Silent Knight. Tori Phillips

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СКАЧАТЬ her palm across her aunt’s brow, as if she could wipe away both the pain and the ceaseless rain. “Hush, sweet darling. Save your strength. Pierre will return soon.”

      “Ha! When the devil speaks the truth!” Moaning softly, Marguerite closed her eyes.

      Celeste cast an anxious glance at Gaston. Raindrops hung on his bushy eyebrows and dripped from his salt-and-pepper beard. He gave her the ghost of a rueful smile. “It will take more than an upset cart to silence Marguerite de la Columbiare. Wipe away your fear, my lady.” The old soldier squeezed her shoulder, then renewed his fierce exhortations to his laboring men.

      Thank the good Lord her father had sent Gaston with her when Celeste and Marguerite left their chateau, L’Étoile, two months ago! Two months? Nay, it seemed like two years, and the journey to her unknown bridegroom was only half-over. Celeste pulled the cloak closer over Marguerite, trying to block the worst of the storm. Gruff Gaston had been her father’s faithful sergeant during his youthful campaigns. Now he served his master’s youngest daughter with equal devotion. Celeste promised herself to commend Gaston’s steadfastness to her parents as soon as she was safely at Snape Castle—wherever in this wretched land that odd-sounding place was.

      “By the holy cross, it is about time!” Gaston bellowed. “Take heart, my lady. Pierre returns, and brings help, as well!”

      Shaking the rain out of her eyes and the heaviness from her heart, Celeste peered through the gathering gloom. Pierre rode Black Devil as if the true fiend of hell were after him. Behind the boy, she could make out a number of figures, accompanied by a two-wheeled cart. Knights, come to aid two ladies in distress!

      “Praise be to the guardian angels,” Pierre panted as he reined the great stallion to a halt. “There is a small monastery ahead, full of good brothers. And they speak a passable French. Look you, Lady Celeste. They come.”

      Out of the rain, a half-dozen men dressed in the simple brown woolen robes of the Franciscans hurried toward them. The creak of their cart’s wheels made welcome music to Celeste’s ears, though the plain-garbed monks were a far cry from her knight-filled fantasy. Without pausing, the new arrivals leapt into the ditch and took hold of the wagon. Celeste saw their bare feet, shod only in open sandals, sink into the clammy muck.

      One, taller by a head than the rest, shouted a quick command in English, and then everyone heaved against the wagon together. Miraculously, the cumbersome vehicle lifted away from Aunt Marguerite’s body. With the groaning of splintered wood and the creaking of the wet leather springs, the heavy conveyance regained the roadbed once more, where it came to rest in a woefully canted position.

      “Peace be with you, my lady.” A gentle voice, warm as summer honey, spoke flawless French in Celeste’s ear. “Let me tend to your companion and ease her suffering.”

      Celeste looked up at the speaker, then gasped when she beheld him. The tall blond monk had the shining face of the archangel Gabriel himself!

      

      Guy Cavendish had seen many pretty women in his twenty-eight years, but never one whose eyes flashed the color of purple violets in springtime and whose midnight black hair blew in a silken cloud about her. A hot stirring fluttered below his knotted rope belt. He clamped his teeth tightly together. Jesu! The girl was temptation incarnate—the very thing he had renounced when he entered Saint Hugh’s Priory six months ago and pledged himself to a life of poverty, obedience and chastity—especially chastity.

      Her eyes widened with that old familiar look of awe that he hated to see on anyone’s face. Guy ducked his head lower, hiding from the lady’s glassy-eyed expression. By the Book! When would people—especially women—cease to stare at him like that? All his life, the word beautiful shadowed Guy. Though his body had shot up to six and a half feet, filling out at the proper time into a man’s form, his face had never roughened as his brother’s did, but had retained the look that his old nurse once told him reminded her of the stained-glass windows in York Minster. Guy’s blond curls had not darkened to brown, as Brandon’s had done. Despite the bald patch in his novice’s tonsure, his short hair fell about his face in a bright golden halo, which only accentuated the deep blue of his eyes.

      Disgusted by his unwanted beauty, he had thrown himself into the harsh training of warfare. The years of riding at the quintain and wielding a heavy two-edged sword had not marred his cursed looks, but instead, hardened his muscles and broadened his shoulders so that men held him in respect and women openly admired him.

      Singly and in battalions, ladies at the king’s court had sighed at his beauty, fought for his attention at tournaments and boldly proffered their own special favors in return. Being a mere mortal, without saintly pretensions, Guy had taken what was so enthusiastically offered. But in the secret hours of the night he had wondered if the lady who slept beside him would have been so generous if he was less comely.

      As his hands gently probed through the soaked velvet gown of the semiconscious woman, Guy strove to ignore the disturbing feminine presence only a whisper away from him. The injured lady cried sharply when he touched her left hip.

      “Softly, good mother,” he murmured as his fingers continued their necessary search. He felt her stiffen as his hand hovered over her thigh. “I will be gentle. You will feel better anon, I promise.”

      The old lady’s eyelids fluttered open. “I am in torment!” she groaned. Then she got a good look at him, and her mouth dropped open. “Sweet Saint Michael! Am I in paradise already?”

      Guy sighed softly to himself. “Nay, good lady, unless you call a foul mud hole heaven.”

      The woman surprised him by giving a weak chuckle. “Would that I were twenty years younger and not so sore in body. I’d make a heaven of any spot on earth, if you were there to share it with me.”

      The lady of the violet eyes gasped. “Hush, Aunt! You are speaking to a priest. Pay her no mind, Father. I fear my aunt’s tongue runs faster than her wits. It is the pain that makes her prattle, n’est-ce pas?”

      Reluctantly Guy allowed his gaze to light upon the speaker. A mistake of the first order! He felt as if a dart from a crossbow had shot through him, rendering him speechless.

      “A priest! Quel dommage! Such a pity, eh, Lissa? Did the maidens tie black ribbons in their hair when you professed your vows, handsome Father?” The aunt’s eyes twinkled with faint merriment before they closed against another wave of pain.

      Despite being the subject of this uncomfortable conversation, Guy allowed a faint grin to touch his lips. “As to that, I know not, my lady, though my mother cried and wondered what she had done wrong in my upbringing.”

      “I daresay she did right well,” murmured the aunt before lapsing into a faint.

      “Oh, please, don’t let her die,” the younger woman begged, her purple irises shimmering in the raindrops.

      “She’ll not die—not this day, at least.” As he spoke, Guy removed the rope from around his waist and used it to lash the aunt’s lower extremities together. “She has merely fainted, which is a blessing. The trip back to the monastery would be an agony, were she awake.” Averting his eyes from the young lady, Guy called in English to one of his fellow novices.

      “Brother Thomas! Your strong arm is needed here. The old woman has broken a bone or two and must be gently carried.”

      “Aye!” The younger monk, little more than a boy and robust in nature, slipped through the mud at Guy’s command.

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