Charming the Prince Part 8

The flat of the sword slammed into Bannor's head, sending him crashing to the ground. He struggled to a sitting position and dragged off his helm only to find a disbelieving Hollis standing over him. Shaking his head to stave off the ringing in his ears, he reluctantly took the gauntleted hand Hollis extended to him and allowed his steward to pull him to his feet.

The dozens of knights and men-at-arms who had gathered in the list to train were all gaping at him with the same astonishment as Hollis. They'd never before seen anyone best their master in a contest of skill or strength, and weren't sure whether they were expected to cheer Hollis's victory or fall upon him with swords drawn.

"Excellent effort," Bannor rasped, giving his steward a hearty clap on the back. "Most commendable."

The men exchanged several dubious glances before sending up a half hearted huzzah.

"Th-thank you, my lord," Hollis stammered, looking as if he'd rather be back inside the castle calculating taxes.

While the next two combatants circled each other, swords at the ready, Bannor leaned against the fence surrounding the sand-sprinkled field.

Hollis joined him. "I do hope you'll forgive me," he said sheepishly beneath the ringing of the swords and hoa.r.s.e shouts of encouragement. " 'Twas not my intention to dishonor you."

"I'm quite capable of dishonoring myself. I proved that this morning." Bannor dragged his forearm across his sweaty brow. " 'Twould have been no more than I deserved had you cut my head off. Then you could have drenched it in honey and had Fiona present it to my bride on a trencher. 'Twould have been a sweet revenge for her to savor."

Hollis used a kerchief to dab at his own brow. "I'm quite relieved to learn your loathing is for yourself and not for me."

Remembering the look Willow had given him before she had exited the great hall, Bannor murmured, "My loathing is only a shadow of hers."

"Ah, but the lady does not know that your neglect was prompted by the purest of motives."

"Nor will she ever know. She will leave Elsinore believing me the most heartless of wretches-too cold and unfeeling to defend the honor of my lady against a band of rebellious children."

A fortnight ago, Willow's contempt might not have troubled Bannor. But as his gaze traveled down the length of the list to the gra.s.sy field where those very children were staging their own mock tournament, his expression was bleak.

Ennis and Kell were galloping toward each other with Mary Margaret and Margery perched on their respective shoulders. The girls clutched makeshift lances in their chubby little paws. Since no one had been able to get Hammish off the ground or coax him into moving any faster than a waddle, he'd appointed himself herald, and announced each unseating with an off-key blast from an ivory hunting horn. As the lad endured an accidental kick in the head without even staggering, Bannor shook his head, marveling at his fort.i.tude. When they tired of that game, Desmond donned one of Bannor's own cast-off helms and began to best each child in turn, no great feat of strength or skill considering he towered head and shoulders over even the tallest of them.

Bannor might have been tempted to challenge the arrogant brat himself had an excited murmur not swept through the list. He knew even before he turned that this was the moment he'd been waiting for. The moment when he could at last claim victory for his own.

But as Willow came striding toward him, he felt only dread.

He had already decided that he would accept whatever rebuke she chose to give him, but as he caught sight of her butchered hair, he knew he wouldn't utter a whimper of protest if she wrested his sword from his hand and plunged it through his heart.

With her stained skirts and shorn head, she should have looked ridiculous. Instead, she looked as regal and magnificent as a hostage queen, stripped of her crown, but not her majesty. As she neared, Bannor realized that what he'd mistaken for cool gray ash in her eyes had always been banked embers, now fanned to glowing flame by her wrath.

His men instinctively cleared a path between them as Bannor stepped away from the fence and stood with hands on hips, bracing himself for the blow she'd come to deliver.

She marched right past him without sparing him so much as a contemptuous glance.

Speechless, Bannor swung around to watch as she descended upon the group of children. Their eyes widened in alarm and they scattered before her.

All but Desmond, who had just used a thick branch to sweep Edward's legs out from under him. As Edward scurried to safety, Desmond's triumphant bray of laughter drowned out the ominous silence that rippled in Willow's wake.

"Who'll be next?" he shouted, Bannor's oversized helm hanging crooked over one ear. "Who'll be the next churl to challenge Sir Desmond the Invincible?"

"I believe I'd like to have a go at it," Willow said mildly, plucking the branch from his hand. Before he could squint through the eye slits at his new challenger, she delivered a ringing blow that sent him staggering to his knees.

Having so recently been the recipient of just such a blow, Bannor might have winced in sympathy had he not been struggling to choke back an astonished shout of laughter.

"Hey!" Desmond cried, his voice a hollow wail. "You can't hit me when I'm not looking. That's not fair!"

The boy dragged off the helm. His petulant scowl faded when he saw the avenging angel standing over him, the glistening spikes of what was left of her hair haloed by the sun. Something in Willow's eyes must have warned him, because after one wild look around to confirm that his siblings had deserted him, he began to scuttle backward through the gra.s.s on his heels and elbows.

"Fair?" Willow echoed, scorn ringing in her voice as she stalked him. "Fair? What would a bully like you know about fair? I've seen your kind before. You delight in preying on those who are weaker than you, but when it comes to fighting fair, you're naught but a sniveling little coward!"

As Willow grabbed the sputtering boy by the ear and hauled him to his feet, Bannor wondered how he could have ever thought her delicate.

"Mary Margaret! Ennis! Kell! Help me!" Desmond wailed as Willow began to drag him toward the castle.

His brothers and sisters remained huddled behind a hawthorn tree. Even his pet crow, newly relieved of its splint, took to the sky, cawing in distress, as Desmond's voice rose to an enraged howl. His face flushed so red his freckles all but disappeared. Willow marched on, giving him no choice but to follow or abandon his ear to her unrelenting grip.

As they approached Bannor, the boy's howls melted to a whimper calculated to rend even the most hardened heart. "Papa, oh, Papa, do save me! I'll be good. I swear I will!"

Willow halted directly in front of Bannor, her taut jaw and forthright gaze daring him to deny her. She could not know that in that moment he would have denied her nothing.

"Might I have a word with your son, my lord?"

Desmond clutched at the front of the quilted gambeson Bannor wore to protect his armor. "Please don't let her take me, Father! She's a madwoman!"

Bannor leaned down and said in his son's ear: "In future contests, Sir Desmond the Invincible, I'd advise you to choose your opponents with more care." To Willow, he extended a hand toward the castle. "Be my guest."

Willow proceeded to haul a disbelieving Desmond toward the bailey. The younger pages, who had most often been the victims of Desmond's bullying, were the first to break the stunned silence. They scampered gleefully along behind him, sending up an elated cheer. The men-at-arms followed, adding their own shouts of approval to the growing din.

Hollis clapped a hand on Bannor's shoulder. "What in the devil is she doing?"

"Something I wish I could have done long ago," Bannor murmured.

Shrugging off Hollis's grip, he joined the procession, as eager as the others to learn what fate Willow had chosen for his son. As they entered the courtyard, servants streamed out of the surrounding buildings to see what all the commotion was about. The beekeeper who had been stung on the nose when Desmond had capsized his hives began to clap, as did the candlemaker, who had been dipped in his own vat of tallow when Desmond had snuck up behind him and shouted "Boo!" The maidservants who had been forced to rewash all the sheets after Desmond had hurled fat globs of mud at their freshly washed laundry hooted with delight.

A thunderous surge of applause rocked the bailey as Willow marched the bellowing boy up the stairs to the wooden platform that housed the gallows.

Bannor began to shove his way through the crowd, afraid she might actually be planning to hang the lad. But she dragged him past the gallows, past the stocks, and past the flogging post, finally halting in front of the finger pillory that was most commonly used to punish harmless drunkards, petty thieves, and unruly peasant children.

Steering Desmond to his knees, Willow folded his fingers into the hollows carved into the wooden crossbar. She lowered a second piece of wood over his knuckles and fastened the latch with an unmistakable flourish.

Bannor smiled. She had chosen well. Although Desmond's imprisonment was painless, no matter how hard he squirmed or how loud he howled, he could not free his fingers from the tiny tunnels.

As Willow straightened, her gaze met his over the heads of the cheering mob. Bannor touched a hand to his brow to acknowledge her triumph. She spread her skirts in a mocking curtsy, as graceful in victory as she'd been in defeat. Tearing his gaze away from hers, Bannor turned blindly toward the north tower, determined to retreat before she captured far more than just one of his p.a.w.ns.

Ten.

Willow sank her teeth into the apple she'd confiscated from the page who had been about to hurl it at Desmond's head. The lad and his companions had rapidly dispersed after Willow had disarmed them, still grumbling and kicking at the dirt because they were to be deprived of the pleasure of throwing bruised apples and rotten cabbages at her surly prisoner.

As the sun had began to set behind the west tower, deepening the chill in the air, the rest of the crowd had drifted away as well, growing bored with the spectacle of Desmond glaring at Willow and Willow cheerfully ignoring him. Soon the two of them were left all alone in the courtyard, their pointed silence broken only by the distant strains of music and merriment wafting out from the great hall.

Desmond's crow perched on the sinister arm of the gallows, looking more inclined to tuck his head into his breast and take a nap than to pluck Willow's eyes out.

Willow sat with her back against the flogging post, her skirt draped between her splayed knees. From the corner of her eye, she saw Desmond's hungry gaze trace a trickle of apple juice down her chin.

"Care for a bite?" she asked, holding the apple beneath his chin.

He bared his teeth, warning her that he'd rather rip her throat out.

She shrugged. "I would imagine your brothers and sisters are enjoying some nice fat pomegranates and rose-sugared raisins right about now. If you'd like to join them, all you have to do is apologize."

"I'd rather rot!"

Willow tossed away the apple core, hiding her gratified smile. 'Twas the first sound he'd made since his outraged howls had faded to sullen silence. "That could be arranged. Although I suspect your father would protest when the vultures started plucking the flesh from your bones."

"Ha! He'd be glad to be rid of me."

"Why would you say such a thing?" she asked softly.

Desmond was no longer glaring at her, but staring straight ahead, his freckled jaw set so tight it hurt to look at it. "Because 'tis the truth. He cares naught for me, or for any of my brothers and sisters. He cares only for war and the king." Now that the floodgates had been opened, Desmond couldn't seem to stop his torrent of words. "During the war, we had to be content with him coming home every few months-bringing a sack of presents, rumpling our hair, telling us what fine children we were and how proud our mothers would have been had they lived. When he came home to stay, I thought 'twould be different. We all did. But he shut himself up in that tower and wouldn't pay us any heed, no matter what we did." He fixed her with a baleful glare. "Then you came."

Willow wanted to recoil, but she was forced to watch helplessly as that rigid jaw began to quiver. "You with your big gray eyes and your soft black hair. We saw the way he looked at you that day in the courtyard! We knew he'd never come to love us if he had you to love!"

A single tear spilled down the boy's cheek. He pressed his face to the crossbar, but could do nothing to hide the sobs that wracked his narrow shoulders.

Willow drew in a shaky breath of her own. So their mischief was not wicked or malicious as Stefan's and Reanna's had been, but was only a desperate bid for their father's attention. And they weren't seeking his attention so much as they were seeking proof of his love. She knew only too well how futile a quest that could be.

Willow tore at the pillory's iron latch, shredding one of her fingernails. When she lifted the crossbar, she half expected Desmond to bolt, but he crumbled into a sitting position on the platform, burying his face in the crook of one arm.

Willow longed to comfort him as she had so often longed to comfort Harold or Gerta. She resisted the temptation by drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She sat quietly while he cried, her gaze fixed on the frosty opal of a moon that had just begun to peep shyly over the castle ramparts.

She waited until he swiped at his nose with the back of his hand before choosing the apple with the least bruises from her pile of missiles and holding it out to him.

He scowled suspiciously at her.

"I may be a wicked stepmother, but 'tis not poisoned, if thats what you fear."'

"I s'pose I couldn't blame you if it was," he confessed sheepishly, s.n.a.t.c.hing the apple from her hand and biting a juicy chunk out of it. "Not after that horrid thing we did to your hair."

" 'Twill grow back in time. I hope." Willow hugged her knees even tighter, also hoping that the sooner she made her own confession, the less painful it would be. "You needn't consider me a rival for your father's affections, Desmond. Although he is n.o.ble enough to honor his vows, Lord Bannor has made it quite clear that he was very disappointed in Sir Hollis's choice of a bride." She blinked up at the moon. "He will never love me."

"Oh, we know that now," Desmond said cheerfully, nibbling his way around the gutted apple core. " 'Twas him who gave us the idea of driving you away."

Willow whipped her head around to stare at him. "Oh, he did, did he?"

"Aye. We were just going to play a couple of pranks on you in the beginning. Then Kell climbed up on the roof to drop a stinkpot down the chimney of the tower, and overheard Father tell Sir Hollis that the best way to get you gone was to let you spend as much time as possible in our company."

Willow felt as if she had been the one struck over the head with a branch. She knew Bannor regretted marrying her, but she hadn't suspected that he was so eager to be rid of her that he would use his own children to drive her out of his life.

"You needn't look so insulted," Desmond said, tossing the apple core over his shoulder. " 'Twasn't very flattering to us, either."

She frowned. "No, I don't suppose it was."

"But it made sense of what Edward heard the night you came to Elsinore. Edward's a bit of a dunderhead when it comes to spying, so we thought it was just gibberish at the time."

"And just what did Edward hear the night I came to Elsinore?" she asked, although she was almost certain she didn't want to know.

"Well, he was peeping through the squint in the north tower wall-"

"The squint?"

"Aye, 'tis a tiny hole in the mortar that connects to the secret pa.s.sageway in the wall." Desmond shrugged as if living in a castle honeycombed with secret pa.s.sages and peppered with peepholes was the most ordinary thing in the world to him. "Most of the chambers in the castle have got them. Fiona told us our grandfather had them built so he could spy on his female guests while they disrobed, then smuggle them into his chambers after his wife was abed."

Well! Willow thought. That would certainly explain the niggling sensation that she was always being watched, and the spectral giggles that haunted her whenever she was alone. "What a miserable old lech your grandfather must have been! I suppose I should warn Bea to start wearing a chemise to bed."

"Oh, must you?" Desmond blurted out, his dismay unmistakable. He had enough manners to blush beneath Willow's frigid stare. "Anyway," he hastily continued, ducking his head, "Edward was peeping through the squint when he heard Sir Hollis say that swearing a vow of celibacy would be much nicer than bedding you or some fat old fishwife with a mustache. Father couldn't bear the thought of giving up women for good, so Sir Hollis offered to keep you for himself. Father told him it would be unfair to ask him to make such a terrible sacrifice."

Willow gasped. Was there to be no end to the insults she must endure from the wretch's faithless tongue?

"Then Father mentioned a convent. He and Sir Hollis both agreed 'twas the only fit place for a woman such as you."

Willow would have gasped again if her breath had not frozen in her chest. A convent! Bannor found her so abhorrent that he would lock her way in a convent? He would doom her to a life of piety and celibacy. She would never know the kiss of her prince or that of any other man. She would never know his kiss.

Desmond peered into her pale, still face, a hint of panic flaring in his gamin green eyes. "You're not going to cry, are you? I hate it when the girls cry. I'd rather you whacked me on the head again."

"No," Willow said calmly, rising to her feet. "I'm not going to whack you on the head. And I'm not going to cry."

She had no intention of wasting another tear on his traitorous father. Just as she had no intention of wasting another moment struggling to earn the love of a man who was so stingy with his affection he wouldn't even spend it on his own children. She'd already squandered too many tears and too many moments striving for a love that could not be won or earned, yet was never freely given.

Rage poured through her, washing her heart clean of the blood from its fresh wounds and searing the old wounds into scars that would serve her well in the battle to come.

Unnerved by her icy calm, Desmond stammered, "D-don't not cry for my sake. Blubber all you want if 'twill make you feel better. I'll just stick my fingers in my ears."

Before he could, Willow said, "I was just remembering something my father once told me."

"And what would that be?" Desmond asked.

She tugged the boy to his feet. He hung helpless in her grasp, plainly captivated against his will by the storm of mischief brewing in her eyes. She gave his freckled hand a squeeze before bending down to whisper, "All it takes to make allies of foes is a common enemy."

Eleven.