“This is heavy work. We will need to pay well.”
He didn’t like it but agreed. “Very well,” he tried to decipher her writing, upside-down. “How much wealth will we glean from this harvest?”
She shrugged. “If we find a good market, close to two pounds a bushel. At somewhere around four hundred bushels, we will make eight hundred pounds on this harvest alone.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Indeed? Most profitable.”
“Then you understand it is imperative to hire our workers in the next couple of days.”
“We will go to town tomorrow and accomplish this.”
She nodded, satisfied that he understood their situation. She thought their business to be concluded but he lingered by the desk, watching her. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was curious.
“Was there anything else, my lord?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” he said casually. By the time she looked up, he was rounding the table and pulling her into his arms. She gasped as his warm mouth clamped down on her neck.
“Jax,” she breathed. “What are you doing?”
He nuzzled her neck, her shoulder. “Tasting my future wife.”
She stiffened in his arms; he could feel it. His head came up, the two-colored eyes focusing on her as his mood dampened. “So you still have not warmed to the idea.”
It was a statement, not a question. Kellington gazed back at him, studying the splash-pattern of bright green that filled a portion of his right iris. It was mesmerizing and she struggled to stay focused.
“I think you would tell me whatever you wish in order to gain your wants,” she said frankly. “I told you that I did not want you to kiss me so you tell me that I will be your wife so that I will let you do as you please.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Is that what you think? That I am telling you what you wish to hear in order to have my way with you?”
She nodded, once. He could see by her expression that she was deadly serious. His first inclination was one of aggravation.
“God’s Blood, woman, you are my captive. I can simply take what I want from you. I do not require your permission.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I told you that I would not be.…”
“Your whore,” he cut her off, nodding his head exaggeratedly. “I know – I’ve heard it a half dozen times. You talk too much. And you think too much.”
She scowled. “What else am I supposed to do? You lay siege to my father’s garrison, kill his men, murder children, create an army of … of corpses in the bailey, yet you expect me to put all of that aside and happily accept your proposal of marriage?”
He dropped his hands from her. Then he turned on his heel as if to march from the room. Kellington watched him stomp to the door but he suddenly stopped, turning to face her.
“I am Ajax de Velt,” there was exasperation in his voice but, strangely, his tone remained moderately civil. “I have been as you see for many years. I have commanded my mighty armies for nine years and I have overrun fortress after fortress in that time. Men fear me. Kings fear me. And if God himself does not fear me yet, he should. If I could find the road to Heaven, I would lay siege to it as well.” He abruptly walked towards her, wagging a big finger in her face. “I may be many things, Lady Kellington, but I am not a liar and I am not a manipulator. Those are cowardly traits and I am not a coward. If I say I am going marry you, then I am. You can take your oath upon my word for it is as solid as gold.”
She looked up at him, the sheer size of the man dominating everything in the room. But she did not sense true anger from him; it was frustration, annoyance, an odd sense of desperation. But in that outburst, she began to realize just how sincere he was.
Slowly, she shook her head. “I cannot marry you. My father would never allow it.”
His eyebrows lifted. “The man is my prisoner.”
“So you would kill him if he does not agree?” her voice lifted in outrage. “Are you mad?”
“I did not mean that. I simply meant… hell, I do not know what I meant. What will it take to convince you that my intentions are real?”
She stared at him, understanding that Jax was asking to prove himself. He was demanding to validate his intentions. She was startled at the very least, hardly comprehending that he was bargaining for the consent of her hand in marriage. She began to see a way out of their predicament, even if it meant sacrificing her future in the process. Perhaps she could save what was left of Pelinom, and her father, with de Velt so vulnerable. She had to try.
“Release my father,” she said, watching the expression on his face as she spoke. “Bring him back to Pelinom and restore him to his post. And for the love of God, allow us to bury the army of dead you have posted in the bailey.”
He listened to her conditions, digested them. “If that is what it takes to convince you that my intentions are sincere, then so be it,” he said quietly. “I will bring your father back to Pelinom, but in order to return him to his post, he must swear fealty to me.”
Her blood ran cold. “He’ll never do that.”
“Then I cannot release him.”
“But you said you would.”
“I said I would if he swore allegiance to me.”
She eyed him, watching the gravity of his expression, his body language as his massive fists rested upon his slender hips. The mood of the room was changing, turning deeply serious. He wanted something. If he wanted it badly enough, then she wanted something from him, too.
“You could simply marry me against my will, you know,” she said. “As you have made clear, I am your captive. You need not ask my permission. You need not bargain with me at all. Why are you so willing to negotiate?”
“Because I want your agreement. I do not want an unwilling bride.”
Her gaze lingered on him a moment longer before she finally shook her head, turning away from him and regaining her stool. It was obvious that she was mulling over everything. She toyed with the parchment, finally looking up at him as he moved to the other side of the desk.
“I cannot believe we are having this conversation,” she said with genuine confusion. “Two weeks ago you conquered my father’s garrison. You murdered men, women and children without conscience, yet now you show a side to your character that displays sensitivity and vulnerability. And you are willing to negotiate a marriage contract? Since when does Jax de Velt negotiate anything?”
He averted his gaze, the dual-toned eyes moving over the parchment, the table, the floor, and finally to the lancet window near the desk. He wandered to the window, looking out to the bailey below.
“I cannot answer that,” he said quietly. “All I know is that I do not want to command you to comply, yet I want it so badly that I can taste it. I cannot think of anything in my life that I have ever wanted more than you.”
She was stunned by the statement; he had not said it lightly and she did not take it lightly. She could therefore only think of one thing to say.
“Why?”
He snorted ironically, turning to look at her. “As I said, I cannot answer that question. All I know is that you have been something different to me since the day I met you. I see such beauty and peace and courage in you, things that are not a part my world. You are a corner of heaven that I never knew existed.”
Without meaning to, he had said something innately sweet. Kellington felt her heart soften just the slightest, but not entirely. The fact remained that Jax was a violent man. There was much blood on his hands.
“And I come from a world where all I have known is peace and tranquility,” she said softly. “What you did to Pelinom… Jax, you destroyed my heaven. You murdered my friends, my father’s vassals… you destroyed everything. How can I spend my life with a man who destroyed everything that was dear and wonderful to me?”
He came away from the window, emitting a heavy sigh. Crossing his enormous arms, he paced the floor thoughtfully. “It has always been this way with me. There is nothing else.”
�
��But there is in my world. If we marry, and I am not saying that I agree, then you will become a part of my world. I do not want to be a part of yours. It is bloody and horrifying and deadly. I do not want to live like that.”
He looked at her, then. “But this is who I am. You will have to accept it.”
“I will not. I cannot live in Hell as you do.”
He fell silent. Somehow his pacing ended up at the desk and he reached out, taking her hands within his massive mitts. He studied her small fingers, inspected the nails, running his calloused fingers over her skin simply to feel the texture. Then he held them tightly.
“I have ambitions,” he told her, his voice soft and hoarse. “I know of one way to achieve them. I will not give up my goals, even for you.”
“I never asked you to.”
She was right, but he still looked at her as if her statement had startled him. Hurt him, even. After a moment, he brought her hands to his lips.
“Is there nothing I can say to gain your agreement?”
She felt his lips against her flesh like firebrands. The man had a way of making her forget everything, of sucking her thoughts from her brain until she was limp and irrational. Impulsively, she put a hand on his cheek, the first time she had ever voluntarily touched him. He closed his eyes tightly at the warm, soft sensation against his flesh.
“I have heard that you are a man without mercy and it would be easy to believe that were I to give credit to the rumors of your cruelty,” she repeated the words she had said to him those weeks ago and his eyes opened, looking at her with surprise. She smiled at his wonder. “But I believe there is mercy in every man, my lord, even you. I believe there is good in you, too. It is to that good man I would agree to marriage. But to the other man, I would have to refuse.”
His oddly-colored eyes glimmered. “What does that mean?”
She shook her head. “I do not know. All I know is that your proposal has me torn.”
He sighed yet again, unsure what more to say. He kissed her hands, her wrists, before pulling her into a crushing embrace and slanting a fiery kiss over her soft lips. This time, Kellington did not resist. She welcomed it.
When he pulled back, it was to look her in the eye. “Would it truly change your mind if I returned your father to Pelinom?”
She studied his face, deeply acquainting herself with the human side of Jax de Velt. Until the past few moments, she hadn’t truly known that it existed. He was a war machine, a murderer, the most feared knight in the land. But she saw the vulnerability, the gentle qualities that all men possessed but that he kept tightly bottled up. It was an extraordinary show of unbridled weakness and she knew it.
“Return him home and bury our men,” she whispered. “But it is more than just that. You must ask my father’s permission.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “He will never give it.”
“If you attempt to right your wrongs, he might. He is not an unreasonable man.”
“I am not accustomed to asking forgiveness, lady.”
“It is not asking forgiveness. It is making amends.”
He let her go, gently, his mind sorting through the alien thoughts he was considering. Kellington stood next to her father’s old desk, watching Jax mull over their conversation. She went to him, wrapping her small, warm hands around his massive fist. Surprised that she should make a move to touch him, he looked down into her lovely face, feeling himself go weak all over again. God, what he wouldn’t do when that woman looked at him.
“Please, Jax,” she whispered. “Bury our men and return my father home. It would be a good start.”
He was folding. He could feel it. “If that is your wish.”
“It is.”
She smiled, a lovely gesture that came from the heart. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Because of the depleted stores, the meal was nothing fanciful but it was plentiful. Great loaves of bread, cheese, some remnants of dried fruit and half of a sheep littered the table. The men at the table ate and talked, mostly between themselves as they plowed through the food. Jax was part of their conversations but they wholly ignored Kellington, for which she was grateful.
She felt rather like she was sitting at the Devil’s supper table. She could feel the evil cloaking the hall like a fog, invading her senses, causing her to shrink away when one of the men laughed loudly or spoke in tones with too much volume. She was coming to wish that Jax had never asked her to sit at the table. These men wanted nothing to do with her, and she with them. They were de Velt’s generals, a special breed of warrior.
Kellington sat between Jax and Amadeo. The blond knight was involved in a conversation with a couple of Jax’s generals and she caught bits of conversation about the shape of Welsh longbows and how the garrisons in the Marches were having them modified to fly further. Kellington picked at her mutton, not particularly hungry, her mind moving to the orchards to the south where the apricots were. It was a big orchard, planted many years before she was born. She thought of her mother and how the woman loved to make apricot compote with apricots and sugar and nutmeg. She hadn’t thought of her mother in quite some time; the woman had succumbed to a cancer when she had been eight years of age. Her father had never quite gotten over the death.
Someone was attempting to gain her attention. Startled from her rambling thoughts, she looked up to see that Amadeo was focused on her.
“I was saying that Pelinom is perhaps one of the most organized fortresses we have come across,” he said with a surprising amount of pleasantness in his voice. “We’ve seen such places as you cannot imagine. Unkempt and failing although there was no excuse for such a thing because they were well placed and well supplied.”
He was attempting to make conversation. The knight sitting next to him was looking at her as well; he was one of the generals from Wales, a big man with very dark curly hair and onyx-colored eyes. Kellington’s nerves were on edge.
“I am honored that you think so highly of Pelinom’s abilities,” she replied politely.
Amadeo watched her in an appraising manner, perhaps a closer look than he would have normally taken given the fact that his liege was planning on marrying the woman. He was very curious indeed.
“I am told it is all your doing,” he said. “Cleric duties are an unusual skill for a woman.”
She shrugged lightly. “As an only child, I fear my father sought to pass on all of his knowledge regardless of what it was. I can read, write and do mathematics. And I can also wield a sword, although most of the time it hurts my wrist just to lift it.”
She was smiling slightly, attempting to interject some lightness into the conversation. She suspected these men knew little humor and she wondered inwardly if such attempts were a mistake. To her surprise, Amadeo smiled but it was the knight on the other side of him that spoke.
“You have battle skills, then?” the man said; he had a deep, unexpectedly gentle voice. “Did your father expect you to defend the keep in his stead?”
She wriggled her eyebrows. “I doubt my sword skills would have been an asset in that case. I would have done better kicking men in the shins or gouging their eyes out.”
That drew a laugh from Amadeo and the knight, which in turn garnered Jax’s attention. A few of the other men turned their attention to Kellington and before she knew it, the entire table was looking at her. Her smile faded when she saw their focus and her heart began to pound.
“Why do you laugh?” Jax very nearly demanded.
Amadeo shook his head. “The lady was merely explaining the extent of her warring skills.”
“I see,” Jax’s two-colored gaze lingered on Amadeo a moment before focusing on Kellington. “I was not aware that you had warring skills.”
He was in pure de Velt mode; deep, dark, menacing. This was the man she had met the first day he had conquered Pelinom, the man she was terrified of. She had no idea why he seemed to bleed destruction and evil at her like a sieve.
“I do no
t,” she said, coughing slightly because her throat was dry from nerves. “I believe that is the point. The best I could do against an enemy is tickle them to death.”
Amadeo snorted again; her comment actually brought smiles to a few faces. Jax was not oblivious to the fact that she was humorous nor was he oblivious to the male attention on her; he was only aware of his raging jealousy. He knew these men, had fought with them and died with them. Some were as close as brothers. But their smiles upon Kellington had his killer instincts raging to defend what was his. It was the strangest thing he had ever experienced.
“As I recall,” he said, no humor whatsoever in his voice, “you did not tickle, you tried to bite. Caelen nearly lost fingers.”
Kellington’s smile faded and her cheeks flushed a dull red. She lowered her gaze to her lap, unsure what more to say. She felt ill to her stomach, wishing she could sink through the floor and vanish.
“It was my fault for his less than knightly behavior towards the lady at the time,” Caelen actually spoke up from across the table. “I would not blame her overly.”
Jax glared at Caelen for daring to defend the woman. It was a challenge as he saw it. He was about to return the volley when his attention shifted to the something, or someone, lingering in the shadows near the kitchen stairs. In the blink of an eye, he was on his feet, moving. His actions were so abrupt that Kellington looked up to see what had him moving so quickly. She barely had time to recognize Lavaine before Jax was upon her.
Lavaine had something in her hand. Whatever it was went flying as Jax grabbed her wrist, eliciting a scream of pain. He reached out an enormous hand to grab the woman around the throat, but Kellington was on her feet.
“No!” she screamed. “Do not kill her!”
Lavaine had collapsed, weeping loudly as Jax’s hand lingered on her neck, then slowly came away. His dual-colored eyes stared at Kellington with the look of a wild animal. He was in battle mode, the killer unleashed. But Kellington forced herself past the terror his expression provoked, simply grateful he had not snapped the woman’s neck. She rushed to her friend, gravely concerned.