“It is good to have at least one obedient child.”
“Do you have children?”
He snorted as they began to head back toward the tournament village. “Nay,” he said. “But I know about them.”
“How?”
He was still grinning. “Because between my brother and I, he was your older daughter and I was Ines. One obedient child, one…livelychild.”
Catalina cocked an eyebrow as she readjusted her grip on her daughter. “Is that what they call this?” she said. “Lively?”
Essien simply laughed softly. What had started out as a violent confrontation had turned into something quite the opposite, and he wasn’t hard pressed to admit that he was relieved. He shouldn’t like to have such a lovely lady as an enemy.
Definitely not an enemy.
… but nothing more.
Or so he thought.
CHAPTER THREE
The games thatnight were something to celebrate.
Lioncross Abbey Castle was an enormous bastion located on the Welsh marches, built solid and big, squatting amongst the rolling green hills like a predator ready to pounce. Before Christopher had assumed ownership of the castle, it had belonged to his wife’s family for over one hundred years. The name came from the fact that the castle was built upon an ancient Roman fort, which had become a church, the foundations of which were still visible in the undercroft of the structure. It was surrounded by enormous curtain walls, twenty feet high in places, that neither the Welsh nor any other invading army had ever been able to breach. It was, in fact, an immovable object situated in a bucolic land that seemed to convey peace and serenity far more than it did war and conflict.
Lioncross was a legend as much as its owner.
It was the seat of the Earl of Hereford and Worcester, titles given to Christopher during the reign of Richard the Lionheart—which was a good thing, considering his brother, John, hated the very ground Christopher walked upon. Christopher had been close to Richard and, in fact, had earned the nickname the Lion’s Claw for his unwavering support and duty to the monarch bothin England and in the Holy Land when he had gone on crusade at Richard’s side. He had returned from the Levant and Richard hadn’t, but he was more or less Richard’s will in England in the man’s absence, something that had created a mortal enemy out of John. The relationship between Christopher and John was legendary, something that fortunately did not carry over into John’s son, Henry, who loved Christopher and depended on him greatly.
Therefore, Christopher had kept his lands and his titles throughout the reign of three kings. Ironically, it was John who had given him the massive earldom, hoping to entice the man into supporting him. Christopher was mostly a knight, born and bred to battle, but he had been a hell of a tournament competitor in his day and racked up dozens of wins in both the joust and the mass competition. Over the years, however, it had been rare for him to put on his own tournament, as he simply didn’t have the time to do it, but in this case, the tournament was supposed to be in celebration of his wife’s birthday. At least, that was what he told her, and Dustin had promptly told him that she wanted no part of a bloody tournament and to stop making excuses simply because he wanted to put one on.
He’d put one on, anyway.
Therefore, he stopped telling people that this tournament was a celebration of Lady Hereford’s birthday because every time he said it, she would contradict him, so he was tired of being called out as a liar. Even if itwastrue. Tonight, the feast promised to be the biggest one yet, because several more competitors had arrived due to the fact that the mass competition was in a couple of days. The joust had gone first and there had been seven days of it, the last day and the finals being tomorrow.
There was a lot to celebrate this evening.
The great hall of Lioncross was ablaze with the light of a thousand tapers on this evening, plus the enormous hearth was spitting out so much smoke and heat that no one could get within ten feet of it without risking being roasted alive. It was already half full of competitors and some women, but the truth was that most wives didn’t attend things like this because they could be long, uncomfortable, dull at times, and dangerous at others. Therefore, there were a good deal of single men traveling around in gangs, and Rebecca and four of the wards entrusted to Lady Hereford to train and nurture had set themselves up at the very entry of the hall to cheer, or jeer, the men who came through the door.
They had created quite a spectacle.
If a man were handsome, they would yell and cheer and throw cherries at him, cherries they had stolen from the feasting table from numerous bowls because there had been a bumper cherry crop earlier in the season. Several men had been hit in the arm, shoulder, thigh, or cheek with flying cherries. When they turned angrily to the source, they would see clapping, laughing young women being led by a gleeful redhead. It was difficult to be truly angry at Christopher de Lohr’s delightful daughter, so they simply brushed it off and moved into the hall, away from the flying cherries. But for men who were perhaps not so handsome—or worse, old—the reaction of the women was perhaps more stinging.
The first men who received that kind of treatment were a pair of older brothers from Devon. They didn’t receive cherries thrown at them, but pebbles. Rebecca had a reed from the castle pond, hollow, and she blew hard to shoot the pebbles with great accuracy thanks to older brothers teaching her how to do it. She nearly blinded one of the Devon brothers before they got away from her. Because her mother and father were still in the castle, dressing for the evening, she could get away with such actions,including shooting a very soggy cherry at a knight named Rolf Deinhold and absolutely ruining his pale linen tunic. He was angry about it until Rebecca promised to dance with him later. Then he was willing to let it go.
But others weren’t.
It soon became a spectacle for half the room to watch Rebecca and the young women as they jeered or cheered those entering the hall. Those around the young women began to cheer and jeer along with them. A handsome man would enter and a great chorus of cries would rise up in the hall, or a man considered unhandsome or dirty or slovenly would enter and there would be an entire chorale of catcalls and hisses. It was a competition once again, not on the tournament field this time, but inside the great hall. It went on for about an hour, men entering and dodging either flying fruit or accurate pebbles, until the elite knights began to arrive.
Then the stakes deepened.
William de Wolfe came through first, tall and exceedingly handsome, and Rebecca stood up and clapped loudly, cheering. A few cherries flew from her cohorts, dropping around his feet. William paused at the flying fruit, greatly confused, until he saw who was behind it. He’d had his own round with Rebecca a few days earlier when she tried to flirt with him and he’d politely brushed her off. Therefore, he was on his guard. But Paris entered on William’s heels and instantly, the jeering started because Paris had been something of an arse to Rebecca around the same time she was flirting with William. Therefore, the pebbles started to fly. Paris had no patience for lively young women, and he began picking up handfuls of smashed cherries and pebbles on the hall floor and throwing them back at the women, who screamed and scattered.
The entire room erupted in laughter.
Only Rebecca didn’t think it was so funny. She didn’t like being challenged at her own game. She fired another pebble back at Paris and caught him in the arse. Stinging, he rubbed his bum and shook his fist at her, but she told him that she’d get him into trouble with her father if he didn’t stop harassing her. William pulled him away before there could be more of a confrontation, and that was the end of that.
With Paris gone, Rebecca settled back into her role as judge and jury for the men trickling into the hall. Kieran Hage followed Paris and William, and he was cheered, with a cherry hitting him in the shoulder. He had no idea why, frowning at the lively women, before continuing on. After him came Jonathan de Wolfe.
