He dismounted some distance from the place where he first met Jura and walked silently through the darkness. Already he could hear voices raised in anger. He walked closer until he could hear them.
“You lied to me, Jura,” Daire was saying. “How many times did you meet with him in secret? He told me of how you ran to him.”
“I did not,” Jura said, and her voice was strained as if she were repressing tears. “I met him twice by accident and once he tricked me into meeting him. I never wanted to see him. You know how I’ve always hated him. He does not belong in Lanconia. Geralt should be king. He has no right—”
“It seems he has every right now,” Daire spat at her. “He has the right to touch you, to hold you. Is that why you trained so hard, competed so hard? So you could win him and share his bed? Does your lust rule your head as well as your body? Will you pant after him day and night and forget about your people? Will you betray us because of your lust?”
“No!” Jura screamed. “I am no traitor. I do not lust after him.” She was lying and she knew it, but she couldn’t bear to lose this man who had been her friend for so many years. He used to hide her and lie to Thal about her whereabouts when Thal was angry with her. “He attacks me. I have never invited his touch.”
“Ha! Will you say that tonight when he beds you?”
“I wish to God I did not have to bed him,” Jura said.
“You shall have your wish,” Rowan said, his voice full of controlled fury as he stepped from the shadows and into the moonlight. He drew his sword. “And you,” he said to Daire, “shall die for touching my wife.”
Daire drew his own sword.
“No!” Jura screamed, and threw herself on Rowan. “Do not hurt him. I will do whatever you want.”
Rowan snarled at her. “I want nothing from you.” He pushed her aside as if she were an annoying insect, and Jura landed a couple of feet away in the damp grass.
She watched the men circle one another and wished for a way to stop them. She drew her knife, planning to step between them when a big hand clamped onto her shoulder and made her remain seated. She looked up to see Xante.
Quite calmly, Xante stepped between the men, facing Rowan. “You have the right to take this man’s life, my lord,” Xante said, “but I beg that you do not. Today he lost his betrothed and he has lost her abruptly and publicly.”
“There is more to it than that,” Rowan snapped. “Out of my way.”
“No, sire, there is not,” Xante said, not moving. “There is no treachery. Merely two hot young bucks fighting over a female.”
Quite suddenly Rowan became aware of what he was doing. He was acting like Feilan always feared he would. He was behaving like an emotional Englishman and not a Lanconian. At all costs he must control himself. The scar on the back of his leg twitched and hurt almost as much as it had the day his tutor had branded him. He straightened and sheathed his sword. “You are right, Xante. Daire, the woman is yours. I will not force myself on her. Take her.”
The three of them did not move as Rowan turned back toward his horse.
Xante recovered first. “She is your wife, my lord. You cannot discard her so easily. The people would be so angered they—”
“Damn the people!” Rowan shouted. “The woman hates me. I cannot take a wife like that. Tell the people that the last match was not fair. I will marry Cilean. Tell them anything.”
“And I will be the first to escort you to the border,” Xante bellowed. “You do not come here with your English ways and spit on us. You wanted the woman; you wanted the Honorium, and now, by God, you will choose England or Lanconia. Either your English ways or our Lanconian ways. You discard the woman and you lose the kingship.”
Rowan knew what he was saying was true. But to live with a woman who hated him. A woman who found his touch foul and disgusting. A woman who prayed she wouldn’t have to bed him.
Rowan clenched his teeth. “I will take her but, before God, I’ll not touch her until she begs me to do so.”
Before another word could be spoken, the sound of horses interrupted them. It was Geralt, his dark face almost invisible in the dim moonlight.
Geralt glared at Rowan. “Our father is dead,” he said, and reined his horse away and rode back to Escalon.
Rowan did not look at any of the people around him but made his way back to his horse. He was king now. King of a people who didn’t want him; husband of a woman who didn’t want him.
Chapter Seven
JURA LEANED AGAINST a tree, her ribs heaving from her run. It had been a week since Thal’s death and, except for the burial ceremony, she had not left the women’s field. Over Thal’s deep grave she had looked up to see the man who was her husband glaring at her, but he had quickly turned away.
Turned away, she thought with anger, that’s how everyone was reacting to her. The guardswomen looked at her with hooded eyes and their whispering stopped when she approached. Three days after the Honorium the trainees stopped obeying her. Onora, a high-tempered, vain girl who dreamed of commanding the guard and who had fought very hard to win Rowan, had sneered at Jura with contempt and said that she had been discarded by the king, so why should they give her their respect? Jura had been faced with ten young recruits, each staring at her with defiance.
Her impulse had been to pull a knife on Onora but Jura was not stupid enough to pit herself against ten strong women. With as much dignity as she could muster, she had turned and left the field.
There seemed to be no one on her side. The guardswomen believed she had lied about not wanting to win and had deliberately knocked Cilean down. As for Cilean, she lay in her chamber, her body slowly healing, and refused to see Jura.
Now, as Jura leaned against the tree, she knew she hated this Rowan who called himself king.
Her anger was so great that at first she didn’t hear the approaching footsteps. The man was almost upon her before she drew her knife. It was one of the English knights who had accompanied her enemy from England.
“Put that away,” he snapped. He was a young man, dressed in the long robes of the English, and he was scowling at her. “My lord bids you come.”
“I do not obey him,” Jura said, her knife at the ready.
The man took a step toward her. “Go ahead and threaten me. I’d love to remove a little of your hide. I don’t have much use for your people and even less for you.”
“Neile!” said a deep voice to Jura’s left.
She turned, knife ready, toward the voice. Another English knight stood there, an older man, or at least he looked older, since there was a scar across the part in his hair and the hair had grown white there.
This man turned toward Jura. “My lady—” He stopped in anger at the snort from the other knight. “King Rowan wishes you to come to him.”
“I have work to do here,” Jura said.
“You bitch!” the younger knight, Neile, said, and took a step toward her.
The older man stepped forward. “It is not a request. Please come with me.”
Jura saw the warning in his eyes, letting her know that there would be consequences if she did not go with him. She knew the time had come to pay for her crime of winning the Honorium. She sheathed her knife. “I am ready.”
She followed the older knight, the younger one behind her, to the edge of the forest. A saddled horse waited for her and a pack animal was loaded with what she recognized as her meager belongings. She did not comment on their presumption but rode with the two men toward Escalon.
She had been isolated since her marriage and had no idea how the Irial people had reacted to the separation of her and Rowan, but the people soon let her know. They laughed as she rode by and called her the Maiden Queen. They loved the idea of this beautiful young woman, who so many had lusted after, being rejected by the king.
Jura held her head high as they rode into the walled city then through the inner walls to Thal’s castle. Inside, the castle was much cleaner than when Jura had lived there an
d she snorted in contempt. Such a waste of time on frivolities.
The English knight opened a door to a room that Jura knew well. Thal had used this room for planning his war strategies. She walked inside and the door closed behind her. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness.
Rowan sat at one end of the room, the lack of light making his hair appear dark. “You may sit,” he said.
“I will stand,” she answered.
She could feel his anger, but it was no stronger than her own.
“We must talk,” he said through his teeth.
“I have nothing to say that has not been said,” she answered.
“Damn you,” he raged. “This is your fault for enticing me to believe you wanted me.”
For all the man looked nothing like Thal, he sounded like him. Thal never believed any wrong had been caused by him but was always others’ fault. “One does not confuse lust with wanting marriage,” she said calmly. “I may lust after a well-formed blacksmith but I would not wish to marry him.”
“I am your king, not a blacksmith.”
She stared at him. “You are not my king. You are an Englishman who, because of some cruel jest of the gods, has been made my husband. There are ways for our marriage to be dissolved.”
Rowan got up and walked to the narrow arrow slit that passed for a window at the far end of the room. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I have looked into that, but I’m afraid it will not be possible. At least not yet, not when the Honorium is so fresh in people’s minds.” He paused and Jura saw him hunch his shoulders together. “I curse the day my father met my mother. I wish she had married a serf rather than a Lanconian. Always, being a prince has been a grief to me, but this is the worst.” He spoke so low that she barely heard him.
He turned back toward her. “I am going to unite the tribes of Lanconia, and I fear the Irials will not follow me if I set aside the half-sister of their old king’s son.”
Jura smiled at him. “Unite the tribes of Lanconia? And will you also move the Tarnovian Mountains? Perhaps you would like them a little farther south. Or maybe you’d like to move the rivers.”
His eyes shot blue fire at her. “Why did I allow my body to rule my head? Why did I not have one minute’s conversation with you before calling the Honorium?”
“You called it? I thought Thal ordered it to give all the tribes a chance at the English prince.”
“Fool that I was, I called it, as it was the only hope I had of obtaining you. I was sure you would win.”
One moment Jura was standing still and the next she was leaping at him with her hands made into fists. “You injured my friend Cilean merely for your lust?” she screamed at him. “You broke my engagement to Daire because of your japing lusts?”
He caught her as she flew at him, his back hitting the stone wall. He was so angry at her, insanely angry, viciously angry, but the moment he touched her his anger turned to desire. He enveloped her in his arms and his mouth crushed down on hers, and Jura responded to him, her body seeming to try to make itself dissolve into his. Her arms went about his neck, pulling him closer as her mouth opened under his. Her anger, her despair, her loneliness turned into desire for him. She was his to do with as he would.
Suddenly, he pushed her from him and Jura went sprawling onto the hard stone floor.
“We must talk,” he said through his teeth.
He was panting like a hard-run horse as he looked down at her. A beam of sun came through the arrow slit and lighted the back of his head. “I curse you, Jura,” he said, his jaw hard. “I made a vow before God that I’d not touch you and I will not.”
Jura was trying to recover her senses. “We are married now,” she said. Whatever problems she had with his logic, she had none with her wanting of him.
“Then you must beg me,” he said.
“I must what?” she said, rising.
“If you want me in your bed, you must beg me.”
Jura blinked at him. “Is this one of your English customs? Do you make your soft Englishwomen beg? Is that a way to further humiliate them and to make yourself feel powerful? Lanconian men need not make their women grovel. Lanconian men are men.”
His anger was back and he took a step toward her then moved away, rather like one did when one moved too close to a fire. “I made a vow to God and I will not break it. Now, we have things to discuss.”
“I have nothing to discuss with you,” Jura said, and started for the door.
He caught her arm but released it instantly. “Sit,” he ordered.
With a shrug, Jura obeyed.
Rowan turned away from her and began pacing. “However it happened, through what mean turn of fate, you and I are married. I could dissolve the marriage if the circumstances were different, if I were not half English and therefore suspect or if you were not related to Geralt. But I cannot release us from this marriage; therefore, we will have to make concessions. Tomorrow I leave to go to the Vatell tribe to talk with their leader and you must go with me.”
Jura stood. “I most certainly will not.”
Rowan stood in front of her and leaned down until his nose was nearly touching hers. “I do not trust you to not try to gather an army to put that loud, arrogant brother of yours on the throne. I will have you near me—both of you—so that I can see what you are doing.”
“Or is it that you do not want the people to think you cannot take your wife’s virginity,” she said softly. She could feel his breath on her lips.
His eyelids lowered. “I can take it all right, make no mistake of that.” He glanced down at her lips and back to her eyes. “But I will not.”
She moved away from him. Whatever his stupid English reasons were for rejecting her, he was doing just that, rejecting her. It was another reason in her long list for hating him. “I will remain here and—”
“No!” he said loudly. “Whether you want it or not, you are my wife and you will act as such. If you do not share my bed, you will share my room, or tent, as it may be. I will let nothing stand in my way of uniting the tribes. If the people want to see me with my virginal wife, then they will see me—and I will be able to see that you do nothing evil behind my back.”
“If I put a sword through you, it will be in your heart not in your back.”
“I assume that is meant to ease my mind,” he said dryly.
“Take it how you want,” she said, glaring at him, then her expression turned to curiosity. “How do you plan to unite the tribes? Conquer them?”
Rowan moved away toward the window. “In a manner of speaking. I want to marry them to each other so that in a couple of generations they will be so interbred they will not know which tribe they are. They will only be Lanconians.”
Jura smiled at him. “And how do you plan to do this? Ask them to marry people they hate?” Her smile disappeared. “You know nothing of us. The tribes would die before giving up their identity. Why don’t you go back to your England and leave us in peace before you cause a war—if you live that long?”
“And will you return with me?”
Jura was aghast. “Live in England, where the women must beg the men for their favors?”
Rowan opened his mouth to explain but closed it again. “I will not try to explain to you. Your duty is to obey and nothing else. You are to go with me as I travel across Lanconia and nothing else. I want no advice from you nor any comments. You are to be a proper wife.”
“An English mouse, you mean,” she said. “You will find a Lanconian woman not so easy to subdue as your pale English dolls. I will go with you. What does it matter? I will be a widow by the next full moon.” She turned on her heel and left the room.
As she moved along the dim stone-walled corridors toward the main hall, she thought of what a fool the man was. As if he could march into the main city of each tribe and ask them to please stop hating each other. She was right, someone would kill the fool within days.
And as for his not bedding her, that was truly puzzling.
Was it that he did not desire her? That seemed a ridiculous thought or maybe all Englishmen were as passionate about women as this one was about her. Or perhaps he could not consummate their marriage. She shrugged. Who could understand the thoughts of a foreign idiot?
“You are Jura,” said a small, breathless voice. “You won.”
Jura looked down to see the little son of the Englishwoman. She suspected he was younger than his height indicated, and, to her, his pale skin and hair looked like bread that had not been baked long enough. The wall torch made the boy look as if his face were carved out of a pearl.
“What do you want?” she asked, looking down at the child. He was a young enemy now but he was indeed her enemy.
“I saw you,” the boy said, his eyes as round as blue meadow flowers. “I saw you win. I saw you beat everybody. Would you teach me to run like you do? And wrestle? And shoot a bow?”
Jura couldn’t keep from smiling. “Perhaps.”
The boy smiled up at her.
“There you are,” said a voice at the end of the corridor. It was the young man called Montgomery and Jura’s hand instinctively went to her knife, but the young man was merely gazing at her in a way that Jura knew was complimentary. Her hand relaxed.
“This is Jura,” the boy said proudly.
“Yes, I know,” Montgomery said, and smiled. Jura saw that he was going to be a splendid-looking man and she smiled back at him.
“What is this?” Rowan shouted from behind the trio. “Montgomery, have you nothing to do but drool over my wife? No armor to clean? No weapons to sharpen? No lessons to study?”
“Yes, my lord,” the boy said, but he gave Jura another smile before he left.
Young Phillip, at the sound of his uncle’s shout, had moved between Jura and the wall, his arms going around her thigh and holding on to her. Jura looked down at the boy in surprise.
“Phillip!” Rowan said sharply. “What do you think you are doing?”
“This is Jura,” he said as if this were an answer.
“I know full well who she is, now come away from her.”