Knights Read Free Page B

things were Gloriana’s, for Cyrus the wool merchant and his wife, Edwenna, had perished a twelve-month before, when afever swept through London Town. Their legacy was extensive.
    Edward caught up just as she was urging the pony through the narrow passage.
    “Blast it,” he fumed, “this gate should have been sealed
years
ago. Suppose our enemies were to learn of it!” ’
    “They would surely pass through,” Gloriana said, in a tone full of dark and dire portent, “and skewer us all with their swords!” Leaving Edward to close the postern, she crossed the overgrown garden where she had played so happily as a little girl, when she and Edwenna were down from London Town, and hurried through the village proper. As she mounted the drawbridge, the first of Kenbrook’s men were arriving at the inn, abandoning their horses in the dooryard and brawling among themselves as they made for that establishment, where passable wine and ale could be had.
    “No control over his own men,” grumbled Edward, who had caught up with Gloriana by then. “That’s Dane for you.”
    Intent on a bath and fresh clothing, Gloriana ignored the comment and galloped past smiling guards into the third and outermost bailey. At last, at last, Kenbrook was home. Gloriana, now twenty, had begun to fear, secretly of course, that she would be too old to bear children by the time her husband returned from his travels. She’d had nightmares in which she was a shriveled crone, grown over with warts like a garden taken by weeds, when Dane St. Gregory finally came back to England to claim his bride.
    Her heart hammering with a mingling of panic and glorious anticipation, Gloriana crossed the middle and innermost baileys and was off her horse and runningtoward a side entrance to Hadleigh Castle in almost the same motion. She streaked across the great hall—the stone floor was bare of rushes and servants were sweeping and scrubbing—and along the broad passage leading to her private quarters, a sumptuous apartment that had once belonged to Lady Elaina, the absent mistress of the household.
    Along the way, Gloriana collided with Gareth, her elder brother-in-law and master of Hadleigh Castle, for his private chambers lay in that direction. He laughed and grasped her upper arms to steady her.
    “Does the devil pursue you?” he teased. “You flee as if he does.”
    “Dane has come back!” Gloriana sputtered. Beyond, Edward could be heard, bursting into the great hall. There was a clatter, and one of the servants berated him good-naturedly for overturning her scrubbing pail. “I can’t let Lord Kenbrook see me like this!”
    Gareth’s blue eyes twinkled. He resembled Dane in some ways, even though he was almost twenty years older and neither so tall nor so broad in the shoulders, and his hair, while thick and fair, had darkened to a butternut color. “Dane has come home at last? A surfeit of good news. No doubt my brother is hungry for the sight of his bride—as well he should be after so much time has passed. My guess is, he will not care overmuch if said wife looks rather more like a wood nymph than a baroness.”
    Gloriana pulled free of Gareth’s grasp, with a murmured and quite incoherent apology, and fled down the passage and into her own apartments. There, she flung herself into the process of hasty transformation.
    * * *
    In the courtyard of Hadleigh Castle, Dane dismounted and then helped Mariette down from her horse. His hands nearly spanned her waist, and it seemed that she weighed no more than the goose he’d bought at Christmas as a gift for his men. For a moment it troubled him that she was so small; even stout women ofttimes perished while giving birth to a child; the last Lady Hadleigh had died whilst bearing Edward. What chance had a creature as fragile as Mariette, when St. Gregory sons were known for their great size?
    It seemed, just briefly, that a cloud passed over the sun, blotting out its light.
    Dane spoke to Fabrienne, in