The Knight's Conquest Read online

  ‘Oh, Ellie, dearest.’ Jolita placed a comforting arm around her sister’s shoulders and hugged her. ‘I’m sorry. It’s Sir Owain; he’s unsettled you, hasn’t he?’

  Eloise nodded, admitting what she had known since her father had spoken his name. ‘I wish I’d known he was going to be here,’ she whispered. ‘I could have been better prepared. Now he’s aware of my anger and I’d have preferred him to believe that I scarce remember him. Indifference is much harder for a man to bear than anger.’

  ‘You can still show him indifference, Ellie. Ignore him, like you said.’

  The notion was so absurd that both sisters burst into unladylike guffaws that put paid to the tears. ‘I will,’ Eloise insisted, laughing and wiping her cheeks. ‘I will, when he comes galloping up on his great snorting stallion, shaking the ground, I’ll pretend I can’t see or hear him.’ Her voice dropped again. ‘It’s going to be difficult, Jollie, but I’ve made my decision and I shall stick to it. It’s for the best. And anyway, he seemed content to be as discourteous as I was. He took my insults, and I have plenty more for his sort.’

  ‘No, pet. Don’t. You’ll not win. You’ll be hurt.’

  ‘I will win, Jollie. One way or the other, I will.’

  Eloise’s definition of winning was not quite the same as her sister’s, in this context, for the battles raging within were more complex than the mere sparring to which Jolita referred. The idea was ludicrous that a man could re-enter her life at any convenient moment and expect her full co-operation without a hint of reproach. Not only reproach, but resistance.

  As for her being in love with her steward, well, that was the obvious interpretation to be put on an unorthodox alliance. High-born women did not marry their retainers unless there was something unusual involved, like love, for instance, when the matter would be hushed up, for decency’s sake. No, Stephen atte Welle was her choice for no other reason than that she deserved to have a man on whom she could depend utterly, a man who would shield her from other men’s attentions. And her steward was utterly dependable.

  There had been a young lad, a gardener at the lax convent school near Lichfield. She smiled as she remembered. They had had fun, delighting in breaking the bonds of oppressive discipline that threatened to crush their young bones, the frowns, the bells, the rules, the thou-shalt-nots. The idea of running away had occurred to all her friends at various times, but to do it with a young man was an added excitement in a life shorn of any cheer except in talk of what they had done at home, what they would do if they had the chance, what other people did, apparently. The boy had meant nothing to her except as a means of escape. He had been more enthusiastic than adept, and there had been no lovemaking to speak of. The whole thing, taken too seriously by the nuns and her family, had gone disastrously wrong, especially as they had not quite believed the two runaways about the degree of intimacy. Or lack of it. She had had to produce her cloths at her next period, a humiliating come-down from such high jinks. After that, her father had shown an undignified haste to find her a husband, which she had understood, but quietly resented.

  Two betrothals had followed, each one more unsuitable than the other, both of them terminated by unpredictable death, neither of them grieved over. But nor did the experience do anything for her self-confidence.

  Sir Owain had appeared quite suddenly after having served with the king in France, their handsome neighbour unseen by Derbyshire folk except those men like her father who spent time in London. With only a brief meeting to go on, he appeared to be all she had dreamed of and hoped for. And while she had dreamed on, with more substance than before, he had made an offer and then disappeared, leaving her not only puzzled but bitterly hurt and obliged to pretend that it was of no great consequence, especially as Sir Piers Gerrard made an appearance within days of Sir Owain’s sudden departure.

  A personal note to her in his own hand would have done, but apparently he believed that she would be like all his other conquests, bowled over by one look and thereafter his for ever with nothing more to do except to wait. Well, she was bowled over, but not confident enough or tame enough to wait for the next snap of his fingers. The knight would have to work harder for his prize than that.

  Sir Piers, a tempestuous knight, had left her no time to lick her wounds. The negotiations had been summary, the state of her heart not examined too closely, the marriage itself impelled by her family’s relief and by Sir Piers’s urgency that was taken for genuine enthusiasm by his adoptive family. But the hurt that Eloise expected to heal did not, nor was it helped by her new husband’s coarseness, which had been well concealed until then. To her relief, he had not stayed with her long before a sudden departure to London, but long enough for her to see how he spent money lavishly and wildly, how his jousting came before anything else, even her, how his eyes and hands roamed freely over her few women and how variety in everything seemed more important to him than maintaining what he possessed. The rejection which she had already been suffering now intensified under this new affliction, which was not helped by the strangeness of her new home or by the expectations of Sir Piers’s relatives and many living-in guests to whom he gave free hospitality as a manifestation of his munificence.

  If she had wondered at the short duration of her previous liaisons, the news of his sudden death at Windsor on St John’s Eve only established her growing suspicion that three months was to be the extent of her association with any man. And while on the one hand she experienced relief of a personal nature that she would no more have to suffer his vulgarities, this was tinged by an anger that she had consistently been denied a chance at the kind of happiness she dreamed of, and of which she knew herself to be capable. She had glimpsed it, once, briefly, before it disappeared like another dream. She would not give Sir Owain a second opportunity to wound her: better still, if the chance presented itself, she would wound him just as sorely. Meanwhile, she would make her own arrangements for her security and pray that her determination would persuade the king to let her be.

  As for the duration of her next marriage to Master atte Welle, it had occurred to her that the three-month curse might only apply to knights, not to men like Stephen. Only time would tell.

  Chapter Two

  Sir Owain of Whitecliffe was not the only guest at Handes Castle whose company Eloise preferred to evade. Though she and her sister adored each other, there was no such affection from either of them for their elder half-brother Rolph and his sour-faced wife Griselle, a pair they referred to in private as Wrath and Grissle. They were so ill-matched that it became a source of wonder to Eloise and Jolita how they managed to produce a constant stream of infants, a miracle of nature which Lady Griselle lost no opportunity to flaunt before Eloise. The fourth member of the de Molyns’s new brood was due to arrive some time in September, but Griselle’s pregnancy was not enough to prevent the whole family from travelling to Handes with almost their entire household—nurses, tutors and pets—the promise of a week’s hospitality being too good to miss.

  Living only a few miles from Eloise’s home at Haughton Manor, Sir Rolph had offered to accompany her to Derbyshire, but the thought of being cooped up in the company of her brother’s noisy and ill-mannered offspring was unappealing. Nor did she relish the idea of fielding Lady Griselle’s less-than-subtle inquisitions about the state of her finances. So Eloise had travelled in relative peace with her own retinue, sure that it would only be a matter of hours before Rolph came to find her.

  The castle was crammed with guests, and Eloise had expected to put up with some discomfort. Instead, she and her maid Saskia had been allocated the small round chamber at the top of one of the towers that she had occupied before her marriage. From one narrow window she could see the hills and woodland, but the other side gave views of the market square teeming with people, thatched rooftops and, beyond them, the conical tops of the striped canvas pavilions in the field being prepared for the tournament.

  Quietly bustling, the maid shook out garments and pla
ced them over wooden rods to hang in the small garderobe built into the thickness of the wall, and it was during this short period of respite that Sir Rolph de Molyns came to find Eloise soon after his arrival.

  He was breathless and red-faced from the exertion of the steep spiral staircase, and it was on the tip of Eloise’s tongue to remark that this show of unfitness did not bode well for his success in the jousts. But she bit it back, suspecting that Grissle had probably made similar remarks and that, unless his mission had been vital, he would not have scaled these heights.

  True to expectations, his courtesies were barely exchanged before he came straight to the point with no show of finesse. ‘D’ye have it, Eloise? My money?’ He flopped on to the blue gold-starred coverlet of the curtained tester bed that Eloise herself had embroidered as a child. ‘You said you’d—’

  ‘I said I’d look into it, Rolph, but I’ve had problems trying to get my own dues so that I can continue to run the estate. You must forgive me if I’ve been tempted to put my own needs first, on this occasion.’

  Rolph would have been as good-looking as his father but for the permanent expression of discontent. His downturned mouth drooped slightly open with disappointment. ‘But I have more responsibilities than you do, sister, and it’s now years since I expected Piers to repay my loans. You must be near winding up his estate by now.’

  She was, but she had no intention of letting Rolph know how well her lawyers had done on her behalf, for it was their father who had hired and paid them. ‘These affairs can drag on for years, you know. The accountants could find none of the IOUs that you spoke of, nor was I able to find any reference of your loans to Sir Piers.’

  ‘You have my word for it, Eloise. Isn’t that good enough?’

  There was a note of desperation in his voice that made Eloise wonder whether it was at Griselle’s insistence he pursued the matter so relentlessly, or whether the mysterious loans were unknown to her. According to Rolph, they had begun before his marriage and continued until Sir Piers’s death last year. ‘It may be good enough for me, Rolph, but not for the auditors, I fear. Like yours, they wanted an interim statement at the view of account at the beginning of this month, and my bailiff had to be able to show a profit, right down to the string that ties the sacks of flour. They’d not be nearly as understanding as I’d like them to be if I were to tell them of your loans having to be paid back.’

  ‘But that doesn’t come out of the demesne accounts, Eloise, it comes out of Piers’s estate,’ he wailed, running a hand through his sandy hair. ‘Payment of debts is usually one of the first things to be dealt with.’

  ‘Yes, but that is not in my line of duty. I told you that, Rolph. I was not named as one of Sir Piers’s executors, and his family would not allow me to take any part in the execution of his will, even though I was the obvious person to do it. They said we’d not been married long enough to receive my dower, or my legitim which gives me one-third of the goods and chattels at home, and it’s only recently that I’ve been given permission to stay permanently at Haughton.’

  ‘There were other properties to move into.’

  ‘There should have been. His family would not move any of the sitting tenants out, so I had nowhere else to go.’

  ‘And your jointures? You could have sold some of your joint property to pay me back.’ He swung his legs off the bed with a petulant scowl and went to look out of the window, his hand on his forehead.

  As used to his insensitivity as she was, Eloise still found it difficult to keep the sharp edge out of her voice. ‘None of my jointures from Father or from Sir Piers’s father were due to take effect until we’d been married for a year or until our first child was born, Rolph. As you are probably aware, those conditions were not fulfilled.’

  He half-turned, making a gesture with one hand that Eloise took to be either an acknowledgement or an apology. ‘Your dowry, then?’

  Eloise sighed. ‘You might as well know, Rolph, that the cash Father gave me I loaned to Sir Piers to buy a new stallion for breeding and a new suit of jousting armour, among other things. He swore it was a temporary state of affairs, and I too expected to be paid back within the year. I was not. As for the land from my mother that was to form part of my dowry, that’s still hers and won’t be released until she dies which, God willing, will not be for some time yet.’

  His snort of disgust came with a sagging of his shoulders as he leaned back against the tapestried wall from where he regarded Eloise with a mixture of dismay and anger. ‘But you’ve come out of it all right, I see,’ he said, glowering at her.

  ‘You see nothing of the sort, Rolph.’ Eloise’s patience snapped. ‘You see a woman of twenty-three who could have had a bairn by now if you’d kept your interfering nose out of my affairs. It was you, remember, who insisted on Sir Piers’s suit being considered before all others, you who assured Father that you could handle my affairs as well as he while he was at Westminster. It was you who assured Father that Sir Piers was solvent. Wealthy yet thrifty, you said. Well, that was far from accurate, when he’d been borrowing money from you for years to fund his extravagances, his newest armour, more horses, more retainers than Father, almost. Does Father know of your loans? And why did you continue to lend him money when he showed no sign of—?’

  ‘No! Eloise…no!’ Rolph almost leapt away from the wall, his eyes pleading for her silence. ‘Father must not know anything of this. Not a word. Promise me. Promise me, Eloise!’

  His vehemence took her by surprise, and she trod carefully through a mire of inconsistencies. ‘There’s no need for me to tell anyone of your affairs, Rolph. But if I were to begin subscribing money to your loan-fund I’d certainly have to account for it then. Do you really expect me to forfeit some of my dower to refund money that you lent to my spendthrift husband before I married him? Do you? When I’ve had a whole year of wading through lawsuit after lawsuit to claw back what is rightfully mine? Does Griselle approve of your repeated demands, or is she to be kept in the dark, too?’

  Eloise had never known her half-brother look so forlorn and, at that moment, she felt the beginnings of sympathy for his obvious wretchedness. He sat heavily on the bed again and lowered his head into his hands, mumbling through his fingers. ‘If I had my way,’ he said, ‘I’d say no more about it. But it’s Griselle who’s insisting so. It’s her dowry money, you see. She discovered by accident—’

  ‘Accident? How?’

  ‘She agreed that we could sell some of her distant dowry properties to buy other land nearer home. Well, that money had just come through at the beginning of June last year, and Piers came over to Cove Hall just before he returned to London to beg me to let him have the use of it. Griselle overheard me agreeing. She went sky-high…flew into a terrible rage…made me promise not to lend him another penny. Then, when he was killed, she demanded I get it back any way I could.’

  ‘From me.’

  ‘Yes, from you. It’s hell…sheer hell…she never lets the matter rest day or night. If she knew—’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I should never have begun lending him money in the first place.’

  ‘Then why did you? And why didn’t you get receipts?’

  ‘He said it wasn’t necessary among friends.’ He pulled himself up by the bedpost and stood hanging on to it, knowing how unconvincing he sounded. Apart from being neighbours, they had shared little time together.

  ‘Is that why you wanted him to offer for me? Because he was a friend?’ she whispered. ‘You expected something in return?’

  ‘No…well, no. He wanted you, Eloise.’

  ‘No he didn’t, Rolph.’

  ‘Eh?’ He swivelled his head to see her face more clearly.

  ‘He didn’t want me. In the three months of our marriage he spent no more than fifteen days at Haughton Manor, not even enough time to get me with child. So now I’ve decided to take charge of my own life, at last. I’m going to marry Stephen atte Welle, my steward. You’d
best hear that from me rather than from anyone else.’

  His expression of bewilderment slowly gave way to utter desperation, and the explosive ‘Your steward?’ was forced out like an insult. Lurching towards the door, he yanked it open without another word and headed downwards into the darkening stairwell like a man descending into the underworld.

  Saskia emerged from the garderobe where she had been waiting discreetly for Sir Rolph to leave his sister’s chamber, her homely face reflecting nothing of the bitterness she had overheard. The two women had been together for over nine years during which the thirty-eight-year-old maid had come to know almost as much about the de Molyns family as they did themselves. Her devotion to Eloise was absolute.

  Without comment, she began to unplait her mistress’s hair, shaking free the thick auburn silk and enjoying the luxurious sensation rippling through her fingers. She alone was in a position to see what no one else was allowed to see, to handle and care for it as no one else could, and it might have been said that the only thing Saskia did not understand about Eloise was this most recent decision to marry her steward. She had nothing against the man but, practicalities aside, she alone knew the extent of her mistress’s awakening at her first meeting with Sir Owain of Whitecliffe, which had happened with no other, certainly not Master Stephen atte Welle. She began to divide and comb the hair, replaiting it deftly.

  ‘Did I do right, Saskia?’ Eloise whispered.

  ‘Now look, love,’ said the maid, quietly, ‘don’t you start feeling guilty about refusing to hand over what you’ve been fighting for. If it had not been for Sir Crispin’s London lawyers, you’d still be wrangling for every penny. These widows’ cases can go on for years, you know. No one has a right to demand anything from you after that, and if Sir Rolph wants a repayment of loans, he should file a claim with Sir Piers’s executors like all the others have had to do. And if you were to ask me—’ She stopped abruptly.