Maiden Bride
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Deborah Simmons
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CHAPTER ONE
Nicholas de Laci leaned against the wall of the great hall, brooding over a cup of ale. He was not drunk; he never drank too much. It dulled the wits, and he had honed his to a razor sharpness. As if to prove his skills, he lifted his head at a sound from the arched entranceway, his eyes alert for any sign of danger, but it was only his sister, Aisley, and her infant son.
Hexham would not pass this way again.
The thought slipped into his mind like a dark phantom, despite his iron-hard discipline, and for just a moment Nicholas let himself dwell upon it. His enemy was dead. The neighbor who had waylaid him in the Holy Land, abandoned him there and returned to try to steal his lands had been cut down in this very hall by Aisley’s husband, Piers, who had deprived him of his revenge in one fell swoop.
Nicholas glanced toward two heavy chairs near the front of the hall. That was where they said it happened, by Aisley’s seat, but the tiles had long been scrubbed clean, and Hexham’s blood was gone. Forever. Nicholas would never see it spilled, never know the satisfaction of vengeance in the depths of his hungry soul.
He had tried other killing in the year since, hiring himself out as a soldier, but the deaths of strangers meant as little to him as the coins he received in payment. Nicholas already had great wealth and a prosperous demesne to call his own. Built by his father, Belvry was a modern castle and the envy of his peers, and yet it gave him no pleasure, either. And so he had returned here, to the scene of his bitter disappointment, vainly searching for a respite from the gnawing emptiness that had become his life.
Nicholas’s fingers tightened around the cup that held his ale. In truth, he found contentment nowhere, for nothing held meaning for him anymore. His sister was so much changed over the five years he had been in the Holy Land that he knew her not, and he resented her husband for taking what he had most wanted: Hexham’s life.
“Nicholas! I did not see you there against the wall. What are you about this afternoon?” Aisley asked, with that half welcoming, half wary smile that he had grown accustomed to seeing directed toward him. His lovely fair-haired sister was not sure what to make of him, but that hardly surprised him. Nicholas was no longer sure what to make of himself.
“Nothing,” he answered, brushing her query aside with a flick of his eyes. He nodded toward a long bench, and Aisley sat down, baby in her arms. “Look, Sybil, ‘tis your uncle Nicholas,” she cooed. “Uncle. Uncle Nicholas,” she babbled, crooning in a way Nicholas would never have thought possible.
The Aisley he had known had been an aloof childwoman, a skilled chatelaine, but certainly not the sort to lavish affection upon anyone. Now, instead of handing the infant over to a nurse, she dragged it around with her most of the time, carrying on over it in a way he found hard to fathom.
A sound from the entranceway drew his swift attention, and Nicholas saw Piers stride into the hall. A huge man, Aisley’s husband was capable of intimidating others, but rarely did so. Instead, he seemed to take infinite delight in the world around him, from which he had been briefly cut off during a bout with blindness.
“Piers!” Aisley’s voice rose in excited pleasure. “Look, Sybil, ‘tis your father!” she said, waving the baby’s tiny fist toward the great knight. Perhaps something about the birthing process had damaged her wits, Nicholas wondered, not for the first time during his visit. “Here, go to your uncle while I greet your father,” Aisley cooed.
To his utter horror, Nicholas found the infant thrust into his arms. It was small and fat and bald, and it smelled, with an odd sort of milky, soapy odor. He had known it to reek more foully. The thought made him rise to his feet and glance down suspiciously. If it soiled his tunic, he might have to strangle it. Cup in one fist, babe in the crook of his arm, he glanced helplessly toward his sister, but she was already beyond his reach.
With a happy smile, Aisley threw herself at her husband’s tall form, while Nicholas watched in amazement. He would never get used to that behavior. The two of them kissed passionately, just as though they were in their own chamber and not standing amid the rushes of the open hall. Nicholas found the display positively sickening.
He would have thought that Piers only indulged his daft wife at such moments, but for the fact that the knight sought her out with the same enthusiasm. Perhaps Piers’s sightlessness had left him sadly addled, too.
“Waaah!” The babe in Nicholas’s arms seemed suddenly to realize where she was and started screaming shrilly in protest. Nicholas’s gut churned in response to the hideous noise, and he wondered if he ought to depart Dunmurrow soon. He felt apart and alien among this strangely happy threesome who made his own life seem even more barren and aimless.
“Here!” he said, standing abruptly and holding out the child to its mother.
“There, there, Sybil, ‘tis time for your nap, perhaps?” Aisley whispered, and Nicholas stared, astounded at the way she talked to the thing, just as if it might understand her. His sister was beyond him now, as was everyone, everything, everyplace…His stomach twisted, reminding him that he ought to eat something, but food held no interest. Instead, he focused on the giant blond man who would call him brother.
“Nicholas!” Piers greeted him with the warmth that continued to annoy him. How dare the Red Knight eye him with that knowing look, as if seeing right through Nicholas’s skin to his hollow insides? How dare he tender advice, when his keep was shabby compared to Belvry?
Dunmurrow was old, and its residents were far from wealthy, and yet they seemed to possess some treasure that Nicholas lacked, which only frustrated him further. The ache in his belly clawed at his vitals until he nearly winced, but he did not waver under Piers’s steady regard.
“I came to find you, brother,” the older knight said. “A messenger from the king has arrived, seeking you.” Nicholas glanced quickly behind his sister’s husband, to where a man sporting Edward’s device stood not far away. How had Nicholas missed him? His attention had been diverted by babes and amorous displays, that was how! Deflecting his anger inward, Nicholas calmly placed his cup upon the great table and stepped forward to greet the stranger.
Finally. It had been a year since Hexham had made war upon neighboring Belvry, and all this time the fate of the bastard’s lands had remained unresolved. Piers claimed that Edward would decide in Nicholas’s favor and award the property to Belvry’s heir in reparation, but Nicholas had a deep-seated mistrust of kings and princes, gained in a folly called a holy war. It would not surprise him if Edward confiscated Hexham’s demesne for the crown.
Nor did it matter to him. Hexham had no issue, so either way, the land would leave the man’s line forever. That was small satisfaction for Nicholas, but he took it. It was all the revenge left to him.
“You are Nicholas de Laci, baron of Belvry?” the king’s man asked.
“I am,” Nicholas said.
“I have a message for you from your sovereign.”
Nodding, Nicholas gestured for the man to take a seat on the long bench beside the great table. As the messenger found a place, Nicholas caught a glimpse of Aisley’s anxious face and realized that his sister and her husband wanted to hear the news, too. Their interest startled him. Was it curiosity? He supposed they had little enough excitement in their dreary keep.
“Shall I fetch some refreshment for you?” Aisley asked hopefully, and Nicholas was again amazed by the transparency of her thoughts. The Aisley he had known would never have shown emotion—or felt it, either. ‘Twas the birthing, no doubt, he thought again. It had changed her, and not for the better.
“That would be most welcome, my lady,” the man said. “But my message is brief. Care you to hear it first?” he asked Nicholas. His gaze traveled from Nicholas to the lord and lady of Dunmurrow, and Nicholas felt a smart of annoyance at those who sought to know his business. He had kept his own counsel for years, and had learned to rely solely upon himself, because it was necessary. It was the only way to survive.
To hasten his audience’s departure, Nicholas gave Piers an inquiring look, but he received a flash of warning from the Red Knight’s blue eyes in response. Piers coddled his wife, and he seemed to feel that Nicholas owed Aisley something for her wardship of Belvry. Nicholas did not care for the debt, nor for the reminder of it, and he stiffened slightly. He had the feeling that someday, for all Piers’s attempt at friendship, the two of them would come to blows.
This time, however, Nicholas gave way. What was the harm in them hearing, after all? It was a matter of little enough importance to him. “This is my sister, and you have met her husband, Baron Montmorency,” Nicholas said with cool disdain. “You may speak freely before them.”
The man glanced again toward Aisley, as if seeking the resemblance between the delicate lady with the silver-blond hair and Nicholas’s tall, dark form, but he said nothing. Presumably he was too eager for his supper to care.
“I have come about the dispensation of the lands adjacent to Belvry, property of Baron Hexham, now deceased,” the man said, and both Piers and Aisley nodded, worry apparent in their eyes. Did they hide nothing from the world? Nicholas thought with contempt. And what did it matter to them what happened to Hexham’s land? Had they not had the pleasure of watching the villain die?
Nicholas felt the familiar clenching of his stomach at his lost vengeance, and pushed the thought aside, concentrating on the messenger instead. He was reading from a royal decree, couched in fancy wording, about Edward’s desire to bind people to their lord with strong ties and to cement loyalties through marriage whenever possible. Yes, yes, Nicholas thought, impatiently. Getonwithit!
“As Baron Hexham has been found to have a living female relation, a niece, it is our wish that you take this woman, Gillian Hexham, to wife, thereby joining the two properties and taking lordship over all.”
Although the man continued reading, Nicholas heard him not, his interest focused solely on one piece of information: Hexham had a living relative. Nicholas’s blood, long dormant, surged through him at the knowledge, and the hatred he had nursed so bitterly sprang to life once more, filling the emptiness in his soul with renewed purpose.
“A niece? Hexham has a niece?” Aisley’s voice, oddly strained, pierced the haze of blood lust that gripped him. “I knew of no niece.”
“Apparently she is the daughter of his younger brother, long dead,” the messenger said. His words fell into a silence so heavy with tension that the very air seemed to vibrate with it, and he shifted uncomfortably, glancing anxiously at the stunned faces that surrounded him.
Nicholas paid him no heed, for he was consumed once more with thoughts of the revenge he had been forced to abandon. It was Aisley who broke the quiet, a soft sound of agitation escaping from her slender throat. “Nicholas…” she whispered. “Oh, Nicholas, please…”
He glanced over at her in surprise. She was still standing, her daughter in her arms and her husband beside her, and she wore a stricken expression at odds with her cool beauty. “I know what you are thinking, but do not even consider it,” she begged.
“You know what I am thinking?” Nicholas echoed, his tone heavy with contempt for her audacity, his eyes daring her to go on. But he had forgotten how strong she was, and she reminded him by meeting his cold glare and holding it until he turned away, revolted by her entreaty. Even that outright dismissal did not stop her, however.
“This poor woman is not to blame for her blood,” she said. “Indeed, she has probably already been punished for it, by Hexham himself. Think of how he would destroy all those he touched. Think of his own wife, locked away in her tower!”
His sister was babbling now, and even through the primitive heat raging through him, Nicholas noticed it. So unlike Aisley, he thought dispassionately, and vowed that he would never display himself so openly.
“Why, this innocent girl has probably been locked away, too, else why would I never have met her?” she asked. Growing desperate now, she whirled toward the king’s man, and the baby in her arms began fussing. “She cannot have stayed with him, for we would have heard something of her. Where has she been all this time?”
“She has lived in a convent for many years—since her youth, I believe,” the messenger answered.
“A convent?” Aisley gasped. “By all the saints, she is a nun?”
* * *
Aisley bit her lip as she paced back and forth across the great chamber, her hands knotted into tight fists at her sides. “You saw him! You saw the look on his face! He will crucify her!” she cried.
“Nonsense,” Piers said calmly. “Nicholas is a hard man, but not cruel.”
“You think you know him?” Aisley asked, turning on her husband. “Well, I do not. Even in our youth, he was distant, unfeeling, and when he returned from the Holy Land, so cold and hard, and his eyes so…so…” Aisley shuddered, unable to go on.
“War changes a man, Aisley,” Piers said gently, but she would take no comfort. Her thoughts were on her brother, who had made hatred his life’s blood, vengeance his only joy, and on the poor innocent who would be forced to suffer for it.
“What could Edward be thinking? He knows how Nicholas was obsessed with Hexham, chasing him down like a dog and driving him to madness.”
“I think the king knows what he is doing,” Piers said with a pensive air. “You must admit that this is the first time Nicholas has shown an interest in anything since Hexham’s death.”
“Yes, Nicholas finally responded to something, but ‘twas horrible to see it.” Aisley shuddered at the recollection of how those gray eyes, so like her own, had sprung to life with the fire of his malice.
“Edward is no fool,” Piers said. “He would not put the girl in danger, and I seem to recall one marriage he arranged to the good.”
Aisley stopped pacing to glance at her beloved husband, her thoughts diverted momentarily by their own hard-won happiness. “But that was different,” she protested. “Edward told me to choose one of his knights, and I picked you. ‘Twas my own good judgment that founded our marriage.”
“I do not think you felt that way from the first,” Piers said in that familiar dry tone of his, and Aisley could not help but smile.
“Oh, Piers,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “But I was strong and world-wise, while that child is innocent—a nun, by all the saints! My brother would abuse a holy woman!”
“Nicholas is not going to abuse her, and she cannot have taken her vows yet, or she would not be made to wed,” Piers protested.
“But she has grown up in a convent, a gentle, delicate thing, most likely, sheltered from the hard ways of the outside, and certainly unused to men and their brutality. Oh, Piers, what shall become of her in Nicholas’s hands?”
“Have faith, Aisley,” Piers answered.
“Yes, faith,” Aisley echoed. “I shall pray for her, as she will need it, and may God have mercy on the poor girl.”
* * *
Nicholas rode away from Dunmurrow without a backward glance. Nothing held him there, but something, finally, waited for him ahead. Though he feared no one, Nicholas kept enough men with him at all times to provide good escort, so he was well equipped for a new journey. Pausing only long enough to learn the location of the convent where he would find her, Nicholas had set out to fetch his bride.
He did not care what she looked like. Whether she was old or young, crone or beauty, she was of Hexham’s blood, and his hatred drove him on toward this new object of revenge. In fact, Nicholas was so eager to reach his destination that he hurried his men needlessly, the patience and discipline that had ruled his life for years loosening its tight hold upon him.
“Where go we?” A deep voice, low and melodious, sounded beside him, and Nicholas flicked a glance to the man who spoke. He wore a long, flowing robe, as did several others in Nicholas’s company who disdained the traditional knight’s mail coat.
“Darius.” Deep in thought, Nicholas had not noted his companion’s approach. Although annoyed at his own inattention, he was not surprised to be caught off guard, for Darius had the ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere. Some of the others called him Shadow Man and feared his stealth, but Nicholas was not so foolish. That skill had saved their lives more than once as they roamed strange cities throughout the East.
Although he was called a Syrian, Nicholas had no idea where Darius came from originally. The population of Syria was diverse, with Greeks, Armenians, Maronites, Jacobites, Nestorians, Copts, Italians, Jews, Muslims and Franks coexisting, along with a few Germans and Scandinavians.
Darius’s name was Egyptian, and Nicholas could well picture the tall, dark man as a direct descendant of some powerful pharaoh. He had a noble look about him, and a confidence not born of the gutter. His skin was a deep gold, but light enough to suggest a mixed parentage, and Nicholas often wondered if Darius was some sultan’s cast-off son. Or perhaps he was simply the product of a knight who had raped a local woman in a crusading frenzy.
Nicholas had never asked, and Darius had never offered. Since their precipitous meeting several years ago, they had kept to an unwritten rule between them: no questions about the past. When the time came for Nicholas to return to Britain, Darius had come along, and Nicholas had shared what needed to be known with the man who came closest to being a friend to him. But that was as far as it went. They held each other to no oaths, shared no future beyond the day, and passed no judgment upon each other.
“We go to a convent,” Nicholas replied. “A holy place for women,” he added when Darius sent him a questioning look.
The Syrian still appeared puzzled as he struggled with such a foreign concept. “The women live alone together?” he asked.
“Yes, they have pledged themselves to God.”
“What do we there? I am surprised they allow men in such places.”
“We go to find a kinswoman of my enemy. Hexham’s line lives on, Darius, and I would have my vengeance upon it, at last.”
“This kinswoman is a holy one?” Darius asked.
“Nay. She but lives there with those who are.”
Nicholas saw Darius relax slightly. Although, as far as Nicholas knew, the Syrian did not practice any religion, he had a high regard for the places he deemed holy, both Christian and Muslim. “Ah,” he said softly. “And what shall you do with her?”
Nicholas did not answer immediately, for he was still considering his plans. The future, which had only a few hours ago seemed so bleak and senseless, now held endless possibilities. Nicholas tried to tamp down the clamor in his blood to a dull roar, but the patience that had been his mainstay seemed to elude him now. Thwarted by Hexham’s death, and the long, hollow months that had followed, he craved immediate recompense. Now. At last.
“I would make her suffer as Hexham did me,” Nicholas finally replied.
“You mean to leave her to bleed to death in the desert sun?” Darius asked.
Nicholas ignored the Syrian’s sarcasm, for he did not wish to be reminded of the torment of those burning days and freezing nights, or of the slow year of recovery that had followed.
“Nay,” he said. “But I would find out that which she cherishes most, and I would take it from her, just as Hexham tried to do to me and mine. I would discover what she most fears and reviles, and I would present it to her. I would torment her and take pleasure in it. I will have my revenge.”
In the ensuing silence, Nicholas felt Darius’s hard stare upon him. Although the Syrian’s dark eyes held no censure, he knew that Darius had a deep-rooted respect for women. More than likely he did not approve of Nicholas’s plans, but he would not interfere.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then Darius dropped his gaze. “You go to kill her, then?” he asked, his exotic features, swathed in cloth, revealing little of his mood.
“No,” Nicholas answered, as he let a slight smile play upon his lips. “I go to marry her.”
