. “And who be you, sir? Who is he, my lady?”
Who, indeed?
“It’s all right, Leod. This is Alexander de Monteneau. He’s the new lord of Carrisford.”
Leod gave a good snort. “Is he, now?”
Knowing Leod’s stubborn, squint-eyed challenge all too well, Talia turned him on his heels. “Now please go back and stay with the children.”
“You’re sure you’ll be all right, my lady? He’s a big one, he is,” Leod said, loud enough for all to hear. “Bigger’n any of the others.”
And quicker.
And wiser.
And far, far more handsome.
A stray thought that went fluttering through her chest.
“You gonna marry him?” Leod whispered.
Dear God! Had de Monteneau heard? Her ears filled with the slamming of her pulse.
Not that it mattered; she’d marry the man over her dead body.
“Please go, Leod. Hurry.” Talia watched Leod dodge through the crowd, leaving her with a dark crimson blush, unable to look at de Monteneau.
But he seemed not to have heard Leod’s ridiculous question. “We’re done here for now, Dougal. Settle the men into the barracks, and I’ll see you back here at daybreak.”
De Monteneau turned to his men, gave a nod
ded salute, and they broke into another bellowed cheer that hung in the rafters as the hall emptied.
“So. Am I finally free to go as well, my lord guardian?”
He eyed her for a very long time, then relaxed, as though the battle was won and he believed he was settling into her castle for good. “You’re free to show me to the keep.”
The family quarters? “The keep, my lord? Tonight? Why? It’s late and—”
“And I want to see to my chamber.”
Talia’s heart stopped. “Your chamber? In the keep? But Rufus housed himself in the Red Tower—”
“I am not Rufus.” He bent to her, his gaze steely cold and dangerous. “You’ll do well remembering that, Lady Talia. Now, take me to the keep.”
He hooked Talia’s elbow and pulled her through the great hall and out the door.
Toward the keep. Her home.
Her heart.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” Talia said, trying to disengage her elbow from his grip. But he only pulled her against his side and kept walking. “You see, there’s no chamber made up for you at the moment. My own chamber is—”
“Available, madam?”
Where the devil was all this unseemly blushing
coming from all of a sudden? Every word the man spoke seemed to take on wholly improper textures.
He was steel and leather and a soft kind of heat that forced its way through the seams of her gown.
Talia stopped beside the well and turned on him. “My chamber is
not
available to you, my lord. You can take the…uh…the solar.”
In the shifting shadows of the courtyard, she could see the hardening of his jaw.
“You’ll soon learn, madam, that I’ll take whatever I please, whenever, whether you will it or not.”
D
eceptive woman. Her every word, every breath as distracting as her scent.
She flounced past him, stopping long enough to scratch a scruffy hound behind the ears and murmur an encouragement that set the beast’s entire body wagging, then laid him out, legs up, on his back.
“Good lad, Rollo.” And then the woman took off across the bailey, trailing the enchanted hound in her wake. “The keep is this way, my lord.”
Feeling too much like the hound himself, Alex caught up with his ward in two strides, only to become a part of her growing entourage.
“What shall I do with the feast, my lady? There’s food everywhere in the kitchen.”
Feast? What bloody feast?
The woman stopped and studied Alex for the briefest moment before she turned slightly from him and whispered something to the anxious young man, never shifting her eyes from his own, as though he would allow the woman her secrets.
“Oh, aye! Consider it done, my lady. Thank you!” Then the young man sped away, his apron strings flying.
She started off again, but Alex caught her arm. “Feast, madam?”
Her eyes tracked his, stars of mutinous brightness in the moonlight. “Venison, a turnip custard, a lumbarde, sorrel soup…”
“I didn’t ask the menu. What sort of feast? Why?”
She sighed as though he could never understand. “Your arrival interrupted what was sure to become another of Rufus’s drunken brawls, my lord.”
More than a drunken brawl, to be sure. “So what did you just tell the boy?”
“That he could distribute the food to anyone who was hungry. A common malady here at Carrisford, my lord.” She stood with her shapely hip against her palm, daring him to reverse her order, so obviously certain that he would do just that.
So utterly incorrect. Better to keep her off-balance. “Now to the keep, madam.”
She drew up her mouth into a confused frown,
then nodded and ducked through an archway into a small inner ward that was moonlit and smith-iron blue, bordered by the three-storied stone keep itself, and flanked by timber-picketed walks along the wall towers.
The woman was stopped by three more of her frantic people, efficiently answered their questions, then led Alex past a well house and a neat, rain-glinted garden before starting up a short, wooden-roofed staircase that ended abruptly at a thick, closed door.
“Jasper!” The lady rattled the latch. “’Tis me, Lady Talia!”
The door opened a crack to still another elderly, wiry bearded man, this one wearing an ancient helmet. The remains of her army, perhaps?
“Thank the good Lord, my lady!” The old soldier threw open the door and pulled the woman inside, only to give her what must have been a bone-cracking embrace. “Leod said you were safe, but there’s nothing like seein’ for m’self! Were many killed this time?”
This time.
Such a telling phrase.
“None, Jasper,” she said, throwing Alex a disdainful, disbelieving glare as he followed her inside the guardroom. “At least none according to His Lordship, here.” She tsked. “My new guardian.”
Jasper glowered at Alex, tucking his frown up
into his moustache and brushing a light powdering of grey off his sleeves and his thin shoulders. “The devil, you say?”
“He might well turn out to be the devil, Jasper,” the woman said, taking off the old man’s helmet and handing it to him. “But just now he’d like to see his chamber.”
Jasper snorted. “His what?”
“Yes, Jasper. His Lordship will be staying here, in the keep.”
A very pointed statement, rife with secret meanings.
“But the
children
, my lady! Rufus never even…I mean, all the others—”
“Yes, I know, Jasper. But the solar will have to do for tonight. We’ll make His Lordship comfortable, won’t we? If you’ll follow me, my lord.”
She flashed Alex a completely false smile as she grabbed an oil lamp off the neat worktable and started up the circle of stairs, muttering under her breath—doubtless cursing him and all his kin.
She’d already opened the door by the time he reached the landing and was breezing into the room, lighting a lamp on a table beside a brazier.
“’Tis a fine room, my lord guardian,” she said, suddenly more the overly generous hostess and less the she-dragon of but a few moments ago. “Plenty of light during the day. Windows to the inner ward.”
Tapestried walls and a cluster of chairs, a work-
table, a settle by the cold brazier. No bed, but that was easily taken care of.
Certainly better than the tent and cot he was used to.
His home, for the moment.
His castle.
His ward.
“I hope you’re pleased, my lord?”
Pleased? Bloody hell, the woman pleased him dangerously well; that softly impatient hand shaping her hip, her hem revealing an equally impatient tapping foot, the discrepant flowers sagging from her girdling belt, her inexhaustible resolve.
“It will do, madam.” Would have to do, for the time being, for his purposes.
“Good, my lord, then I’ll see that you get a—” She stopped short as a great pounding suddenly rolled down from the wooden stairs. A sound that drew a sharp but deeply concerned frown from the woman.
He nodded toward the thundering sound. “What would that be, madam? Prisoners?”
Fear flickered across her fine features, softening them for an instant. “My private apartments are above.”
“Then you have bats, madam.”
And then they came swooping down the stairs, pounding footsteps and giggling voices and then a useless bellow from far above.
“Come back here, young ladies! This minute! Do you hear me?”
But the chaos only increased, until it spilled into the solar along with two girls, then Leod, who hadn’t a chance of catching up with them.
“Taliaaaaaaa!” The girls sped past him to his irritated ward, encircled her with their arms.
“Is he gone?”
“Are you married, yet?”
Married?
“Did you have to kiss Rufus?”
Kiss de Graffe?
“Does this mean you’re going to have a baby now?”
A baby? Holy Christ!
“What the bloody hell is going on here, madam?” His bellow stopped everything. Gained him two pairs of startled eyes and another pair flashing over the heads of the girls.
“My lord, please refrain from cursing in front of the girls.”
Her family? Sisters? Far too old to be of her own body. Golden-haired, clinging fiercely to her, hiding in her skirts now.
“Who’s he, Talia? Who are you, sir?”
“Talia, there’s a man in here.”
“Yes, Fiona.”
“Where’s Rufus?”
Why the devil would the woman be kissing that bastard de Graffe?
And why was she looking at him as
though she had just been caught in some magnificent falsehood.
“Explain, madam.”
She ignored him, bent to the girls. “Rufus is gone.”
“For good, Talia?”
“Please, please say for good.”
Another glance at Alex, before she said, “Rufus won’t be coming back.”
She was bloody well right about that.
“Yayyy!!” The girls clasped hands and jumped around in a circle until the woman took hold of their wrists and held them apart.
“Settle yourselves, please. My lord, this is Brenna.” She raised the hand of the eldest. “And this is Fiona. My sisters. Ladies, this is Lord Alexander de Monteneau.”
They turned to him as a pair, inspecting him from head to boot, still holding fast to Talia’s hands.
“A new one, Talia?” Fiona said, leaning hard against the woman, her teeth catching up her lower lip. “Is he going to stay, do you think?”
“Are you going to marry him, Talia?”
Marry him?
“Brenna, please. Take Fiona and go to bed.”
But the pair didn’t seem to be finished with him. “He’s big! Lots bigger than Rufus!”
“To bed, Fiona! Take them, please, Leod.”
Alex could only stare at the woman and won
der about all this marriage talk. And babies and kissing. What the holy hell had been going on before he’d arrived?
She cast him a short, angry glance, then shuffled the two girls toward Leod and the door. “Upstairs with you both. Now!”
“But Talia, what happened to Rufus?”
She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, then said to Alex, “I’ll have a bed sent here to you, my lord guardian. If you need anything further, my chamber is on the next landing, and Jasper is below.”
She turned to leave, but he took hold of her arm. She stopped and looked up patiently into his eyes.
“Madam, you haven’t answered my question—”
She frowned, glanced at each of the girls, then shook her head at him. “Please, my lord, the morning will have to be soon enough.”
And then she was gone. Without a by-your-leave!
The bewildering woman and the giggling girls and the frowning old man, and all those drooping flowers still tucked into her circlet and her belt.
Bleeding blazes!
Nothing had gone as he had imagined, beyond the bloodless battle and the simple transition of power. He’d expected to find an acquiescent and overwhelmed young woman; not an intelligent, too clever, passionate beauty
who could so easily distract him from his intentions.
A woman wholly entangled in her family; one she loved more dearly than her own life.
The sort of love he’d lost long, long ago.
He wouldn’t dare hang me, Alex. Kings don’t do that.
But, oh, my brother, Henry hadn’t been just any king. What was the life of a ten-year-old hostage when it could satisfy his royal fit of outrage? After all, he’d murdered his own brother to gain the throne of England, and with it Normandy.
It should have been me he hanged, Gil, not you.
Bloody hell, it should have been their cunning bastard of a father. A man who had gladly offered two of his young sons as fodder for his dishonorable deeds.
The sort of love that he’d learned to keep clear of.
“Your bed, my lord. As my lady ordered.” Jasper entered abruptly with three other men, as though the woman had magical communications with her people.
God knew the kind of enchantment she was capable of working on his men.
“There in the corner, Jasper. I’ll be back.” Alex started out the door.
“Would you like bathwater as well, my lord?”
Great God, that sounded good. Leisurely and
steaming. But later. Just now, he had a castle to secure.
“Bathwater, yes.”
With any luck it would be well chilled by the time he returned—cold enough to divert his thoughts from the compelling woman who lived on the landing above.
Are you going to marry him?
A bizarre question. Asked not only by the woman’s sisters, but he was sure that he’d heard the same question from old Leod in the great hall.
He crossed the courtyard, his mind sorting through the work ahead of him, the rest of him wondering why the devil the idea of Rufus laying a finger on the woman, let alone kissing her, should set his nerves on end.
“I think you should have married Lord Alex right away, Talia!” Brenna breezed into the girls’ chamber, twirled around the room in her nightgown.
Fiona joined her whirling dance. “He’s bushels more handsome than Rufus!”
“And taller and grander!”
“And nicer.”
Nicer? A minute in de Monteneau’s presence, and the girls were enchanted. Not quite the response that would keep them safe from his influence. And nothing of the fear they’d had of Rufus and the others.
“Quiet your voices; you’ll wake the girls.” Talia bent over Lissa and tucked the soft woolen blanket around her shoulders, then kissed Gemma on the top of her tousled red head, grateful that they could sleep through most anything.
“You’ll marry him sooner or later, Talia. Just like what happened with the others.”
“I never married a one of them, Brenna, if you recall.”
“But this one’s different, I think.” Brenna dashed to the casement window and pushed open the drapes, then the shutter. “Did you see his dreamy eyes?”
Dark as a moonless midnight and just as dangerous.
“I don’t want to hear another word about marriage or kissing, Brenna. Not about Rufus, and certainly not about my new warder.”
Marriage was off the bargaining table this time around.
And she was in the process of making sure there wouldn’t be a next.
Lord, she was so tired of it all, the war and the unrest, and the loss. Being tossed from one man to another as though she were but a ball of cording.
“Now, to bed with you both.”
It took her a quarter of an hour to settle them into the bed they shared, still another to describe in detail every minute leading up to the marriage ceremony which, thank the Lord, never happened.
“Did Lord Alex take you by the hair when he
found you, the way Rufus did?” Fiona took a sudden death grip on Talia’s hand, worry in her eyes.
De Monteneau’s hands were too strong and rough to be as gentle as they seemed, to be trusted.
“No, Fiona, Lord Alex didn’t hurt me.” And he’d never have the chance to.
“There, I told you, Brenna!”
A rap sounded on the door, followed by a whispered, rasping voice. “My lady! Be you there?”
At Talia’s “come,” Quigley and Leod and Jasper all came scrambling into the room.
“Shhhh…” she murmured, pointing to Brenna and Fiona. “To sleep, young ladies.”
And then she funneled the tangle of muttering men out into the dim vestibule, her heart pounding in dread.
“What is it, Quigley?”
“His Lordship’s men have been pokin’ around the granary in the village.”
“Aye, my lady,” Jasper said, “and we didn’t have time to move all of the booty from the last run.”
Talia took a steadying breath. “What exactly was left in the granary? Do you remember? The barrels of dried fruit…that spice box…”
Leod smacked his forehead. “Hell, that tapestry and the plate chest, too, from the earl of Hampton’s sumptuary wagon. We almost lost Wilson getting that.”
Aye, and if she was ever caught with the great earl’s chest of silver plate…It was theft, pure and simple—a hanging crime.