Page 4 of While Angels Slept (de Lohr Dynasty #1)

Simon wandered away, pacing around Brac’s body like a guard dog.

Tevin’s gaze moved to the three other knights who served him personally.

Each man was worth his weight in gold, skilled and powerful fighters.

They all stood around Brac’s body, protecting it, showing respect for Brac and his family.

Soon enough, they would put him in the ground and move beyond the grieving. But not tonight.

Tonight belonged to Brac.

*

“We have a problem .”

Settled in Rochester’s warm, smoky solar with a cartographer’s drawing of England spread out before him, Tevin glanced up at the two knights standing in the doorway. Sir John Swantey had uttered the ominous words and Tevin focused his attention on the lanky, slender man.

“What problem is that?” he asked.

The knight sighed. “Charles Penden. He refuses to let us bury his son. He wants to burn him instead.”

“What does the wife say?”

“She’s nearly gone to blows with him.”

Tevin stared at him a moment before slowly rising from the massive table that held the well-worn map. His expression was pensive. “We have more of a problem than that. I received word this morning that Dartford Crossing has been reclaimed by the opposition.”

John’s eyebrows lifted, perhaps in disbelief and some frustration. “Then we retake it, my lord?”

Tevin shrugged as if John had just made the most obvious statement in the world.

“We’ve no choice. That bridge is our link to London and regions beyond.

” He thumped the vellum beside him. “But what I cannot figure out is if the king’s forces, specifically Worcester, is trying to separate me from my seat or if by taking control of the crossing, they’re trying to separate the Empress’ concentration of forces.

To separate Kent from London would be a great feat. ”

“And to take Thunderbey Castle would be a stroke of excellent fortune.” The second knight spoke, although it was not in a tone that one would have expected from a warrior. This knight was smaller, wearing heavy mail that seemed absurd on such a slight frame.

At second glance, one would notice that the knight was, in fact, a woman.

Lady Valeria du Reims had been fighting with her older brother since she had been a very young woman.

She was fierce in battle, though Tevin knew he should not allow it.

Still, he had never been able to deny her.

Val did as she pleased and Tevin was weak enough to let her.

If he’d tried to stop her, she’d only go fight for someone else.

It was a pity as well. She was a lovely girl with pale red hair and luminous dark eyes.

She would have made an excellent match as Viscount Winterton’s sister.

But in her current state, she would only make some man an excellent knight instead of a wife, and there was no market for that sort of thing.

No matter how Tevin approved or disapproved of her behavior, one thing was for certain; her advice was always sage and he valued it. He felt all the more guilty for his selfishness.

“They’ll not take my seat, no matter how they try,” he said.

“Thunderbey is well fortified. She’ll hold against any onslaught.

But they could separate us from it.” He picked up his gauntlets and shoved them on his fingers.

“All that aside, we must bury Brac Penden before his body begins to rot. It’s been nearly three days that he’s lain in that tiny chapel across the ward.

I do not believe his wife has left his side. ”

“She hasn’t,” Val said. “Nor has that little boy.”

Tevin knew that. He’d been kept abreast of the behavior of the Penden family.

Other than the breakdown in the ward the night they had brought Brac home, Lady Penden had shown remarkable control.

She remained quiet and calm, praying for endless hours over the body of her husband.

Tevin respected that. What he did not respect was Charles Penden’s mad ravings day and night about the fate of his dynasty.

He’d had them all on edge. Lady Penden had ignored him for the most part.

John’s report of the conflict between the two was the first he had heard in three days.

If Charles were incapable of making the decision to bury his son, then as his liege, Tevin would be forced to do it.

“Brac will be buried before sunset,” Tevin tightened the last strap of his expensive gauntlet and headed out the door. “Inform the men of our plans and tell them that we move out before dawn. I will go speak with the family.”

“The Steward is dangerously brittle,” Val said. “He does not think clearly.”

“Where is he?”

“The last I saw, standing outside of the chapel.”

The solar was off the great hall. Tevin, Val and John marched through the empty room, listening to their boots echo off the plank floor.

The hall was eerily still. They moved through the front door, the same door that Brac had quit days before when it had been his last day on earth.

The wooden steps, made portable so they could be raised in case the ward was breached, creaked under their combined weight as they descended.

Once on the solid dirt of the bailey, Tevin turned to the right and headed to the chapel.

Had he not been so focused on the task at hand, he would have noticed that it was a spectacular fall day.

The sun was shining and a soft breeze fluttered the banners that flew high upon the parapets.

Days like this were rare. But the weather remained unnoticed as the chapel came within sight and Charles Penden with it.

The man was standing outside the door of the tiny, wooden structure built within Rochester’s great walls.

His appearance was unkempt, his graying hair long and dirty as he worried his hands through it nervously.

Tevin knew he was in for trouble before he even reached him.

*

Cantia heard the voices from the bailey.

One was soft, deep and calm, while the other was unsteady and tense.

She recognized the second voice as that of Brac’s father, but did not immediately identify the second.

Whoever it was, he was not succumbing to Charles’ psychosis.

She could sense that the situation was escalating.

Excusing herself from her kneeling position next to her husband’s lifeless body, she went to the door and opened it. Charles was pacing back and forth in front of the chapel, kicking up clods of dirt with his emotional stomping. Several feet away, evenly planted, stood Viscount Winterton.

Cantia took a moment to study the man who had been in command when Brac had met his death.

She’d not given him another thought until this very moment.

He was tall, extremely broad shouldered, with enormous hands that rested comfortably at his sides.

She had remembered the size of his hands from the night of Brac’s death when she had clutched one of them so very tightly.

She looked closely at his face. He wasn’t young, nor was he old.

He had piercing dark eyes, so dark that they were nearly black, and a decisively square jaw.

He wasn’t unattractive in the least. In fact, he was extremely handsome if she thought about it.

But the one thing that she noticed about him above all else was that he did not groom himself in the Norman fashion.

While knights of the realm shaved their faces clean and wore their hair in various lengths of short, the Viscount Winterton’s hair was long, well past his shoulders.

It was the color of tarnished copper, dark and glittery, tumbling in spiral tendrils across his shoulders.

He pulled the front of it back behind his head to keep it out of his eyes, but the rest of it was wild and free.

And upon his face he wore a well-trimmed beard and mustache, evidence that he did indeed take some stock in his appearance.

Aye, he was a bit of a curiosity at first glance, like a beautiful untamed horse.

Yet she did not sense cruelty or unkindness from him.

That had never been her first impression.

He may have looked like a barbarian, but he had the manners of a gentle knight.

When he caught her looking at him, he bowed his head in greeting and acknowledgement.

The action jolted her from her thoughts.

Slightly embarrassed that she had been caught staring at him, she spoke.

“What goes on here?” she said to him, to Charles. “I could hear your voices inside.”

Tevin’s dark eyes appraised her for a moment before answering.

He’d first seen the woman that horrible night of her husband’s passing when she had not been at her best. Now, in the sunlight and properly dressed, he was rather struck with the fact that she was an exquisite creature.

Her rich brown hair with flame-colored highlights was caught in a simple braid, yet on her, it was like wearing a strand of rubies.

Her figure, slender in the middle yet round in all of the right places, wore a simple broadcloth gown like a goddess.

Aye, she was a unique example of a woman.

He’d never seen finer. But he realized he’d been staring at her too long, so he answered.

“The Steward seems to believe that cremating his son is in everyone’s best interests,” he said. “I was simply telling him that civilized people do not burn their dead like yesterday’s rubbish.”

Cantia’s lavender eyes flew to her father-in-law. “Indeed they do not,” her voice was strong. “Brac will be buried with his ancestors in the crypt at Rochester.”

Charles’ pacing came to a stop. He glowered at her. “Cremation is an honorable burial,” he growled. “I intend to go with him.”