The Conquest Read online

  "You will have supper now, my lord?"

  Tearle gave a start and looked up from his goblet of wine. "Oh, Margaret, I didn't see you. Has she come down yet?"

  "No," Margaret said slowly. "I imagine that she will find it difficult to dress herself."

  "You do not miss much, do you?" He smiled at the woman who had come to his mother when they were both girls. Tearle's mother had died in Margaret's arms.

  "I could not help notice that you are mad in love with her."

  "She hates me," he said gloomily.

  Margaret nearly laughed aloud at that. "The girl who gave you such a look of longing in the courtyard does not hate you."

  "You have not heard her speak to me. Ah, sometimes she desires me, if I kiss her enough and tell her that she is pretty, but she desires that from any handsome man." He snorted. "She desires that even from me, who she thinks is ugly." He looked up at Margaret. "She is a Peregrine."

  Margaret's face lost its laughter. She went to Tearle and put her hand on his shoulder. "You were always a good boy. That you'd marry this boy-girl to settle a feud is very noble of you."

  "I tricked her into marrying me," he snapped. "And I didn't marry her to settle a feud. I married her because I wanted her."

  "Ah, could you not just have bedded her?"

  Tearle didn't speak for a while. "Perhaps." He didn't say more but just sat there looking at his wine goblet.

  Margaret sat on the chair next to him. He was as near to being a son as she was ever going to have. "I have heard about these Peregrines. Are they as rough as I have heard?"

  "Worse."

  "Then perhaps some softness in the girl's life would do her good. Perhaps soft music and soft words would win her. Perhaps if you let her see you as you are, she would come to love you."

  "I have told her I will petition the king for an annulment. I mean to keep my word."

  "Did you tell her when you would send the messenger?"

  Tearle smiled at her. "No, I did not. But I did say I would give her an annulment, which means I am not to touch her."

  Margaret laughed. "Do you not know that there is much more sensuous pleasure than what goes on in the bed?"

  Tearle gave her a look to say that she was half mad.

  "The girl moved from me when I but meant to touch her arm," Margaret said. "And she looked at my gown with lust in her eyes. For all her boy's clothes, I think she hungers for what a woman has and wears. I think that roses might win your lady."

  "Roses?"

  "And music and tales of love and silk and gentle kisses placed behind her ear."

  Tearle looked at the woman for a long while, his mind racing with his thoughts. He remembered the way Zared had reacted to his kisses. Perhaps she did not hate him as much as she said she did. If he had not allowed his jealousy to overcome him, what might have happened? Perhaps it was possible to win her with a bit of courting. He smiled at Margaret.

  Chapter Twelve

  « ^ »

  Nothing that Zared had ever experienced had prepared her for life in the Howard house. At supper she sat at a clean table and ate delicious food, and her new husband treated her as though she were fragile and precious.

  The calmness of the servants, the general peace of the whole house was new and interesting to her. In her own home it wasn't unusual for her brothers' knights to come storming into rooms demanding that someone come and settle a fight. Her brother Rogan regularly slammed his battle ax into tables to make a point. But at Tearle's the questions were whether she had enough wine or whether her soup was hot enough.

  After supper a handsome young man came and played a lute while he looked at Zared with liquid eyes.

  "What is he saying?" she asked, since the man was singing in French.

  Tearle looked at her across a silver wine goblet. The whole room glowed with the light from the fireplace. "He is singing of your loveliness, of your beauty, and of the beautiful way you move your hands."

  Zared looked startled. "My hands?" Her brothers had always complained that she had no strength in her hands, that she could barely lift a sword. She held her hands in front of her and looked at them.

  Tearle took one in his own and kissed her fingertips. "Beautiful hands."

  "What else is he saying?" she asked, looking away from her husband to the handsome young man.

  "He says only what I have told him to, for I wrote the song," Tearle answered, an edge to his voice.

  She looked back at him in wonder. "You? You can write songs in another language?"

  "Songs and poetry. I can play the songs as well. Should I demonstrate?"

  "If you can write, then can you read? Liana can read. Could you read me a story?"

  Tearle stopped kissing her hand and smiled at her, then signaled the man to leave them. Another soft command from him and a servant brought five books into the room. "Now, what shall you hear?" When Zared looked blank, Tearle smiled. "I know. I shall read you Héloise and Abelard. That should appeal to you."

  An hour later Zared was sitting in front of the fire trying not to cry, for the story he had read to her was very sad.

  "Come now, it happened long ago, and there is no need to cry." When she kept sniffing he pulled her into his lap and stroked her hair. "I did not know you had such a soft heart."

  "I do not think you have any heart at all," she snapped.

  He kissed her forehead, then, still holding her, he stood and began to carry her up the stairs. "I think it is time you were in bed."

  Zared snuggled against him. He was still her enemy, of course, but at the thought of spending the night with him her skin began to tingle. But when they entered the room he kissed her forehead and left her alone.

  She didn't know whether to be glad or enraged. In the end she was just puzzled. She undressed and went to bed and lay awake for a while, thinking about the odd man she was married to. She knew of his idea to keep her a virgin until he could petition the king for an annulment, but how could he keep his word? Her brothers would not have allowed a wife to remain a virgin no matter what the woman said. The more she thought the more puzzled she became. The Howard man was not like any man she had met before.

  She woke to find him sitting in her room, a rose on the pillow beside her. He helped her dress in riding clothes, a shorter skirt with no train, but he did no more than kiss her neck as she held her hair up for him to fasten the ties at the back of the gown.

  They went down the stairs together, and there were horses waiting and servants bearing trays of fresh bread and cheese and goblets of wine. They rode together, and he talked to her not of war or weapons, but of the beauty of the day. He pointed out pretty birds and once even imitated a bird's call.

  They stopped at a lake, and he asked her to go swimming with him. Zared said that she did not like to swim and that she didn't really like the water. She sat under a tree and watched as Tearle stripped down to his loincloth and slowly walked to the water. She looked at him for as long as she liked without his watching her. Over the past few weeks each time she looked at him he seemed to have grown larger. She remembered thinking that he was a puny man, a weak man. There had been that time when she had first met him and thought that he had nearly been killed by a slight knife wound. Then she had thought him to be very weak.

  But she looked at him and saw how broad his shoulders were, how thick the muscles in his legs were. There were scars on his body, scars just as her brothers had, scars made by weapons. She wondered if he had been injured in battle or if all the scars had come from practice or tournaments.

  She leaned back against the tree and watched him swim. It was all a waste of time, of course. She should be training as she usually did, she thought, but then she smiled. Her training had always been to prepare her for fighting the Howards, but she had married a Howard and was watching him swim in a pool.

  He lay on his back in the water, and Zared could not help but notice the deep muscles on his chest. He wasn't as big as her brothers, of course, but he