The Warrior's Maiden (The Warriors Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  A Note from Denise

  Other Books

  Copyright

  With the skirts of her work-a-day gowns lifted to her knees, Elianne du Hommet ran, her soldier-escort panting at her heels. Beneath awnings raised against the day’s unusual heat, Knabwell’s startled merchants left off their haggling to stare after the sheriff’s grown daughter. Tethered chickens squawked and flapped out of her way. Stubblefed geese, an autumn delicacy, hissed from their wicker carriers.

  Elianne’s companion collided with an unfortunate housewife, spilling the contents of the hapless woman’s basket. "The lord sheriff’s business," he shouted by way of apology to the townswoman as he sprinted to catch his charge.

  Together they flew out onto the higher of Knabwell’s two cobbled thoroughfares. The soldier shot a look toward the city’s southern gate. "Jesus save us! That’s Haydon’s party," he cried. "Hurry! He wants you at the priory before they arrive."

  Elianne threw a glance over her shoulder. Not three dozen yards behind her rode a knight upon a dappled steed. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and tall. Beneath his green surcoat, the color of which identified him as Lord Haydon’s man, his mail gleamed like silver. With his helmet off, the knight’s hair glinted gold in the sun. His gaze was turned up toward the castle her sire ruled. There was a forceful, forward bend to his body as he sat upon his horse, as if he were eager to reach his destination, or for battle.

  At the knight’s side rode a dumpling of a woman dressed in sturdy green. Although the broad brim of her straw hat hid her face, there was something in the woman’s posture that named her Lady Haydon and no other.

  Hat!

  Elianne staggered to a halt and clapped her hands to her bare head, leaving her chaperone to lope on alone toward the priory. Oh Lord, not only was her hair uncovered, she wore it in a single tail instead of decent plaits. She was no married woman and without dowry never would be, but four-and-twenty was too old to go about with her hair exposed like some virgin bride.

  Groaning, Elianne looked at her stained hands; she’d been pressing apples when her father’s messenger arrived. No matter how tragic the deaths of Lord Haydon and his daughters, or how panicked her father was over that event, she couldn’t meet the grieving widow bearing the marks of the chores that made up her daily life.

  Annoyance flared. Acceding to her father’s whims without thought had become a bad habit, one she needed to break now. She once again shot a glance over her shoulder at Haydon’s approaching party. What had she been thinking? She had no more place greeting Lord Haydon’s distraught widow than there was point to her existence.

  "I'm going back," she shouted to her escort.

  His father was dead. Each time Josce FitzBaldwin returned to this thought, shock and rage consumed him. His father wasn't just dead; Baldwin of Haydon had been foully murdered by bandits not worthy to lick his boots, and for that fact someone would pay in blood.

  Josce turned his gaze to Knabwell’s castle. Set atop a great knob of rock near the city’s center, the royal fortress's native limestone walls glared down upon all that lay below it. Towers, each one wearing a conical cap tiled in dark and gleaming slate, bulged at every corner of the structure.

  It was there in yon pile of stones that Josce would find the man ultimately at fault for his father’s death: Reiner du Hommet, sheriff of this shire. Josce’s mouth tightened. It didn’t matter that killing a royal servant meant his own death. Reiner du Hommet would either present those murdering thieves to him so he could mete out proper justice, or the sheriff’s blood would flow to satisfy Josce’s grief.

  Treasuring his vow, Josce straightened in his saddle only to catch sight of the most amazing woman racing along the lane ahead of him. Jesus God, but she towered a full head over the soldier who accompanied her. She might well look him in the eye, when Josce was taller than most men he knew. Not that she wasn’t all woman. Her faded blue gowns clung to the slim line of her body, revealing nicely rounded breasts, a narrow waist and lush hips. Her hair, caught in a single curling tail the color of dark honey, bounced from side to side with her every step, not so much as a headscarf to shield it from the world. Not married, then. No surprise that, as tall as she was. Only an exceedingly rich dowry could get any man, be he common or noble, to accept a mate bigger than himself.

  The woman abruptly stopped and brought her hands to her head. As her escort loped on ahead of her, she threw a glance in Josce's direction. He strained to make out her features, wondering if she had a face to match her body, only to relax in disappointment. The distance was too great for detail.

  Her companion turned to rejoin her and an argument ensued, the woman shaking her head at whatever her escort suggested. Rather than heed her refusal, the soldier grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along with him until she ran once more. That one so crude might manhandle her indicated that the woman was of no consequence. This startled Josce, for there was something of command in her bearing. He watched them round the corner onto a nearby lane and disappear behind a row of narrow two- and three-storey homes, regretting he could no longer see her.

  Beside him Lady Haydon’s mare stumbled a little on the rutted street. Josce’s stepmother made a quiet startled sound and clutched more tightly at her reins. No great rider was Beatrice of Haydon. He studied her. Afternoon light streamed through her hat brim’s open weave to reveal the dark rings beneath her eyes. Her flesh sagged from her cheekbones. Her linen riding attire, damp from this autumn day’s unusual heat, hung from her shoulders.

  She’d dropped a stone, maybe two, in weight since receiving news of her husband’s and daughters' deaths less than a week ago. Grief had aged her, making her look a full score older than her six-and-thirty years. Aye, the only thing keeping Beatrice upright in the saddle at the moment was the same need for vengeance that now owned Josce. So great was Beatrice’s ambition to avenge her daughters’ deaths that she’d set aside her customary dislike for her husband’s bastard son to solicit Josce’s sword to her cause. Josce had gladly given her his vow. For Lady Beatrice, for Clarice and Adelaide, and for the love Baldwin had showered on him, Josce would be her conduit of revenge.

  "Tell me again this is no mistake. Tell me my babies are truly gone," said his stepmother from her horse beside him, her gaze locked upon some distant spot as she spoke.That she didn’t look at Josce as she spoke was a reminder their agreement was but a temporary truce. Once Beatrice had what she so craved, she’d no doubt reclaim her previous distaste for him. Josce didn’t begrudge his stepmother her dislike, not when he knew he stood as living proof of her greatest failure, Josce being the boy-child she’d been unable to produce for her noble husband.

  Beside him, Beatrice drew a shaken breath. "Tell me, for I fight and fight and still cannot make sense of it. How could my daughters leave Haydon two weeks ago in the company of their sire and six of our strongest men, only to be sla
ughtered by some ragged band of thieves?" With each word her voice tightened, a sign of her battle to govern what ached in her.

  "Tell me," she continued, her voice now dropping to a pained breath, "that their deaths aren’t my fault for wanting my darlings schooled with the same nuns who tutored me." Her eyes squeezed shut. She pressed a fist to her lips. "Why didn’t I send them to the convent in Haydon's shire where Emma was raised?" she muttered around her fingers.

  Her words stirred Josce’s guilt. It wasn’t Lady Beatrice’s fault that their kin perished, but his own. If only he’d been at his father’s side perhaps the outcome of the attack would have been different. Why hadn’t he insisted on accompanying his sire to Knabwell, instead of letting his father shoo him off to spend time with friends at a companion’s newly-acquired manor? Damn him, but he’d been too eager to go, making his friends more precious to him than his own father.

  Pain stirred rage into once again consuming him. "Nay, you cannot fault yourself, my lady," Josce commanded her, and himself as well. "All blame belongs to the sheriff. Is he not guardian of the peace here? Yet under his rule your good lord and husband has been murdered, along with two sweet innocents."

  His words brought Lady Haydon more upright in her saddle even as she swayed unsteadily. What he could see of her profile might have been carved from stone as she stared ahead of her. "Aye, it’s the sheriff at fault and who will be held accountable on this very day. There is Bakers’ Walk." She pointed to the same lane down which the tall woman had turned. "We follow it,

  then bear east onto Priory Lane, which takes us to the convent's gate."

  "The priory? Nay, we go to the castle, to the sheriff’s seat," Josce protested. He wanted no delays before he skewered du Hommet, first with his questions, then later, as vengeance indicated, with his sword.

  "Why, when the sheriff already awaits us at the priory?" his stepmother retorted, shooting a sidelong glance and almost looking at him. "This did I command in the message our man carried to both him and Prioress Gertha this morn."

  Josce bit back his desire to scream in frustration. God take him, but no man could draw his sword on hallowed ground! What if the sheriff refused Josce’s demand that he set aside all else to capture the thieves? It was intolerable to think the sheriff might offer him the opportunity to vent what boiled in him and Josce might find his hands tied by virtue of location alone.

  "Madam, I thought we went to confront him." Josce did his best to gentle his voice and failed. "How can we do so when we are to meet the prioress in her chamber?"

  Her laugh was knife-edged. "The prioress’ office? That’s not where we’ll meet him. I will meet the sheriff at the ice house in their orchard. I want to see his face as I stand beside my cold darlings," she told him.

  As Beatrice spoke, she tilted her head to peer up at him from beneath her hat’s wide brim. Breath rushed from Josce as he looked upon her countenance for the first time since they’d broken camp this morn. Her skin was ashen and her eyes seemed to struggle to hold her focus. Her smile was naught but the baring of her teeth. It was madness and nothing less Josce saw writ across her face. Unnerved, he set out to dissuade her, not at all certain Beatrice would survive such an encounter.

  "Surely, they expect us to come first to the prioress."

  "The portress will tell Mother Gertha where I’ve gone, and she will come to me, bringing the sheriff with her," Beatrice told her stepson, the twist of her mouth growing ugly. Her eyes narrowed. "I want to hear his excuses as he faces the results of his incompetence. I want him to kneel before me and beg my pardon so I might refuse it!" Her voice rose with every word until she fair shrieked.

  Behind them Haydon’s men muttered. Nick of Kent, their master-at-arms, urged his horse forward until he rode alongside Josce. He sent a wary look at his lord’s son. Nick’s worry was no less than what Josce already felt. With a lift of his hand Josce signaled that the men should halt. Nick’s sigh of relief was audible.

  "What are you doing?" Lady Beatrice snapped, a hint of helplessness in her voice. Rightly so. She might be Haydon’s lady, but the command of her husband’s soldiers fell to Josce.

  Reaching across the gap between their horses, Josce took her reins, drawing both their mounts to a halt. "Stopping," he replied. "We go no farther until you reconsider this plan of yours, my lady."

  "Reconsider?!" So violently did the word leave her lips that she again swayed in her saddle, then snatched at the saddletree with a fearful breath. For an instant she rocked in her seat, until Josce worried she might well swoon right here.

  "Aye, reconsider for the sake of your two surviving daughters. You took my oath to serve as your avenger. Let me do as you begged me. You’re barely strong enough for a meeting with the prioress. Leave visiting our loved ones for a later moment."

  "Upstart!" Beatrice spat the word at him. "You’ve no right to refuse me anything."

  "My right or not," Josce told her, "these men take commands from me. If I tell them to retreat from Knabwell with you, they’ll do it."

  "Nay, you cannot deny me this," Beatrice cried, then caught her breath. Again she smiled, this time the bend of her lips sly. "Spite me, and I’ll exclude you from his burial."

  Josce glared at her. Damn her, but she could do it, she could keep him from attending his father’s interment. Josce was no heir, but a bastard. With Baldwin gone, his noble widow had every right to refuse Josce not only his father’s burial, but any further contact with all things Haydon, including his two surviving half-sisters. It wouldn't matter to her that his sisters were the only remaining family he had; Josce’s mother and maternal grandparents had passed long ago. Against the love his sire had ever showered on him, Josce couldn’t risk losing the chance for a final farewell.

  Despising her for manipulating him this way, he bowed his head, eyes narrow and jaw tight. "I am at your command, my lady."

  "Not good enough. I want your vow that you’ll not stop me in this," she demanded.

  "I so vow," he said, resentment burning in every word.

  "Nay, that still isn’t enough to bind you, is it? You’re too clever by half. You’ll abandon me at the priory’s gate, going to Mother Gertha on your own to stop me." Beatrice eyed him for a moment as she thought. "Vow too that you will not allow these men nor any of the nuns to stop me from reaching the ice house."

  Josce’s breath seared from his lungs as her trap closed around him. What choice had he? He laid his hand upon his sword’s hilt and gave her what she wanted.

  Down Bakers' Walk Elianne and her escort flew. The air around these tall narrow homes was thick with the yeasty scent of baking. To a one, their lower level shutters were all flung open to reveal the shops they contained and the men within working their dough and forming loaves.

  The street forked, Elianne and her escort veering to the right onto Priory Lane. A clutch of yearling piglets, autumn hams come October, squealed and scattered before them. Here merchants' houses gave way to tiny thatched-roofed cottages. These were the homes the nuns life-leased to their pensioners. Each house claimed a wee vegetable plot, each plot ending at the priory's perimeter, a tall stretch of wall built from the same stone as the castle Elianne's father ruled. Ivy, yet lush and green in early September, tumbled over the top of the wall. In the distance a few treetops could be seen, the occasional red flash speaking of apples in the priory's orchard, which was the fount of the nuns' income.

  The priory's guest house loomed at the end of the lane. A full two storeys tall, pretty carvings trimmed the triple arches of its upper windows. Here, Elianne's gasping chaperone fell away to wait beneath its eaves until the time for her return to Coneytrop, her home. Although the sheriff was ever cautious with his daughter's person when she was away from their estate, and had been since she'd come into her monthly cycles, Elianne needed no guarding within this woman's realm.

  Elianne slowed as she neared the great, arched gateway that connected Man's world to God's. As it was most days, only one of the porta
l's two thick oaken doors stood open. Two sisters, clad all in black as befitted their order, stood in the opening. Of the pair, only the portress belonged here. Mathilde, a plump, cheery woman who loved her duty as greeter, smiled when she saw Elianne. Not so the convent's subprioress. Disapproval clung to every harsh fold of Sister Nilda's face. "You're panting," she said as Elianne stopped before them, "when we taught you no well-bred woman runs."

  Elianne's jaw tightened. Their dislike was mutual, formed during the time she'd been a student here. It was hard enough to be the sheriff's burdensome third daughter, a dowry-less, useless woman with no hope of husband, children or career, without tolerating Nilda's venom.

  "If you must know, I was commanded to haste by my sire," Elianne snapped.

  "But of course," Sister Mathilde said, defending a child she'd liked against a despised superior. "Elianne would run for no other reason."

  Nilda's mouth only curled as she looked askance at Elianne's shabby attire and loosened hair. "Your sire may rot for all I care. You won't come anywhere near our exalted and bereaved visitor dressed as you are. Go home and change your gowns."

  You have no right to send me away," Elianne retorted.

  Nilda glared up at the sheriff's daughter. "Forward bitch! You'll not speak so to me."

  "Sister Subprioress!" the portress gasped, hands at her cheeks.

  The subprioress spoke over her. "By our Lady, what airs you adopt when all the city knows how degraded your sire's estate has become. So indebted is he that he foully disparaged your sisters, selling them into marriages with peasants for coins."

  Vicious lights came to life in Nilda's gaze. "But not you. Even a peasant has more sense than to purchase an ill-mannered giant like you. Well, we don't want you either. When our Lord finally yanks Reiner du Hommet's sinful soul from his overbearing body, don't bother begging sanctuary here. I'll see you never get a place, not even as a lay sister."

  "I'd rather starve than beg for a crust of bread from you," Elianne shot back, her vehemence hiding the very real fear that starvation after her father's death was the fate that awaited her.