The Conqueror. Kris Kennedy
be taking the risk—”
The knight uncoiled suddenly. Without seeming to move, his hand was inside the captain’s mantle, removing the pouch of money. “Someone else will take the risk, then. And the money.”
“Now, sir, all right and all right,” the captain mewed, licking his lips as he watched the bag hovering in the air between them. “I ne’er said I won’t, just that it’s unwise, my lord”—that phrase came from nowhere. What other than his manner bespoke this black, swirling shape as a lord of anything but trouble?—“and I can’t be answerable for any misfortune.”
He saw a gleam of teeth as the hooded figure smiled grimly. “I shall do many unwise things, captain, and not ask you to answer for any of them. At Prime, tomorrow, I shall be here with my men.”
“D’accord,” the captain grunted, pocketing the money again with a sigh of relief.
The dark figure turned away. “And we have horses.”
The captain spun too late. “Well, what the—” He stopped, realising he was alone, left to stare at empty darkness.
Chapter One
Six months later, October 1152
London, two hundred fifty miles south of Everoot’s
principal castle, the Nest
The crush of people was enormous. Nobles they might be, but they were as noisome and unruly as a drunken crowd.
She wore a green gown. Woven of rare and expensive silk, it shimmered like an emerald waterfall. The bodice hugged tight, as did the sleeves, until they opened wide at her elbows and fell in graceful folds of silk. Ebony curls spilled down her back with loose sprays dancing by her cheeks. A thin circlet of silver clasped a light veil of palest green over her forehead. On the outside, she was a vision of proper breeding and improper beauty.
Inside, she was a simmering cauldron of nerves.
Guinevere de l’Ami, daughter of the illustrious Earl of Everoot, stood by the stone wall of the London apartment and clutched her empty wine cup so tightly it pressed her knuckles white. She smiled vacantly at a passing baron, who veered in her direction and smiled rather less vacantly, revealing a row of greyish teeth. Gwyn’s heart sank. A young varlet carrying an ewer of wine passed next, and she leaned forward.
“May I?” she asked, smiling benevolently. Then she reached out and took the entire jug.
His unbearded chin dropped. He peered at his hand, then at her, but Gwyn was already weaving away through the crowd, pitcher tightly in hand. If anyone tried to take it from her, she’d crack him over the head with it.
Finding a small window alcove, she positioned herself beside the newest innovation, a fireplace, and tried to do two things at once: blend in with the stone wall and get smashingly drunk. Grimacing at the wine’s oily flavour, she threw back a large swallow.
Fortification came in many guises.
There were few better places or, more precisely, more grand places, to fortify oneself with wine. This was the king’s feast, hosted at the end of a grueling week of councils between the king and his mighty advisors. Men such as the wealthy Earl of Warwick and the powerful Earl of Leicester. Men with the status of her father. The few treasured loyalists amid these awful, bloody civil wars.
For sixteen years now, the English nobility had been cleaved in two. Families wrecked, friendships destroyed, legacies lost. Robbers ruled the roads and bandits sacked the villages. Underneath it all, the land had been gutted and raped. But now it was worse.
Already the news was spreading: the powerful Earl of Everoot had died. His heir, Guinevere de l’Ami, was a woman alone.
She quaffed another deep draught of wine.
The large great room of the London apartment was growing dark but, as the sun slowly set, a pale rosy hue streamed through the unshuttered window beside her, washing the room in a light reminiscent of fading roses and thinned blood.
Gwyn sloshed more wine into her cup, reflecting glumly on the sort of mind that went about creating gory metaphors of sunsets.
Losing one’s beloved father not two weeks past might have such an effect, she supposed wearily.
Having one’s castle besieged might better do the job. Even if one stood at a king’s feast, two hundred and fifty safe, heartbreaking miles away.
She should have known.
When Marcus fitzMiles, Lord d’Endshire, spent the week following Papa’s death doling out solicitude and concern like an almoner, she should have known something terrible was coming. Marcus fitzMiles was her nearest neighbour, her father’s ally, and the most rapacious baron in King Stephen’s war-torn realm, eating up smaller estates like pine nuts. And until Gwyn arrived in London last night, he was the only one who knew Papa had died. The only one who knew how undefended Everoot was. How undefended Guinevere was.
She should have known.
She lifted her chin and stared blindly across the room, eyes burning. She could not let it happen. Not so soon after Pap—. Not so soon—. Her throat worked around the tightness threatening to choke her. Not now.
She’d promised.
Then again, she reflected miserably, she’d made a lot of deathbed promises she simply didn’t understand. But one does not bicker with a dying father when he asks you to guard a chest of love letters between him and your dead mother or when he tells you he was wrong, dreadfully wrong (about what?), and begs you to “Wud. Guh. Saw.” Whatever that meant. She’d knelt on the cold stone floor beside his bed and promised everything.
She swallowed thickly. Tension and fear and old, old shame flickered inside her belly like a curling red flame. She clutched her wine cup, fingers tight around its stem. Where in perdition was the king? Each minute gone was a minute more fitzMiles had to begin feeding on his largest platter yet, Gwyn’s home.
She needed more wine. Spinning about, she plowed right into the chest of Marcus fitzMiles, Lord d’Endshire.
“Good heavens!” she screeched. A few baronial heads shifted towards the sound. Wine sloshed over the rim of her goblet.
“Lady Guinevere,” Marcus said smoothly, taking the cup from her dripping hand.
“Give me that.” She snatched it back.
A practiced smile inched up his mouth. He stretched his hands wide, all bemused innocence. “Indeed, you may have it, my lady.”
“My thanks for returning what is already mine. Such as the Nest.”
“Ahh.” He inclined his head forward an inch. “You have heard.”
“Heard? Heard?”
Marcus swept a casual glance around the room. “Indeed. Heard. As will everyone else if you do not keep your voice down.”
“Keep my voice down? Be assured, Marcus, my voice will be raised so loudly to the king—and anyone else who will listen—that your ears will burn.”
He raked a cool glance over her gown. “Happens you might be the one burned, Gwyn.”
Her eyes narrowed into thin, blazing slits. Curled around the stem of her wine goblet, her fingers turned white. Had the cup been a man, it would have died a gruesome death. “Me? Burned?”
“Are you to repeat everything I say?” he queried with just enough true curiosity to send her teeth clicking together.
“Then let us have you repeat what I say, Marcus, to ensure understanding,” she said in a low tone, practically snarling. “You will never have the Nest.”
He shook his head with a small smile, as if deigning to correct a child who had erred. “Nay, my lady, you misunderstand. I bethought your castle in need of reinforcements while you were away with so many of its knights.”