Page 19 of An Ill-Made Match

“I thank you, but no. I have no desire for your pity, or your kisses.”

He was silent a moment. “Has no-one ever teased you, Eden?” he asked.

Thrown, she turned to look at him. “Is that what you’re doing?”

He pulled a face. “I’m attempting it, but not getting very far.” She screwed her eyes up and tipped her head to one side. “Not even as a child?” he asked incredulously.

“I was a very serious little girl,” she answered briskly. And besides, she’d had duties. Running around fetching and carrying for her Aunty Gwenda. Keeping Lenora amused.

He frowned at her. “You can tell you haven’t any brothers,” he said at last, his answer surprising her.

“I have a cousin, Kit,” she said. “He will inherit Hallam Hall on my uncle’s death. But he is somewhat younger than myself and Lenora. We did not see much of him growing up.”

He made no comment on that, but instead stared into the distance. Eden turned her own attention back to the view and they sat side by side, in almost companionable silence for a few minutes.

In the end Roland spoke again. “We’ll just tell them I had a change of heart,” he said abruptly.

Eden started. “What?”

But he was already coming to his feet. He held his hand out to her, and without thinking, she took it and he pulled her to her feet. Holding it fast, he drew it through the crook of his arm and led her back toward the horses.

Eden pondered his words uneasily for the next stretch of the journey. If he meant to tell everyone he’d simply decided on her instead of Lenora, then it was vastly unlikely anyone would believe it. For starters, her cousin was dazzlingly beautiful. Quite apart from that, she was also the heiress to a considerable private fortune. As for herself, she was neither an heiress or a beauty and possessed nothing that would have caught a man like Roland Vawdrey’s eye. Eden knew she had her good points, but none of them would have served to tempt a man like the King’s champion. He had no interest in the arts, or ingratiating himself in intellectual circles. When she had thought of marriage in some distant, hazy future, she had imagined her husband as a diplomat or polished courtier who might attend the Queen as she did. Not as the King’s champion, who earned his gold through brawling with other knights. She huffed out a sigh, before noticing that Roland’s squire was watching her curiously. “Cuthbert, isn’t it?” she asked, pulling herself together.

“Aye milady.” He drew his horse on a level to hers.

“Have you been Roland’s squire long?”

“Only for a six-month,” he answered. “Before that I was his brother’s squire. And before that, the Duchess of Cadwallader’s page.”

“The Lady Linnet?” asked Eden in surprise. “So, you are acquainted with all the Vawdrey family, then?”

He nodded. “Oh aye,” he said airily. “I’m well in with the family.”

“And how do you like being Sir Roland’s squire?”

“Well enough,” he answered cautiously. “I get to see a good bit of the country, travelling from tournament to tournament.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I daresay, most knights do not travel with their ladies,” she said, thinking about future tournaments, when she could remain at court while Roland trampled his unfortunate rivals.

Cuthbert appeared to consider this a moment. “Depends,” he said. “Plenty of them take their doxies, but wives only tend to come to the bigger events.”

Eden’s eyes widened, but before she could press him for any more detail, Roland called something from ahead and Cuthbert spurred his horse on to join him. Doxies, thought Eden. So, her life had come to this. If someone had told her she would be consorting with doxies before the month was out, she would never have believed them!

They did not arrive at Tranton Vale until midday, and approached Sir Aubron Payne’s timbered manor house by way of a moat. The sun was bright and the clouds clearing from a blue sky.

Cuthbert twisted in his saddle to look around at her. “Looks like a good day for it,” he called back as attendants approached Roland. Eden smiled weakly and wondered if the activities would have already begun.

When he’d finished giving their names to the attendants, Roland turned his horse to bring it alongside hers. “Do you want to go up to the house first or straight to the field?” he asked.

“Why would I want to go up to the house?” Eden asked him blankly.

“To…” Roland waved a hand vaguely. “Change your dress, or arrange your hair,” he suggested looking uncertain himself.

“I don’t have anything with me,” she reminded him. “And besides, I do not know the host’s family. ‘Twould be most awkward indeed to thrust myself upon them, with no introduction.”

“You’re in the country now, Eden,” he reminded her dryly. “Court manners will be wasted on these folk.”

“I’ll come to the field with you,” she said decisively, not caring if he was embarrassed to have her trailing behind him. She suddenly felt filled with a sort of horror of letting him out of her sight. After all, he was the only person she knew here. The idea of having to tell strangers her new married name brought her out in a cold sweat. Strangely enough, instead of looking irritated by this news, Roland looked if anything, rather pleased. She would never understand him, she thought, as he directed the attendants to which baggage they could take up to the house, and which would be accompanying him to the field. She wondered sourly whereabouts she ranked in his list of possessions? Rather lower than his horse and his armor, she fancied, though perhaps marginally higher than his hair comb. She followed behind him on Christobel, as they rounded the house and headed toward a large field that was fluttering with brightly colored tents in the breeze.