Page 3 of Lion of Thunder (De Lohr Dynasty: Sons of de Lohr #5)

CHAPTER TWO

Massington Castle

T he sun was bright this day, deceptive in its splendor because the day was so cool. It was autumn, typically wet and cold for the most part, but this season had been unusually dry. It was the cold without the wet, though if one stood in the sun long enough, there was some warmth to it.

In short, it was a glorious day.

But not for one of the heavily armed combatants in a corner of Massington’s bailey. There was one who was winning and one who was losing, and a crowd of bored soldiers had gathered to watch. The two were circling one another while a very large man with skin the color of leather and bright blue eyes watched from a flight of steps that led into a nearby tower.

He shouted to the one who was winning.

“He’s trying to get in behind you,” he said in a heavy Teutonic accent. “You must prevent him from doing so or he will defeat you.”

The combatant he was yelling at seemed to take the suggestion to heart because the figure suddenly charged the foe, head-on, hitting low and trying to knock the opponent off his feet. Then the figure jumped on top of his chest, pinning his arms, and began taking swings at his head. With arms restrained, the opponent was helpless.

The man on the stairs came flying off.

“No more,” he said, grabbing the attacker from behind and pulling them off the man on the ground. “Enough, Ella. You’ve made your point.”

Lady Elysande du Nor ripped herself from the man’s embrace, yanking her helm off and tossing it to the ground. With rage, she faced the man with the bright blue eyes.

“You told me that he was going to try to come in behind me,” she said. “In a real battle, I would have to disable him. That is what I was trying to do. That is what you have taught me to do, Harker.”

Harker of Kent merely smiled at his protégée, something that bordered on pride, though he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing he was pleased with her. To do so would be to encourage the lass’ already sizeable ego. But the man on the ground propped himself up on his elbows, pulling the helm off his shaggy blond head.

“You were trying to kill me,” the young knight said, climbing slowly to his feet. “You get so bloody angry sometimes.”

Elysande stood her ground. “You provoke me to it,” she said. “You try to be intentionally tricky, Olan. I do not like it.”

Olan de Bisby’s eyebrows lifted. “And you think an opponent in battle is going to play fair?” he said. He looked at the man with the bright blue eyes. “I told you it was a mistake to teach her how to fight, Harker. She puts too much emotion into it.”

Harker fought off a smile. There was emotion around here, but it wasn’t coming from Elysande. It was coming from a young and talented knight who happened to be quite fond of Lady Elysande, feelings that weren’t reciprocated. Sort of. Maybe they were just a little, but not nearly so much as what Olan felt.

That made the days at Massington Castle and these moments of combat… interesting.

They were also days of chaos.

Harker had been a knight a very long time. He’d been a young man back in the days of King Richard and then King John, a newly minted knight from Saxony who found warfare in England more interesting. His real name was Harker Saxe von Lauenburg, but he’d sworn fealty to a lord in Kent when he first came to England and preferred to stay with that identification. He’d fought with de Lohr and then the House of de Nerra, the Lords of Selbourne to the south, before ending up with Marius du Nor and his small but well-trained army. He was the commander of the army here, where in other, larger armies, he was simply one of the knights. He’d rather be in command, but because he had no real noble background, having been knighted by a knight he’d been a servant for long ago, he didn’t have the pedigree required. But he had the skill.

And the love of a fight.

The current fight before him was in the form of Lady Elysande. Since losing her older brother two years ago in a horse-riding accident, she had asked Harker to train her in the hopes of pleasing her grieving father. The only problem was that Marius found his pleasure at the bottom of a wine bottle these days and not in a daughter who was desperately trying to make up for the son he’d lost. It was a complicated situation, to be sure, but Harker was doing his best to train the fiery, strong, and sometimes overbearing Elysande.

Who also happened to be a woman of extraordinary beauty.

That was where Olan came in. He’d spend days and months and years being in the orbit of a woman who was more beautiful than nearly anyone in England. She had long auburn hair that fell in ringlets with a hint of gold to them and eyes of a pale hazel. But her face was where the true physical beauty was, with a pert nose and wide-set eyes, and a smile that could set a man’s heart to racing. The truth was that Elysande wasn’t really aware of the effect she had on men, which was tragic in Olan’s case. The man practically followed her around on his knees, and although she was fond of him, she’d never quite given him the response he needed.

Not yet, anyway.

The problem was that the woman was headstrong and aggressive. She wasn’t the shy and retiring type. Therefore, the situation wasn’t going to get any better with the battle going on between them. He was humiliated and she was angry, so Harker motioned for her to follow him as he began to wander away from the area where the army usually trained.

Reluctantly, Elysande followed.

“What is it?” she demanded, annoyed. “Are you going to lecture me? Save your breath. I did everything you told me to do.”

Harker nodded patiently. “You did,” he said. “But Olan is correct. You are going to get yourself killed if you do not take the emotion out of the equation. I have told you this from the start.”

Elysande frowned. “Emotion is what motivates me.”

Harker shook his head firmly. “Remember something,” he said. “Battle is not personal. Battle is simply the state in which a man, or a woman, either survives or dies. Battle is nothing more than survival of the strongest and that is how you should look at it. If you become emotional about it, then that weakens your foundation. You start to worry about everything other than survival. You start to worry about your opponent and what he is thinking. Mayhap you worry about you and your own mortality. Worry will kill you, my lady. You must erase it from your mind in battle.”

He made sense, though Elysande was loath to admit it. She didn’t like it when Harker was right.

Which was frequently.

“And if I do not remove it?” she asked.

He lifted a dark blond eyebrow. “Then you are already dead.”

He said it with such finality. Feeling rebuked, she simply shrugged and handed him the sword that was still in her hand. Harker’s eyes were glimmering with some amusement at his extremely stubborn student, but he knew Elysande. God love the lass, she always wanted to be the best in everything she did. She wanted to be right in every opinion, every bit of knowledge. She had the heart of a warrior and the soul of a tyrant, which greatly amused him. If he’d had a daughter, he would have wanted her to be exactly like Lady Elysande du Nor.

There was no one finer.

“Ella!”

A shout came from the direction of the keep, and they turned to see a woman in fine silks coming in their direction, waving at them. She was short, a little round, and had Elysande’s lovely hair, only it was piled atop her head and tucked deep under a pale wimple.

Lady Esther du Nor waved again at her daughter.

“Ella!” she said, coming closer. “Ella, you must come with me immediately. You were supposed to come inside an hour ago.”

Elysande immediately dropped her shoulders and her head. She looked like a child who had just been caught doing something naughty and now must face the punishment. As Harker made himself scarce, Esther ran right up to her daughter, grabbed her by the wrist, and began to drag her toward Massington’s enormous, square keep.

“Come along,” she said. “Your betrothed will be here soon and we must prepare. You cannot go to the man smelling like… well, a man .”

That was it for Elysande. She plopped right down in the dirt as her mother held her wrist.

“Mama, must I?” she said. “We have already had this conversation, too many times.”

Esther’s eyes narrowed at her petulant daughter. “Aye, we have,” she said. “But that does not change the situation.”

“I told you that I do not wish to marry Westley de Lohr!”

Esther wouldn’t hear the same argument yet again. “Get up,” she said. “You are not a five-year-old child. Well-bred young ladies do not sit in the dirt.”

“They do if they are unhappy,” Elysande said emphatically. Then she lay down, spread her arms and legs out like a starfish, and stared at the sky. “Mama, please . I have told you and Papa time and time again that Westley and I are ill matched.”

Esther put her hands on her hips and frowned. She didn’t like her daughter’s display of temper and looked around to see who else was watching, only to see Harker standing several feet away, where he’d come to a halt. He was grinning. But he caught Lady Ledbury’s eye and quickly wiped the smile off his face, rushing off for good this time. Somewhere over by the wall, Olan was doing the same. He, too, was disinclined to invite Lady Ledbury’s wrath, so he hastened up to the wall walk where she couldn’t yell at him.

But Elysande didn’t care about her mother’s wrath.

She continued to lie in the dirt.

“Mama,” she said with frustration, “I told you and Papa when you first brought about this betrothal that it would not work. I told you that years ago.”

Esther simply motioned to her. “Get up, Ella.”

Elysande refused. “You are not listening,” she said. “You never listen to me and the only way I can force you to listen is if I do things like this. If I lie in the dirt. Mama, I swear to you that if you do not listen to me this time, I will remain here until you do.”

Esther didn’t like being embarrassed. She didn’t like it when her daughter did things she wasn’t supposed to be doing. She was fully willing to ignore her daughter, as she did most of the time, but in this case, she was being humiliated and that made her unhappy. But she also knew her daughter was stubborn enough to do what she said.

She would remain there until her mother heard her out.

“What, then?” Esther said impatiently. “And I do not want to hear what an unsuitable match Westley is because that is not true. He’s more than suitable. He’s a de Lohr.”

Elysande sighed heavily. “He smells.”

Her mother peered at her. “He does what ?”

“Smells,” Elysande said, louder. “Mama, you have no idea what it was like fostering with him. I was young, but I remember.”

“You remember that he smells?”

“Like a compost heap,” she insisted. “He was big and smelly, a complete bully to everyone around him, and kept throwing around his family name. He was a boor!”

Esther was trying not to smile at her dramatic daughter. “And how old were you when you first met him?”

“Eight years of age,” Elysande said. “He was sixteen years, I think. I knew him for three years and in all that time, he never smelled better and he never became less of a bully. Why should you want me to marry someone like that?”

Esther could hear the fear in her daughter’s voice. Not much, because Elysande didn’t like to show fear, but it was there. The fear of a young woman facing an unknown future. She was trying to find excuses about her betrothed, something she’d known about for years. Ever since Marius had summoned the courage to approach the mighty Earl of Hereford and Worcester about a betrothal between his youngest son and Marius’ only daughter. It had been a bold proposition, but the earl had several sons and not all of them were going to end up with heiresses. But Marius offered Westley a landed title, nothing of real political value, but it came with a couple of villages and herds of sheep. The income from it was good.

To his surprise, Christopher took it.

“You ask why I should want you to marry someone like that?” Esther repeated after a moment. “Because your husband is from the House of de Lohr, the grandest house on the marches. Christopher de Lohr is a living legend in England and your children will bear the name. They will have the finest opportunities. Mayhap that does not mean anything to you now, but as a mother, it will. I should want you to marry someone like Westley de Lohr for the opportunities it will give you.”

Elysande wasn’t convinced. “There are other opportunities,” she said. “Not just Westley.”

“What opportunities?”

Elysande sat up, shaking the dirt out of her hair. “Olan,” she said. “He is from a good family.”

“You want to marry him?”

She immediately shook her head. “Nay,” she said, but realized she shouldn’t have discounted him so easily if she was trying to get out of a betrothal. “What I mean to say is, not at the moment. But mayhap I will, in time.”

“How much more time?” Esther asked. “You have already seen twenty years and eight. You are far past marriageable age, Ella. You should have been married ten years ago.”

Her advanced age was a sore subject. Elysande averted her gaze, feeling much like lying back on the dirt and having a tantrum again. “Thank God I was not,” she said. “Married to Westley with a gaggle of smelly children just like their smelly father.”

“That is your future, so you had better become accustomed to it.”

Elysande grunted unhappily and shook her head. “We have been betrothed for years,” she said. “Eighteen, to be exact.”

“That is a ridiculously long betrothal.”

“It’s not long enough.”

Esther frowned. “The only reason it was so long is because every time your father brought it up to Hereford, he would make excuses about his son being unwell or unready or un… something,” she said. “My suspicion is that Westley is as reluctant to marry you as you are to marry him, but that is of little matter. You will both do as you are told.”

She sounded final and Elysande knew that she meant it. They’d done nothing but argue for days about this, ever since Hereford sent a missive declaring that it was finally time for the betrothal to come due. That had come like a punch to the belly for Elysande, who was hoping Westley and Hereford would just forget about her and move on. But that was not to be the case. With a grunt, Elysande stood up from the dirt, brushing herself off and creating a dust cloud around her.

“I suppose if I have no choice, I’ll take the one with money and a legacy,” she said, sounding resigned. “Olan is nice, and he can be sweet, but I do not want to spend my life ordering my husband about, and that is exactly what I would be doing with Olan. He is so subservient that it is sickening.”

A smile tugged at Esther’s lips. “There is always Harker.”

Elysande looked at her in horror. “He is an old man!”

Esther chuckled, taking her daughter’s hand as she began to head toward the keep. “There is also Samson Fitz Walter,” she said. “He has been at your father to break the de Lohr betrothal. He is quite interested in you.”

Elysande shook her head. “He is only interested in our lands,” she said. “They border his. If he marries me, he more than doubles his lands.”

Esther thought on the neighboring warlord who was rather mysterious, a man with rough edges, though he seemed to be polite enough. “Possibly,” she said. “Your father said he is from a family that used to serve King John, long ago, but beyond that, I do not know of his pedigree.”

Elysande didn’t either, and she didn’t care. “There is something about him that makes me uneasy,” she said. “I am not sure what it is, but there is something in his eyes that is… oh, I do not know… possibly disturbing.”

“How do you mean?”

Elysande shrugged. “As I said, I do not know,” she said. “Mayhap it is the way he looks at me. Like he is looking into my soul and he wants it. Papa said that when he refused the man’s offer to break the betrothal with Westley, Samson evidently showed some temper.”

“Is that so?”

“Declared his undying hatred for Hereford. Papa said the man had quite a fit about it.”

“Then mayhap it is best that we not break a de Lohr betrothal for a man who has fits.”

Elysande pondered that for a moment. “Speaking of fits,” she said quietly, “do you think Papa will be up to Westley’s visit? How is he feeling today?”

Esther knew what she meant. Marius indulged in a bottle daily no matter how much she tried to keep it away from him, and today had been no exception. That left Esther and Elysande covering up for Marius whenever visitors were around—and, of course, that meant relaying commands directly to Harker and saying it was on Marius’ behalf.

But Harker knew the truth.

Given that he was bedding his lord’s wife, he knew everything.

They were nearly to the keep now. The conversation died as they headed up the wooden stairs to the entry and the two-storied foyer beyond. Mural stairs, with painted scenes on the walls, beckoned them to the upper floors where maids were waiting with a bath and a change of clothes. They had received word from Hereford that he and Westley were on their way, but there was no telling when, exactly, they would arrive. The usual journey from Lioncross Abbey to Massington took a little over a day, and they’d received word late yesterday afternoon. That meant they could possibly arrive at any moment.

Feeling like a lamb to slaughter, Elysande was forced to obey her mother and prepare, at least outwardly. But she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She had a little surprise planned for her betrothed.