Rexanne Becnel Read Free

shed.
    “The poor lad? If he’s a lad, I’m an infant.”
    “You’re a dwarf, and an ill-tempered one at that,” Tillo snapped.
    “And you’re a grumpy old cripple,” Gandy retorted.
    Linus looked up from his fingers. “Be nice,” he rumbled in his deep, slow voice.
    Rhys pulled his breastplate over his head. There were times, like now, when he regretted the motley group he’d somehow assembled. A foul-mouthed dwarf, saved from the stocks at
Pleshing. A giant, harnessed like a beast of burden, freed from the fields outside Cockermouth. As for Tillo, the old man had been hungry, and once fed, he’d refused to go away. Still, the odd trio was the closest thing Rhys had to a family. When other knights laughed at his strange, bedraggled entourage, he took great pains to defeat the boastful fools in the most humiliating manner possible.
    Ignoring the bickering around him, he spoke to Tillo. “Is there news? You would not have returned so soon if there were not.”
    “News, indeed,” Tillo said, hobbling over to a bench and lowering himself painfully onto it. “Word circulates that the coronation is planned in but a fortnight. All the great lords of the land have been called to attend.”
    “All of them?” Rhys went very still. “The lords of the Welsh marches, as well?”
    “’Tis what I am told. Young Henry wants them all there so that each of them may swear their allegiance to him. Me-thinks this boy king will hold his several kingdoms with a fist of iron: Pray God he will do better by the common folk than did that shiftless Stephen.”
    “He will not do better by my people of Wales,” Rhys muttered. “A weak king allows his wayward barons to ride hard upon the land. A strong one will seek to solidify the gains they have made.” He thrust his hands into the thick leather gloves used for the joust, then reached for his helm. “If I am to move, I must do so now,” he continued more lowly to himself.
    But Gandy had heard and the little man’s eyes danced with excitement. “So we go to Wales, to this Rosecliffe Castle you despise so much?”
    Rhys drew out the long sword from the sheath Linus buckled around his hips and stared at its finely honed edge. “We go to Rosecliffe. But only after I grind every knight in this tournament beneath my heels.
    “Every English knight,” he vowed.

TWO
    ISOLDE WAS MISERABLE. SHE HAD HELD TO HER POSITION AND now she must suffer the consequences. But it was so hard—and so unfair!
    Her father had given her two choices—both equally repugnant. Come to London and formally accept Mortimer Halyard’s offer. Or remain in Wales and thereby insult her future husband and begin her marriage all wrong.
    Despite Isolde’s rages and pleading, her father would not relent. He was adamant that she wed the hapless Mortimer. He’d turned away three good matches already, he reminded her, good men of noble families whom she had disdained. He would not turn away young Halyard and his very powerful father. For the past three days Isolde and her father had barely spoken to one another. Even now she could not believe he would actually go so far as to force her to wed the man.
    Her mother had kept apart from the discussion. Her only advice to Isolde had been that a woman, like a man, must stand by her convictions, no matter the consequences. And so Isolde intended to do.
    “I will take up the veil before I agree to this,” she now declared as her father mounted his favorite steed. She crossed her arms and stared balefully at him. “I mean what I say, Father.”
    He gazed down at her, a muscle ticking in his cheek. “’Tis obedience the church expects of its servants. If you cannot be obedient to your earthly father, ’tis unlikely you’ll be so to your heavenly one.”

    So saying he turned and the party started forward. If it hadn’t been for her mother’s small, encouraging smile, Isolde might have burst into tears, for she hated this estrangement from her father.
    Still, her