entire household came to be wary of the sight of flaming red hair and flashing green eyes stalking through the baileys and keeps. They came to watch, expectantly and with bated breath, at just what point during a meal or muted conversation the Wolf’s cub would fling his patience aside and snatch up his bride by the hand or sling her like a sack of grain over his shoulder and carry her up to their apartments, there to remain until they both emerged, subdued and markedly weaker about the knees, their differences either resolved or forgotten.
They remained at Amboise until Ariel was delivered of their first child—a daughter, Eleanor, born with flame red hair and eyes so green they were like crystals plucked from the sea. The day of her birth marked the second time Ariel saw tears spill freely from her husband’s eyes—no match for the flood that poured from her own when he presented her with the pearl their daughter’s namesake had given him, mounted in a necklace of fine gold circlets, each containing a perfect cabochon emerald.
Eleanor was born in the late summer, the same time Philip’s armies overran Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and most of Poitou. He met no resistance from the black and gold devices of La Seyne Sur Mer, for in March of that year, the dowager queen had died at Fontevraud. Philip, relieved he would not have to face Lord Randwulf’s army, nevertheless cut a wide berth around Amboise and its surrounding territories, preferring to leave sleeping wolves lying undisturbed.
With Normandy under French rule, John’s search for Eleanor of Brittany effectively ended. It galled him to know she had been stolen out from under his nose, but it was not as if she could ever challenge him for possession of the throne. He reacted to the loss of his niece and the loss of Normandy by spending the next year in an orgy of feasting and debauchery. He was all but convinced William the Marshal was behind the rescue, but with no direct proof, he had to settle for seizing any and all estates deeded to the De Clare traitors. Most of these, he discovered to his further rage, had been placed in trust with the Countess Isabella of Pembroke, who was just as adamant as her husband in decrying the youthful passion and misguided zealousness that had led her niece and nephew astray.
As to Guy of Gisbourne’s description of the scarred knight who had left him a cripple, there was little doubt in the king’s mind it was Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise, even before he heard of the marriage of the Wolf’s cub to Ariel de Clare. Realizing he must have passed within arm’s length of them on the road to Corfe threw the monarch into such a frothing fit, he was nearly a month in bed recovering his senses.
Having seemed to simply vanish into thin air, Eleanor of Brittany was referred to thereafter as the Lost Princess of Brittany. Stories, songs, and legends of what really happened to her were rekindled occasionally, each with eyewitness accounts of either her demise or her appearance as a ghostly spectre in the king’s chambers. All of the stories were related by the tawny-haired monk who visited Kirklees faithfully each and every week for the next seventeen years. So familiar had he become to the peasants who worked the fields around the abbey, that after the first few months he rarely troubled himself to change out of the drab brown cassock he wore. A stranger passing through the greenwood might have thought it odd to see a monk practicing with a sword and bow, odder still to see the collection of outlaws and misfits he collected into his fold. But there were few strangers who ventured into the heart of Sherwood, and none who emerged if the forest residents did not like the look of them.
Occasionally, messages arrived from Normandy and were also shared in the sunny garden of Kirklees. News that Ariel and Eduard had moved to a fine castle of their own near Blois, where two strapping sons and another daughter were born in successive springs, put smiles on their faces and joy in their hearts. News of Robert d’Amboise’s rise through the ranks of knighthood set a third face blushing more hues of red than a summer sunset.
Marienne FitzWilliam had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Because she had not taken any vow of seclusion, she was often sent to the market in Nottingham to trade the linens woven by the nuns of Kirklees. It happened one day, she was caught in a circle of sunlight, frowning in concentration over a selection of needles and spindles, when the bored and lecherous eyes of a town official happened to settle on the abundance of glossy chestnut curls. His name was Reginald de Braose and he was in the service of the new sheriff of Nottingham …
But that, dear reader, is another story.
SHE WAS A FIERY NOBLEWOMAN
WHO MET HER MATCH IN THE
WARRIOR PLEDGED TO
DELIVER HER TO ANOTHER
MAN’S ARMS.
Marsha Canham has written ten historical romances for Dell. She has received numerous writing awards and lives outside Toronto, Canada.
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Copyright © 1994 by Marsha Canham
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