The Conquest Read online

  "What others?"

  "The other tournaments you've entered. Have you won all the prizes?"

  Severn looked at his little sister's eager face in the moonlight. He'd never attended a tournament in his life. His youth had been spent fighting the Howards. "Of course not," he said, and he watched Zared's face fall. "Rogan won some of them."

  Zared laughed. "They must be wonderful, with all the men in armor. They must look splendid."

  "No more of that!" Severn commanded. His voice lowered. "How am I to keep you safe and to prevent others from knowing your gender if you look calf-eyes at every strutting ass whose armor catches your eye?"

  "I have more sense than that," she hissed. "I would never—"

  "And what of Ralph?" he asked mockingly. "The poor boy thought he was beginning to lust after my brother."

  "Lust? Are you sure? What did he say?" She stopped at her brother's infuriating chuckle. "His lust is not my concern," she said haughtily. "He is naught to me."

  "Umm hmm," Severn said smugly. "You are to behave at this tournament. Do not make a fool of yourself, and do not dishonor the Peregrine name."

  "You honor our name on the fields, and I will do my part," she said, a bit angry that he'd think her capable of dishonoring their family name, but then she relaxed. "Tell me of a tournament. Are there many people there? Liana said the people wear beautiful clothes, that even the horses are garbed most wonderfully. Perhaps we should have taken the garments she had made for us."

  "Ha!" Severn said. When Liana had shown him an embroidered cloth that his horse was to wear he'd scoffed at her. What did it matter what a man wore when he fought? What was important was whether he knocked his opponent to the ground or not. "I want them to see me, not my horse," he'd told Liana, and he walked away. He wasn't going to let a woman tell him how to dress, nor was he going to let her know he had no idea what a knight wore to a tournament. And he wasn't going to let his little sister see his ignorance.

  "The men who can't fight need to dress up their horses," Severn said firmly. "I do not need to wear cloth of gold to make me a man." He took a breath and expanded his chest. "It is my experience that the better a fighter a man is, the less he has to dress as a peacock to impress others."

  Zared was thoughtful for a moment. She was sure her big brother was right—Severn and Rogan seemed to be right about most things—but there was still doubt in her mind. "If the other men's horses are dressed, will not the Peregrine horses look plain?"

  This had crossed Severn's mind, too, and a couple of times on the journey he'd wished he had taken the pretty garments Liana had offered him. The helmet with the plume on it or that black velvet cloak might have looked good on him. He caught himself. No, he thought, he was a fighter, not some London playactor.

  "The Peregrines will stand out as a haunch of beef on a table loaded with fancy sweets." He smiled as he said that, liking the image. "You will see, people will remember the Peregrines."

  Zared smiled in the darkness. "We need only Hugh Marshall to remember us so he will award you his rich daughter. Do you think your wife will be like Rogan's?" Her voice was hopeful, for she liked Liana very much and especially liked all the things she'd done to horrible old Moray castle in the past two years.

  Severn grimaced at his sister's words, for he hated what Liana had done to his older brother. He didn't like the way marriage had changed Rogan, the way it had softened him. Before marriage Rogan had been a man of fire, a man ready to fight, but since then he constantly preached caution. Instead of fighting he'd rather sit with his wife and listen to ladies singing. Now he found more pleasure in his little son's first steps than he did in training. Severn was sure that someday the Howards were going to attack and kill them all while Rogan was tickling his wife.

  "My wife will not be like Rogan's!" Severn snapped. "Now let me go to sleep, and no more of your foolish questions. You'll find out what a tournament is like when we get there."

  Zared didn't ask him any more questions, but it was a long time before she could go to sleep.

  The next day she stood watching the men pushing at the mud-jammed cart. They traveled with four knights, and four servants to do the mundane work, and two big carts full of armor and weapons and a couple of tents. Grazing under trees were Severn's precious warhorses, as well as the riding horses and the nags to pull the carts.

  Severn and the men had been working for an hour to clear the carts, and Zared watched them impatiently. They were very near the Marshall estate, and she was eager to get there and set up their tents. During the three days of the tournament all food was to be provided by Hugh Marshall. In the morning the procession would be held, and all the knights would ride their splendid horses before the stands to greet Hugh Marshall and his daughters.

  Zared wondered what the Lady Anne was like and how she would fit in with Rogan and his wife. It never crossed Zared's mind that Severn would fail to win Lady Anne's hand. She believed that whatever her brother wanted, he would get.

  Zared was the first to hear the rider approaching. She knew what she had to do. She gave a low, piercing whistle to Severn as she ran for a nearby tree. Grabbing the lowest branch, she swung herself upward.

  Sometimes it annoyed her that her brothers made her hide at the least sign of danger, but after her recent encounter with the Howards she was not about to be disobedient.

  Zared was high off the ground by the time the rider came by, and she gave a look of disgust to see some fool of a lady tearing below her. She'd lost the reins to the horse and was hanging on for all she was worth. Zared would have climbed down, but she didn't dare until Severn had called that it was safe.

  She looked through the branches at Severn and the men, swords drawn, ready to fight.

  Severn was muddy from head to foot, but Zared could see the way he looked at the approaching woman. That idiotic look he wore could only mean that the woman was pretty. She rolled her eyes, thinking she'd probably be up in the tree all afternoon while Severn wooed the woman.

  Zared watched without much interest as Severn ran straight at the horse. The horse reared, but Severn ducked the hooves to catch the reins.

  "He'll be killed!"

  Zared was so startled at the sudden voice from beneath her that she almost fell from her perch in the tree. Below her were three ladies and two men, all dressed in velvets and furs. She had been watching Severn so intently that she hadn't heard them approach, and she cursed her lack of wariness.

  "What does it matter?" one of the men said. "He's only some farmer."

  The other man turned. "His death will matter very much if…" He paused. "If my lady's gown is splattered with blood." They all laughed.

  Before she thought, Zared slipped the knife from her boot and prepared to jump. Some tiny bit of common sense stayed her. She sat rigidly and glared down at the people, trying to see their faces and memorize them.

  "Oh, look," one of the women said, "he has caught the reins. He's braver than any farmer I have seen. Do you think Lady Anne will reward him?"

  Zared looked through the leaves to the woman on the horse, but her back was to her. Severn's face looked even stupider than it had a moment before, so she guessed this Lady Anne was quite something to look at. She wished her brother's face didn't have quite so much mud on it because, from the way Lady Anne was leaning away from him, she didn't seem to find Severn exactly appealing.

  "Thank you," Zared heard Lady Anne say.

  "It was a pleasure to save such a beautiful neck."

  "Why, the insolent dog!" the man below said. "I'll teach him—"

  "He doesn't look as though he'd take kindly to a whipping, and have you not noticed those four buffoons lurking in the trees?" the other man said.

  Buffoons! Zared thought. She very much hoped the soft-spined men would face Severn on the tourney field the next day. They would find out he was no farmer!

  "Come to me on the morrow at the tournament, and I will reward you," Lady Anne said.

  "I shall