Knights by Linda Lael Miller Page A

Gloriana saw, through her lashes, that Dane had entered and was even now striding between the long tables toward the dais. His gaze was fixed on Gloriana’s face, and she saw a grim fury in him that made her breath catch—not from fear, but something more complex and made partly of pleasure.
    “Our husband approaches,” Gloriana said to her companion.
    Mariette giggled, a fretful sound, rather than a frivolous one, then pressed slender, fluttering fingers to her lips. “He is terrifying, is he not?” the girl whispered.
    Gloriana supposed that, in his own way, Dane
was
a frightening man. For herself, she felt no impulse to flee. “Kenbrook has been too long on the battlefield,” she confided, in her bumbling French. “He has forgotten his manners, if he ever had any in the first place.”
    “He did not,” commented Gareth, who had cometo stand behind Mariette and Gloriana. “He has ever been a barbarian and a tyrant, my brother.”
    Gloriana felt Gareth’s hand come to rest, very lightly, upon her shoulder.
    “Come, Gloriana,” he said. “The music is jolly and I would dance to it.”
    Others had left the table, Gloriana saw, to step to the tune. “I have not yet taken my supper,” she said, for she could be stubborn. When she was still at her lessons, Friar Cradoc had oft made her say extra prayers in consequence of this flaw, in the hope that God would expunge it from her nature.
    So far, He had not and, although the good friar might have been surprised by this oversight on the part of the Almighty, Gloriana wasn’t. She reasoned that God had other, more pressing concerns than the failings of one maiden.
    “As your guardian and the master of this keep,” Gareth said pleasantly, his fingers tightening on her shoulder as Dane stormed nearer, “I command you to obey me.”
    Gloriana sighed with all the force of a player upon a stage and rose from the bench. “I would not consider defying you,” she said in a tart whisper, smiling all the while.
    “A wise philosophy,” Gareth replied. Gloriana was barely on her feet before he’d gripped her arm and half-dragged her down off the dais, through the rushes, and into the midst of the revelers. Dane watched them for a few moments, as if considering whether or not to push through the crowd in pursuit. Then, after approaching the dais to speak to Mariette, he sat down at one of the lower tables to break bread with his men.
    One of the mummers approached, silently, and offeredGloriana a mask, a garish and tragic face with a handle. She took it, chagrined that in spite of her efforts to present a cheerful façade, her misery showed so plainly.
    She curtsied and held the mask to her face, gracefully following Gareth’s steps as he guided her. “I hate him,” she said.
    “I don’t blame you,” Gareth answered smoothly. He had always been a reasonable and perceptive man. “I am told that you intend to move into your father’s house in the village and live alone there, except for your servingwoman.”
    “I shall leave the castle immediately following Edward’s ceremony,” she confirmed.
    Gareth had maneuvered her out of the hall and into a cool passageway, dimly lit by smoking oil lamps suspended from iron brackets set into the walls. Gloriana lowered the mask and sank onto a bench. She was exhausted, not from the dancing, but from the effort of maintaining her dignity. Ever since Dane had returned, she had been as fragile as the shell of a sparrow’s egg.
    Bracing one foot against the bench upon which Gloriana sat, Gareth regarded her in silence for some moments. Then he sighed, and for the first time ever, she noticed that he was aging. “You must see reason,” he said, at some length. “It is neither prudent nor fitting for a young woman to set up household alone. Not when she has kinsmen to care for her.”
    Gloriana set the mask aside with a thump. “Nevertheless,” she said, “I intend to do it. I have gold—I can hire my own men-at-arms, if