Fairest of Them All (Once Upon A Time #3)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

A crisp fanfare rippled through the morning air.

Carey spat out the plume of the feathered quill he was nibbling, his gaze shifting to the castle on the hill. The metallic rumble of the drawbridge being lowered underscored the brassy invitation of the trumpet.

As if drawn by its siren lure, Austyn emerged from their faded tent into the dappled sunshine. Carey promptly sat on his parchment and tucked the quill behind his ear, fully expecting to be chided for not devoting his free time to polishing his master’s chain mail or some other practical task. His first glimpse of Austyn’s face banished all such concerns from his mind and brought him halfway to his feet.

Carey had been dodging retching, moaning Englishmen all morning, men sickened to pale husks of themselves by their overindulgence in ale, wenches, and revelry, but none of them bore the haunted look of the damned as Sir Austyn of Gavenmore did. To Carey’s knowledge, his master had indulged in none of those vices. He had returned early to the tent, declining to discuss the outcome of his quest, and retired without a word. It appeared he had not slept, but had spent the night wrestling demons and losing.

The skin of his brow was pale, his eyes burning hollows. Yet the mouth beneath his dark mustache was set in sullen determination. Carey had seen that particular twist of his lips only once before, when he’d discovered a nine-year-old Austyn struggling to carry his mother’s body down the narrow, winding stairs of Caer Gavenmore without bumping her limp head on the wall.

Carey held his breath without realizing it, anticipating the gruff command to prepare the horses so they could begin the long journey home.

Austyn strode past him without a word, heading toward the castle.

Scrambling to gather ink and parchment, Carey hastened after him, trotting to match his long strides. “We’re staying?” he dared.

Carey’s boldness earned him a brusque nod. “Aye. We can’t keep living as we have forever—riding from tourney to tourney, fighting and clawing for every ounce of English gold they’ll surrender to us. What if I should lose a purse, or worse yet, a limb? What if I were to die on the jousting field? What would happen to Caer Gavenmore then?” He shook his head. “I’ll not leave this place without that dowry. My father has been punished enough by that damned curse. I’ll rot in hell before I’ll see him robbed of his freedom and everything he holds dear.” Austyn’s resolution failed to soften the fierceness of his expression. A twitching acrobat flipped out of his path, forgoing his penny payment to seek less hazardous turf.

The acrobat wasn’t the only one looking askance at Austyn. Their passage among the ranks of the English streaming up the hill earned him more than a few wary stares, nudges, and knowing mutters of “Gavenmore.” The Welsh giant towered head and shoulders over even the tallest of them. His current demeanor only contributed to his air of menace. He looked like a man about to sell his soul to Satan without reaping any of the benefits.

Carey’s curiosity mounted. “Was the lady truly so fair?”

Austyn shuddered, never breaking stride. “’Twas like looking into the face of my own death.”

“Eyes?”

“Two of them. So blue as to be almost violet.”

“Brow?”

“Fair as virgin snow.”

Carey unrolled his parchment, juggling ink and paper. “Nose?”

Austyn lifted a self-conscious finger to his own nose, battered from too many blows taken in a helm. “Straight.”

Drawing the quill from behind his ear, Carey wiped a smudge of ink from his temple before starting to scribble. “Voice?”

“Drizzles over your ears like sun-warmed mead.”

“Oh, that’s good. That’s very good. What of her hair?”

Austyn slipped a hand into his hauberk, drawing forth a sable curl that unrolled past his knees. Carey stopped writing, swallowing hard. “Sweet Christ, Austyn? Did you leave her any?”

Austyn’s glare as he tucked the treasure away prompted Carey to blurt out, “Lips?”

A pained mist captured his master’s eyes. “Soft. Yielding. Made a man want to sink between them and…” His voice faded on a groan.

Carey scribbled madly. This was even better than he had hoped. “Temperament?”

Austyn’s resignation erupted into passion. “Such boldness! Such brazen vanity! Saucy wench hadn’t a morsel of sense. Too foolish to shrink from an armed knight in a deserted garden, yet sniveled like an infant when I laid my blade to her precious hair.”

Carey tucked the quill between his teeth and nibbled thoughtfully. “So you found her distasteful, eh? Perhaps your repugnance will protect you from—”

Austyn’s fist closed in the front of his tunic, driving him back until his shoulders struck a handy oak. Carey quailed before the desperation in his master’s face. “Distasteful? Repugnance? Would to God that it were so! I wanted to drag her to the ground beneath me and plow her like a fallow field. I wanted to drop to my knees, bathe her feet in my kisses and swear her my eternal fealty. I wanted to lock her away so no man but me would ever lay eyes on her again.”

In his friend’s eyes Carey caught a glimpse of the beast Austyn had struggled his entire life to tame. A tremor of foreboding shook him. Ignoring the curious gazes of the passersby, he whispered, “’Tis not too late to turn back.”

Austyn released him, absently smoothing the wrinkle he had made in his tunic. Even as a boy, the weight of responsibility had straightened his shoulders instead of bowing them. “That’s where you’re wrong, lad. ’Twas too late to turn back before I was born.” He squatted to retrieve Carey’s scattered quill and papers, noticing them for the first time. “And what’s this?”

Carey rescued his precious notes, trying not to squirm. He’d been hoping to put off this moment for as long as he dared. “While you were gone last night, I passed the time with some bards brought by their masters from Normandy. It seems the tournament is to commence with a test of chivalry.”

“Chivalry?” Austyn spat out the word like an epithet.

“Aye. After the earl’s daughter opens the tournament with a song, her suitors are to engage in a brief contest of”—he dropped his voice to a mumble—“verse.”

Austyn spun on his heel and marched back toward the tent.

Carey rushed after him. “Don’t be so rash! ’Tis only the earl’s ploy to separate the civilized from any unschooled savages who might attempt to win his daughter.”

Austyn’s long strides did not falter. “Then you can congratulate the man for me. This unschooled savage is going home to Wales. Being damned for all eternity is one thing, but being made an ass of is quite another.”

Carey scampered ahead of him, waving the papers beneath Austyn’s intractable nose. “I’ll not let them make an ass of you. That’s why I’ve been up all night writing these masterful tributes to the lady’s beauty.”

Austyn stopped dead, a scant inch away from trampling his man-at-arms. His nostrils flared like an angry bull’s. “Very well.” He stabbed a finger at the beaming Carey. “But if she dares to laugh at me, I won’t kill her. I’ll kill you.”

Austyn’s hackles prickled as they passed through the inner bailey of Castle Tewksbury to be swallowed by the yawning jaws of the great hall.

The sturdy weight of the hauberk worn beneath his surcoat soothed his raw nerves. He refused to leave his back unguarded in such a mob of armed English. No peace decreed by treaty or surrender could banish the centuries of distrust bred into his Welsh bones.

A retinue of extravagantly garbed knights led by a hooded lord jostled past Carey, sneering at his worn tunic and faded boots. Carey waved a fist at their backs. “Flee my wrath, will you? Be ye knights or damsels?”

Austyn clapped a restraining hand on his man’s shoulder, itching to caress his own sword hilt. He refrained, knowing any hasty flare of his temper might result in bloodshed. Better to save his hostility for the battlefield of the tournament, where he could vent it with honor for a worthy prize.

Provided, of course, that he survived the humiliation of dueling with rhyme instead of steel. A flush of heat crept up the back of his neck as he envisioned the beauty from the garden, her dark head tossed in laughter, her eyes sparkling with merriment at his expense.

He shot Carey a glower, but his efforts were wasted. His man-at-arms was gazing around, as wide-eyed and open-mouthed as if the pearly gates of heaven had parted to grant him entry. Austyn rolled his eyes. Carey was only two summers younger than his own twenty-nine years, but at times Austyn felt decades older.

He resisted his own temptation to gawk. Castle Tewksbury was less a castle than a palace. Instead of a central hearth with a crude smokehole overhead, three pairs of stone-hooded fireplaces flanked the plastered walls. Crushed beneath his boots were not sweet herbs and stale rushes, but luxuriant Turkish rugs. Austyn could remember when Caer Gavenmore had been adorned with such treasures, before his mother died and they’d all been sold off to pay the taxes.

At the far end of the vaulted hall sat a raised dais draped in white samite. Behind the platform, an oriel window sifted the sunlight through panes of colored glass, casting jade and ruby masks over the expectant faces clustered beneath it.

Carey nudged him. “Looks like a bloody cathedral, doesn’t it?”

“Aye.” Austyn nodded grimly, eyeing the virginal hue of the draped dais. “A fitting altar for an angel.”

He could not help but notice that the crafty earl had admitted no women, noble or peasant, into the hall. He doubtlessly wanted every scrap of male attention riveted on the tournament’s prize. Austyn snorted cynically. The precaution was unnecessary. From what he had seen of the earl’s daughter, she embodied the unfulfilled desires of every man born into the world since Adam. With such a glorious Eve displayed before them, any other female present would have paled like the moon before the radiance of the rising sun.

The scarlet curtain draped over the arched doorway at the side of the platform parted. Austyn’s pulse quickened in anticipation even as his gut knotted with dread.

A squat man emerged. Had his saffron-colored surcoat not borne the Tewksbury coat of arms, Austyn might have taken the fellow for one of the mummers. ’Twas incomprehensible to him that the dwarfish creature could have spawned the willowy nymph Austyn had encountered in the garden. The man looked better suited to frolicking beneath a toadstool.

His host’s identity was confirmed by a rousing cheer and a violent press to the fore as the challengers elbowed their way closer to the dais. They gave Austyn a wide enough berth, but he had to reach out and snatch Carey back by his tunic to keep him from being trampled. Austyn was content to linger on the fringes of the crush, knowing he would have a clear enough view over their heads.

Stepping up on the dais, the earl lifted his stubby arms. His hanging sleeves swept open like mink-lined wings. “Welcome! Welcome all to Castle Tewksbury!”

Austyn winced. All the majesty denied the earl in stature had been granted him in voice. Austyn’s head still ached from the blow it had taken the night before and Tewksbury’s bass cracked through it like thunder.

The earl acknowledged the cheering and stamping of feet with a regal nod. “Many of you have traveled far and endured great hardship to accept my invitation this day. Before we commence with the competition, I wish to provide you with a vision of inspiration.”

Excitement rippled through the crowd, borne by whispers and murmurs of “The lady! He shows us the lady!”

Austyn tried to unclench his fists, but found he could not. He only prayed he could stop himself from rushing up on the dais to shield her from the ravenous gazes of the other men. The thought of them leering at her, secretly imagining all the things they hungered to do to her lithe body, all the things he hungered to do…

A tortured groan escaped him. Carey shot him a wary look, his frown deepening as he spotted the beads of sweat Austyn could feel inching down his brow.

“… my wish that you should no longer suffer in suspense,” the earl was saying, his voice little more than a roar of doom in Austyn’s ears. “My beloved daughter has chosen to honor your noble endeavors in song.”

As the earl took a seat on the dais, the clamor of approval that had greeted his proclamation was muted to a reverent hush. Carey bounced up and down on his tiptoes to see over the head of the man in front of him.

Austyn slipped a hand into his hauberk to finger the ethereal softness of his hard-won trophy; the exotic scent of myrrh drifted to his nostrils. The first fey notes of the Welsh lullaby echoed through his pounding head, but he could not have said if they were composed of reality or dream.

The curtain parted.

A woman stepped into view.

Carey tugged his sleeve. His puzzled voice rang like a gong in those first few heartbeats of stunned silence. “Forgive me for asking, sir, but just how dark was it in that garden?”