Page 42 of The Champion

“And Cyril was asleep in his bed. Far from the battlefield.”

“But he was killed because he was a knight. Just as my father was. Nay, I want no more fear or strife. I want only to feel safe in my heart. To know that when I close my eyes, my husband will be by my side and not off to foreign lands to fight and die. I have no wish to live my mother’s hellish life.”

“Your mother’s life is hellish?”

Rowena found herself confiding in him. “Aye. My father was a good man. But they were placed together by their parents and had nothing in common. Ever. My father all but ignored my mother whenever he was home. He spent most of his time away from us.” Tears welled as she recalled the day of his death. “When my uncle came to tell us he died, I shall never forget the look on my mother’s face. It was empty. My world was shattered and hers... It was as if my uncle had told her a neighbor had died.”

“Perhaps she hid her pain.”

“Nay,” she said, remembering it all clearly. “She told me that she only wished he had stayed home and lived long enough to give her a son, so that I wouldn’t be forced to marry a man I didn’t love.”

“You were lucky,” he said quietly. “My father loved my mother more than anything else on this earth. He always hated to leave her side and would rush home to be with her as soon as he could. I remember most, the way he would stare at her, watching everything she did. Every move she made. It was as if he were looking at paradise.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, thinking of Christopher who had been their mother’s illegitimate son. “Kit?”

An angry tic started in Stryder’s jaw. “My father loved my mother, but she never loved him.” His gaze snapped at her. “He was just a stupid, ill-bred knight while my mother dreamed of a poet. She wanted a man whose tender words could woo her and my father knew nothing save warfare. But he knew his heart. And she was it.” He shook his head. “My father had come rushing home to be with her, only to find his home vacant.”

“You had gone to visit your brother?”

“How do you know that?”

“Kit told me that she had been betrayed by a servant.”

He nodded. “Aye. My mother had gone to visit his father. Again. I knew she was unfaithful, but I never betrayed her. I had given her my word.”

Rowena’s heart ached as she recalled the death of Stryder’s parent. It was common knowledge that his father had slain his mother, and tried to kill him, before the man took his own life. Until now, no one had known why. Stryder alone knew the reason and to her knowledge, he had never told a soul.

“I don’t know if I can sing for you, Rowena. Ever.”

Her heart ached at the anguish she saw in his deep blue eyes.

“And I could never take you for wife,” he said, his voice carefully measured. “I refuse to have a wife who cannot love me for what I am. You are so like my mother and I am my father’s son. There will never be a woman born I would trust to keep faith with me in my absence.”

She nodded in understanding. “And I am my mother’s daughter. I could no more love a man of the sword than either of our mothers. So, tell me, Stryder. How do we get out of this?”

“I don’t know. Murder?”

“I am not amused, my lord.”

“Lord Stryder!”

They both turned as another group of women spotted their hiding place.

Stryder groaned.

Rowena was beginning to understand just why the man was so arrogant. “Leave me,” she said, urging him to run.

“I can’t, Rowena. Your Saracen could return.”

Before she could argue, he tossed her over his shoulder and ran with her.

Rowena was horrified, not to mention in a good deal of pain. No one had ever held her in so degrading a position, let alone ran pell-mell through the crowded inner bailey. With every step he took, he bounced her middle against his hard shoulder. It was all she could do not to cry out.

Everyone not chasing them turned to stare.

“Put me down, Stryder,” she snapped.

He ignored her as he made his way to the stable. No sooner had he entered it than the door behind them slammed shut and was bolted.