Читать книгу Templar Knight, Forbidden Bride - Lynna Banning - Страница 14

Benjamin looked up from his writing table as the sound of Leonor’s harp, and then cheers, drifted to him from the hall below. He cocked his head, listening with undisguised pleasure.

Good. She had been accepted. Nay, revered, by the sound of shouts and the din of banging cups. Excellent! If she wished, his precious lamb could make her way from castle to court with her art. Now the whole world lay at Leonor’s fingertips.

A shadow fell across the open doorway. Benjamin started, and a blot of ink fell on the page before him. ‘Who comes?’ His voice grated in the silence.

The Templar stepped across the threshold. The knight’s wintry green eyes flicked to meet Benjamin’s gaze. ‘Shalom.’

Benjamin blinked. ‘And to you, peace also.’

Reynaud studied his old tutor, his lips widening into a broad smile. ‘Greetings, Benjamin. Alea jacta est.’

Benjamin’s black eyes snapped. ‘What’s that you say?’

‘That was the first Latin sentence you ever taught me. Do you not remember?’

Benjamin half-rose from his seat. His gaze travelled from Reynaud’s face to the scarlet cross stitched on the front of his surcoat, then dropped to his sword belt.

‘So I see,’ Benjamin murmured. ‘Truly, the die is cast.’

He stood and clasped Reynaud in an embrace so tight the old man wheezed for breath.

‘Gently, my son, gently. Your mail shirt cuts the skin. It is like grasping a tree to one’s breast!’

Reynaud laughed. ‘A tree, am I?’

Benjamin beamed up at him. ‘Very like. Thou art a man, in esse. Now I wish to hear what you are doing here in Moyanne? I know about Hassam asking protection for Leonor…now I would know the rest of it. The truth.’

‘I was sent. By the Templar master, Bertrand de Blanquefort, in Acre.’

‘Acre,’ Benjamin breathed. He raked crabbed fingers through his thick grey beard. ‘And how goes it in Acre?’

‘Well enough,’ Reynaud answered. ‘Christian fights Christian for power in Jerusalem. How goes it in Granada?’

The old man smiled. ‘Well enough. Brother fights brother, as you well remember. Arab fights Christian and Arab as well. Al-Andalus cannot long survive with such division.’

‘Nor can Jerusalem.’ Reynaud eyed the older man. ‘The pomegranate will be devoured, seed by seed. Think you that men are greedy for power, or just fools?’

‘Fools. Greedy for power, yes, but fools. And that is dangerous.’

‘I fear you are right,’ Reynaud said on a sigh. ‘Hassam taught me to think first and draw my blade second. But in Outremer, one does not long hold to that philosophy and live. Now I strike first and ask afterwards.’

Benjamin said nothing. Gesturing for Reynaud to sit, he blotted up the spilled ink and quickly poured two cups of wine from the wooden pitcher at his elbow. He handed one across the writing table to Reynaud. ‘To your health.’

Reynaud lifted his cup. ‘And yours.’

The two men studied each other. At last Benjamin cleared his throat.

Reynaud rose, set his wine cup on the table and bent close to the older man. ‘Know you the silver swan?’ he enunciated carefully.

‘Eh? What? What are you talking about, a swan? What has a swan to do with anything?’

Satisfied, Reynaud patted the man’s bony shoulder. Benjamin knew nothing about de Blanquefort’s coded phrase. For the first time in his life he felt he was the teacher and Benjamin the student.

Deliberately he changed the subject. ‘Tell me of Leonor.’

Just speaking her name brought an unexpected rush of warmth to his chest.

‘Leonor? Ah, yes, Leonor. Well, no doubt you have heard her sing tonight?’

Reynaud nodded. Would that he had not. Her image, and the sound of her low, melodious voice, remained indelibly stamped on his heart.

‘So,’ Benjamin continued. ‘It is obvious, is it not? She is beautiful. Like her mother. Her music, her poems, her…’ His voice trailed off, then he gazed at him with watery black eyes. ‘How impressed she must be at what you have become! You were always a fine-looking boy, but as a man— ay de mi! The ladies must all fall in—’

Reynaud laughed. ‘She was not impressed,’ he said shortly.

Benjamin smiled. ‘As Hassam will tell you, she is a handful. That one has a mind of her own, I fear. Also like her mother.’

‘You must bear part of the blame for that, old friend,’ Reynaud said with a chuckle. ‘Her education was your doing.’

‘And her mother’s,’ Benjamin amended. ‘But, yes, I admit it. Since the day of her birth I have loved Leonor as if she were my own daughter. Old men grow more foolish with the years.’

Reynaud sobered. A Templar, too, could be foolish. And to be foolish was dangerous. There was no room in the life of a spy for the distraction of a woman. He would need all his wits about him in the days to come.

With a gesture, he refused the older man’s offer of more wine. ‘She may be in danger. Hassam fears she may be kidnapped.’

Benjamin’s thin shoulders twitched. ‘Kidnapped!’

‘Calm yourself. I do not think that is what my uncle fears most. I think Hassam knows of some other threat in Navarre, a danger which he did not share with me.’

Benjamin quailed. ‘Danger? What kind of danger?’

‘I know not, at the moment. I mean not to offend you, old friend, but I am suspicious of Leonor.’

At Benjamin’s thoughtful nod, Reynaud pressed the issue a step further. ‘“Know you the silver swan” is a coded message. She sang those very words in the hall just now.’

The old man’s head snapped up. ‘Coded message?’

‘Ben, is it possible that Leonor could be a spy?’

‘What? Leonor? ’ The old man’s black eyes blazed. ‘Have you left your wits in Acre? Think, man. She is a woman! At the moment, bent on being a minstrel. Is that not worrisome enough?’

Reynaud laid his forefinger against his old tutor’s lips. ‘We shall keep silence, then, you and I. I will protect her.’

Benjamin hugged him hard. ‘Guard her well, my son.’

Reynaud knew the links of chainmail under his surcoat pressed into the old man’s flesh, but the strength of Ben’s embrace did not falter. Again he had to smile. In addition to Leonor, Benjamin loved him as well.

Reynaud re-entered the great hall just as the servants were clearing the tables and pushing them back against the walls to make space for dancing. Pages bustled between kitchen and scullery, folding the stained linen cloths and tossing scraps of meat to the hounds as they passed. The wine server made his rounds, collecting the cups and pitchers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the portly man glance about, then surreptitiously gulp the dregs from a pewter cup left on the table.

His own mouth felt dry. Just as the red-faced wine server reached for Reynaud’s cup, he rescued it and downed the contents in two swallows. Then he turned to search for Leonor.

He surveyed the hall, watched as a troupe of musicians tumbled in through a doorway, one carrying a gut-strung rebec and a vielle, three others with wooden flutes, a gittern and a battered tabor drum. They took up positions at one end of the hall, and the chattering crowd cleared the floor. The string players adjusted their tuning and knights and ladies linked hands for a circle dance.

He scanned the faces of the onlookers, then searched for Leonor among the dancers, but the slim, black-haired woman in emerald silk was not among them. Surely she would not retire this early, not after such a triumphant reception? Unless…

A thread of alarm travelled up his spine. Was she in danger? He grabbed a sloshing pitcher out of the wine server’s grasp and refilled his cup with a hand that trembled.

Before he could lift the wine to his lips, a low voice spoke at his elbow. ‘Reynaud, do you dance this evening? Or…’ Leonor looked pointedly at the wine cup in his hand ‘…do you prefer to drink?’

He started so violently a bit of wine spilled over the edge of his cup and wet his fingers. She moved like a cat! Her green silk tunic was girdled with gold links, accentuating the curve of her waist and hips. He worked to keep his gaze elsewhere.

‘I did not see you approach.’

The grey eyes rested briefly on his, an expression of amusement in their depths. ‘I did not intend you to.’

Reynaud drew in a careful breath. He was supposed to watch her, not the other way around. His belly tightened. She could appear and disappear like a wraith. Hassam was right—he would need all his wits to keep track of her. At this moment, the idea did not displease him as much as it should.

‘Do you dance, Reynaud?’ Leonor repeated.

The thought of touching her, even linking hands, brought the blood to his brain. His senses came alive, then careened out of control. He could not risk it.

‘I can dance, yes. I choose not to.’

‘As you wish.’ She smiled up at him and his heart lurched.

He did not wish. He wanted to hold her close, drink in her scent and let his mouth explore hers.

This was madness! Was he not a holy knight? Never had he wanted a woman so. But now his mind reeled as if he were fevered.

‘You have not yet told me,’ she murmured, ‘which of my three songs you found most enjoyable.’

Reynaud could not answer. Here in this noisy hall was neither the place nor the time to question her about the coded words.

Count Henri approached, and she stepped to one side to accept her uncle’s invitation to join the dancing. Without a backwards glance she glided away on the count’s arm, pivoted and made a deep reverence.

Reynaud watched her move gracefully in the circle of dancers until his eyes burned. No wonder Benjamin was enamored. Leonor was like no other woman he had ever encountered. By the time this evening ended, every man in the hall would be in love with her. Watching over her, wanting her, was pure torture.

And suddenly he knew he could not do it.