Chapter Twenty-one
Battles
Talon
“Why so dour, Captain?
’Tis the eve of Christ’s Mass. You should be
celebrating.”
Talon looked up from his fifth cup of
wine. Gertruda, a striking brunette with perceptive brown eyes
wearing a low-cut gown of red velvet, sat down on the couch in the
king’s salon beside him. A few years older than Talon and the widow
of a general he’d served under in Lombardy, she was a favorite of
the queen’s court. She and Talon had celebrated Christ’s Mass
together at court two years ago, and by the look in her eyes and
her suggestive smile, she was inviting him to join her
again.
“Sorry, Gertruda.” Talon
sloshed his wine around his half-empty cup and took another swig.
“Not in the mood.”
Gertruda rose her slim brows high on
her powdered forehead. She laid a pale hand on his sleeve and ran
her long, tapered fingernails from his elbow to his wrist and back
again. “I can change your mood,” she purred. “You know I
can.”
Talon brushed her hand off. “I doubt
it.”
Gertruda eyed him with something akin
to amusement. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
Talon drained the last of his wine.
“Who’s what?”
“Who’s the woman that
causes you to stew in your cups and glower at any other female who
dares come within ten feet of your scowling visage?”
“What makes you think it’s
a woman?” He sat back and crossed his arms across his chest. “Maybe
my favorite horse died.”
She laughed lightly. “Does this horse
have red hair and hazel eyes, whose braid you carry in your
pocket?”
Talon pressed his hand to his breast
pocket, where Lara’s parting gift to him nestled over his heart.
“How’d you know about…” Lara’s name stuck in his throat.
Gertruda smiled, not unkindly. Talon
followed her gaze to where the queen sat surrounded by a gaggle of
women watching him and cackling among themselves.
“The king told the queen
about a certain cook’s lad who was a girl. A young woman who had so
blinded the stout-hearted Captain Guiscard that no other woman need
even try to catch his steely eye.”
“Ah.” Talon cocked a brow
at the queen and her clutch of hens, many of whom had approached
him at one time or another since his arrival in Worms. Gertruda had
simply been the most recent and forthcoming.
“A handsome, virile man in
love with another woman,” she said with a slow, sensuous shrug of
her exposed shoulders, “is a challenge to some women.”
“I’m sure he is,”
Phillipe, who’d been drinking with the king and several other men
across the room only moments before, said from behind the couch.
“But his one wildcat of a woman would happily claw the eyes out of
any other woman brazen enough to go after her man.”
“I see.” Gertruda rose
with a polite smile. “Thank you, for the warning.”
Phillipe nodded as she walked away,
heading straight for the queen, no doubt to impart her new bit of
gossip.
“Keeping your promise to
Lara?” Talon said as Phillipe took the now empty seat beside
him.
“What promise would that
be?”
“No need to play dumb with
me. She told me of the oath she made you swear to her.”
Phillipe’s guileless, well-practiced
smile dropped. “She told you?”
“Of course, she did. Do
you really think she’d keep such a thing from me?”
“No wonder you’ve been
such a dour, grumpy bastard,” Phillipe said. “Brooding on her and
the babe as you have been.”
“Babe?” Talon opened his
mouth to say, though he wasn’t sure any sound actually came out.
“What babe?”
Phillipe’s jaw dropped. “You said you
knew. You said she told you.”
“About your promise to
watch my back. To make sure I made it back to her in one
piece.”
“So you didn’t
know?”
“That she carries my
child?” Talon pinned him with an accusatory glare. “Do you really
think I’d have left her to bring my child into this world unmarried
and alone?”
“No.” Phillipe shook his
head. “I didn’t, I don’t, and I told her as much.”
“Then why?” Talon wanted
nothing more at that moment than to throttle his best friend. “Why
didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t she?”
“She didn’t want to worry
you.” Phillipe took a swig of his drink. “She wanted you
concentrating on keeping your own hide intact, not fretting about
her or the babe.” He threw his hands up, palms out. “Her words, not
mine. I swear on my mother’s grave.” He paled. “Oh, Christ. I’m
sorry. Bad choice of words.”
“Bad choices all around.”
Talon stood and glared around the spinning room until he spied the
door and made for it on legs that felt as if they’d been cut off at
the knees.
***
“This month is almost at
an end,” Phillipe said as Talon turned his back to him and picked
up the Black’s hoof to look at the same shoe he’d already
inspected. “How much longer do you plan on not speaking to
me?”
“Yes.” Talon set the
Black’s hoof down and eyeballed Phillipe. “Likely,
awhile.”
Phillipe laid a hand on Talon’s
shoulder. Talon shrugged it off.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell
you sooner, on my own,” Phillipe said. “But in my defense, it
wasn’t my idea to keep her pregnancy a secret from you. It was
hers. You know how convincing she can be.”
“Hardheaded stubborn’s
more like it,” Talon growled.
“And as smart as she is
stubborn,” Phillipe said.
Talon snorted.
“Right too, as it turns
out.”
Talon scowled. “How so?”
“You’ve done nothing but
fret and brood and snap and snarl at anyone foolhardy enough to
approach you since I gave her secret away, driving yourself crazy
worrying about her and the babe. Driving the rest of us crazy and
walking on eggshells around you.”
“She still should’ve told
me.”
“What would you have done
differently if she had, other than worry sooner?”
“I would’ve married her.
Given our child my name.”
“So, marry her when we get
back. People have short memories for these sorts of transgressions,
especially when they’re righted. Sometimes later rather than
sooner, but righted nonetheless.”
“What if we don’t get
back?” Talon spoke his greatest fear out loud. “How would I right
that?”
“You wouldn’t.” His words
twisted in Talon’s gut. “But she would live knowing you loved her,
that your child was conceived of that love, and God help any fool
who’d dare call her child a bastard and expect to come out of it
unscathed.”
Talon stared down at his scarred palm
and clenched his fist. “I should be there with her, taking care of
her and our unborn babe, not halfway across Gaul, sitting on my ass
waiting to go chase Saxons through frozen marshlands.”
Phillipe let out a wry chuckle. “I’ve
good news, then.” He pulled a parchment out of his tunic pocket and
handed it to Talon. “We march in a month’s time.”
“Good.” Talon patted the
Black’s flank, anxious to shake the rust off the both of them. “The
sooner we get to it, the sooner we get back, the sooner I can claim
my prize.” He grinned for the first time in over a month, thinking
back on a certain conversation between himself and Lara. “An old
jest,” he explained to Phillipe. He glanced at his scarred palm.
“And well worth the price.”
“What price?” Phillipe
asked. “For what prize?”
“My blood and my sword for
Crossroads Keep,” Talon told him. “I’ve decided on it as the land
Charles promised me, once this campaign is over.”
“It is a nice piece of
land,” Phillipe said.
“It is.”
“With a well-built,
comfortable manor house and a stable to rival the
kings.”
“It has.”
“What do you plan to do on
your nice land in your comfortable house?”
“Raise fat babies and
sleek foals.”
“Need a partner? For the
foals, I mean.”
Talon considered it. “The more mares
bought and covered—”
“—the more foals to sell,”
Phillipe finished.
Talon offered Phillipe his hand, and
they shook on it.
“Odds are Anglbert will
want in on it too,” Phillipe said. “The old miser has more coin
saved than the pope and hasn’t quit bemoaning the lack of Berta’s
cooking since we rode out of Oloron.”
“Well then.” Talon shut
the gate to the Black’s stall shut. “Let’s go find Anglbert and
Charles and stake my claim.”
***
Lara
By February, Lara’s belly had stopped
sending back half of what she ate, and by March she was eating
twice what she normally would. By April her belly was noticeably
rounded and the acrobat in her womb was turning somersaults on a
daily basis, and by May, she had no more material in the seams of
her gowns left to let out and had added side-panels of linen from
Sophie’s old gowns to make room for her growing belly.
It was the last market day of May, and
she set her wagon up alongside Willem and Patience’s, laying out
her baskets of herbs and dried flowers, wheels of cheeses, bars of
soaps, and vials of tinctures, including a dozen of Sophie’s love
potions.
“Spring is always a good
time to sell love potions,” she said as Patience eyed the
distinctive vials renown in four provinces. She laid a hand over
her taut belly and grinned as the babe moved under her palm.
“Hopefully, I’ll sell enough of them to buy a bolt of fine linen
from the tinker to start making some baby gowns with. I’ve already
made two dozen absorbing cloths from what’s left of Sofie’s
gowns.”
Patience nodded her approval. “You’ll
need at least six infant gowns,” she said. “One to wear, a clean
one to change into, and four drying on the line at all
times.”
“Lovely.”
Patience was still laughing as a group
of village women walked by and waved, their baskets swinging.
Patience and Lara waved back. Though most of the people had
responded to Lara’s pregnancy as a natural matter, there were some
who turned their noses up at her and whispered behind their hands.
Not that Lara had expected any different.
“How many vials did you
sell Marta?” Patience asked as Marta and Denys strolled past, arm
in arm, gazing at each other as if they were the only two people in
the square.
“None.” Lara gave an
indulgent smile to the young lovers. “She didn’t need any. They
figured it out all by themselves.”
“Aye, once Marta realized
the captain was taken by you, which, by the way, she figured out
much quicker than you did.”
“Everybody figured us out
quicker than I did,” Lara said with a rueful grin. Ravenna sashayed
toward them across the square, her arms linked with the steward
Roumel’s daughters. The same two who’d thought to snare Talon with