“My sister was not like that.”
“Life in London is more, er, free than it is here.”
“Bother that. What about justice? Does Celia go unavenged?”
“I cannot prosecute a man like Lord Jamie, a wealthy lord from a powerful family whose friends number among them John, Duke of Lancaster, without proof.”
Emmeline’s chest tightened, and with it, her resolve. Sir Thomas’s hands might be tied, but hers weren’t. She didn’t know how, just yet, but one way or another, she’d prove this James Harcourt had murdered Celia and make certain he was punished.
Harte Court September 18, 1386
It was dark by the. time Jamie Harcourt drew rein at the crest of the knoll. Not that he needed the light to guide him, for this was the land of his birth. He’d explored these fields and forests from the time he could walk, and every square inch was indelibly engraved on his mind.
Yet a thrill went through him as he looked across to the keep built high on the opposing bluff. Harte Court was as vast as a small city, its four sturdy towers and countless dependencies tucked safely behind twelve-foot-thick walls. Fierce and intimidating, some called it the impregnable fortress, but to him it was home. Or had been once.
Home. A pang of longing struck him, swift, sharp and totally unexpected. After seven years in exile, he’d hoped he’d gotten over his attachment to this place. Now he knew he never would. As the eldest son, Harte Court was his birthright, yet he could never claim it. The familiar bitterness rose up inside him. Impatiently he shoved it away. His time here was short, too short for useless regrets.
“No sense borrowing trouble when we’ve plenty enough, eh lad?” He patted Neptune’s glossy black neck and kneed the stallion back onto the road. The air smelled sweet indeed to a nose more used to the tang of the sea. ’Twas fragrant with the mingled scent of ripe wheat and the wildflowers nodding in the hedgerows separating the fields into neat squares. Prosperous and well tended, he mused. There seemed to be more cultivated land than he recalled from his youth, but then, he’d been more interested in chasing the maids and learning to wield a sword than overseeing the estate that would one day be his.
Now he could not afford to care.
Resolutely pinning his gaze to the ribbon of dusty road, he thought instead of the things he must do after he’d paid his duty call. Return to London. Meet with Harry. Sail quickly back to Cornwall. Tight schedule. No time for lagging or sentimentality.
“Who goes there?” demanded a gruff voice.
Jamie looked up, startled to find the moment he’d been anticipating and dreading was nearly at hand. The drawbridge had been lowered over the moat, but was manned by a guard of twenty. Not surprising in these troubled times. “Jamie Harcourt, come to bid my mother well on her name day.”
“The hell ye say.” A stout soldier in Harcourt green and gold strode forward and held a torch aloft. “Jesu, it is ye.”
Jamie laughed. “I know. George of Walken, is it not?”
“Ye’ve a good memory, milord.” The old warrior grinned. “Yer sire said ye’d come to honor yer lady mother, but—”
“No one thought I’d dare show my scarred face.”
George looked at the patch covering the ruins of Jamie’s left eye, then away. “There was some who thought ye’d not come…considering that murder business, but I wagered on ye.”
The reference to Celia made his stomach lurch. Would that mistake haunt him, as well? “How much did you win?”
“A pound, all told.” George chuckled. “New men. They don’t know ye as well as I do.” His smile dimmed. “I was always sure ye’d be back. I just didn’t know ’twould be so long.”
“Ah, well, black sheep are never certain whether they’re welcome or not,” Jamie replied with a cheeky grin.
“Ye were never that,” George said stoutly. “Just a high-spirited lad who pulled his share of pranks, ran off to sea and found he liked the adventuring life better than all this.”
A few pranks…like getting himself maimed, his brother crippled and breaking his parents’ hearts. How he wished he could go back and live his life over, but that was impossible. “Fortunately my brother isn’t cursed with my wild nature.”
“Sir Hugh’s been a fine lord in yer stead. Fair and honest and as hard a worker as any under him. But…but he can never be the warrior ye are. What if we are invaded by the French?”
“I doubt the French will come, but if they do, good old Hugh will do what’s needful. He always rises to the occasion.”
“Aye, that he does.” George glanced at the patch again, no doubt recalling the day that had changed Hugh’s and Jamie’s lives forever. “Ye just missed him, rode down to settle some trouble in the village not half an hour past. I could send someone to—”
Jamie shook his head. “Unless Hugh has changed greatly, he’d not thank either of us for dragging him from his duty for so frivolous a thing as greeting his errant twin. I’m certain he’ll return before I leave. Thanks for wagering on me, George.” For believing in me where others have not, Jamie thought to himself.
Kneeing Neptune into a trot, Jamie passed under the teeth of the portcullis and up the road that cut through the outer bailey. Here were the barracks for the soldiers, the stables and the training field. A wave of nostalgia assailed him as he recalled the many hours spent in the tiltyard learning to wield a sword under his father’s exacting eye. The memory was tainted by the fierce competitiveness between himself and Hugh, the strife that had ended in a blood-spattered glade seven years ago.
Look ahead…never back, he warned himself.
All hope of slipping within, seeing his mother and leaving without causing a stir vanished when he rode through the gatehouse and into the inner ward. The courtyard was washed bright as day by the hundred torches fixed to the massive stone towers and packed with those who’d come to celebrate the forty-third anniversary of Lady Jesselynn’s birth. From inside drifted the sounds of music, laughter and general merrymaking.
The ringing of Neptune’s shod hooves on the cobblestones brought several heads around. The crowd in the courtyard fell silent quickly, as though they’d all been struck mute at once.
“Pon my word. ’Tis young Jamie,” a man exclaimed.
His name riffled through the crowd like an ill wind. Men’s eyes widened, their mouths twisted over words he’d heard before: Ingrate. Brigand. Wastrel. Murderer. The older women flinched and crossed themselves; the younger ones giggled and stared.
“Dieu, he’s a handsome one,” said a blonde upholstered in red silk. She appraised him as greedily as she might a slice of beef.
“Too rough. Too dangerous ”hissed her companion.
Beneath her
