The Marriage Parley

CHAPTER ONE

Poetry did not come easily to a man of war such as Richard of Elford, but from across the mud, blood and sweat of the battlefield, Lady Margaret de Guilles pushed back her cloak's hood and looked at him. Proof that beauty existed in the depths of hell.

"She is here." Yves drew close enough to speak for Richard's ear alone. "And she brings the king's shitwiper with her."

For three days and countless years before that, his family and hers had battled over the right to farm the fertile acres upon acres lying betwixt their demesnes. The carnage, the stink, the bristling aggression of men raised on hate melted beneath the sheen of the crow's breast silk of her hair. Her milk-white skin appeared twice as pure and untarnished for the filth around her.

"Steady," Richard said, aware of the eyes of both armies on them. Men who had only yesterday laid down their weapons would be eager to pick them up again.

Early morning mist clung in pockets as a forlorn, gray dawn pushed back the night. The smoke from campfires swirled about them along with the quiet murmur of hundreds of voices.

Yves studied Lady Margaret as she stood and surveyed the battlefield. "You have met her before?"

"Not met." A single encounter remained stamped on Richard's memory. "But I did see her once. Many years ago."

He remembered her eyes most clearly. Eyes more deadly than a hundred broadswords. Eyes the shade of spring irises that dared him to lose himself in their depths.

But this day, Margaret de Guilles would look at him, would speak with him, and lay her pretty hand in his. Because today the war ended, and it ended in marriage.

Carrion birds wheeled and cawed in dark murders above them, picking through all of their fallen. Much like the slim, dapper figure of John of Arles, emissary to King Henry, was picking his way through the battle mire, a kerchief pressed to his nose and mouth.

The second most powerful man in the kingdom and, as Yves said, King Henry's shitwiper.

Looking at Arles's silk shod form and dainty pointed shoes, a man might think to test him. Such a man wouldn't live to see his next dawn. John's narrow shoulders carried the full weight of the king's trust and the king's own will steeled his spine.

"My lady." John held out his hand to the Lady Margaret. "Be careful where you step."

"So many." Margaret took his hand, her other pressed to her mouth. A terrible sadness filled her face. "So many have died here."

"Here, my lady." John plucked her skirts out of the muck and handed them to her. "There is nothing more to be done for these. We act today for the living."

How easily Arles dismissed the lives lost on the field. It was easy to dismiss them when it was not your hand swinging the sword that ended another's life. For three days Richard had battled beside his men until the order for a truce from the king had reached them. His weariness went marrow deep.

As she drew near enough, Richard bowed low. "My lady. You came quickly on the heels of the king's message." Let his men see him bend the knee to the woman the king would have him take to wife, the woman his men would have to accept as their lady.

"I wish I had come sooner." Her beautiful eyes swept the battlefield, lingering on a young boy's corpse, no more than sixteen and already his life spent. She shook her head, her voice no more than a whisper, "Too many."

"This ends." Neither of them could afford to carry their fathers' feud forward. It had cost Elford countless lives and near beggared them.

Margaret transferred her gloved hand from John to him and dipped into a deep curtsy. "Well met, Sir Richard."