A Kingdom of Dreams (Westmoreland Saga 1)

" 'Tis meant to be," said Lord Melbrook, obviously not sharing his wife's distaste for it. "But then, I have assumed exactly the same position before King Henry, so you see, 'tis not quite the debasing gesture you ladies obviously find it. However," he amended after a moment's additional thought, "perhaps it feels different where you're a noble bending your knee to a king."

As soon as the last vassal had knelt and sworn his fealty, Jenny quietly excused herself and slipped upstairs. Agnes had just finished helping her into a bedgown of soft white lawn embroidered with pink silk roses when Royce knocked on the door to her chamber and entered. "I'll just go down to the Lady Elinor and see if she needs me," Agnes said to Jenny, then she bobbed a quick curtsy to Royce.

Realizing the linen gown was nearly transparent, Jenny snatched up a silver velvet dressing gown and hastily put it on. Instead of mocking the modest gesture—or teasing her about it—as he might have done when they'd been happy together, Jenny noticed that his handsome face remained perfectly expressionless.

"I wanted to talk to you about a few things," he began quietly, when she had belted the robe. "First of all, about the badges you handed out to the villagers—"

"If you're angry about that, I don't blame you," Jenny said honestly. "I should have consulted with you or Sir Albert first. Especially because I handed them out in your name. You weren't available at the time, and I—I don't like Sir Albert."

"I'm far from angry, Jennifer," he said politely. "And after the tournament I'll replace Prisham. Actually, I came in here to thank you for noticing the problem and for solving it so cleverly. Most of all, I wanted to thank you for not letting your hatred for me show to the serfs."

Jenny's stomach lurched sickly at the word hatred, as he continued, "You've done the opposite, in fact." He glanced toward the door by which Agnes had just departed and added ironically, "No one crosses themselves any more when they walk near me. Not even your maid."

Jenny, who had no idea he'd ever noticed that before, nodded, unable to think of what to say.

He hesitated and then said with a sardonic twist to his lips. "Your father, your brother, and three other Merricks have each challenged me to a joust tomorrow."

The sensual awareness of him that had been plaguing Jenny ever since Katherine had remarked on Royce's alleged tenderness toward her was demolished by his next words:

"I've accepted."

"Naturally," she said with unhidden bitterness.

"I had no choice," he said tautly. "I am under a specific command from my king not to decline if challenged by your family."

"You're going to have a very busy day," she remarked, giving him a freezing look. It was common knowledge that Scotland and France had each picked their two premier knights, and that Royce was to confront them as well tomorrow. "How many matches have you agreed to?"

"Eleven," he said flatly, "in addition to the tournament."

"Eleven," Jenny repeated, her scathing voice filled with frustration and the endless pain of his betrayal. "Three is the customary number. I take it you require four times the amount of violence as other men to make you feel brave and strong?"

His face whitened at that. "I have accepted only those matches which I was specifically commanded to accept. I've declined more than two hundred others."

A dozen sarcastic retorts sprang to her lips, but Jenny had no heart to speak them. She felt like she was dying inside as she looked at him. Royce turned to leave, but the sight of William's dagger lying upon the chest against the wall suddenly made her feel almost desperate to defend her dead brother's actions. As her husband reached for the door handle, she said, "I have thought it through, and I think William must have reached for his dagger not because he meant to use it, but because he was cautious of his safety while alone with you in the hall. Or perhaps he feared for my safety. 'Twas obvious you were enraged with me at the time. But he would never have tried to attack you—never from the back."

It was not an indictment, simply a statement of conclusion, and although Royce didn't turn to face her, she saw his shoulders stiffen as if bracing against pain while he spoke. "I reached the same conclusion the night it happened," Royce said tightly, almost relieved to have it out in the open. "From the corner of my eye, I saw a dagger being drawn at my back, and I reacted instinctively. It was a reflex. I'm sorry, Jennifer."

The woman he had married would not accept his word, nor his love, but, oddly, she accepted his apology. "Thank you," she said achingly, "for not trying to convince me or yourself that he was an assassin. 'Twill make it much easier for us—for you and I to…"

Jenny's voice trailed off as she tried to think what lay ahead for them, but all she could think of was what they had once shared—and lost. "For you and I to—treat each other courteously," she finished lamely.

Royce drew an unsteady breath and turned his head to her. "And that's all you want from me anymore?" he asked, his voice rough with emotion. "Courtesy?"

Jenny nodded because she could not speak. And because she could almost believe the look in his eyes was pain—a pain that surpassed even her own. "That's all I want," she finally managed to say.

A muscle at the base of his throat worked as if he were trying to speak, but he only nodded curtly. And then he left.

The moment the door closed behind him, Jenny clutched at the bedpost, tears streaming from her eyes in hot rivers. Her shoulders shook with violent, wrenching sobs she could no longer control; they tore from her chest and she wrapped her arms around the post, but her knees would no longer support her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Canopied galleries with chairs placed on ascending levels lined all four sides of the enormous tournament field and were already crowded with gorgeously garbed ladies and gentlemen by the time Jenny, Brenna, Aunt Elinor, and Arik arrived. Flags flew from the tops of each gallery, displaying the coats of arms of all the occupants within it, and as Jenny looked about, searching for her own banner, she immediately confirmed that Katherine had been correct: the galleries of her countrymen were not integrated with the others but were set facing the English —locked in opposition even now.

"There, my dear—there is your coat of arms," Aunt Elinor said, pointing to the gallery across the field. "Flying right there beside your father's."

Arik spoke, startling the three women into near panic with the sound of his booming voice, "You sit there—" he ordered, pointing to the gallery flying the Claymore coat of arms above it.

Jenny, who knew this was the giant's order, not Royce's—which she wouldn't have obeyed anyway—shook her head. "I will sit beneath my own coat of arms, Arik. Wars with you have already emptied our gallery of many who should have been there. Claymore's gallery is packed."

But it wasn't. Not quite. There was a large, thronelike chair in the center of it that was conspicuously empty. It had been meant for Jenny, she knew. Her stomach twisted as she rode past it, and the minute she did, all six hundred guests at Claymore and every serf and villager within sight of the field seemed to turn and watch her, first with shock, then disappointment, and, from many, contempt.

Clan Merrick's gallery, flying the falcon and crescent, was between Clan MacPherson's and Clan Duggan's. To add to Jenny's mounting misery, the moment the clans across the field saw that she was riding to their side, an ear-rending cheer went up that continued growing in volume the closer she came. Jenny stared blindly ahead and made herself think only of William.

She took her seat in the front row, between Aunt Elinor and Brenna, and as soon as she was settled, her kinsmen, including Becky's father, began patting her shoulder and calling proud greetings to her. People she knew—and many she didn't—from the galleries around her lined up in front of her to either renew their acquaintance or ask for an introduction. Once she had longed only to be accepted by her people; today, she was being worshiped and petted like an adored national heroine by more than a thousand Scots.

And all she'd had to do in order to accomplish it was to publicly hu

miliate and betray her husband.

The realization made her stomach cramp and her hands perspire. She'd been here less than ten minutes and already Jenny didn't think she would be able to endure more than a few minutes of it without becoming physically ill.

And that was before the people who had crowded around her finally moved away, and she found herself the cynosure of nearly every eye across the field on the English side. Everywhere she looked, the English were either looking at her, pointing at her, or drawing someone else's attention to her.

"Just look," Aunt Elinor said delightedly, nodding at the infuriated, glaring English, "at the wonderful headpieces we are all wearing! It was just as I expected —all of us were quite carried away with the spirit of the day and have worn the sort of thing that was in style in our youth."

Jenny forced herself to lift her head, her gaze running blindly over the sea of colored canopies, waving flags, and floating veils across the field from her. There were steeple-shaped caps with veils trailing all the way to the ground; caps that stood out on both sides like giant wings, caps shaped like hearts with veils, like cornucopias with draperies, and even caps that looked as if two square pieces of veiling had been shaken out and hung over long sticks that were standing in the ladies' hair. Jenny saw them without seeing them, just as she was vaguely aware that Elinor was saying, "and while you are looking about, my dear, keep your head high, for you have made your choice—though a wrong one I think—and now you must try to carry it off."

Jenny's head jerked toward her. "What are you saying, Aunt Elinor?"

"What I would have said before if you'd asked me: your place is with your husband. However, my place is with you. And so here I am. And here is dear Brenna on your other side, who I strongly suspect is concocting some wild scheme to stay behind and remain with your husband's brother."

Brenna's head lurched around and she too stared at Aunt Elinor, but Jenny was too immersed in her own guilt and uncertainty to register much alarm over Brenna yet. "You don't understand about William, Aunt Elinor. I loved him."

"He loved you, too." Brenna said feelingly, and Jenny felt slightly better until Brenna added, "Unlike Father, he loved you more than he despised our 'enemy.' "

Jenny closed her eyes. "Please," she whispered to them both. "Do not do this to me. I—I know what is right…"

She was spared the need to say more, however, by the sudden blast of clarions as the trumpeters rode onto the field, followed by the heralds, who waited until there was a semblance of quiet and then began proclaiming the rules:

The tournament was to be preceded by three jousting matches, the herald cried out, the three matches to be between the six knights judged to be the finest in the land. Jenny held her breath, then slowly expelled it: the first two combatants were a French knight and a Scotsman; the second match was Royce's against a Frenchman named DuMont; and the third was Royce's against Ian MacPherson—the son of Jenny's former "betrothed."

The crowd went wild; instead of having to wait all day and perhaps two to see the Wolf, they were going to see him twice in the first hour.

The rules at first seemed perfectly ordinary: the first knight to accumulate three points won the match; one point was given a knight each time he struck his opponent hard enough to splinter his spear. Jenny assumed it would take at least five passes for any knight to accumulate three points, considering that it was no mean feat to successfully level a lance, take aim atop a galloping horse, and strike an opponent at precisely the right spot to shiver a lance—particularly since the smooth surface of the armor was designed to make the lance skid off. Three points, and the match, were automatically awarded to a knight if he actually unhorsed his opponent.

The next two announcements made the crowd roar with approval and Jenny cringe: the jousts were to be fought in the German style, not French—which meant the massive regular lances would be used, rather than poplar ones—and the deadly spear heads would not be blunted with protective coronals.

The bellows of enthusiasm from the crowd were so loud there was a long delay before the herald could finish by announcing that the tournament would follow the trio of jousts and that the remaining jousts would take place throughout the next two days. However, he added, due to the illustriousness of the knights attending, the jousts that followed the tournment would be organized according to the importance of the knight if such could be determined.

Again the crowd roared with enthusiasm. Instead of having to watch obscure knights joust with even lesser ones, they'd have their greatest pleasure served first.

Outside the ring, the constables had finished checking saddle fastenings to make certain no knight intended to use leather straps, rather than good horsemanship and brute strength, to stay on his mount. Satisfied, the chief constable gave the signal, the heralds trotted off the field, and then kettle drums, pipes, and trumpets began to blast, announcing the ceremonial parade onto the field by all the knights.

Even Jenny was not proof against the dazzling spectacle that followed: six across, the knights paraded onto the tourney field wearing full armor, mounted on prancing warhorses decked out in dazzling silver bridles and bells, colorful headdresses, and trappings of brilliant silks and velvets, that displayed the coat of arms of the knight. Polished armor glinted in the sun so brightly that Jenny found herself squinting as before her eyes paraded tabards and shields emblazoned with coats of arms showing every imaginable animal from noble beasts like lions, tigers, falcons, tiercels, and bears to whimsical dragons and unicorns; others bore designs of stripes and squares, half moons and stars; still others bore flowers.

The blindingly bright hues of color combined with the ceaseless roar of the crowd so delighted Aunt Elinor that she clapped her hands for an English knight who rode by with a particularly stunning coat of arms bearing three lions rampant, two roses, a falcon, and a green crescent.

At any other time, Jenny would have thought this the most exciting spectacle she'd ever beheld. Her father and stepbrother rode past along with what she judged to be about four hundred knights. Her husband, however, did not appear, and the first pair of jousters ended up riding onto the field to the disappointed roar of "Wolf! Wolf!"

Before confronting each other, each of the two knights trotted over to the gallery where his wife or his lady love was seated. Tipping down their lances, they awaited the ceremonial bestowal of a favor—her scarf, ribbon, veil, or even a sleeve, which she proudly tied on the end of the lance. That accomplished, they rode over to opposite ends of the field, adjusted their helmets, checked visors, tested weights of lances, and finally awaited the blast from the trumpet. At the first note, they dug spurs into their mounts and sent them hurtling forward. The Frenchman's spear struck his opponent's shield slightly off center, the Scotsman swayed in his saddle and recovered. It took five more passes before the Frenchman finally took a blow that sent him crashing to the ground amidst a pile of shining steel legs and arms and the accompaniment of deafening cheers.

Jenny scarcely noticed the outcome, even though the fallen knight was practically at her feet. Staring at her clutched hands in her lap, she waited, listening for the call of the trumpets again.

When it came, the crowd went wild, and despite willing herself not to look, she lifted her head. Prancing onto the field, his horse draped in gorgeous red trappings, was the Frenchman she had particularly noticed during the parade, partially because he was physically huge and also because the couteres that protected his elbows were enormous, pleated pieces of plate that fanned out into points that reminded Jenny of bat wings. Now she also noticed that although he wore a handsome baronial necklace at his throat, there was nothing "whimsical" or beautiful about the gruesome figure of a striking serpent emblazoned on his breastplate. He turned his horse toward one of the galleries for the usual bestowal of a favor, and as he did so, all the noise of the crowd began to die away.

A tremor of dread made Jenny quickly divert her gaze, but even without looking, Jenny knew when Royce finally

rode onto the field—because the crowd suddenly became eerily still. So still that the periodic blasts of the trumpeters tolled out into the awed silence like a death knell. Unable to help herself, she lifted her head and turned; what she saw made her heart stop: in contrast to the gaiety and color and flamboyance everywhere, her husband was garbed entirely in black. His black horse was draped in black, its headpiece was black, and on Royce's shield he did not display his coat of arms. Instead there was a head of a snarling black wolf.

Even to Jenny, who knew him, he looked terrifying as he started across the field. She saw him look toward his own gallery, and she sensed his momentary mistake when he saw a woman seated in the chair at the front of the gallery that had been meant for Jenny. But instead of riding toward it, or toward any of at least a thousand women around the field who were frantically waving their veils and ribbons at him, Royce swung Zeus in the opposite direction.

Jennifer's heart slammed into her ribs with a sickening thud when she realized he was coming straight toward her. The crowd saw it, too, and grew silent again, watching. While everyone in the Merrick gallery began to shout curses at him, Royce rode Zeus clear up to within lance's reach of Jenny and halted him. But instead of tipping his lance forward for the favor he knew she would not give him, he did something more shattering to her, something she had never seen done before: He sat there, Zeus shifting about restlessly beneath him, and he looked at her, then he deftly but slowly twisted his lance, setting the end on the ground.