Chapter One #3
It would have made for great competition.
As Essien mulled over the fact that Hage was out of the competition now, he turned away from Christopher and Alexander, heading back to his brother and their section of the staging area.
They had a big tent set up and a small area beneath a tree where the horses were tethered.
He could see Addax back by the tent now, preparing to inspect his reserve lance that the squires were polishing, when he heard someone calling his name.
Curious, he looked over his right shoulder to see a woman with flaming hair waving at him.
Rebecca de Lohr had made an appearance.
Essien forced a smile, taking a deep breath and hoping her father would see her before she reached him.
Essien had known Rebecca since she was born, but for some reason, she had decided over the past month or so that she was madly in love with him.
He’d never seen her so attentive. In fact, she’d mostly ignored him for her entire life, so the latest surge of attention was both odd and unwelcome.
Here she came, waving her hand at him.
“Essien!” she called, smiling. “I had to come and see for myself if you were injured. Your bout was most exciting!”
Essien came to a halt, sighing with resignation.
Given the fact that she was his liege’s daughter, he couldn’t very well be rude to her.
Rebecca was a beautiful woman with extraordinary coloring—hair like molten metal and eyes the color of storm clouds.
She had a pert little nose and a dusting of freckles across her cheeks, and her beauty was beyond compare.
Even Essien was not hard pressed to admit that.
But she was a child, and he saw her as a child, and he wanted nothing to do with her.
At least, not in that way.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said. “Did you see the entire event or did you cover your eyes up like you did the last time?”
Rebecca laughed. “Did you see that?”
“I did.”
She continued to laugh, and Essien had to admit that it was a charming gesture.
Her two older sisters, Christin and Brielle, were rather serious, accomplished, and skilled women, more mature than most, so Rebecca’s charismatic manner did not follow in line with her mother or her elder sisters.
Not that Lady Hereford or Lady de Sherrington or Lady de Velt were any less charming, but Rebecca had a free manner about her, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
She was sweet and captivating and a bit of a flirt, and she latched on to Essien’s arm before he managed to move out of her range.
“Well, I did not do it the second time,” she assured him. “Es, take me into the vendors’ stalls, will you? I want to buy some sweets.”
He shook his head, resisting the urge to pull his arm away from her warm fingers. “I cannot,” he said. “The next round will probably be starting within the hour and I cannot be off gobbling puddings or pies. Go find someone else to buy you sweets.”
Rebecca was undeterred. “Come with me or I will tell my father.”
“Tell him. I do not care. He will tell you the same thing I just did.”
Her eyes were twinkling mischievously. “Papa?” she called, knowing Christopher was within earshot. “Papa, come immediately. I have been insulted!”
Christopher did indeed hear her. She was hard to miss because of her high-pitched voice. He had been in conversation with Alexander, ignoring Rebecca’s summons, until she turned to him and shouted.
“Do you not care that Essien has horribly offended me?” she demanded. “Come at once. I demand you punish him.”
Christopher sighed heavily before turning to her. “I am glad he offended you,” he said. “You probably deserved it. Now, leave the man alone and go back to the lists. This is no place for you.”
“How cruel you are!”
“Do as I say. Go back to the lists.”
“But I want sweets and Essien will not take me!”
Christopher cocked an eyebrow. “If I come over there, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you back to your mother,” he said. “If that is something you are unconcerned with, then by all means, continue to disobey me.”
“I would be honored to escort your daughter to the sweets vendors, my lord.”
An unexpected offer entered the mix and Christopher turned to see a knight he only vaguely knew.
Lance le Kerque, blond and brawny and handsome, was standing a few feet away.
A former bachelor knight who had spent a good deal of time on the tournament circuit as a competitor known as the King of Pain, Lance had only recently sworn an oath to one of Christopher’s neighbors, an older lord by the name of Harald de Efford, Lord Eckington.
De Efford was in bad health, however, so Christopher was surprised to see the man’s new knight at the tournament and presumably away from his liege.
“Le Kerque?” he said, surprised. “I did not see your name on the rolls. Don’t tell me that your lord accompanied you here?”
Lance nodded. “He did, my lord,” he said. “He sends his greetings.”
Christopher was surprised to hear it. “He must be feeling better, then?”
“He seems to be, my lord,” Land said. “He wanted very much to attend.”
“Are you competing?”
“Tomorrow,” Lance said. “I was supposed to enter the games for the joust, but we came too late for me to be added. I am, however, entered in the mass competition. I was here in the staging area, greeting some friends, when I saw Lady Rebecca. I am happy to escort her if your men are otherwise occupied.”
Christopher looked at the men around him. He only saw men who served him, or his allies, and he had no idea what had happened to Curtis, but he didn’t want to send Rebecca off with a knight he barely knew, even if the man did serve a trusted ally.
“Your offer is kind, but no need,” he said. “Sherry will escort her.”
“Papa!” Rebecca said unhappily. She’d been rather flattered at the handsome knight’s offer, but now it was turning into an embarrassment. “Nay.”
She drew the word out as if implying to him, in one small word, that she truly didn’t want to be seen, yet again, with her sister’s husband.
Alexander seemed to be her escort all too frequently because he was a family member and a father with children of his own, so he tended to be judgmental and protective when it came to his ravishing sister-in-law.
It was like having a personal guard dog, something Rebecca didn’t want.
And Christopher was well aware of it.
“Then you may choose,” he said. “It is either me or Sherry. Those are your choices.”
Rebecca frowned in an expression that looked very much like her mother.
In fact, she had a personality much like her mother’s had been when Christopher first met the lovely Dustin, Lady Hereford.
A spitfire was a fairly apt term. Therefore, when Rebecca turned on her heel and began marching away without either escort, Christopher wasn’t surprised.
With Rebecca, that kind of thing was expected.
But he silently nodded to Alexander, who took the hint and began to follow Rebecca as she stormed off.
De Lohr women were feisty that way.
That left Lance standing there rather awkwardly, since his offer of an escort had been refused. Christopher realized that. Not wanting to offend the knight, he offered a brief explanation.
“She can be difficult to handle even in the best of times,” he said quietly.
“I meant no offense against you, because your offer was kind, but Rebecca is… headstrong. It would be unfair to put you in a situation where she might be unmanageable. At least she has a healthy fear of Sherry and that alone will keep her from running amok.”
Lance understood. Sort of. “Of course, my lord,” he said. “No offense taken.”
“Good,” Christopher said. Then he gestured toward the lists. “Take me to Eckington. I’ve not seen the man in some time and I should like to greet him. This is my tournament, after all. I should like to be a good host.”
“My pleasure, my lord,” Lance said. “At least I shall be able to escort one de Lohr today.”
He grinned as Christopher conceded the point.
As the pair of them headed off toward the lists, that left Essien still standing there, realizing that le Kerque had saved him from the predatory redhead.
Better still, he’d come through it without raising her father’s anger.
It would have been easy to give in to her and become the son-in-law of the great Earl of Hereford and Worcester, but that wasn’t what Essien wanted out of life.
He loved the de Lohr family, so that wasn’t the issue. But settling was. Marriage was.
He didn’t want to do either at the moment.
Out on the tournament field, he noticed that the marshals were preparing another pair of knights, ready to run at one another.
He recognized the colors, as one was a knight from Ludlow and the other was none other than William de Wolfe’s elder brother, Jonathan de Wolfe.
The bout promised to be exciting because Jonathan de Wolfe, or “Wolfie,” as he was known, was as passionate a competitor as his younger brother.
More so, even. The de Wolfe brothers hadn’t gone up against one another in competition yet, but if things progressed the way everyone expected them to, William and Jonathan would go against each other at some point.
And that promised to be quite a match.
“Es!”
Essien was distracted from his observations of the tournament field by a shout, turning around to see Addax trying to catch his attention.
“What is it?” Essien called.
Addax waved him over. “Get over here,” he said. “We’ve another bout later today, brother, and if you do not get over here to inspect your lances, I will damage them and you will fail.”
Essien headed in his brother’s direction, grinning. “It is the only way you will be able to beat me when we go against one another.”
Addax snorted. “That is bold talk coming from a man who still sucks his thumb when he goes to sleep.”