Page 13

“We’ll find out, I suppose.” Reggie nodded ahead, where a crowd was beginning to gather in what had once been the manor’s circular front drive, but was now the place where the camp blacksmiths had set up their mobile forges. Guards in light armor and men fresh from their bedrolls in nightshirt and robe were gathering beneath the glow of a dozen torches. Above their murmurs, Reggie could make out the creak and groan of a vehicle, and the thunder of many hooves.

A young lad wearing what looked to be his mother’s fur-lined robe turned and spotted the two of them. “My Lords General,” he said, eyes popping wide. He sketched a quick bow which, frankly, embarrassed Reggie, and stepped aside to motion them forward.

They weremy lords general, though, so Reggie nodded in response and stepped through. The crowd gave ground for them, a ripple of attention and then steps aside, until Reggie and Connor, the latter still holding Liam, stood at the head of the gathering.

“Look, look!” Liam said, wriggling in Connor’s arms, half-climbing onto his father’s shoulders for a better view.

Reggie did not want to examine the way that picture of smiling father and excited son made him feel, and so he trained his gaze on the head of the driveway where it emerged from the forest road.

Mounted bannermen came first, in full plate and helm, surcoats fluttering and horses trimmed out in their tourney day best. An ostentatious display fit for a king – but not a Northern one, Reggie knew straight off. This was pure Southern pageantry. The first two of the four riders carried streaming torches; the rear two carried the blue field of stars of Aquitaine, and the white, winged horse on deep plum that belonged to the Duchy of Astoria.

Reggie’s stomach soured.

Beside him, in a laughing voice, Connor said, “Gods, it’s House Primrose.”

The murmurs around them swelled as the banners were recognized. Some laughter, like Connor’s; some snide grumbles; some lascivious remarks best ignored.

Next came the outriders, four ahead and four behind a carriage that resembled a cottage on wheels. Dome-shaped, and obscenely large, it lurched along on its four, gold-painted wheels, its body bleached white and edged with hammered metal. Jewels did indeed wink along its roofline and at its windows, covered from the inside with curtains. Pulled by six matched gray geldings, the whole procession was like something from a fairy story.

Connor whistled as it circled around and halted before them with a kicked-up spray of gravel and much snorting and jigging from the horses. He leaned in close – close enough for Reggie to smell sweat, and sex, and for his heartbeat to elevate, slightly – and whispered, “L’Espoir, I take back all the fop jabs. Even you couldn’t concoct something this extravagant.”

“Thank you,” Reggie drawled, while his toes curled and flexed inside his boots.

A footman swung down off the back of the carriage, unfolded a complicated sequence of steps, opened the door and stepped aside, hand held out in offering for his mistress. A mistress who took great care and an annoying amount of time making a grand exit from the conveyance.

First, a soft, slender hand emerged, smooth as fine china in the glow of the torches; rings winked on her fingers, and around her wrist, where a bracelet had slipped past the white fox-fur trim of her cuff. A hand that floated out, slow and soft, and finally deigned to land in the offered palm. She’d practiced the next bit, Reggie could tell: the way she rose slowly from the shadows of the carriage and leaned out onto the step, voluminous skirts of fur and wool and silk falling around her in an artful spill.

Lady Leda had been a Primrose since she was seventeen, and a widow since she was twenty. She’d never remarried; had instead devoted herself to rearing her stepson to be the heir, and crafting a certain…aura about herself. She’d used her dead husband’s wealth to drape herself in the finest clothes and jewels of the land; had turned his ancestral home into a frosted confection, all white plaster and gleaming gems, gold and silver gilt on everything. She had also, if rumor – and a few eyewitness accounts at balls over the years on Reggie’s part – had it right, devoted herself to sleeping with every halfway handsome man in Aquitainia. She was reportedly a voracious and creative lover, open in her enjoyment of sex; a notorious flirt and favorite among married men whose wives were more uptight.

At forty, she was still splendid, her pale hair mounded on top of her head, her dress cut so low her breasts threatened to come tumbling out of her bodice on each breath. She stood at the top of the carriage steps a long moment, surveying them all, a giant sapphire winking at the center of her throat.

Her gaze swept Reggie – and then locked onto Connor. Her lips curved, and there was no mistaking the spark in her eyes for a trick of the torches.

Reggie didn’t know why that left him faintly nauseated, but it was a feeling that only intensified as Lady Leda descended and made straight for them – for Connor, really – and Connor set Liam down.

Head tipped back, truly in awe of the glamorous lady, Liam backed up until he bumped into Reggie’s knees; Reggie gripped the boy’s shoulders in both hands and held him still. It felt a bit like he was using him as a human shield, but so be it. He thought it might keep him from doing something even more embarrassing.

Connor bowed first, somehow elegant with his messy, too-long hair and his open shirt, his chest on flagrant display. “My Lady Leda,” he said, warmly. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

She offered the slightest of curtsies…and a very thorough perusal of all the male skin on visual offering. Her smirk said she liked what she saw. “Lord Connor Dale. I do believe I’ve seen a ghost.”

He smirked back, and Reggie felt the need to swallow, the nausea teasing at the back of his throat, now. He felt the ghost of the noose, a faint pressure across his windpipe.

“Only almost.” He took the halves of his shirt in his hands and spread them, better revealing the old, puckered arrow wounds.

The torchlight danced in her eyes. She was a statuesque woman, nearly of a height with Connor – whose invitation she took readily and without fanfare, stepping in close to press a hand to the scar between his pectorals.

Everything inside of Reggie tensed, a full-body flinch that went unnoticed, as Leda raked her nails slowly down the trail of hair that narrowed to a fine point just beneath Connor’s navel. Her nails teased, briefly, along the waistband of his trousers, and then withdrew with obvious reluctance.

Reggie’s face was aflame. In Aquitainia, ladies didn’t touch men like that in front of an audience, much less half-clothed men. Around them, soldiers shifted, uncomfortable to have been witness to such a scene. A few chuckles rippled at the edges of the crowd, and Reggie knew the whispers were ribald jokes and unsubtle innuendos. Across from him, two young men had gone goggle-eyed and pale-faced, their hastily-pulled-up trousers doing little to conceal the sudden rush of excitement Leda’s bold touch had inspired.

Leda smiled, teeth bared like fangs, gaze full of fire. “Some might say,” she purred, “that a little tarnish only enhances an object’s natural beauty.”

The ground seemed to tilt beneath Reggie’s feet, and he realized he was clutching Liam’s shoulders tight enough that the boy was trying to wriggle away. He released him, and forced himself to take a few measured, open-mouthed breaths. He tried – less than successfully – to take himself firmly, figuratively, in hand.

There was no accounting for his reaction. None. There were strumpets aplenty about, in all states of dress and undress, camp followers hawking their wares like any tinsmith at market. He himself had done lots of rolling in lots of hay. He wasn’t a blushing virgin, and yet he was blushing now, so badly that he feared he might swoon, and something dark and ugly was coiling in the pit of his stomach as Lady Leda finally deigned to glance his direction.

Her look was sly, and said he wasn’t doing a very good job of schooling his features. “Lord Reginald, I do believe you’ve gone a touch green, my dear.”