I told you he would be back.” Ela paced the floor of her chamber. Bertha followed, her hands outstretched to catch the pins that fell from Ela’s hair with each step.
“That ye did, my lady.”
“And now there is an army outside, and half my father’s knights are out on patrol on the other side of the forest. This isn’t good.” Ela turned, catching the scared yellow aura of her maid. “You’ll be fine.”
“How so?” Bertha squeaked.
“I plan to sneak past Father and offer myself in sacrifice to Os before he tears down the manor.”
Bertha stopped short. “Oh? The last time ye thought to sacrifice yourself, ye got into a heap of trouble.”
Ela strode faster around the room. “Yea, but this will be different. It will be glorious and an adventure worthy of one with my wild reputation.”
“But miss, ye’re an innocent!”
“I’m a virgin, Bertha, not naïve.” Ela huffed and switched Henry to her other shoulder. “And what better way to stop a curse than to find Boadicea’s grave site and demand an end to the torment with her own spear? Hmm? Just think—an end to my nightmares. You know, they’ve just been getting worse.”
Bertha made a sympathetic sound at the back of her throat.
As the weeks had passed since Beltane eve, she’d grown more and more exhausted. Meg refused to help her with another spell, saying it was too dangerous to play at magic. Ela was unable to get a decent night’s sleep because her dreams were of detailed battle scenes—or Osbert. It was as if Boadicea herself wanted answers, and Ela was charged with finding them. Her gifts to heal had remained, as had her ability to see auras.
Only Os had been veiled to her, and she wanted to know why.
When she wasn’t fighting the Roman army in her sleep, she was dreaming of Os’s face—his lips, eyes, his cool demeanor, his surprised laughter. He was a complex man, filled with honor. She was sorry that her father had thrown him from the manor.
Os never would have left her to spend the night in a boar pit.
She sighed. “The Earl of Norfolk is bound to know more about Boadicea than what Osbert does. I will go and see what I can.”
A chosen few of the Montehue servants knew the Montehue secrets, and Bertha was one of them. “Aye, my lady. But be careful … you’ve not been far from home before. And Sir Osbert is a handsome man, eh?”
Her face flushed. “I don’t recall.”
Teasing, Bertha said, “A strong knight such as that could make a woman fall in love.”
“Love?” Ela huffed. “There is more to a match than that.” She paced the floor. “Love. If I hadn’t seen Gali and ‘Tia have it, then I wouldn’t believe in it at all.”
“Not just your sisters, my lady,” Bertha chided. “But yer folks too.”
Tense, Ela fed Henry a piece of chicken left over from her morning meal. “All right, let us be clear. I am surrounded by fools in love, and yet I’ve never felt the spark. It is not meant for me.” She thought of Osbert’s dark gold hair and blue-gray eyes and sighed. He was handsome, but he would never suit. Not if he was afraid of witches.
“But what about children, my lady?”
“There’s the problem with the curse, see? This is why I must end it with me. I would marry for children alone, but I lose my powers if I don’t wed for love. Pah. I would wed to gain Father security—but then I lose my abilities that make me me. It is a ridiculous curse, and I am tired of it.” She snapped her fingers to Bertha’s pity-filled gaze. “Stop looking at me like that.”
Henry chittered and then jumped from her shoulder to the bed.
Ela took a deep breath, patting her pockets to make sure her small knives were there, and then her leg, where she’d tied her short sword to her garter. “It is time to go before Osbert and my father start fighting in earnest.”
Taking the stairs down two at a time, she peered out over the window casement. She expected to see her father and Osbert negotiating terms, since the battle between them hadn’t yet consisted of anything more than words.
Neither man really wanted bloodshed.
Yet neither man was willing to give ground. It would be up to her to save peace. “Oh no.” With mounting alarm, she pulled her maid to her side and pointed out the window. “Bertha, are those Thomas de Havel’s colors?”
The maid scooted in and peered out. “Aye, my lady. What could that bugger want? Ye’ve turned down his offer for marriage three times now.”
“Would he join forces with the Earl of Norfolk against my father? Nay—oh, pray tell me that he didn’t just sound the charge to battle? Oh dear!”
Not waiting for Bertha to answer, Ela picked up her dress and grabbed Henry in a tight hold to her chest as she raced back up the flights of stairs to the balconies around the manor. She shaded her eyes against the bright afternoon sun. Her heart thudded against her chest as she searched for Osbert’s golden head. She sighed with relief when she found him unhelmeted and unharmed.
By contrast, Thomas de Havel wore a shining black helmet with a fox crest in red on the side. He led around fifty men—ten more than Osbert had arrived with that morning. Her father was dressed handsomely in white and green, and her mother waved a scarf from the top of the gate tower, a small figure in the distance.
Her father was in the middle formation, Osbert was to his left, and now Thomas de Havel was on his right. Fear trickled down her back. If the two men went against her father, then Montehue Manor would be lost.
I should have married that imbecile, just to stop this from happening.
Deciding that he wanted to marry her after all, Thomas had sent flowers and gifts of jewelry—he’d even sent a minstrel with a poem about her tan skin. But Ela—bolstered by her parents’ warnings that they could take care of themselves—hadn’t given in. Now look where that had gotten them!
So far there had been no fighting between Osbert and her father, just taunting and threats. Her father would never willingly give her up to Os, even though she would willingly go.
She had to choose. Now. Thomas de Havel had lands that butted against theirs. He could be an ally in court intrigue … but she just couldn’t bring herself to bed a man who loathed her. Indifference would be kinder, but she had the feeling that he was the type of man to pull wings from butterflies. He’d poke her just to see her bleed. She couldn’t bring children into a viper’s nest such as that.
Osbert, on the other side of the coin, would do his best to see her safely returned to her father after he was rewarded with his land for bringing her to the Earl of Norfolk. He didn’t want anything from her but her company.
She kissed Henry on the nose. “I’m still doing it. You stay here and wait for me to return, aye? Bertha’s promised to give you treats and—hey!”
Henry was torn from her arms and tossed to the floor like an insignificant pest. Bertha fought against the attackers, but was felled by a gloved fist. Ela struggled as the men in black and red wrestled a burlap bag over her head and body and dragged her out of the manor. She screamed and kicked, but it did no good.
Nobody came to rescue her.
Osbert had a terrible feeling. He didn’t like invading Lord Montehue’s lands, and he’d warned his men to cause no physical violence, unless he said otherwise.
Robert Montehue had a stubborn streak as wide as his own, and the older man refused to back down, despite Os’s assurances that his daughter would be treated like fine porcelain. All logic pointed to the two men eventually coming to a reasonable agreement without death.
Nay, the foreboding dealt with something else. A warning from God, mayhap? If so, Os required a clearer message.
“Why don’t you come too?” Osbert finally asked, sweat pouring from his brow in the heat. “Bring your lady wife and daughter and make a trip of it. I can show you around, bring you to Thetford where Boadicea is supposed to have lived. The women would feel the history that is theirs alone. Surely that is a compromise worth considering?”
Lord Robert Montehue, his face as red as a cooked ham, jerked his stubborn chin in the air. His blue eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say no. Osbert wanted to pump his fist victoriously in the air. I’ve got him.
And then Thomas de Havel and his men came riding over the fields, ruining the new crops just beginning to thrive, destroying the compromise that he’d been working so hard toward.
Robert looked at Os and spat to the ground. “Ye sided against me with that toad? Pox on you.”
Os tightened the grip on his sword handle. “Never,” he promised. “I’d rather be dead than have my good name besmirched by joining forces with him.”
Lord Robert raised a suspicious brow as they watched de Havel march closer. It seemed as if de Havel’s men took pleasure in ruining the new sprouts in the once neat rows. It infuriated Os, and he clenched his knees around Bartholomew’s middle—prepared to surge forward and kill the bastard, if need be. A joustmaster had to learn patience and calm, else he would be injured.
There was no money in injuries.
Thomas came close enough to be a threat. But to whom, Os couldn’t tell. He braced for bloodshed and saw Robert do the same.
Then he heard Ela scream. He knew it was her, the red-haired temptress who’d toyed with his dreams for a fortnight. It resounded in his soul, a cry that pierced him in the heart. Never again, he thought wildly. Nobody will ever touch his woman so brutally again.
He shook his head, not understanding his thoughts. He and Lord Robert exchanged a glance as Lady Deirdre shouted and pointed toward the back of the manor with her green and white scarf.
“The forest.” Os grabbed Bartholomew’s reins in one hand and drew his sword with the other. Thomas de Havel chose that minute to spring his men forward, ready for battle. Without thought, Osbert signaled for his men to join with Lord Robert’s against the common enemy. Somehow, de Havel seemed to have an army of fifty or more.
“I must save my daughter,” Lord Robert said, fighting his way free of the melee. A soldier in black and red let loose a mace, and it knocked Robert to the ground with a horrifying thud of spiked metal hitting flesh.
Os reached down his hand to lift the bleeding man up, but Robert gritted his teeth against the pain and shook his head. “Don’t waste time—just go get my daughter. And I hold you to your damned oath to bring her back as she was when she left this place.”
In other words, Os thought as he searched for Albric, Warin, and St. Germaine, find Ela before she was a victim of rape. Just the word left a foul taste in his mouth. Or—and God help him, because this was even a worse thought—before Thomas de Havel took her maidenhead and forced her hand in marriage. The king would approve in haste, once the damage was already done, and consider it to be fair.
His friends gathered around him, their horses stamping to return to the thick of the fight. “Our alliance is with the Montehues, against de Havel. I’ll be back. If I’m not, go to Norwich.” They were all three strong Earl of Norfolk knights, and he knew they would treat this mission like it was their own.
Os urged Bartholomew in the opposite direction. They raced around the side of the manor and toward the forest. This time, he had no fear of what was in the deep heart of the wood. He’d been there and survived it.
He vowed that Ela would too.
Ela breathed in the foul horse taste of the burlap bag, then bit the fabric, tearing at it until she had a hole she could poke her face out of. Her teeth cracked together with each uneven hoof step, and she vainly hoped she didn’t break one in the front.
She never doubted that she’d find a way out of the trap she was in—if not by her father’s or Os’s hand, then by her own.
Ela was resourceful, aye, and the dagger in her boot was sharp. Her eating knife was in her waistband, and her short sword tied to her garter beneath her tunic. The fact that the leather sheath sliced into her thigh with each jostle just assured her that it was there. She would eventually find a way to free her bindings and use her weapons on her captors.
She couldn’t think about the sound poor Henry’s body had made when he’d hit the floor. Or Bertha’s stunned cry as she was hit. She stuck her head farther from the bag and looked around. Thomas de Havel’s army had torn the fields on this side of the manor, and the smell of horse manure streaked the air. How had he gotten so many knights willing to fight against her father? Did the king know? Were they mercenaries? Her father said that knights for hire were dangerous because they had souls that could be bought for coin.
Ela ignored hearing her internal voice ask what if and concentrated instead on wiggling farther from the bag.
Her captor’s horse slipped, and Ela accidentally bit her tongue. She tasted blood and her fury grew. She’d not been raised to be powerless at the hands of men.
What type of cur was Thomas de Havel, to have her kidnapped from her own home? To go to battle against her father because she’d refused to marry him?
She didn’t understand—unless he thought to kidnap her and marry her against her will. What had changed his mind? Ela couldn’t imagine being bound forever to him, especially now that she knew where his preferences lay.
She had a feeling that he was a man who wanted rough sport, and a woman was too easy a victim—another thing she’d been taught to never be. Shuddering with revulsion, she squirmed until her shoulders were free from the bag. Unfortunately, her hands were still tied behind her.
Eyeing the ground as it flew beneath the horse’s hooves, she swallowed hard and banished fear to somewhere it couldn’t touch her. This is going to hurt.
Os leaned over Bartholomew, gaining great speed over the trail leading to the forest. He could see two horses up ahead and two men in de Havel’s black and red, almost at the tree line.
His gut ached and his insides writhed with frustration, but he kept his head clear as a trained knight ought.
Ela. She had the power to make him lose his concentration.
It had been her, God’s bones, that eve in the clearing. Naked and calling down the heavens’ magical thunder-filled power until he’d accidentally stopped her from completing her spell. What had she wanted? Thomas’s declaration of love and marriage?
Os gritted his teeth, smacking the reins. Faster.
Humiliated at being booted so forcibly from the manor, Os had raced Bartholomew to Norwich, fighting the desire for revenge. By the third day of his journey, he’d calmed down enough to admit where he’d gone wrong.
If he had a daughter and someone foolishly said they were going to take her forcibly from home, he would not have been as kind as Robert Montehue.
The problem wasn’t just being ousted—he could understand and appreciate Lord Robert’s reasoning. It was Ela who had him tied in knots. He would swear on the Holy Bible that something had passed between them—it had felt like love … nay. He wouldn’t even think the word. It was impossible. But intriguing.
It defied logic. With his own eyes, he’d watched Ela, darling, sweet-faced Ela, call down thunder, lightning, and rain.
“Faster, Bartholomew. Go!”
Just then he saw what looked like a rolled rug fall from the back of the rear horseman. He felt a thud in his bones and knew that Ela had somehow gotten loose from her captors.
De Havel’s men reached the forest trees before realizing they’d lost their treasure. He sensed the men deciding to either come back the distance they’d gone to pick her up where she lay—so still—and chance being killed by his drawn sword as he raced forward, or escape certain death by taking the woods.
They chose freedom. Mercenaries, Os spat with disgust. By the time he reached Ela, she was beginning to stir.
“Ela.” He dismounted and knelt by her side. Her head poked out from a hole in a burlap bag that trapped her shoulders, with her arms behind her back. Her legs were tied too, and she squirmed to get free. Anger at how close she’d come to being hurt caught his tongue, and he closed his eyes for a moment to gain control.
“Osbert Edyvean. Nice army you brought today. Help me up,” she said with a wink. “What took you so long to rescue me?”
He could yell or laugh at her stupid joke. “I came as soon as I received your message, my lady.” He attempted to lift his lips.
“Don’t do that, it’s terrifying. Heroes are not supposed to grimace. Do you mind cutting through the ties? I can’t reach my knife—either of them.”
He’d never met a woman who would willingly drop to the ground from a moving horse. He remembered her father saying that she was skilled at sword fighting too, that fateful afternoon in the hall. “You have your own knives?” He scratched his chin. “You chewed your way through a burlap sack.” She was an enigma. She intrigued him, calling him to her without words, yet she was everything he couldn’t have. He was a lowly knight—and she was a lady, mayhap a witch, who was quite capable of saving herself.
“Aye, I did need you. Well, mayhap not the first time. ‘Tis nice to be saved, anyway. It was the first time anybody offered.” She bounced up and down. “Knife. Slice. Give it to me, and I’ll do it myself, for pity’s sake.”
He reached out and slid the blade down the center of the burlap bag. She obligingly hopped around to show him her back, and he slit the ropes binding her wrists, and lastly the ones on her ankles. He glared at the edge of the forest where the men had disappeared. Perhaps it was just as well that they’d gone, for he would like to kill them and let God sort it out.
“Free,” she sighed and slumped to the ground. Rubbing her wrists and hands, she bit her lip. “This stings.”
“‘Tis the rush of blood returning.” He kneeled on the ground in front of her and took her hands in his. Hers were small and lightly chapped. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that made her less of a lady. He rubbed the slight callous over her knuckle, his body humming with recognition of her. The feeling took him by surprise, for he’d never been swept by desire so fast, nor so keenly.
“Knife throwing. I’m rather good,” she said shyly before pulling her hand free.
“I don’t doubt it,” Os mumbled, wondering if she could hear the thunder of his heart.
She stared at him, her green eyes as pure as the spring grass and as clear of evil as anything he’d ever seen. How could she be a witch?
Yet he’d watched her from the top of the hill.
The desire to protect her, to keep her safe despite any harm that would come to him, felt inbred, as if it were a part of his body. His mind. His heart.
It was more than the pledge he’d given her father. More, he thought, than what he could explain with mere words. He had to touch her. Honorably, of course.
He leaned forward, just, he told himself, to brush a harmless kiss across her forehead. She’d lost the customary wimple women wore, but her hair was still covered in a golden veil. Her lips parted slightly, and her breath echoed his.
He kissed her smooth forehead. She blinked in surprise.
Just a taste of her lips.
They met, crashing mouth to mouth, and Os groaned at her generous warmth. She didn’t back away from his kiss but welcomed it by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him back with enthusiasm.
Sweet Christ.
After a few moments, she broke away. He pulled her back, not done tasting the sweetest mouth he’d ever sampled. She struggled in his arms. “Os! Will your horse carry two?”
“Aye.” He kissed her eyebrows, the tip of her nose.
She kissed his mouth, then shook his shoulders. “Let’s get on him, then, afore we’re killed. Here come Thomas’s men.” She pushed against his chest and ran to Bartholomew, hitched up her dress to her bare knees and jumped, pulling herself up by the saddle and tossing one leg over to sit astride.
My God.
“Os! Hurry, man, before we’re dead. How is my father? My mother? Let’s circle back and fight. I will show you a shortcut, and we can get swords and axes. Aye, axes,” she said with a bloodthirsty cry of rage and terror.
Os looked back and saw the reason that a knight was supposed to keep his focus in order to stay alive. Thomas de Havel carried the white and green Montehue flag and was racing for them, followed by at least twenty men. “We can’t stay and fight, Ela. Not this time. Which way to the village—nay, we can’t lead Thomas through there. Which way to a back road?”
She struggled to jump off Bartholomew’s back, but he held her tight. “I’ll not leave my family to die, coward!”
“Nay.” Osbert turned and quelled her with a fierce look that would have had mere men shaking in their boots. “You will retreat and live to fight another day.”
Ela’s green eyes widened with understanding, and she settled down, her gaze focused on the carnage behind her. “My family home. Thomas is setting fire to the fields. Did you see my father?”
He grunted and pretended not to hear. Os understood her pain, but he’d made a promise to Lord Robert that he’d not forget. Ela would be safe, or he would die protecting her. There would be no more kisses.
Ela wiped the tears from her eyes. She hated to cry, but how could she stop? Her parents might be dead, though she didn’t feel the loss in her heart, not as she’d done with her grandmother.
What could she do? Her grief billowed just as each cloud of dark smoke puffed into the air. Would the villagers stop the blaze before the manor caught fire? The horses, the cows, the gardens, the new crops—all threatened because of Thomas de Havel.
She vowed vengeance.
“Why?” She leaned her forehead against Os’s back. “Why did he come to battle? Not because I wouldn’t agree to marry him … that would be stupid. A waste of men.”
Os was quiet for a while. “He wanted you, if I had to guess, at any cost. Some people will not accept no for an answer.”
“He didn’t want me.”
“Until you said nay.” Os slowed Bartholomew to a walk. “Rest, boy. Where is the next village?”
Ela looked at her surroundings and shifted uncomfortably. She hadn’t realized they’d come so far. “Abberton, I think. Where will your men go? Back to Norwich?”
“Aye. Albric will lead any survivors home.”
She shivered. “You don’t think they are all dead, do you?”
He paused, as if considering. She appreciated that he didn’t just lie. “Nay. The Earl of Norfolk has trained us all well. We fight for him, and he doesn’t hire incompetent knights. Despite the rumors about him, he’s been a fair lord to me. He’s much different than his father.”
“How did Thomas get so many men?” Her eyes itched from tears and worry. Osbert’s warmth as he sat in front of her made her feel safe.
“Mercenaries. Going into battle against an army of paid knights is both good and bad. If they see they are losing, they tend to disappear—but they can be brutal in winning, since part of their knight price is a share of the gold from the slain.”
“I thought as much. I would want to fight for a man I believed in, if I were able to go to war.”
He scoffed. “You sound like a boy instead of a young lady of means.”
“I long to be free and to race my horse bareback across the fields, and yet I also like being pretty and having my hair brushed with perfume. I can toss a knife dead center of a target and juggle four apples at once. I can also read and add simple accounts. My parents think me a prize, and yet I am twenty and unwed.” Her sigh was heartfelt.
He burst out laughing, chuckling so hard that her head shook where it rested against his back.
“It would be difficult to be you.” He switched the reins to his left hand. “You could try being me, but you’d be bored, methinks.”
“What is it like, to be a knight of God?” She tickled his side and was glad when he laughed. She didn’t think he laughed as much as he should.
“I spend a lot of time praying, and fighting, and being grateful for my many blessings.”
“What blessings are those? The only wealth you have is your horse.”
“Not so, my lady, not so. I have my own sword, I have a lord who provides food and shelter for me and Bartholomew, and I travel the world saving pretty ladies from trouble.”
Ela smiled against the fabric of his tunic. “What do you really do?”
“Live.” He exhaled with exaggeration. “In between things the earl asks me to do, I joust.”
“In tournaments? Oh. I wouldn’t be bored being you. I long for adventure. Why is it that only men get to fight for honor and prizes?”
“Women are the fairer sex. Don’t be angry with me—I heard that intake of breath. In hand-to-hand combat, women do not have the muscle-power that men do.”
“‘Tis unfair.”
“Not so. Women have the strength to bear children.”
“We are not given a choice,” Ela said, recalling a few of the babies she’d helped deliver. “What of your mother? Is she a strong woman?”
He stiffened, and she wondered at his response. “She died.”
“I’m sorry. Do you have any brothers and sisters? Is your father still alive?”
“They all died.” His voice roughened.
“Osbert. What happened?” Reacting to the pain she heard, she unselfconsciously wrapped her arms around his waist to give him a hug.
“It was a sickness passing through our village. I couldn’t save them.” His voice broke and he coughed. “I didn’t.”
She leaned her forehead against his solid back, silently offering comfort.
He cleared his throat. “Women have a strength in them that is just as powerful as a man’s sword arm. Just different.”
“You are different from any other man I’ve ever met.” She resisted the temptation to place a kiss on his shoulder, but she left her arms loosely around his waist. She told herself that she was worried she might fall off.
“You don’t know many men, eh?”
“Not to flirt with.” What difference did it make if she told him some of the truth? “I’m the youngest of two brothers and three sisters, so I am not naïve, nor sheltered. I’ve delivered babies—I usually get called in to assist when there is a problem with the birth. As you heard, Boadicea’s kin has a gift for healing. I inherited that gift, along with my hair and eyes.”
“You are telling me that you believe that you have a power handed down from generation to generation and that it comes from being descended from Boadicea.”
“It’s true.” Ela’s pulse pounded in her throat.
“For certes, the villagers certainly believed that your Aunt Nan was some sort of miracle worker. They couldn’t wait to tell me a bunch of stories that couldn’t possibly be true. A cross between a witch and a saint.”
“Ah.” Ela said a silent prayer for her Aunt Nan’s soul and prayed as well that her parents were safe from harm. “You search for answers and then mock them. That is not very good of you, sir.”
“Sh.” Os picked up the reins and slapped them down, urging Bartholomew into a trot. “We have company. And until I’m sure what colors they wear, we should hide.”
Ela swallowed her disappointment in Os’s answer. She turned back to see who was behind them. “The road is clear.”
“It won’t stay that way.” They came around a bend, and Os guided Bartholomew off the road, across a ditch, and behind a cluster of trees, where they dismounted.
Ela thought it was a terrible waste of time—until she heard the pounding of hooves racing down the road toward Abberton.
How had he known they were being followed? Ela warned herself to be wary of Os, who was not just a simple knight of God, nor a coolheaded minion of the Earl of Norfolk. Not a witch-hunter, but more a gallant knight. He believed in women’s strength. Osbert Edyvean was a dangerous, complex man, and Boadicea help her, she felt a spark.