Ironheart

“I could never marry a man I didn’t love!” she said with all the blithe confidence of a four-year-old girl.

“One day a knight will come and steal your heart.” He swung her down to the parapet.

“Will you be my own special knight?” she asked straightway.

“Of course,” he said grandly, flourishing a salute.

She blinked rapidly. Then she glanced upward, a piercing, anxious look. “For ever and ever?”

Leon smiled his sudden smile. His voice changed, deepened. “Henceforth, I am your forever knight.” Bowing low he kissed her hand.

She slid her hand free and detached a knot of ribbon from her night rail and held it out to him. “Then I will wait, ’n’ when you are all grown up, you shall come back and marry me.”

“Just like that?”

She nodded her head emphatically.

Leon took the token and tousled her hair. If she were not careful, this rare blossom would grow into a thorn bush! He glanced at the dawn sky, pretending disinterest.

“All right,” he conceded.

She planted her hands on her hips. There was witchcraft in her eyes. “Will you swear on it?”

Leon ground his teeth. Aggravating girl! Really, she tried his patience to distraction! He inclined his head and turned away. “I vow by sun and moon, earth and water, fire and air. Does that satisfy you?” he said to the free air beyond the walls.

Behind him he heard a whisper of slippers. His back muscles went rigid.

“Nurse!” She ran off gaily, muddy hands outstretched. “Oh, Nurse, I could see far and far. I saw the prince ride out!”

Leon looked around. The waiting woman lowered tight-clenched hands and spread them, and hugged the draggled child to her. In a deliberate, careful tone she told the child, “You must never climb up there alone, you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t. My own true knight was with me.”

“This running about has got to stop, my girl.”

“But why?” The light voice lilted.

The nurse brushed her off mercilessly, then wrenched her away, scolding loudly, “It’s unnatural to want to be adventuring out of doors.”

“But, Nurse, I have found my knight—only he’s not a knight yet—and he’s got hair like gold!”

“One day a fine man with golden hair will ask for your hand, then marry you, get you with strong children, a round half dozen. But until then, little mistress, you’d best be learning the ways of a lady.”

When she reached the doorway, the girl turned. “Until we meet again, may every road be smooth to your feet,” she called in her bell-chime voice, the traditional Celtic farewell.

“And may you be safe from every harm,” Leon managed to reply, with more feeling than the customary response usually carried. He had forgotten to ask who her father was. Not that he would ever see her again. The FitzWarren entourage was returning to Whittington on the morrow.

Unable to stop himself, he reached out a hand, wanting to ask her name. She did look at him, a pale, distracted glance, but the nurse waved him off when he’d have followed her.

He closed his eyes, just for a heartbeat. When he opened them, they had been swallowed up in the darkness.

Chapter One

Northern Marches, Wales, 1204

“The priest is here. All we lack is the groom.” Brenna heard the words as if from a great distance. They hung in the air above her head like flaming arrows, separate and solid, one after another, shooting from some unseen bow…

“He will come.”

“I fear the worst.” The voice drew nearer, a high sweet voice like a bird’s. ’Twas her great-aunt Alice, all aflutter. “If no evil has befallen him, surely he would have arrived by now.”

A creeping chill went down Brenna’s back. The wind whipped her hair and her gown. But her eyes never blinked, her face never flinched, though her heart was hammering against her ribs. She said nothing, only stared fixedly over the merlon, gazing beyond the southward sweep of the battlements.

The walls fell sheer below her, stone set on stone, castle and crag set high above the green valley, field and forest rolling into the mountain bastions in the distance. In the world below, children shouted, a stallion screamed and a tuneless voice bawled a snatch from a drinking song.

The wind sighed upon the stones.

Marry. Marriage. Husband. Wife. Bed.

Children.

A great churning dread welled in her heart. She knew nothing beyond the valley and its inhabitants and the limited knowledge and experience acquired as a healer. The secret tales told by the village women baffled her and yet beckoned with promises more provocative and lurid than the vague tutoring her aunts had imparted on the duties of a wife. She was not certain now whether she wholly welcomed the idea of marriage, of a husband, but it was still, all things considered, a good way to preserve the peace on the border.

He had to come! Her anxious glance went back to the valley. The priest had come trailing in, complaining of heavy rain, and confessing that he had mistaken an intersection of roads and ridden an hour or more along a road before discovering his error. She hoped that her groom was late for as silly a reason, but it was making her increasingly concerned. The only other alternatives were either that he had met foul play or that he had changed his mind.

Why? was the next obvious question, but she only frowned for even thinking of it. Come the Sabbath she would be wed, and she had never even met her betrothed! The feeling of doubt and confusion at the news of her future husband’s impending arrival came laced with a dread that she couldn’t shake, a dread made up of fear for what he might have learned…what he might have already reasoned…

She was being foolish. Don’t think maybe he’ll come today and maybe he won’t, she told herself. Don’t believe that it’s not worth keeping a lookout.

He is coming. She knew it. Yet the shadow of the gray stone walls joined the shadow of the tower and grew long across the courtyard. Not an hour of daylight left.

“Brenna!” Slowly she became aware of a plucking at her sleeve. Her aunt was talking again. What was she saying? “What of the wedding? The feast is being prepared even now.”

Brenna swallowed hard and as close to invisibly as she could. “I am not ready to abandon all hope.”

“Should the preparations be halted?”

“No!” Brenna’s fingers clutched the unyielding stone. Her breath left her slowly. She had not known that she was holding it. “No. Grandfather is the most indulgent of guardians, but I fear his patience is exhausted, and to halt all the preparations now would cripple his purse.”

“What will you do?”

Brenna wrinkled her nose. Since childhood, she had dreamed of her perfect knight. She had built her own romance about him as she grew older. Her experience as a healer had given her a knowledge of the male anatomy, so she could even visualize in vivid detail the fascinating play of muscles across his shoulders, the rippling sinews along his broad ribs, and the taut, flat belly with its tracing of hair that she knew led downward to the manly part of him. It was at this point that her mind games always stopped for she could not totally catch the import of what lay beyond. When she thought of the future, it was of some romantic meeting with her hero.

But it had not come true…

How ridiculous, to waste time on such thoughts. Her knight was but a dream, a memory. It was no use indulging in romantic fantasies, for marriage was not a romantic business. Marriage was a shackle and no pleasure, however you looked at it. Romance belonged to the troubadours, an elaborate conceit made of flowery language, poetry and lute-twanging.

“I am forsworn, surely and irrevocably. I am betrothed to Aubrey of Leeds.”