Velvet Song Read online

  There were so many questions Alyx wanted to ask, but she had no idea where to start. Her emotions showed on her face.

  “You’ll have to come,” Stephen smiled, kissed her cheek and disappeared into the trees, the short plaid swirling about his thighs.

  What followed for Alyx were three days of relative peace. Raine seemed to grow an attachment for the crippled Brian and was impressed by Brian’s eagerness to learn.

  “The hate is eating him,” Raine said as he and Alyx lay in bed. “He thinks that if he trains hard enough he’ll be able to fight his brother, but Roger is formidable. He would slay Brian in one thrust.”

  “Brother against brother,” Alyx whispered and shuddered.

  Alyx felt sorry for Brian, who slept apart from the people of the camp.

  “I don’t trust him,” Joan said. “He says too little and he has nothing to do with anyone.”

  “He’s been hurt. He’ll get over it,” Alyx defended the boy.

  “He’s planning something. He’s been gathering the down from thistles and yesterday he paid a man to send a message to someone.”

  “To whom?” Alyx demanded, immediately concerned. Perhaps Brian was actually loyal to his brother and was planning to lead Roger Chatworth to Raine, or worse, to send the King’s men in.

  “I don’t know who it went to.”

  “We must tell Raine,” Alyx said, grabbing her maid’s wrist and dragging her toward the training area.

  “I know of the message,” Raine said when Alyx told him. “Brian wishes to find out the condition of his sister.”

  “Have you had a reply?”

  Raine jabbed a sword at a quintain. “My little brother’s seed has taken and Lady Elizabeth carries his child.”

  Alyx thought of the lovely Elizabeth—and her sharp tongue. “She’ll not like that. She’ll not like any man taking her to bed, then discarding her.”

  Raine gave her a hard look. “You seem to give my brother all the credit. Perhaps this Elizabeth is a wayward wench and seduced my brother. Then, when he loved her, she left him. If Chatworth struck Miles, it would seem that Miles fought to keep the woman.”

  “Perhaps, but Miles—” She broke off at the sound of trumpets in the distance. “What is it?”

  Raine turned to some ex-soldiers near him. “Find out what that is.”

  Within seconds, the men were on their horses and away into the forest. Long minutes later, they returned. “Roger Chatworth is accepting your challenge, my lord.”

  “Raine!” Alyx bellowed at him.

  After one quelling look, he ignored her. “I have issued no challenge. Perhaps Chatworth means to make the first move.”

  “No, my lord. He—”

  “I sent the challenge,” Brian Chatworth said from behind them and they all turned. “I knew my brother would not respond to a challenge from me, so I sent it in the name of Raine Montgomery.”

  “You can just go and tell him what you’ve done,” Alyx said, as if talking to a child.

  In the distance, the trumpets sounded again.

  “Go now,” Alyx said, “and explain.”

  “Alyx,” Raine said in a low voice. “Go to the tent. This is not business for women.”

  She looked up at him, still bruised from Stephen’s beating, and what she saw there frightened her. “Raine, you can’t be thinking of accepting the challenge? You didn’t issue it. You surely have more sense than to—”

  “Jocelin,” Raine ordered. “Take Alyx away.”

  Alyx waited for her husband inside the tent, pacing back and forth, snapping at Joan until the maid left her.

  When Raine finally appeared and their eyes met, Alyx gasped. “No, Raine,” she said, wrapping her arms around his middle. “It wasn’t you who made the challenge.”

  He pulled her away from him, his hands on her arms. “You must understand that it’s a matter of honor and it’s been a long time coming. When Chatworth is dead, perhaps then my family can live in peace again. If I don’t kill him now he’ll go after Miles for impregnating his sister. He swears Miles took her by force.”

  “Let Miles fight Chatworth!” Alyx yelled. “I don’t care. Let all your brothers fight, but not you.”

  “Alyx,” Raine said gently. “I realize you’re a woman and more, you haven’t been raised to our ways of honor, but now I must ask you not to insult me more. Help me dress.”

  “Help you! Honor! How can you talk to me of such things? What do I care for honor when the man I love may die? I have fought long and hard to keep you safe, but now because of some foolish games of a boy you must pay the price. Let Brian fight his brother.”

  Color was rising in Raine’s neck. “Brian is no match for Roger Chatworth. And it’s the Montgomery family who has been insulted. Do you forget my sister who died because of what Chatworth did to her? I don’t fight for Brian but for Mary and for Miles and for future peace.”

  She dropped to her knees in front of Raine as he sat on the edge of the cot. “Please don’t go. If you aren’t killed, you’ll be hurt badly.”

  “Alyx.” He nearly smiled at her as he touched her hair. “Perhaps you don’t know, but the estates I have I purchased with money I’d won in years of tournaments. I’ve been through hundreds of these challenges.”

  “No,” she said with feeling. “Not like this one. The hatred that you and Chatworth have for each other wasn’t involved in those fights. Please, Raine.”

  He stood. “I’ll listen to no more. Now, will you help me arm myself or must I get Jocelin?”

  She also stood. “You ask me to help prepare you for your death? Should I be the dutiful wife and murmur soft words about honor? Or should I talk of Mary and how she died and add fuel to your hate? If Mary were alive would she want you to fight for her? Wasn’t her whole life an attempt at peacemaking?”

  “I don’t want us to part with angry words between us. This is something I must do.”

  She was so angry she was shaking. “If we part now as you walk off to answer a challenge that wasn’t made by you, then it will be with angry words—and it will be final.”

  Their eyes held each other’s for a long while.

  “Think carefully on what you say,” Raine said quietly. “We’ve quarrelled before over this matter.”

  “Raine, can’t you see how this hatred is eating at you? Even Stephen saw how it had changed you. Forget Roger Chatworth. Go to the King, beg his forgiveness and let us live, not this constant talk of death and dying.”

  “I am a knight. I am sworn to avenge wrongs.”

  “Then do something about the Enclosure Acts!” she screamed. “They’re wrong. But cease this hideous feud with Roger Chatworth. His sister will bear a Montgomery. A new life for Mary’s. What more could you want?”

  Outside, the trumpets sounded, and the noise went through Alyx.

  “I must dress,” Raine said. “Will you help me?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “I cannot.”

  “So be it,” he whispered. With one last look at her, he turned toward his armor.

  “You are choosing between me and Roger Chatworth today,” she said.

  He didn’t answer her but kept at his armor. Alyx left the tent.

  “Go to him, Jocelin,” she said once she was outside. To Joan, she said, “Come, we must pack. I’m going home to my daughter.”

  Alyx had every intention of being out of the forest before any fighting began. Of course Raine could win, she thought, but could she stand by and watch bits and pieces hacked off him? She was sure Roger Chatworth would be as filled with hatred as Raine was.

  It was two hours before she heard the first sounds of steel against steel as they echoed through the forest. Slowly, she dropped the gown she was folding and left her tent. Whatever he did, whoever he fought, for whatever reason, he was hers.

  She was almost to the clearing where the men fought when Joan stopped her.

  “Don’t look,” Joan said. “Chatworth is merciless.”

  Alyx