Twenty-one
 

Mary had made a mistake, and she knew it. The stiff, awkward conversation a week after her husband had taken her against the wall in an explosion of lust—and nothing else—had been a precursor of what was to come.

In the nearly forty days since she’d sent him from her bed, there had been no more ribbons, flowers, or buns, no more rides, and no more long conversations. She arranged her own bath, she couldn’t think of an excuse for riding, and their conversations were brief and impersonal.

It was as if she were married to Atholl all over again. The only difference was that Kenneth collapsed beside her at night when he finally returned from whatever it was that kept him away from the castle so late, reeking of whisky and damp from a dunking in the river.

Her heart stabbed. At least he had the decency to wash the scent of his liaisons from him before coming to her bed. But she couldn’t be grateful for his discretion, when the very idea of him with another woman made the misery she’d felt with Atholl seem like a pittance in comparison.

Despite her best efforts to approach this marriage with open eyes and a hardened heart, she’d failed. Miserably. She’d fallen in love with her husband. Not the starry-eyed young girl’s infatuation based on a myth, but the mature love of a woman who appreciated the flawed man as much as she admired the hero.

She loved the young boy who’d always had to fight to prove himself and had the confidence and belief in himself to become the best. She loved knowing that beneath the seemingly impervious shell of the fierce warrior was a man of surprising depth and—yes, Sir Adam was right—sensitivity. She loved his passion. Envied it. Was drawn to it. Even when he lost his temper. She loved going toe-to-toe with him—challenging him. He brought out her fight and made her feel bolder and stronger than she ever had before. He’d never treated her as an afterthought or as chattel, but as an equal. He listened to her. Cared about her thoughts.

Ironically, by trying to protect herself from having another marriage like her first, she’d all but ensured the second turned out the same way. She’d sent him from her bed; why was she surprised that he’d found another?

She regretted so many things. She’d been a fool to think it had only been passion. The hollowness in her heart when he’d left her that night told her that. She shouldn’t have let her pride and jealousy prevent him from telling him she cared. And she shouldn’t have interfered in his argument with Sir John. Although Davey refused to discuss what had happened, she suspected Kenneth had been protecting her son.

He was also right to urge her patience. Her son wasn’t used to having a mother around to love him. It was no wonder that Davey was uncomfortable and defensive. Knocking down those barriers would take time—especially when his attention was focused on trying to become a knight. She needed to think of him as the man he would become, not the boy she never had a chance to know.

But it was more than that.

“You should have more faith in me.” He was right. She’d seen him fight. She knew what he could do; it was just that he wasn’t fully healed. But his admonition was about more than his fighting skills. Yet how could she believe in him when he wouldn’t make her any promises?

Of course, she’d never asked him for any. She’d just tried to accept what she thought was her fate. She’d tried to make do with what life had doled out, the way she always did.

But that wasn’t good enough. Not this time. She wasn’t content to be grateful for what she had. She wanted more. She wanted his heart.

But how was she going to breach the seemingly impenetrable wall that had been erected between them?

Every time she inquired about his day or activities, he cut her off. Even her attempt to tend the wound on his jaw he’d received in a tavern brawl the week before was refused. Though he’d yet to resume full activity in the practice yard, he had suffered an inordinate number of scrapes and bruises lately. But every time she expressed concern, he bristled as if she were questioning his skill, so she’d stopped mentioning it.

Lent was nearly over, but she dared not wait for him to return to her bed. What if he did, and it was merely a repeat of the last time? Or worse, what if he didn’t return at all?

The answer of what to do came to her a few days before Easter when a missive arrived for her from Brother Thomas, the monk who had confused her with the Italian nun. She’d considered enlisting her husband’s help or Sir Adam’s in her search for more information about the nun, but as Kenneth wouldn’t give her the opportunity and Sir Adam had returned to Huntlywood Castle in preparation for his journey to France, she’d sent one of the stable lads with a sizable donation to the church for Easter, and a note asking him to send for her should he hear any more about the nun who looked so much like her.

To her shock and barely contained excitement, the castle priest found her after the midday meal and passed on a message from Brother Thomas that the nun in question had returned.

She raced back to the Hall, hoping to find her husband still lingering with his men. She’d been wanting to ask him for help with her sister and now she had a chance. Surely, he would accompany her?

She found his squire, Willy, and to her surprise learned that Kenneth had returned to their chamber. She hastened across the courtyard and up the stairs.

But once she pushed open the door, the excitement fell from her face. He’d changed from the fine surcote he’d worn to the evening meal into a worn dark leather cotun and chausses. Despair shot through her like a flame, scorching the insides of her chest and throat. She knew what those clothes meant.

“You’re leaving?”

He stiffened, as if bracing himself for something unpleasant. “Aye, I have business in town.”

“At another tavern?”

Perhaps he heard the unspoken accusation in her tone. One corner of his mouth curled. “I thought you didn’t care.”

She swallowed, burying her pride and taking, if not a leap, at least the first step. “What if I do?” she said softly, her heart drumming in her throat. Their eyes locked, and for a moment she thought he wanted to say something, but then he turned away. He didn’t want her to care.

“I may be back late.”

He was back late every night. She swallowed again, the second attempt to break through even harder than the first. Her pride and her heart were raw and ragged. It was like the time she’d asked Atholl to take her and their son with him. “May I come with you? There is something I need to do in town. I’ve had some exciting news, and I would be grateful for your help.”

“I’m afraid it will have to wait.”

“It can’t—”

“Not today, Mary.”

She flinched at his curt tone. Maybe it was too late. Maybe he’d lost interest in her. Maybe it really had only been a game.

“All right.” She tried to hide her disappointment, but she feared she looked just as wounded as she sounded.

“It’s not like that.” He took a step toward her before he stopped himself. “Ah hell.” He muttered another oath, dragging his fingers through his hair. “There is a lot happening right now. I have many things on my mind.”

Things he wasn’t going to talk to her about. “I understand,” she said, even though she didn’t. “You are busy preparing for war.” And women.

“Aye.”

But that wasn’t all of it. She was sure of it. Something was bothering him. What was he keeping from her?

“Edward will be coming north soon. I’ve spoken with Sir Adam, and I think it is time.”

“Time?” she echoed.

“For you to leave the castle.”

Mary froze, her senses struck numb. “You are sending me away?” Her voice sounded as ragged and dry as it felt.

He wouldn’t meet her stricken gaze. “The child,” he said. “You won’t be able to hide the babe much longer. There will be less talk this way.”

She didn’t say anything. Tears were burning at the back of her throat, and she feared they would escape if she opened her mouth. He was right—her attendants had guessed her secret weeks ago—but she knew it was also an excuse.

“This was always the plan, Mary.” She met his gaze. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“When?” she said dully.

“After the Easter celebration. It won’t be for long, and you will be only a few miles away. Sir Adam has given us the use of Huntlywood Castle while he is in France. You can bring your attendants. It has all been arranged.”

But no matter what he said, they both knew he was sending her away.

“How considerate of you both. Did you even contemplate taking my wishes into consideration?”

Why should he? She was his to do with as he pleased.

He didn’t answer, but moved to the door. “I know you don’t understand right now, but it will be for the best.”

The best? Mary no longer knew what that was. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want a chance to decide for herself. “How thoughtful of you to decide that for me.”

If he heard her sarcasm, she didn’t know. She wasn’t looking at him. She thought he hesitated as he passed her on the way to the door, but whatever he felt, it wasn’t enough to stop him.

Not long after he left, Mary donned her cloak and headed for the stables. Her heart might be breaking, lying in pieces and stomped on, but she wasn’t going to allow the first possible lead on her sister slip by.

She’d planned to arrange for a few of Percy’s men to accompany her, but Sir John happened to see her as she was leaving and insisted on escorting her into town himself. Perhaps because she knew how much it would anger her husband, she didn’t try to dissuade him.

She quickly regretted the moment of pique. By his manner, Sir John made it clear that he did not see her marriage as an impediment to his courtship. He implied a number of times—too many for her to be mistaken—that if something were to happen to Kenneth or if things “did not proceed as she expected,” he would be there for her. And her son. Needless to say, her pregnancy had little to do with the uncomfortable ride.

Then, when they arrived at the church and she learned that neither the monk nor the nun could be found—indeed, the abbess told her they’d had no visitors the past few days other than the Bishop of St. Andrews and that the monk must have been mistaken—her disappointment had been such that she would have welcomed the quiet and peace of her own thoughts.

Darkness had fallen while she was in the church, and as they rode down the hill into town Mary started to pay more attention to their surroundings. She’d never been in town this late at night, and there was an unsavory element that seemed to have replaced the merchants and tradesmen of the day.

Sir John must have sensed her unease. “You have nothing to fear. You are safe with me. No one would dare attack the king’s men.”

Mary wasn’t so sure. Many of the rough-looking men they passed looked as if they would dare quite a lot. But she was somewhat relieved to see a number of women in the crowd as well.

The crowds were getting thicker on the high street. It was almost as if something big were about to happen. A performance, perhaps? Some kind of festivity?

Her suspicions were confirmed when she heard a large cry go up, the roar of a crowd exploding in applause. “What is that?” she asked.

Sir John’s eyes narrowed as he held his hand up for his men to stop. He scanned the row of tall buildings and narrow wynds. It wasn’t hard to see where the noise was coming from. There was a large pool of light shining from down one of the wynds. “I don’t know, but we are going to find out.” He held his hand out. When she hesitated, he added, “This won’t take long.”

Somewhat curious and bolstered by the presence of Felton’s half-dozen armed and mailed men-at-arms, Mary allowed herself to be helped down, careful to protect her stomach to keep anyone from learning her secret. As with her first child, Mary had put on a relatively small amount of weight. In her heavy gowns, she looked more plump than pregnant. Although with the child due in less than two month’s time, she was much more uncomfortable of late and easily tired.

Another cry went up as they entered the wynd. It was dark between the two buildings, but there was enough light coming from ahead of them to enable them to see.

As they drew near, she could see Sir John’s mouth harden.

“What is it? Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. “It’s as I expected.”

It didn’t take her long to figure out what he meant. By the time they reached the source of the light, everything was perfectly clear. The narrow wynd opened up before them into the space of a small square courtyard. A building had once stood there, she realized, and in the bowels of that building two men were fighting.

Like a circle of fire, torches had been hung on the structures around the makeshift pit, casting the entire area in blazing light. The crowd was dispersed around the pit on a haphazard mix of old walls, stones, and planks of wood set out like stands. People were also watching from the tops and windows of the adjoining buildings.

“A clandestine tourney?” she asked.

Sir John nodded. “The king will be very pleased to hear what we’ve discovered. He’s been trying to put an end to all the unsanctioned combat tourneys in the Borders—if you can call the crude brawling of common ruffians a tourney.”

She’d heard of the illegal brawls before but had never seen one. They were essentially a melee of two. A no-holds-barred, no-rules fight that was supposed to end when one person uttered “craven,” but often ended in death.

The crowd was chanting something. It sounded like “ice.” Curious, she edged forward a few feet, trying to get a better look at the contestants.

She gasped in horror. Both men were helmed but stripped to the chest, wearing only their braies and chausses. Sweat and blood stained their broad, muscled chests as they attacked each other with a ferocity she’d never witnessed before. There was nothing elegant, nothing noble. It was a contest of raw strength and brutality. Each man wielded one crude weapon in addition to his fists. The taller and more leanly muscled of the two had a crude-looking hammer; the heavier-set man, with a neck as thick as his head, held a stave with a mace. Unlike in regular tournaments, the weapons were not blunted.

The sight of such brutality alone would have made her knees go weak. But that wasn’t what made her stomach lurch to the ground and her legs turn to jelly. Despite the steel helms they wore to mask their identities, Mary instantly recognized the taller of the two men as her husband. She would know those arms and chest anywhere.

Any relief she might have felt from discovering that he wasn’t in some tawdry tavern with a woman was overwhelmed by the more immediate concern of the danger he was in both from the man trying to kill him and from Sir John, were it discovered that he was fighting in an illegal tournament.

The question of why he was fighting here and not with the other English soldiers floated to the back of her mind to be answered later. She had to get Sir John and his men out of here.

She spun around on her heel to insist that they leave, accidentally bumping into the man next to her. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been of any circumstance, but at that moment something happened in the pit that caused everyone to lurch forward. Unbalanced, as much from the movement as from her pregnant stomach, Mary cried out and started to fall.

She would have fallen backward into the pit a dozen feet below if Sir John hadn’t caught her.

She was still leaning toward the pit, her arms latched around his neck, when their eyes met.

His were stunned. “You’re pregnant!”

Something was off tonight. For nearly a month Kenneth had fought twice—sometimes three times—a week in the Pits of Hell, as the secret combat tourney was called. He knew it was risky to fight in the illegal tournaments, but Felton’s taunts had only worsened as the weeks passed, and his control where his wife was concerned was stretched to the breaking point. The fighting had provided both the outlet he needed to take the edge off his anger and a means of preparing himself for the upcoming war and his place in the Guard. Ironically, it was MacKay’s hidden-identity appearance in the Highland Games that had inspired him.

He was undefeated. A champion and a crowd favorite. Normally, the shouts of Ice—the war name he’d jestingly given himself as a reminder of why he was here—invigorated him. Got his blood rushing and made his muscles flare with anticipation.

But not tonight. Tonight he felt none of his usual excitement and bloodlust. He exchanged punishing blow after blow with his opponent, more with an eye to ending the fight as soon as possible than to savoring victory.

His thoughts weren’t on the fight but on the conversation earlier with Mary. She’d been trying to tell him something, but he’d been too focused on what he needed to do to listen. Time was running out, and he had to get her to safety. Removing her from the castle would be the first step. But of course, she hadn’t understood. How could she, when she didn’t know the truth?

Distracted, his head snapped back when his opponent’s meaty fist connected with his jaw. A swing of his mace followed. Narrowly evading the sharp points in his ribs, Kenneth realized he’d better focus on the thick-necked brute doing his best to kill him.

He’d just landed a rib-crushing blow of his hammer on his opponent’s side and followed it with a leaping kick that sent him careening to the ground, when a cry pricked his senses. A woman’s cry.

His gaze shot in the direction of the sound. He saw a flash of movement—a woman lurched toward the pit before being pulled back by a man.

Not just any woman. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t possible. But every flared nerve ending in his body told him it was his woman.

He didn’t know whether it was the delayed panic of almost seeing her tumble into the pit, knowing that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop it, that made him snap or the fact that the man who did stop it—and who now held her in his bloody arms too tightly and for too long—was Felton.

He looked as if he were about to kiss her, damn it.

Catapulting out of the pit by stepping on a piece of the broken wall, he launched himself at Felton. “Get your hands off her!”

Felton looked up at him in shocked recognition.

“Kenneth, no!” Mary cried, extracting herself from the other man’s embrace.

But he was too far gone to heed her plea. His frustration. His heart-knotting confusion of feelings for his wife. His fear that he might lose her. Seeing the man who’d been taunting him for weeks with his hands on her. All came together in one mind-numbing rage.

The bastard was going to have the fight he’d begged for. One fist connected with the steel of Felton’s helm, the other with his mail-clad gut.

Felton’s men would have rushed forward to the knight’s aid, but someone in the crowd shouted “soldiers” and the crowd surged toward the wynd. Thinking they meant to attack, Felton’s men drew their swords, and then did find themselves under attack as the crowd reacted to the threat.

Felton tried to grab his sword as well, but Kenneth anticipated his movement and knocked it from his hand.

Felton was fully armored in chain mail and Kenneth was naked to the waist, protected only by the steel of his helm. But it didn’t matter. There was nothing knightly about the way Kenneth fought. He used his fists, elbows, legs, feet—whatever he need to win. Felton used his shield—until Kenneth wrenched it from his hands—his dirk, whatever he could get his hands on, but his weapons were no match for Kenneth’s fierce skill and brutish strength. He’d been hit so many times the past few weeks that his body had become almost immune to pain. In less than a minute, Kenneth had the victory he’d been craving for months. He had Felton on his back, pinning him to the ground with his foot pressed against his throat.

“Put your hands on my wife again and I’ll kill you.”

Felton’s eyes burned hatred through the steel of his helm. He wanted to say something, but Kenneth’s foot prevented it.

The crowd had given them a wide circle, but he was aware of only one gaze on him. Mary stared at him in wide-eyed shock, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time.

“Please,” she said, her soft voice soothing him like a balm. “I’m fine. It’s over. He was helping me.”

Kenneth clenched his jaw, primitive instincts warring with honor. He wanted to kill Felton, but just enough rationality penetrated the haze. The bastard might have been holding her too long and too close, but he’d saved her. Kenneth had plenty of reasons for killing the man, but this wasn’t one of them.

He lifted his foot off Felton’s neck and stepped back. Heedless of the blood and grime, Mary raced into his arms, burying her face against his chest. His arms automatically closed around her. It felt so perfect, so right, that at that moment he recognized the truth.

Concentrating on soothing his sobbing wife, he watched while Felton struggled to his feet.

“I’ll see you thrown in the pit prison for this,” Felton seethed, rubbing his neck.

Kenneth’s gaze narrowed. “If you value your place as Percy’s champion, you won’t say a bloody thing.”

“Clandestine combat is illegal.”

“With war coming, do you think Edward will imprison one of his best knights for long? Especially after it becomes known that I bested Percy’s champion? Perhaps I shall choose to have my trial by challenging you to a wager of battle and we can let the entire castle witness your dethroning.”

Felton’s face was livid with rage. “You bastard! What happened to your arm injury? Why are you fighting here but not at practice? What are you hiding?”

Kenneth swore inwardly but appeared nonchalant. “This is part of my recovery. I was ensuring that I was back to full strength before we met in the yard.” He smiled. “But I guess we’ve established that I’m ready. This is a different type of fighting experience, one you can’t get on the lists with knights.”

Felton swore again, but Kenneth was finished with him. They both knew he would keep what happened to himself. “Find your men and return to the castle.”

Mary had lifted her head from his chest and was blinking back tears as she watched the verbal duel between the two men.

Felton held out his hand. “Lady Mary.”

Kenneth stiffened, but before he could reply, she shook her head and tightened her hold around his waist.

His chest swelled. “I will see my wife safely returned.”

With a look hard enough to cut steel, Felton turned on his heel and left.

Kenneth knew he’d made a mistake. His loss of temper had given Felton even more reason to want to discredit him. But he didn’t care. Mary had chosen him.