She helped him to his feet, then said as she looked up at him, “I am.”
“Graelam was wrong. Your aim was that of a warrior. It was your anger than blinded you.” He turned to Mark. “Send some men to the walls. We must be certain that Graelam takes his leave. Bring up the drawbridge.”
He turned again to look at the woman he was here to consider for a wife. If he had not seen her fight with his own eyes, he would have thought himself in the presence of a delicate young maiden, one in need of protection and rescue. Ah, but she didn’t need anyone. The bloodlust was fading from her eyes, and she slowly relaxed her grip on the bloody sword, letting it hang loosely at her side.
She said, cocking her head at him, “Who are you, Jerval de Vernon? How came you to be here?”
So her father hadn’t told her of his visit. He said slowly, “I am here to visit your father, an ambassador from my own, Lord Hugh de Vernon.”
“You are welcome here, as either priest or warrior.” And she punched her fist into his arm, threw back her head and laughed. “We won!”
Jerval looked over to see Mark staring at her, just standing there, staring.
“Yes,” he said, “we won.”
CHAPTER 5
“Crecy, tell me the truth,” Lord Richard said as he absently pulled the ears on his huge wolfhound, Graynard, who was lolling at his booted feet, “you swear that he did not touch her?”
“I swear, my lord. He wanted her in marriage, honorably. He did tell her precisely what he wanted of her, what he wanted her to become, what he would allow her to become. But I think he did that because he took pleasure in her rage and in her spirit even though she was helpless against him. I think that when she threw the dagger into his shoulder, even that amazed and pleased him.”
“Is the man an idiot?”
Crecy had to smile. “I think he is so fascinated by her that if she stabbed him through the heart he would compliment her strength before he died. But he is gone now, my lord.”
“The son of a bitch,” Lord Richard said as he looked across the Great Hall at his daughter in conversation with Jerval de Vernon, a young man who made him feel as though he was looking at himself twenty years before. Not yet twenty-five he was, and he had already gained a reputation as a fearless warrior, a man of honor, a man to trust at your back. And he is nearly as comely as I was at his age, Richard thought. For a moment, he felt jealousy sear through him at what this young man was, at what he would become, and most importantly, that he would have Chandra.
He said to Crecy, the taste of his own voice rancid with jealousy, “I knew the day would come when I had to give her to another man.” He hadn’t said that exactly right, he thought, though Crecy hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at his words. Richard scratched Graynard’s head, cleared his throat, and tried again. “She is turned eighteen now, old enough to have been wed for three years, and I know I must let her go. She is not meant to remain a virgin. I will give her to Jerval de Vernon. Look, Crecy, he hangs on her every word. He is laughing.”
“I am not surprised. He also saw her fight. It did not repel him.”
“No,” Richard said slowly, “I would not have selected him for her had I believed that he would see her as unnatural.”
“You saw him when he was only twenty years old, my lord, scarcely a man grown, newly wearing his spurs. How did you know what manner of man he would become?”
Richard said simply as he rose and shoved Graynard aside with his boot, “His is my mirror image. His father, Lord Hugh, even told me—jealousy leaping out of his mouth as he spoke—that his boy was just like me. I believed him and I did spend three days at Jervel’s side, watched him fight, jest, drink.” Richard paused a moment, and he frowned. “I did not watch him wench. I hope he does not—” He broke off, then added, “And, I know to my soul that Jerval de Vernon will want her until death drags him from her. Now, where is my wife? I would know why the bitch disobeyed my orders.”
Crecy, the only human in this huge holding who was the recipient of Lord Richard’s true feelings about everyone, said, “I believe she is with her ladies. She sews. She plots. She probably keeps John close to her skirts.”
“More than likely she is hiding from me. I should beat her, Crecy.”
“You might well find your food poisoned if you do, my lord, or a dagger slipped between your ribs some dark night.”
“True enough,” Richard said. “But there is one thing I can do. I am sending John to the Earl of Grantham within the month. It is time. I fear that she’s turning him into a mewling little puke.”
“It is well past time to send him away, some would say, my lord.”
“I wanted to toughen him up, but I realize that he will not do much of anything that is admirable until I have him away from his mother.”
“I will write immediately to Lord Grantham, my lord,” Crecy said, and bowed deeply.
Lord Richard frowned toward his daughter. “Yes, see that you do, Crecy. I wonder what they’re talking about.”
There was a wicked glint in her eyes even as Chandra was saying with all the earnestness of a penitent facing a priest, “It is said that I am very nearly amazing with a bow and arrow. Perhaps even beyond amazing. My father taught me, and there is no one better than he is. I am giving you warning, Jerval, if you want a competition, your manhood will suffer grave sorrow. Perhaps you will even weep in your humiliation. Dare you take the risk?”
The little princess, Jerval thought, wanting to kiss that delicious smirk off her mouth. Did his father truly believe that he would not want her if he knew about her warrior skills? That he would be appalled that she would insult his own skills and his manhood in one breath and make him want to laugh at her cockiness in the next? Probably so. Men saw women in one way only, and he knew he always had, but that was different now. All in the course of one single evening, his life had changed irrevocably. Perhaps he would allow himself to judge her, a woman, by some of the standards a man was judged by. That was difficult, when it came right down to it. But to listen to her bravado, to play at all her games, it amused him, pleased him to his soul, and made him want to strip off her clothes and kiss every inch of her. But he’d also seen her fight like a man, seen her with his own eyes yell her triumph, seen her splattered with blood, and yet she still looked at him as only a big playmate, when all he wanted to do after he kissed every patch of her was to lie with her on that grassy knoll just beyond Croyland’s walls.
He was harder than the stone beneath his feet. If there were an enemy behind him, it wouldn’t be a good thing. He shook his head at himself.