For Love And Honor by Flora Speer Page A

wanted. Still,
her enthusiasm grew until she cried out in astonished delight, “Oh,
Crispin, Crispin,” before she fell across his chest, resting there
in panting exhaustion while he groaned and thrust beneath her.
    “I did not know you would be like this,” he
said when they lay peacefully once more, “funny and passionate and
most endearing.”
    “Nor did I know you had a sense of humor,”
she told him.
    “I never show that part of myself to
strangers,” he said. “My dearest friends know it. Alain and Piers
and I have had some amusing times together.”
    Alain, who looked at her with haunted eyes. / will not
think of him, she vowed yet
again. We will part soon. He will go home. It will be
easier then.
    Aloud she said, “Crispin, I like you so
much.”
    “Dare I hope that, in time, it might be more
than liking?” he asked. “I want you to care deeply for me,
Joanna.”
    “I do care already,” she said, “and I’m sure
I will care more as time goes on.”
    “ I would
not have you think me a nuisance,” he murmured a while later, “but
do you think we could –
just once more before we rise?”
    “Of course,” she responded. She opened her
arms to him, telling herself that her marriage would prove to be a
good one. Love would come later, when she knew him better. For now,
the warm tenderness he evoked in her was enough. Though they were
to make love once in the far reaches of the night when the
banqueting was over, and again in haste when morning came and he
was late for an appointment with Radulf, forever after Joanna
firmly believed it was during that June evening, when she first
began to reach beyond Crispin’s reserve and to truly know his kind
and gentle soul, that their child was conceived.

Chapter 6
     
     
    “So, you’re leaving, are you?” Radulf could
not bring himself to play the genial host, as if he meant what he
said. Not with these two guests. His words rang false. “My dear
young friends, why not stay for the entire week of feasts?”
    Listening to Piers explain why not, Radulf
looked from him to Alain and back again, his eyes hard.
    “ Well,”
Radulf said, the mask of pleasantry slipping a bit more, “if you
care so little for your precious Crispin, then of course you must
go before his wedding celebrations are done. But not until
tomorrow. You will spend one more night beneath my roof, I
hope?”
    “That was our plan,” Piers said.
    With an abrupt nod, Radulf moved away,
calling to the waiting Baird to follow him.
    “I expected he’d be eager for us to leave,”
Alain remarked, puzzled by Radulf’s insistence that they should
remain for another night. “I don’t think he likes either of
us.”
    “His feelings for us won’t matter after
tonight,” Piers said. Seeing Alain cast an apprehensive look about
the great hall, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
    “Does the hall seem unnaturally dark to
you?”
    “All of the candles and torches are not yet
lit,” Piers noted, “and the outer door is wide open, so there is
bright light coming in through the entry hall. That makes the
shadows seem deeper.”
    “Perhaps.” Alain sounded unconvinced. “For a
moment everything went dark. It must have been my imagination.”
    “You are tired after the long hunt this
morning. Late nights and early mornings, long hunts and longer
banquets; it’s enough to drive a man to his knees. Give me the
honest life of a hard-fighting knight, I say, and forget these
interminable celebrations.”
    “Especially this one,” Alain agreed.
    They were
not the only guests who would be leaving the following morning and,
publicly at least, Radulf professed to regret each departure. Two
barons were due at court to begin their forty days of yearly
service to the king, while a third would return home for his son’s
marriage. In acknowledgment of this diminution in the number of his
guests, Radulf ordered Rohaise to set forth an especially fine
feast on that last day when all of them would gather