The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15) by Michael Jecks Page A

A devil with yellow hair.’
    She said nothing. In her life she had already experienced enough misery – she had lost everything. It was hard not to feel sympathy for her brother, though. His bereavement was all but unbearable, she knew. It was obvious in his eyes, and she squeezed his large, horny hand.
    In a moment, he had snatched his hand away. Seeing the hurt in her eyes, he gave a twisted grin. ‘I shouldn’t be with you.’
    ‘I was comforting you, Brother.’
    ‘But you are no longer known to our family. You married against our will, and when you did that, you left us for ever.’
    She felt the blow like a dull stab over her heart, but the pain was brief. Soon it had dimmed, like the memory of her husband’s death.
    He had been such a handsome, bold fellow. Brash, too, she could admit to herself now, from the vastness of the years. A young soldier in the service of the King of Navarre when they first met, she had been attracted by his courage and his stories of adventures near the mountains. He told them with a mock seriousness, but in each story there was a bawdy ending, or asharp edge that showed him to be self-deprecating in attitude, a good trait in a man whose entire life was bound up with searching for honour and fame.
    They had known each other only three days when they ran away and married. Caterina’s father had refused to acknowledge her afterwards because for him, there could be little more dishonourable than that his own daughter should marry one of ‘them’. He and his family had learned to cope with the continual raids, had learned to fight back and defend themselves, and now his daughter was marrying one of the enemy.
    ‘You should never have married him,’ Domingo said roughly. She knew he wasn’t a man who could show love readily, and yet he meant to be kind. They had not spoken in years, and he was finding it difficult to talk to her, she knew.
    ‘How is Joana?’
    He grunted. ‘Your cousin is much as she always has been – loud and demanding. Seems to think she can order people around for no reason. She asked me and my boys to come east, to guard her mistress; now my Sancho is dead, she’s completely lost interest. Just wants …’ He broke off, rubbing vigorously at his eye. ‘Always wants things her own way or not at all. That Lady Prioress has turned her head. Gives Joana her old dresses, and then the silly mare thinks she’s got the position to go with it.’
    ‘She was once my best friend,’ Caterina said sadly. Now she’d be lucky for Joana to acknowledge her in the street.
    ‘You shouldn’t have married a
mudéjar
,’ he said harshly.
    She wouldn’t have if she could have helped herself. The thought of wedding a man who had Moorish ancestry was appalling to her, and yet when she saw him, his white smile, his lazy grin wrinkling those deep brown eyes, his tanned, dark face, when she felt his solid frame and those wiry muscles beneath, Caterina had simply congealed with desire. He was perfection, and a kind and attentive husband to boot.
    But Domingo could never see beyond the colour of his brother-in-law’s flesh. No matter that he had renounced the religion of his father and grandparents, that he had become aChristian; to Domingo, he was still the enemy, and Caterina was sure that on the day Domingo had heard of Juan’s death, he would have danced with joy. If she had enough cruelty in her, she would have asked about Sancho – and then
she
would have danced before him for the death of his own son. Except she wasn’t cruel enough – or perhaps she was too drained with exhaustion to work herself up to such an emotion.
    ‘He died in the famine?’ Domingo grunted.
    She nodded. ‘He was in France with his lord, six years ago now.’
    Six whole years. Since then, nothing to live for. Only survival. The mere thought of all those years gone was daunting, as though she had blinked and a quarter of her life had disappeared. She had been married for five years, from