Page 48 of My Warrior
She swallowed reflexively as he turned his well-muscled steed, and the two thundered across the field as one beast. How like his horse he was—lean and firm and powerful. She remembered how dangerous those arms felt around her. Her heart quickened at the vivid memory.
As she watched, he swung a blunted mace forward with such force that his Gavin opponent was catapulted backwards from his mount, landing with a deadly thud on the sod. She gasped, digging her fingers into the cold stone of the sill. Had the Wolf killed one of her men? The lad lay silent, still as a winter pond.
Before his steed had even skidded to a halt, Holden leaped from its back. He dropped the mace, tore the helm from his head, and rushed to the boy, falling to his knees in the dust. Cambria watched as he gingerly lifted the lad’s shoulders and removed his helm. The boy’s slack face was as pale as cream. She clasped her hand over her mouth in horror.
The Gavin men gathered round, concern etching their brows. Holden ignored them, riveted instead on the lad in his arms. He patted the boy’s cheeks and said something to him she couldn’t hear. As he lay limp across Holden’s knees, the ominous hush stretched like a drawn bow. Cambria held her breath.
Then the boy gasped, filling his lungs with a loud rasp that reached across the silence all the way up to Cambria’s window. The men chuckled in sheepish relief, and Holden tousled the lad’s hair as if he were a favorite nephew. Half sick with worry and relief and disgust at men’s deadly play, Cambria reeled from the window, collapsing back against the cool rock wall.
When she recovered enough to look again, Holden was sparring on foot with her knights, guiding their sword thrusts, shouting encouragement, blocking their advances with a crossed blade. He’d lined them up in two rows, an arm’s width apart, and at Holden’s command, they advanced in unison. She narrowed her eyes. Never had her force appeared so well ordered, so formidable.
Now the Wolf tossed aside his sword and threw down his helm, facing them bare-headed and bare-handed but for a shield. She straightened, a queer prickling at the back of her neck. What arrogant game was this?
Six of them attacked at once, and her eyes widened. Was the man mad? Mere weeks ago, they would have called him enemy. Now he dodged their assault single-handedly with nothing but a chunk of leather-covered wood, leaving his bare throat as a target for their blades.
She anxiously fingered her own throat. She’d been close enough to the Wolf to see the pulse of his lifeblood. Invincible warrior he might be, but he was as mortal as any man. Why would he leave himself so vulnerable?
The answer came reluctantly to her mind.
He was a man of honor. Only true honor would make a man so foolish. He believed in chivalry, and he expected it from the men he battled, even the Scots.
She picked at a crack in the wall. If honor came so naturally to him, how could he have been a part of her father’s betrayal and murder?
The answer was clear. He hadnotbeen a part of it.
The Wolf would not scheme to take a castle by wiles—he would storm it by force. The Wolf would not intrigue to gain an alliance—he would command it. And above all, as she’d begun to sense, the Wolf would never have…
She closed her heart against the truth, wanting to blame him, needing to hold onto her hatred like a knight needed his sword, but already she felt it slipping inexorably from her grasp, bit by thwarting bit.
Holden hadn’t killed her father.
Cambria shut her eyes. In some corner of her mind, a burden lifted, and she no longer felt so torn between vengeance and…and that other emotion that tugged at her heart like a puppy on a leash, the one she couldn’t quite define, the one that made her throat go dry when he stood too close, that left her scarcely able to breathe when his lips touched hers and quickened her pulse as she remembered the feel of his strong hands. She had no name for it, this feeling that, cleared of polluting revenge, seemed as new and awkward as a colt on its first legs.
But it was there, buried deep within her soul, a queer stirring of pride perhaps, as she looked down again at her brave husband, who had somehow managed to knock every one of her knights to the ground like skittles on a bowling green.
So caught up was she in her reverie that she didn’t hear Katie enter the solar.
“Ah, there ye are,” the maid trilled.
Cambria started back guiltily from the arrow loop, all too aware of her face’s glow.
“Why, lass,” Katie began, “whatever..?” The maidservant made her way over to the opening and peered below, a knowing smile curving her lips. “Ah, he’s a fine fighter, your lord, is he not?”
Cambria shrugged.
“And I’ll wager ye might be havin’ second thoughts about that bargain ye made.”
Flustered, Cambria turned on her, her scarlet skirts twirling about her like storm-tossed roses. “How dare you speak of such things!”
Katie appeared unruffled by her tone. “I nursed ye when ye were but a bairn, lass. Ye may be the wife of a lord now, but I remember when ye soiled yer linens with the rest o’ them. The day I may not speak my mind to ye is the day I’ll leave.”
Cambria chewed at her lip, duly reprimanded.
“Ah, lass, why do ye torture yerself so? He’s a good man and not unpleasant to look upon. I’ve heard it bandied about that the de Ware brothers are more than capable between the sh-“
“He’s an Englishman!” Cambria reminded both Katie and herself. But the words felt strangely flat and meaningless on her tongue. “I won’t suffer him to touch me.” She closed her eyes against the clear memory of their kiss only this morning.
“Malcolm is most certain your lord had no part in the deception that killed your father,” Katie confided, pulling a rag from the pocket in her surcoat. “I’d wager ye’d know the truth as well, if ye’d listen to yer heart. Another of his men, perhaps, a betrayer, but not the lord himself. He’s a man of honor. He’d never resort to such treachery. Ye’ve seen the loyalty he inspires, even in our own folk.”
