Knights by Linda Lael Miller

skin. If Kenbrook had slept at all the night before, he had not rested well.
    Gloriana shifted uneasily on the pew, for plainly his lordship was not looking forward to the forthcoming conference in Elaina’s solar any more than she was.

Chapter 3
    M embers of the household smiled and nodded as Gloriana and Dane left the church together after morning mass. Whatever rumors might be circulating, the occupants of Hadleigh Castle were obviously pleased to see husband and wife walking side by side. No doubt they failed to notice, as Gloriana could not
help
doing, that Dane’s hand was pressed to the small of her back, propelling her along.
    He inclined his head to those who called a greeting to him but did not speak, being intent on his business—whatever that was. They mounted an outside staircase, at the top of which was a door opening onto Elaina’s deserted solar.
    Like most of the great keep, the chamber had been swept and aired and laid with herbs and fresh rushes in preparation for tomorrow’s ceremonies of knighthood. Gloriana thought fleetingly that here this was odd, since by Gareth’s own order the room was practically sacrosanct—a dusty shrine to his lost-thoughliving wife.
    Something like pain moved in Dane’s face as he surveyed the place, but the interlude was as brief asthe brush of a butterfly’s wing. In less than a moment, it was over and he had set Gloriana before him, his hard, swordsman’s hands resting gently on her upper arms. He started to speak and then fell silent again, plainly exasperated by his own reluctance.
    “You want to speak to me about the woman,” Gloriana said. There were tremors in her heart, but somehow she managed to keep her outer countenance still. Or so she hoped.
    Dane allowed his hands to slide slowly down Gloriana’s arms. Again it struck her that, while he was a strong man, capable of great violence if the tales his soldiers were telling were true, he cradled her elbows in his palms with care. He sighed.
    “How easy this all seemed when I was yet far from this place,” he said.
    Gloriana, aware that he neither wanted nor expected comment, offered none. She waited, gazing up at him with what her body had hidden showing vividly in her eyes. She was oddly injured by his tenderness, full of strange, fearful and bittersweet feelings, which meant, of course, that giving him up would be all the more difficult.
    He led her to a bench carved with unicorns, maidens, birds, and flowers, and sat her down beside him. He held her hand, unthinkingly interweaving his fingers with hers. “I have brought Mariette from France,” Dane said, at long last, “with the thought of marrying her.”
    Gloriana swallowed hard. She was not given to guile nor mummery, and the reverberations of her shattering heart had finally reached the surface. “But you are my husband,” she whispered, stricken.
    Dane averted his gaze, then forced himself, visibly, to look at her again. “Gloriana,” he said softly,hoarsely, “surely you can see that ours was never a marriage of love, but a contract.”
    She blinked. It was a new notion, this idea of marrying for love. When there was tender sentiment before the wedding, it was only a happy accident—no, love grew moment by moment, day by day, as a couple came to know and appreciate each other. She, Gloriana, had never been given a
chance
to have that, and fury filled her at the injustice of it.
    “My father,” she said coolly, smoothing the skirts of her kirtle, “believed you to be a man of integrity who would honor his agreements.”
    Dane flinched a little, to show he had felt the barb, and then smiled. “Do you want a husband, lovely Gloriana, who desires another?”
    Gloriana pulled her fingers from his and stood, causing the mantle to fall from her hair. She did not trouble herself to replace it. “No,” she said fiercely, in a whisper that seemed to echo through the vast solar. “No, I do not.” She had turned her back on him, in a