Dragon's Knight

Chapter Two

Aislynn paused before the door that led to the private chambers and peered back toward the high table. Aye, Jarrod Maxwell was indeed still there. He was not some figment of her imaginings, that strange and fascinating man who had come walking into their lives with that cool breath of wind. And yet he had managed to sit the whole of the meal without one word to her, talking with her father as if she did not even exist.

She would certainly wish him at the far ends of the earth were it not for her certainty that he would find Christian. Even as she thought this, she could not forget the way he had looked at her mouth. She had felt a rush of something warm and womanly inside. It was something she had never felt when Gwyn looked at her. Not even when he had kissed her that once.

Whatever was the matter with her?

Though Jarrod Maxwell was quite undeniably the most interesting and handsome man she had ever seen in all of her life, she must stop this. She certainly had no reason to think the knight was interested in her. She must not allow herself to imagine some connection between them. Instead, she needed to be about the task of readying his accommodations.

As her father had said, the knight should be shown the utmost honor and hospitality they could bestow upon him. Christian’s chamber was vacant at the moment and quite spacious. It should serve their guest quite well.

Without further ado Aislynn went to the kitchens and charged her women with readying a bath. She then made her way to her brother’s chamber to prepare it for Jarrod Maxwell herself, determined to behave as the daughter of her father’s noble house. Yet, as she was spreading the clean linens on the bed, the bed Jarrod Maxwell would soon lie upon, she noted with alarm that her hands were trembling. Quickly, she told herself her trembling was only due to her excitement and hope that the knight might actually be able to help them find her brother.

When she moved to place the soft white pillow upon the bed, she could not deny an unexplainable thrill at the vivid image of his dark head upon it. She took a deep breath and held the snowy pillow tightly to her breast.

It was with a start of surprise that, at that very moment, she heard her father’s voice behind her in the open doorway. Along with it came the unmistakable deep tones of the man who was so much in her thoughts.

She swung around to face them with a guilty start, dropping the pillow onto the floor.

Her father motioned Jarrod Maxwell into the chamber as he addressed her. “Aislynn, my dear, Margaret informs me that Sir Jarrod is to have Christian’s room during his stay.”

Aislynn nodded, not meeting her father’s gaze as, with a pounding heart, she bent to pick up the pillow and toss it upon the bed. Telling herself that the men could not have known her thoughts even if they had seen her hugging it, she replied quickly, “There is no point in his having less comfortable accommodation when it is vacant. Sir Jarrod will have some measure of privacy here.” As she motioned toward the large wooden tub, she realized that the knight’s name felt strange and at the same time welcome on her lips, which only disturbed her further.

Hurriedly she went on evenly, determined to behave as if she welcomed this man no more than she would any other guest. “The women are heating water for a bath as we speak.”

Jarrod Maxwell held up a hand, shaking his black head. “There is no need—”

Her father interrupted him. “Nay, do not demure, sir knight. Allow us to thank you for your help by way of our hospitality.”

The other man subsided, bowing, his stance tense, as if he were uncomfortable at being the object of their consideration.

Aislynn found herself studying Jarrod Maxwell as he stood there with her father. This new awkwardness was a sharp contrast to the grace and power that seemed his accustomed demeanor. What a strange mixture of reticence and confidence he was. No wonder Christian held him in such high esteem.

Again Aislynn felt an unmistakable stirring inside her. He raised a strong hand and raked it through the raven darkness of his hair while he listened to her father. At that very moment those black eyes found hers and she felt herself flush. He held her gaze for just one moment. “Lady Aislynn.”

Quickly she looked away, moving to make sure the towel she had draped over the bench was not too close to the fire, though she already knew that it was not. Far from being pleased that he had acknowledged her, she was unaccountably flustered, her heart thumping in her breast.

Deliberately Aislynn occupied herself with wandering about the room, putting away the few items her brother had left out. The two men’s conversation became no more than a soft murmur in the background, though the deep timbre of the knight’s voice kept her senses in a heightened state.

So successful was she in distracting herself that she ceased to even attend their conversation until her father’s voice rose as he said, “What do you mean, the side of one of the pots has cracked?” Aislynn looked up to see that her father was addressing Margaret, the head woman at Bransbury, who stood at the entrance to the chamber with a perplexed frown creasing her brow.

The slender, dark-haired Margaret looked from him to Aislynn. “I did not mean to trouble you with this matter, my lord. I intended to inform Lady Aislynn. The iron hook that held the pot of bathing water over the fire came loose, causing it to fall.”

Her brow creasing, for a crack in one of the enormous pots was a calamity indeed, Aislynn started forward. “I will see to it, Father.” She would be glad of an excuse to leave them.

But her father halted her with a raised hand. “Nay, Aislynn, you have had much to occupy you. See to our guest. I will attend this matter myself. I wish to see how badly the pot is damaged.”

“But…”

It was too late. He was gone and with him, Margaret.

She heaved a silent sigh. Clearly she had been too effective at appearing busy.

And now she was yet more determined to appear so. She did not wish to attempt to make polite conversation. But Aislynn could feel the knight watching her. She could not bring herself to look at him, not now without her father’s presence to buffer her feelings.

Desperately she looked about the chamber. The fire burned clean, the tub was ready for filling, the linens were laid out, the bed was turned down. There was nothing left to do and his attention upon her was near tangible, though Aislynn pretended not to notice.

She felt a flush staining her cheeks. Surely she had blushed more in the past hours since Jarrod Maxwell’s arrival than ever before in her life.

It was with a start that she heard him speak her name. “Lady Aislynn?”

She looked across the length of the thick carpet that marked the center of the room and into those black, depthless eyes. There was no expression in them that she could read. “My lord?”

He motioned about the chamber. “Would you mind if I have a look about? I might be able to find something that would help us in our search for Christian.”

Instantly she shook her head, blushing anew as she realized what her thoughts should truly be occupied with—her brother and finding him. “Nay, please do so, but I do not know what you might find. My father and I have been through everything. There seems to be nothing here beyond my brother’s clothing and his drawings.”

“He left his drawings? When we were in the Holy Land he never went far without them.” His dark brows arched. “Perhaps I will begin there.”

Aislynn started toward the chest at the end of the bed and was aware that he was moving toward it, too. When she halted before it, she reached out to the latch. A strange but unmistakable jolt flashed through her as her hand came into contact with warm flesh and she pulled her hand back. In that brief contact, she was aware that the skin she had inadvertently touched was smooth and hard. The skin of a man’s hand.

Jarrod Maxwell’s hand.

Her gaze lifted and she saw that he was now standing close enough that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his mysterious black eyes. He took a step backward, murmuring, “Forgive me. I but thought to do something for myself rather than have you wait upon me.”

Her heart pounding, Aislynn saw that his mobile mouth had turned down in a frown. Rubbing her still trembling hand against the back of her skirt, she wondered if he was aware of her own reaction to that inadvertent touch.

She answered hastily, attempting to cover her confusion. “There is nothing to forgive. You simply startled me.” She was decidedly unhappy with the breathlessness in her voice.

Surely it was surprise that made her tingle from the top of her head to the tips of her toes—startlement.

He bowed, not meeting her gaze now, and Aislynn turned back to open the chest. She found herself speaking too quickly. “As I told you, we have searched everything. Though there are hundreds of renderings, none of them gives any hint of where Christian might have gone.”

With the lid thrown back, the few sheets of parchment, which lay on top of Christian’s best garments, were revealed. “These are most recent of those we found. All the others are over there.” She pointed across the room toward another larger chest against the gray stone wall. “They were obviously made before his return to England.”

She could feel the heat of Jarrod Maxwell’s body as he bent over her. He seemed to have forgotten that awkwardness of a moment ago as he looked more closely at the drawings.

Aislynn swallowed hard, a shiver racing through her. Taking a deep breath, she moved back carefully so as not to actually touch him while giving him a better view. Sir Jarrod, thankfully, did not appear to note her reactions, which was a relief of great proportions. For they only seemed to grow more inexplicably extreme by the moment.

She watched as the dark knight reached out to take the top drawing, holding it close as he studied it, frowning with obvious concentration. Curiosity overcame her reluctance to be near him, and she leaned in to look at the drawing. She was forced to rise up on toe tip to see it clearly.

Noting her action, Jarrod Maxwell looked down at her. “You are very small,” he commented as he held the drawing lower, seeming unaccountably pleased at his observation.

Finding no explanation for why this would be so, Aislynn determined to ignore it. She had never been particularly troubled by her size. It had in no way prevented her from doing anything she wished to do. She turned her attention to the rendering.

She had seen it before, of course. It was done in charcoal, as were all of Christian’s renderings. In it a man lay upon a bed, his face creased with pain and sadness. In the corner of the parchment was drawn the form of the dragon brooch. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked to where Sir Jarrod had thrown his cloak upon the end of the bed, recalling that he had worn it his when he’d entered the hall.

Aislynn knew from Christian that it was Sir Jarrod who had had the brooches made and that their friend Simon Warleigh had one as well. Although it had seemed odd that her brother would draw the brooch on the corner of the page, neither she nor her father had been able to assign any particular significance to it.

Jarrod’s gaze continued to hold obvious concentration as he looked from the drawing of the sick man to the brooch and back again.

Aislynn could not stop herself from asking, “What is it? Do you find something of significance there?”

The knight turned to her with an expression of intense concentration. “I am not sure, but the man in the drawing is a soldier who came with Isabelle and Simon when they left Dragonwick some weeks ago. He was injured in his efforts to help Isabelle and Simon escape from Kelsey.”

Aislynn heard the barely suppressed rage in his voice as he said the name Kelsey. Through her brother, she knew what ill Kelsey, who had murdered The Dragon, had wrought, and also of the anger that seethed inside the three men who had fostered together. But she noted a depth of venom in this man that went even deeper than that which Christian had displayed.

She listened as Jarrod went on, his voice now softened by regret. “Though we thought the wound was not serious, Jack became ill and died. Christian, although he knew him little, spent much time at his side. Seeing Jack so ill, and knowing he had meant only good in helping Isabelle and Simon to leave Dragonwick, made me want to vent my wrath on Kelsey all the more.” His jaw clenched tightly. “And that I can not do, for Simon and Isabelle’s sake. We are too closely watched by King John, who was not pleased to have been coerced into setting Simon free.”

Aislynn knew that it had been Christian who had convinced two very powerful nobles to speak on Simon’s behalf, virtually blackmailing the king into setting him free. She wondered if Sir Jarrod had any notion of how much he revealed of himself with this tale. Clearly he had a great capacity for ire and a love of vengeance, yet he tempered them for the sake of those he loved.

Again, Aislynn was moved by the bond between the three men, though she was not surprised to learn that her brother had sat with the dying man. She had been quite young when Christian had left Bransbury, but his kindness to injured animals about the demesne was well remembered. She had missed his gentleness, his warmth, when her father was so locked in his grief over his wife’s death. Though she had understood as she grew older that a young man must foster and become a knight, she had never stopped hoping that he would return to Bransbury—that they would be as a family.

Christian’s return had made her dreams a reality, for a time. But now they were once more in a state of loss. She would leave no avenue unexplored in her desire to have Christian home.

Yet she could not see what this drawing might have to do with her brother’s disappearance. Puzzled, she watched as Sir Jarrod quickly leafed through the other drawings, setting them into the chest before going back to the first one, the one depicting the man who had died.

Again she asked, “What is it that you see?”

He shook that dark head. “I am not certain. There is just something. Somehow it seems that Christian may be saying that the brooch, The Dragon, is connected to Jack.”

“But even if that is true, I do not see what it can have to do with Christian’s being gone. Perhaps the man simply made him remember past times at Dragonwick.”

The knight raked a hand through his thick hair, taking a deep breath and setting the drawing aside. “Perhaps you are right, Lady Aislynn.”

The sound of her name on his lips brought her back to an instantaneous awareness of all the feelings she had been attempting to deny. Her gaze came to rest on the lean line of his jaw, the curve of his heavy black lashes, the suppleness of his mouth.

A strange heat moved in Aislynn’s belly. At that moment Sir Jarrod turned his black fathomless eyes to her, his gaze as deep as the darkest night and just as unreadable. Aislynn could not move, could not even breathe properly, for her chest felt…

Suddenly realizing that she was staring at him, Aislynn feared that all that was going on inside her would be revealed in her eyes. Deliberately she focused on the fire, the stone floor, the open door. Anywhere but on the dark knight.

Good heavens, had she gone mad?

Her brother was missing. That was the knight’s only reason for being at Bransbury. Even if he were interested in her, it would not be appropriate now. Even if she were not engaged, which she was. Even if her marriage was not significant to the peace on her father’s lands, which it was.

The sound of slow footsteps approaching in the hallway outside made her cast her gaze to the doorway. Her father appeared there. He came forward into the room, taking in the fact that Jarrod was holding her brother’s drawing in his hands.

He looked to Aislynn and she said, “Sir Jarrod wanted to know if he might look through Christian’s things and I said yes.”

Her father nodded. “That is well, for I have said he might have free rein to do whatever he thinks might aid him.” He moved to examine the drawing. “I too thought there might be some hint here yet I can see nothing. What is your opinion?”

Jarrod shrugged. “I see what you see, my lord.”

Her father sighed and made a slicing motion. “Enough for this night. You have journeyed far and must rest.” He turned to Aislynn. “The pot did fall and must be replaced, Aislynn, but we have made use of another. The water will be ready shortly.”

Aislynn felt her cheeks heating again. She had completely forgotten the broken pot, which was certainly unusual for her. She took great joy and pride in the overseeing of the keep.

Her father went on, unaware of her discomfort. “You will be abed before you know it, Sir Jarrod.”

To her surprise, the knight turned to her with a frown of apology. “Pray forgive me, Lady Aislynn. I had not thought until this moment how late the hour has grown. You should have sought your own bed some time gone. I’m sure you will soon be eager for me to leave Bransbury if my presence keeps you up past the hour when your father prefers for you to be abed.”

She frowned, blinking. He was speaking to her as one might a child.

Her father nodded. “Aye, Aislynn, as Sir Jarrod has indicated, the hour grows late for you as well.”

Aislynn did not remind her father of the fact that she was often at her duties until far past this hour. “Perhaps it is past time for me to retire. Good night, Father.”

She bowed in Sir Jarrod’s general direction and slipped toward the doorway as her father halted her, kissing her on the cheek and saying, “Good night, little one.” It was something he had said countless times, but this night, before this man, it gave her a decided feeling of discomfort.

She was infinitely aware when Sir Jarrod’s dark eyes fixed on her and it was all Aislynn could do to meet them as he said, “You have my thanks, Lady Aislynn. I will not allow myself to impose upon your usual routine again. I know how the young need their rest.”

She felt the chagrin that flashed from her own eyes to his. Then quickly she forced her gaze to fall, bowing and making a hasty exit.

Was the man mad? And what was wrong with her father, to have treated her like a child before the other man? Needing her rest, indeed. She was a woman, some nineteen years of age.

Her reactions to Jarrod Maxwell had not been those of a child. But this thought brought only deeper discomfort, for she would never have him know that.