A Kingdom of Dreams

Chapter Twenty-Five

Canopied galleries with chairs placed on ascending levels lined all four sides of the enormous tournament field and were already crowded with gorgeously garbed ladies and gentlemen by the time Jenny, Brenna, Aunt Elinor, and Arik arrived. Flags flew from the tops of each gallery, displaying the coats of arms of all the occupants within it, and as Jenny looked about, searching for her own banner, she immediately confirmed that Katherine had been correct: the galleries of her countrymen were not integrated with the others but were set facing the English -locked in opposition even now.

"There, my dear-there is your coat of arms," Aunt Elinor said, pointing to the gallery across the field. "Flying right there beside your father's."

Arik spoke, startling the three women into near panic with the sound of his booming voice, "You sit there-" he ordered, pointing to the gallery flying the Claymore coat of arms above it.

Jenny, who knew this was the giant's order, not Royce's-which she wouldn't have obeyed anyway-shook her head. "I will sit beneath my own coat of arms, Arik. Wars with you have already emptied our gallery of many who should have been there. Claymore's gallery is packed."

But it wasn't. Not quite. There was a large, thronelike chair in the center of it that was conspicuously empty. It had been meant for Jenny, she knew. Her stomach twisted as she rode past it, and the minute she did, all six hundred guests at Claymore and every serf and villager within sight of the field seemed to turn and watch her, first with shock, then disappointment, and, from many, contempt.

Clan Merrick's gallery, flying the falcon and crescent, was between Clan MacPherson's and Clan Duggan's. To add to Jenny's mounting misery, the moment the clans across the field saw that she was riding to their side, an ear-rending cheer went up that continued growing in volume the closer she came. Jenny stared blindly ahead and made herself think only of William.

She took her seat in the front row, between Aunt Elinor and Brenna, and as soon as she was settled, her kinsmen, including Becky's father, began patting her shoulder and calling proud greetings to her. People she knew-and many she didn't-from the galleries around her lined up in front of her to either renew their acquaintance or ask for an introduction. Once she had longed only to be accepted by her people; today, she was being worshiped and petted like an adored national heroine by more than a thousand Scots.

And all she'd had to do in order to accomplish it was to publicly humiliate and betray her husband.

The realization made her stomach cramp and her hands perspire. She'd been here less than ten minutes and already Jenny didn't think she would be able to endure more than a few minutes of it without becoming physically ill.

And that was before the people who had crowded around her finally moved away, and she found herself the cynosure of nearly every eye across the field on the English side. Everywhere she looked, the English were either looking at her, pointing at her, or drawing someone else's attention to her.

"Just look," Aunt Elinor said delightedly, nodding at the infuriated, glaring English, "at the wonderful headpieces we are all wearing! It was just as I expected -all of us were quite carried away with the spirit of the day and have worn the sort of thing that was in style in our youth."

Jenny forced herself to lift her head, her gaze running blindly over the sea of colored canopies, waving flags, and floating veils across the field from her. There were steeple-shaped caps with veils trailing all the way to the ground; caps that stood out on both sides like giant wings, caps shaped like hearts with veils, like cornucopias with draperies, and even caps that looked as if two square pieces of veiling had been shaken out and hung over long sticks that were standing in the ladies' hair. Jenny saw them without seeing them, just as she was vaguely aware that Elinor was saying, "and while you are looking about, my dear, keep your head high, for you have made your choice-though a wrong one I think-and now you must try to carry it off."

Jenny's head jerked toward her. "What are you saying, Aunt Elinor?"

"What I would have said before if you'd asked me: your place is with your husband. However, my place is with you. And so here I am. And here is dear Brenna on your other side, who I strongly suspect is concocting some wild scheme to stay behind and remain with your husband's brother."

Brenna's head lurched around and she too stared at Aunt Elinor, but Jenny was too immersed in her own guilt and uncertainty to register much alarm over Brenna yet. "You don't understand about William, Aunt Elinor. I loved him."

"He loved you, too." Brenna said feelingly, and Jenny felt slightly better until Brenna added, "Unlike Father, he loved you more than he despised our 'enemy.' "

Jenny closed her eyes. "Please," she whispered to them both. "Do not do this to me. I-I know what is right…"

She was spared the need to say more, however, by the sudden blast of clarions as the trumpeters rode onto the field, followed by the heralds, who waited until there was a semblance of quiet and then began proclaiming the rules:

The tournament was to be preceded by three jousting matches, the herald cried out, the three matches to be between the six knights judged to be the finest in the land. Jenny held her breath, then slowly expelled it: the first two combatants were a French knight and a Scotsman; the second match was Royce's against a Frenchman named DuMont; and the third was Royce's against Ian MacPherson-the son of Jenny's former "betrothed."

The crowd went wild; instead of having to wait all day and perhaps two to see the Wolf, they were going to see him twice in the first hour.

The rules at first seemed perfectly ordinary: the first knight to accumulate three points won the match; one point was given a knight each time he struck his opponent hard enough to splinter his spear. Jenny assumed it would take at least five passes for any knight to accumulate three points, considering that it was no mean feat to successfully level a lance, take aim atop a galloping horse, and strike an opponent at precisely the right spot to shiver a lance-particularly since the smooth surface of the armor was designed to make the lance skid off. Three points, and the match, were automatically awarded to a knight if he actually unhorsed his opponent.

The next two announcements made the crowd roar with approval and Jenny cringe: the jousts were to be fought in the German style, not French-which meant the massive regular lances would be used, rather than poplar ones-and the deadly spear heads would not be blunted with protective coronals.

The bellows of enthusiasm from the crowd were so loud there was a long delay before the herald could finish by announcing that the tournament would follow the trio of jousts and that the remaining jousts would take place throughout the next two days. However, he added, due to the illustriousness of the knights attending, the jousts that followed the tournment would be organized according to the importance of the knight if such could be determined.

Again the crowd roared with enthusiasm. Instead of having to watch obscure knights joust with even lesser ones, they'd have their greatest pleasure served first.

Outside the ring, the constables had finished checking saddle fastenings to make certain no knight intended to use leather straps, rather than good horsemanship and brute strength, to stay on his mount. Satisfied, the chief constable gave the signal, the heralds trotted off the field, and then kettle drums, pipes, and trumpets began to blast, announcing the ceremonial parade onto the field by all the knights.

Even Jenny was not proof against the dazzling spectacle that followed: six across, the knights paraded onto the tourney field wearing full armor, mounted on prancing warhorses decked out in dazzling silver bridles and bells, colorful headdresses, and trappings of brilliant silks and velvets, that displayed the coat of arms of the knight. Polished armor glinted in the sun so brightly that Jenny found herself squinting as before her eyes paraded tabards and shields emblazoned with coats of arms showing every imaginable animal from noble beasts like lions, tigers, falcons, tiercels, and bears to whimsical dragons and unicorns; others bore designs of stripes and squares, half moons and stars; still others bore flowers.

The blindingly bright hues of color combined with the ceaseless roar of the crowd so delighted Aunt Elinor that she clapped her hands for an English knight who rode by with a particularly stunning coat of arms bearing three lions rampant, two roses, a falcon, and a green crescent.

At any other time, Jenny would have thought this the most exciting spectacle she'd ever beheld. Her father and stepbrother rode past along with what she judged to be about four hundred knights. Her husband, however, did not appear, and the first pair of jousters ended up riding onto the field to the disappointed roar of "Wolf! Wolf!"

Before confronting each other, each of the two knights trotted over to the gallery where his wife or his lady love was seated. Tipping down their lances, they awaited the ceremonial bestowal of a favor-her scarf, ribbon, veil, or even a sleeve, which she proudly tied on the end of the lance. That accomplished, they rode over to opposite ends of the field, adjusted their helmets, checked visors, tested weights of lances, and finally awaited the blast from the trumpet. At the first note, they dug spurs into their mounts and sent them hurtling forward. The Frenchman's spear struck his opponent's shield slightly off center, the Scotsman swayed in his saddle and recovered. It took five more passes before the Frenchman finally took a blow that sent him crashing to the ground amidst a pile of shining steel legs and arms and the accompaniment of deafening cheers.

Jenny scarcely noticed the outcome, even though the fallen knight was practically at her feet. Staring at her clutched hands in her lap, she waited, listening for the call of the trumpets again.

When it came, the crowd went wild, and despite willing herself not to look, she lifted her head. Prancing onto the field, his horse draped in gorgeous red trappings, was the Frenchman she had particularly noticed during the parade, partially because he was physically huge and also because the couteres that protected his elbows were enormous, pleated pieces of plate that fanned out into points that reminded Jenny of bat wings. Now she also noticed that although he wore a handsome baronial necklace at his throat, there was nothing "whimsical" or beautiful about the gruesome figure of a striking serpent emblazoned on his breastplate. He turned his horse toward one of the galleries for the usual bestowal of a favor, and as he did so, all the noise of the crowd began to die away.

A tremor of dread made Jenny quickly divert her gaze, but even without looking, Jenny knew when Royce finally rode onto the field-because the crowd suddenly became eerily still. So still that the periodic blasts of the trumpeters tolled out into the awed silence like a death knell. Unable to help herself, she lifted her head and turned; what she saw made her heart stop: in contrast to the gaiety and color and flamboyance everywhere, her husband was garbed entirely in black. His black horse was draped in black, its headpiece was black, and on Royce's shield he did not display his coat of arms. Instead there was a head of a snarling black wolf.

Even to Jenny, who knew him, he looked terrifying as he started across the field. She saw him look toward his own gallery, and she sensed his momentary mistake when he saw a woman seated in the chair at the front of the gallery that had been meant for Jenny. But instead of riding toward it, or toward any of at least a thousand women around the field who were frantically waving their veils and ribbons at him, Royce swung Zeus in the opposite direction.

Jennifer's heart slammed into her ribs with a sickening thud when she realized he was coming straight toward her. The crowd saw it, too, and grew silent again, watching. While everyone in the Merrick gallery began to shout curses at him, Royce rode Zeus clear up to within lance's reach of Jenny and halted him. But instead of tipping his lance forward for the favor he knew she would not give him, he did something more shattering to her, something she had never seen done before: He sat there, Zeus shifting about restlessly beneath him, and he looked at her, then he deftly but slowly twisted his lance, setting the end on the ground.

It was a salute! her heart screamed. He was saluting her, and Jenny knew a moment of pain and panic that surpassed everything, even William's death. She half rose out of her chair, not certain what she meant to do, and then the moment was past. Wheeling Zeus around, Royce galloped to his end of the field past the Frenchman, who was adjusting the visor on his helmet, settling it more firmly on his neck, and flexing his arm as if testing the weight of his lance.

Royce spun his horse to face his opponent, lowered his visor, couched his lance… and was still. Perfectly still-violence, cold and emotionless; leashed for the moment, but waiting…

At the first note from the trumpet, Royce crouched low, dug his spurs into Zeus, and sent him hurtling down the course straight at his opponent. His lance struck the Frenchman's shield with so much force the shield flew off to the side and the knight toppled backward over his horse, landing on his bent right leg in a way that left no chance the leg was unbroken. Finished, Royce galloped to the opposite end of the field and waited, facing the entrance. Unmoving again.

Jenny had seen Ian MacPherson joust before and thought him magnificent. He came onto the field looking as lethal as Royce in the MacPherson colors of dark green and gold, his horse at a ground-eating trot.

Royce, she noted from the corner of her eye, did not move his gaze from Ian MacPherson, and something about the way Royce watched him convinced Jenny that he was judging the future chieftan of Clan MacPherson, and that he was not underestimating Ian's threat. It dawned on Jenny that Royce and Ian were the only two knights in German armor, its starkly angular lines emulating the human body. In fact, the only ornamentation on Royce's armor were two small, concave brass plates the size of a fist, one at each shoulder.

She lifted her sideways gaze to Royce's face and could almost feel the relentless thrust of his narrowed gaze pilloring Ian. So absorbed was she that Jenny had no idea Ian MacPherson had reined to a halt in front of her and was at that moment extending his lance tip to her…

"Jenny!" Becky's father grabbed her shoulder, drawing her attention to Ian. Jenny glanced up and let out an anguished moan, paralyzed with disbelief, but Aunt Elinor let out a cry of exaggerated delight: "Ian MacPherson!" she crowed, snatching off her veil, "You always were the most gallant man," and leaning slightly sideways she tied her yellow veil on the frowning knight's spear.

When Ian took his place down the field from Royce, Jenny noticed at once the subtle difference in Royce's stance: he was as motionless as before-but now he was leaning slightly forward, crouched, menacing-eager to be unleashed on the foe who'd dared seek a favor from his wife. The trumpet blasted, warhorses plunged, gaining momentum, hurtling forward; spears leveled, adjusted, deadly points glinting-and just as Royce was about to strike, Ian MacPherson let out a blood-chilling war bellow and hit. A lance exploded against a shield and an instant later Ian and his magnificent gray horse were toppling to the ground together, crashing, then rolling sideways amidst a cloud of dust.

An ear-rending roar went up from the crowd, but Royce didn't remain to enjoy the hysterical accolades. With cold disregard for his worthy, fallen foe, whose squire was helping him to his feet, Royce wheeled Zeus around and sent him galloping off the field.

The tournament was next, and it was what Jenny had been dreading most, for even at home, they were little less than full-fledged battles with two groups of opposing forces charging each other from opposite ends of the field. The only thing that prevented them from turning into full-scale massacres were a few rules, but as the herald finished announcing the rules that would cover this tournament, her dread multiplied tenfold. As usual, there was the ban against any weapons with sharp points being brought into the lists. Striking a man whose back was turned or striking a horse was prohibited. It was also forbidden to strike a man who took off his helmet for a period of rest-however, only two such periods would be permitted to any knight, unless his horse had failed him. The winning side was whichever one had the most men still mounted or uninjured.

Beyond that, there were to be no rules, no ropes nor fences dividing the forces once the fighting began. Nothing. Jenny held her breath, knowing there was one more decision to be announced, and when it was, her heart sank: today, the herald cried out, because of the skill and worthiness of the knights, broadswords would be allowed as well as spears, if bated.

Two cavalcades of one hundred knights each-one headed by Royce, the other by DuMont-rode onto the field from opposite ends, followed by squires carrying spare lances and broadswords.

Jenny's whole body began to tremble as she looked over the knights on DuMont's side: her father was there, as were Malcolm and MacPherson and a dozen other clans whose badges she recognized. The field was split between the English on one end and the French and Scots on the opposite. Just as in life, these men were divided into the same sides on the tourney field that they took in battle. But it was not supposed to be this way, her heart screamed; a tournament was fought for individual glory and for exhibition, it was not for the triumph of one enemy over another. Tournaments fought between enemies-and there had been some-had been blood baths! Jenny tried to calm her wild foreboding, but without a trace of success; every instinct she possessed was already screaming that something unspeakable was going to happen.

Trumpets sounded three warning blasts, and Jennifer began to pray mindlessly for the safety of everyone she knew. The rope, which had temporarily divided the field in half, tautened; the fourth blast split the air, and the rope was jerked away. Two hundred horses thundered down the field, the earth trembling beneath them as broadswords and lances were raised-and then it happened: twenty of Jenny's kinsmen, led by her father and brother, split off from the charge and headed straight at Royce, wielding broadswords with a vengeance.

Jenny's scream was drowned by the roars of enraged disapproval from the English as the Scots converged on Royce like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the moments that followed, Jenny witnessed the most breathtaking show of swordsmanship and strength she had ever beheld: Royce fought like a man possessed, his reflexes so quick, his swing so powerful, that he took six men off their horses with him when they finally brought him down. And still the nightmare worsened; unaware that she was standing along with everyone else in the galleries, she tried to see into the pile of men and metal, her ears bursting with the clanging, clashing, and clanking of sword on steel. Royce's knights saw what had happened and began hacking a path to him, and then-from Jenny's vantage point-it looked as if the entire outlook of the battle changed. Royce lunged up and out of the heap of men like an avenging demon, his broadsword grasped in both hands as he raised it over his head and swung it with all his might-at her father.

Jenny never saw the twist of Royce's wrists that brought his sword down on a highlander instead of her father, because she had covered her face and screamed into her hands. She didn't see the blood running down beneath Royce's armor from the savage gashes her brother had dug when he rammed his concealed dagger into the vulnerable spot at the neck between Royce's helmet and breastplate; she didn't see that they'd hacked through the light armor at his thigh, or that when they'd had him out of sight they'd hammered at his back and shoulders and head.

All she saw when she uncovered her face was that, somehow, her father was still on his feet, and Royce was attacking MacPherson and two others like a coldly enraged madman, swinging and hacking… and that wherever he struck, men fell like savaged metal sheep.

Jenny bolted from her chair, and almost fell over Brenna, who had clamped her eyes closed. "Jenny!" Aunt Elinor cried, "I don't think you ought-" but Jenny didn't pay attention; bile was rising up in her throat in a bitter stream. Half blinded by tears, she ran to her horse and snatched the mare's reins from the startled serf's hands…

"Look, my lady!" he burst out enthusiastically, helping her into the saddle and pointing at Royce out on the field, "did you ever see aught like him in yer life?" Jenny glanced up once more and saw Royce's broadsword explode against a Scotsman's shoulder. She saw that her father, her brother, Becky's father, and a dozen other Scots were getting up off the ground, which was already running with blood.

She saw impending death.

The vision tormented her as she stood at the open window of her bedchamber, her pale face tipped against the frame, her arms wrapped around her middle, trying somehow to hold all the pain and terror inside of her. An hour had passed since she left the tourney, and the jousting had been under way for at least half that time. Royce had said he accepted eleven matches, and he'd already fought two before the tournament. Based on the herald's announcement that jousts following the tournament would begin with the most skilled jousters first, Jenny had little doubt all of Royce's matches had followed the tournament in succession. How much more impressive, she thought with vague misery, it was for King Henry to demonstrate to one and all that even exhausted, his famous champion could defeat any Scot foolish enough to challenge him.

She had already counted five completed matches-she could tell by the awful jeering roar from the crowd when each loser left the field. After four more matches, Royce would be off the field; by then someone would surely have brought her word of how many of her people he'd maimed or killed. It did not occur to her as she reached up and brushed a tear from her cheek that anything might have happened to Royce; he was invincible. She'd seen that during his jousts at the beginning of the tournament. And… God forgive her… she'd been proud. Even when he was confronting Ian MacPherson, she'd been so proud…

Her heart and mind ravaged by divided loyalty, she stood where she was, unable to see the field but able to hear what was happening. Based on the prolonged, ugly jeering coming from the crowd-a sound that was becoming more pronounced at the end of each match-they weren't getting much of a show from the loser of each match. Evidently her Scots weren't even worth a bit of polite applause…

She jumped as the door to her bedchamber was flung open and crashed into the wall. "Get your cloak," Stefan Westmoreland snapped ominously, "you're coming back to that field with me if I have to drag you there!"

"I'm not going back," Jenny countered, turning to the window again. "I have no stomach for cheering while my husband batters my family to pieces, or-"

Stefan grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, his voice like a savage whiplash: "I'll tell you what's happening! My brother is out there on that field, dying! He swore he'd not raise his hand against your kinsmen and, the moment they realized that during the tournament, your precious kinsmen massacred him!" he said between his teeth, shaking her. "They tore him to pieces in the tournament! And now he's jousting-Do you hear that crowd jeering? They're jeering him. He's so badly injured, I don't think he knows any more when he's been unhorsed. He thought he'd be able to outmaneuver them in the jousts, but he can't, and fourteen more Scots have challenged him."

Jenny stared at him, her pulse beginning to race like a maddened thing, but her body was rooted to the floor, as if she was trying to run in a nightmare.

"Jennifer!" he said hoarsely, "Royce is letting them kill him." His hands bit painfully into her arms, but his voice broke with anguish. "He is out there on that field, dying for you. He killed your brother and he's paying-" He broke off as Jennifer tore free from his grip and started running…

Garrick Carmichael spat on the ground near Royce as he rode off the field, victorious, but Royce was oblivious to such subtle insults. He staggered to his knees, vaguely aware that the roar of the crowd was slowly and unaccountably rising to deafening proportions. Swaying, he reached up and pulled off his helmet; he tried to transfer it to his left arm, but his arm was hanging uselessly by his side, and the helmet fell to the ground. Gawin was running toward him-no not Gawin-someone in a blue cloak, and he squinted, trying to focus, wondering if it was his next opponent.

Through the haze of sweat and blood and pain that blurred his vision and fogged his mind, Royce thought for a moment he saw the figure of a woman running-running toward him, her uncovered hair tossing about her, glinting in the sun with red and gold. Jennifer! In disbelief, he squinted, staring, while the earsplitting thunder of the crowd rose higher and higher.

Royce groaned inwardly, trying to push himself to his feet with his unbroken right arm. Jennifer had come back-now, to witness his defeat. Or his death. Even so, he didn't want her to see him die groveling, and with the last ounce of strength he possessed, he managed to stagger to his feet. Reaching up, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, his vision cleared, and he realized he was not imagining it. Jennifer was moving toward him, and an eerie silence was descending over the crowd.

Jenny stifled a scream when she was close enough to see his arm dangling brokenly at his side. She stopped in front of him, and her father's bellow from the sidelines made her head jerk toward the lance lying at Royce's feet. "Use it!" he thundered. "Use the lance, Jennifer."

Royce understood then why she had come: she had come to finish the task her relatives had begun; to do to him what he had done to her brother. Unmoving, he watched her, noting that tears were pouring down her beautiful face as she slowly bent down. But instead of reaching for his lance or her dagger, she took his hand between both of hers and pressed her lips to it. Through his daze of pain and confusion, Royce finally understood that she was kneeling to him, and a groan tore from his chest: "Darling," he said brokenly, tightening his hand, trying to make her stand, "don't do this…"

But his wife wouldn't listen. In front of seven thousand onlookers, Jennifer Merrick Westmoreland, countess of Rockbourn, knelt before her husband in a public act of humble obeisance, her face pressed to his hand, her shoulders wrenched with violent sobs. By the time she finally arose, there could not have been many among the spectators who had not seen what she had done. Standing up, she stepped back, lifted her tear-streaked face to his, and squared her shoulders.

Pride exploded in Royce's battered being-because, somehow, she was managing to stand as proudly-as defiantly-as if she had just been knighted by a king.

Gawin, who had been immobilized by Stefan's hand clamped on his shoulder, rushed forward as soon as the hand released him. Royce put his arm across his squire's shoulder and limped off the field.

He left to the accompaniment of cheering that was nearly as loud as it had been when he unhorsed DuMont and MacPherson.

In his tent on the jousting field, Royce slowly, reluctantly opened his eyes, bracing himself for the blast of pain he knew would come with consciousness. But there was no pain.

He could tell from the noise outside that the lists were still underway, and he was wondering dazedly where Gawin was, when it dawned on him that his right hand was being held. Turning his head, he looked in that direction, and for a moment he thought he was dreaming: Jennifer was hovering over him, surrounded by a blindingly bright halo of sunlight that spilled in from the open tent flap behind her. She was smiling down at him with so much tenderness in her beautiful eyes that it was shattering to behold. As if from far away, he heard her softly say, "Welcome back, love."

Suddenly he understood the reason he was seeing her surrounded by shimmering light, the reason for his lack of pain, and for the incredibly tender way she was speaking and looking at him. He said it aloud, his voice flat, dispassionate: "I've died."

But the vision hovering over him shook her head and sat down carefully beside him on the bed. Leaning forward, she smoothed a lock of black hair off his forehead and smiled, but her thick lashes were spiky with tears. "If you've died," she teased in an aching voice, "then I guess 'twill be up to me to go out onto that field and vanquish my stepbrother."

Her fingertips were cool on his forehead, and there was something decidedly human about the press of her hip against his side. Perhaps she was not an angelic vision after all; perhaps he had not died, Royce decided. "How would you do that?" he asked -it was a test, to see if her methods would be spiritual or mortal.

"Well," the vision said, bending over him and gently brushing her soft lips against his, "the last time I did it… I threw up my visor… and I did this-" Royce gasped as her tongue darted sweetly into his mouth. He was not dead. Angels surely did not kiss like that. His free arm came up around her shoulders pulling her down, but just when he would have kissed her, another thought occurred to him and he frowned: "If I'm not dead, why don't I hurt?"

"Aunt Elinor," she whispered. "She mixed a special potion, and we forced you to drink it."

The last cobwebs in his mind cleared, and with a sigh of bliss, he drew her down, kissing her, his spirits soaring as her lips parted and she kissed him back with all her heart. When he finally let her go, they were both breathless, longing to say words that deserved to be spoken in a better place than here in a tent that shook with the bellows from a crowd.

After a minute Royce asked calmly, "How badly am I injured?"

Jenny swallowed and bit her lip, her eyes shadowed with pain for the wounds he'd suffered on her account.

"As bad as that?" he teased huskily.

"Yes," she whispered. "Your left arm is broken, and three fingers. The wounds at your neck and collarbone, which Stefan and Gawin said are Malcolm's work, are long and deep but no longer bleeding. The gash on your leg is monstrous. But we've stopped all the bleeding. Your head took an awful blow-obviously when your helmet was off-and undoubtedly," she added vengefully, "when another one of my butcherous kinsmen attacked you. Beyond that you're bruised horribly everywhere."

His brow arched in amusement. "Doesn't sound too bad."

Jenny started to smile at that outrageous conclusion, but then he added in a quiet, meaningful voice: "What happens after this?"

She understood at once what he was asking her, and she rapidly considered the extent of additional physical damage he'd be likely to suffer if he returned for one more joust, and then weighed that against the awful damage to his pride if he didn't. "That's up to you," she answered after a moment, unable to keep the animosity she felt for her father and brother out of her voice as she added, "However, out there on the 'field of honor' which my family has disgraced today, there is a knight named Malcolm Merrick, who issued a public challenge to you an hour ago."

Royce rubbed his knuckles against her cheek and tenderly asked, "Am I to infer from that remark that you actually think I'm so good that I could beat him with my shield strapped to my shoulder over a broken arm?"

She tipped her head to the side. "Can you?"

A lazy smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and his sensual lips formed one word: "Absolutely."

Standing outside the tent beside Arik, Jenny watched as Royce reached down to take his lance from Gawin. He glanced at her, hesitated a split second-a pause that seemed somehow meaningful-then he turned Zeus and started to ride toward the ring. It hit Jenny then what he had hoped for but had not asked for, and she called out for him to wait.

She hurried into Royce's tent and snatched up the shears they'd used to cut cloth strips to bind his wounds. Running up to the black destrier who was restless now, pawing the ground with his front hoof, she stopped and looked up at her smiling husband. Then she bent and cut an oblong piece from the hem of her blue silk gown, reached up and tied it around the end of Royce's lance.

Arik walked up beside her and together they watched him ride onto the tourney field, while the crowd thundered with approval. Jenny's gaze riveted on the bright blue banner floating from the tip of his lance, and despite all her love for him, an aching lump of tears swelled in her throat. The shears in her hand hung like a heavy symbol of what she had just done: from the moment she'd tied her banner on Royce's lance, she had severed all her ties with her country.

She swallowed audibly, then jumped in shock as Arik's flattened hand suddenly came to rest atop her head. As heavy as a war hammer, it stayed there for a moment, then it slid down to her cheek, pulling her face against his side. It was a hug.

"You needn't worry we'll awaken him, my dear," Aunt Elinor said with absolute conviction to Jenny. "He'll sleep for hours yet."

A pair of gray eyes snapped open, searched the room, then riveted with lazy admiration on the courageous, golden-haired beauty who was standing in the doorway of her chamber, listening to her aunt.

"Even without the tisane I gave him," Aunt Elinor continued as she went over to the vials and powders laid out on a trunk, "any man who returns, wounded, to participate in five more jousts would sleep the night through. Although," she added with a bright smile, "he did not take much time routing the lot of them. What endurance he has," she said with an admiring smile, "and what skill. I've never seen the equal to it."

Jenny was more concerned with Royce's comfort at the moment than with his feats when he reentered the lists. "He's going to hurt terribly when he does awaken. I wish you could give him more of the potion you gave him earlier, before he went back onto the field."

"Well, yes, it would be nice, but it's unwise. Besides, from the looks of those scars on his body, he's accustomed to dealing with pain. And as I told you, 'tis not safe to use more than one dose of my potion. It has some undesirable effects, I'm sad to say."

"What sort of effects?" Jenny asked, still hoping to do something to help him.

"For one thing," Aunt Elinor said in a dire voice, " 'twould render him unable to perform in bed for as long as a sennight."

"Aunt Elinor," Jenny said firmly, more than willing to sacrifice the pleasure of his lovemaking for the sake of his comfort, "if that's all there is to worry about, then please fix more of it."

Aunt Elinor hesitated, then reluctantly nodded, picking up a vial of white powder from the top of the trunk.

" 'Tis a pity," Jenny observed wryly, "that you couldn't add something to it-something to keep him calm for when I tell him Brenna is here and that Stefan and she wish to be wed. He did so want a life of peace," she added with a tired chuckle, "and I doubt he's ever been through more turmoil than he has since he set eyes on me."

"I'm sure you're right," Aunt Elinor unhelpfully replied. "But then, Sir Godfrey confided to me that his grace has never laughed as much as he has since he's known you, so one can only hope he enjoys laughing enough to compensate for a life of upheaval."

"At least," Jenny said, her eyes darkening with pain as she glanced at the parchment on the table that had been delivered to her from her father, "he will not have to live in daily expectation of my father attacking him in order to set Brenna and me free. He has disowned us both."

Aunt Elinor glanced sympathetically at her niece, then she said philosophically, "He has always been a man who was more capable of hate than love, my dear, only you never saw it. If you ask me, the one he loves best is himself. Were that not so, he'd have never tried to marry you off, first to old Balder and then the MacPherson. He has never been interested in you except to further his own selfish goals. Brenna sees him for what he is because he is not her true father, and so she is not blinded by love."

"He disowned my children, too-any I ever have-" Jenny whispered shakily. "Imagine how much he must hate me to disown his own grandchildren."

"As to that, 'twas not what you did today which hardened him to your children. He never wanted any if they were sired by the duke."

"I-I don't believe that," Jenny said, unable to stop torturing herself with guilt. "They would have been my children as well."

"Not to him," Aunt Elinor said. Holding a small glass up to the light, she squinted at the amount of powder it contained, then she added a pinch more. "This powder, if administered in small amounts for a few weeks, has been known to render a man completely impotent. Which is why," she continued as she poured some wine into the glass, "your father wished me to accompany you to Claymore. He wanted to be certain your husband would not be able to get you with child. Which, as I pointed out to him, meant that you, too, would be childless, but he cared naught about that."

Jenny's breath froze, first in horror at her father's actions and then at the thought that Aunt Elinor might have been following his instructions. "You-you haven't been putting any of it in my husband's food or drink, have you?"

Unaware of the tense, thunderous gaze leveled on her from the bed, Aunt Elinor took her time stirring the mix with a spoon. "Heavens no, nor would I have. But I cannot help thinking," she added, carrying it carefully toward the bed, "that when your father decided not to send me to Claymore after all, he must have arrived at some better plan. Now go to bed and try to sleep," she ordered sternly, unaware that she had just added to Jenny's pain by convincing her that her father had, indeed, intended to lock her away in a cloister for the rest of her life.

Aunt Elinor waited until Jenny had gone into her chamber. Satisfied that her niece would get some badly needed rest, she turned to the duke, then gasped, her hand flying to her throat in momentary alarm at the ominous way he was glaring at the glass she held. "I prefer the pain, madame," he said shortly. "Take that powder out of my chamber. Out of my demesne," he amended implacably.

Recovering from her brief alarm, Lady Elinor slowly smiled her approval. "Which is exactly what I thought you would say, dear boy," she whispered fondly. She turned to leave, then turned back again, and this time her white brows were drawn together into a stern line. "I hope," she admonished, "you will have a care for those stitches of mine tonight-while you are making certain my potion has not already done its worst to you."

Hampered by his bound left arm and fingers, it took Royce several minutes to struggle into a gray cashmere robe and tie its black belt around his waist. He opened the door to Jenny's bedchamber quietly, expecting her to be either in bed asleep-or, more likely, sitting in the dark, trying to come to grips with everything that had happened to her today.

She was doing neither, he realized, arrested in the doorway. The tallow candles were lit in their wall sconces and she was standing serenely at the window, her face tipped up slightly, seemingly looking out across the torchlit valley, her hands clasped behind her back. With her delicately carved profile and red-gold hair spilling over her shoulders, she looked, Royce thought, like a magnificent statue he'd seen in Italy of a Roman goddess looking up at the heavens. As he looked at her, he felt humbled by her courage and spirit. In one day, she had defied family and country and knelt to him in front of seven thousand people; she had been disinherited and disillusioned-and yet she could still stand at the windows and look out at the world with a smile touching her lips.

Royce hesitated, suddenly uncertain about how best to approach her. By the time he finally came off the jousting field today, he'd been near collapse, and there'd been no chance to speak to her until now. Considering everything she had sacrificed for him, "thank you" was scarcely adequate. "I love you," sprang to his mind, but just bursting out with the words didn't seem entirely appropriate. And if, by some chance, she wasn't thinking about the fact that she'd lost family and country today, he didn't want to say anything to remind her of it.

He decided to let her mood make the choice for him, and he stepped forward, throwing a shadow across the wall beside the window.

Her gaze flew to him as he walked toward her and stopped beside the window. "I don't suppose," she said, trying to hide her worry, "that 'twould do the least bit of good for me to insist that you go back to bed?"

Royce propped his good shoulder against the wall and restrained the urge to agree to go back to bed-providing she came with him. "None whatsoever," he said lightly. "What were you thinking about just now while you were looking out the window?"

To his surprise, the question flustered her. "I-wasn't thinking."

"Then what were you doing?" he asked, his curiosity aroused.

A rueful smile touched her inviting lips, and she shot him a sideways look before turning back to the window. "I was… talking to God," she admitted. " 'Tis a habit I have."

Startled and slightly amused, Royce said, "Really? What did God have to say?"

"I think," she softly replied, "He said, 'You're welcome.' "

"For what?" Royce teased.

Lifting her eyes to his, Jenny solemnly replied, "For you."

The amusement fled from Royce's face and with a groan he pulled her roughly against his chest, crushing her to him. "Jenny," he whispered hoarsely, burying his face in her fragrant hair. "Jenny, I love you."

She melted against him, molding her body to the rigid contours of his, offering her lips up for his fierce, devouring kiss, then she took his face between both her hands. Leaning back slightly against his arm, her melting blue eyes gazing deeply into his, his wife replied in a shaky voice, "I think, my lord, I love you more."

Sated and utterly contented, Royce lay in the darkness with Jenny cradled against his side, her head on his shoulder. His hand drifted lazily over the curve of her waist as he gazed across the room at the fire, remembering the way she looked today as she ran to him across the tourney field, her hair tumbling in the wind. He saw her kneeling before him, and then he saw her standing again, her head proudly high, looking up at him with love and tears shining unashamedly in her eyes.

How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated.

This morning, his life had seemed as bleak as death. Tonight, he held joy in his arms. Someone or something-fate or fortune or Jenny's God-had looked down upon him this morning and seen his anguish. And, for some reason, Jenny had been given back to him.

Closing his eyes, Royce brushed a kiss against her smooth forehead. Thank you, he thought.

And in his heart, he could have sworn he heard a voice answer, You're welcome.