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Married to a perfect stranger...
Reunited with her warrior husband
When Constance inherited her father’s lands, she had no choice but to marry cold-hearted Matthew Wintour. He left her for the battlefield without even a wedding night. Five years later, Matthew has returned a valiant knight! But Constance is no longer a frightened girl. And, this time, she must reach out to discover the honorable man behind the armor and what pleasures await them in the marriage bed...
JENNI FLETCHER was born in the north of Scotland and now lives in Yorkshire, with her husband and two children. She wanted to be a writer as a child, but got distracted by reading instead, finally getting past her first paragraph thirty years later. She’s had more jobs than she can remember, but has finally found one she loves. She can be contacted on Twitter @JenniAuthor or via her Facebook Author page.
Also by Jenni Fletcher
Married to Her Enemy
Besieged and Betrothed
The Warrior’s Bride Prize
Whitby Weddings miniseries
The Convenient Felstone Marriage
Captain Amberton’s Inherited Bride
The Viscount’s Veiled Lady
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Reclaimed by Her Rebel Knight
Jenni Fletcher
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-08925-8
RECLAIMED BY HER REBEL KNIGHT
© 2019 Jenni Fletcher
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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Version: 2020-03-02
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To Evelynne and BGU
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Historical Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Historical Note
Extract
About the Publisher
Historical Note
In the thirteenth century marriage was regarded very differently from the way it is today. For the nobility it had little to do with love, but was a way of gaining power and influence and even making fortunes.
Betrothals could take place when the future bride and groom were still babies. Under canon law, the legal age for marriage was twelve years old for girls and fourteen for boys, although some marriages took place even earlier. However, these could later be challenged in Church Court.
In the majority of cases consummation was delayed until the bride began menstruating, and could therefore potentially provide an heir, but noblewomen rarely had any choice in the identity of the man they would marry—the husband who would effectively own them for the rest of their lives.
In 1200, a year after ascending to the English throne, King John married Isabella, the daughter of the Count of Angoulême, having dissolved his first marriage to Isabella of Gloucester on the grounds of consanguinity. Historians estimate Isabella to have been twelve years old—John was thirty-three.
Controversially, she was already betrothed to Hugh IX le Brun, Lord of Lusignan and Count of La Marche, who appealed to King Philip Augustus of France in protest, thus beginning the hostilities that led to the loss of so much English territory over the channel.
It was this territory that John attempted to reclaim in 1214, leading to the disastrous Battle of Bouvines on 27th July and the First Barons’ War of 1215.
Chapter One
Lincoln, England—November 1214
Constance crouched down beside her cousin, pressing her eye to a gap in the slats of the gallery railing above the great hall. In the gauzy light of the fireside below, she studied each of the new arrivals in turn, waiting for some flash of recognition or long-distant memory to stir. None did.
‘So?’ Isabella nudged her in the ribs. ‘Which one of them is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But he’s your husband! How can you not know?’
‘Because I only met him once five years ago and I was only fourteen at the time! It was before I came to live here, remember?’
‘Oh, so it was...’ Isabella giggled. ‘I couldn’t believe that you were only a year older than me and already married. And to Matthew Wintour of all people!’
‘Sir Matthew now, Uncle says.’
‘Whoever he is, I’ve been pestering Father to find me a husband ever since.’
‘I know.’ Constance threw her cousin a half-affectionate, half-exasperated look. ‘I’ve had to listen, but at least you’re betrothed now.’
‘Finally. You know, he might not be as well connected or important as your husband, but I think I’d recognise Tristan anywhere, even after five years.’
‘Maybe because you want to be married. I don’t.’
‘Well, it’s a little late to do anything about that, but you must remember something about him. What about his hair? His eyes? Was he dark or fair?’
‘Fair...I think.’
‘You think? Didn’t you spend any time alone with him?’
‘No. There was a short ceremony and then he and his father left. I never saw either of them again.’
She lifted a hand to her mouth, chewing nervously on her fingernails. As far as she recalled, she and her so-called husband hadn’t exchanged a single private word on their wedding day. They’d barely even looked at each other, except for one brief, disconcerting moment when he’d slipped the gold band over her finger. Of course he’d been older than she was, around the same age she was now at the time, but he’d barely acknowledged her existence while she’d been too nervous to throw more than a few tentative glances in his direction. They’d simply stood side by side, reciting their vows like the strangers they were. It was no wonder she didn’t recognise him!
Even so, Isabella’s questions were making her feel more and more uncomfortable. Maybe she ought to remember more about the man she’d vowed to spend the rest of her life with, but then she hadn’t particularly wanted to. Truth be told, she’d done almost everything she could to put him out of her mind since their wedding day, as if by doing so she could somehow forget the fact it had ever happened. The only thing she’d never been able to forget was the icy, almost glacial impression he’d left behind. Of all the men her uncle might have chosen for her to marry, why had it had to be him? She’d regretted her vows ever since, dreading the day when he’d come back to claim her.
But now he had and her nails were already chewed down to stubs.
‘That was really all that happened?’ Isabella sounded as if she didn’t believe her. ‘He never wrote or sent gifts?’
‘No, you know that he didn’t.’ She glanced over her shoulder quizzically. After sharing a bedchamber for five years, surely they both knew it would have been impossible to hide any gifts?
‘Not necessarily.’ Isabella shrugged. ‘I know that you don’t like to talk about him. I thought maybe you were just being secretive. Either that or you’d thrown them away.’
‘Well, I wasn’t and I didn’t. I haven’t heard anything from him since our wedding day. All I know is that he’s been away fighting for the King in Normandy. Uncle says this is the first time that he’s set foot in England in five years.’
‘He still could have sent a few messages.’ Isabella sounded offended on her behalf. ‘How strange.’
‘Mmm...’
Constance made a non-committal murmur. Strictly speaking, Isabella was right, he ought to have sent word occasionally. Not that she’d wanted him to, but since he apparently hadn’t forgotten about her existence then he could at least have sent a few gentle reminders of his own, some token attempts at gallantry at least, instead of turning up at her uncle’s manor with barely a week’s worth of notice and simply expecting her to be ready. Then she might have accustomed herself to the idea of being a wife again, as much as she ever could anyway. The only good thing about his return was that it meant she could finally go home... Five years away from Lacelby was far too long.
‘I wouldn’t want a husband I could forget.’ Her younger cousin, sixteen-year-old Emma, came scurrying along the gallery to join them, bending over to avoid being seen from below.
‘Not so loud!’ Isabella hissed with a look of irritation. ‘Father will be furious if he finds out we’re up here. And you’ll be lucky to find a husband at all with your long face. You look like a horse.’
‘I do not! Take that back!’
‘Not when you listen in to other people’s conversations.’
‘If you don’t take it back, then I’ll tell Mother you’re spying!’
Constance rolled her eyes as the two sisters began hurling insults at each other. It was a regular occurrence, though if they weren’t careful, their increasingly irate whispers would start to attract more than their father’s attention below. It wasn’t even as if they had anything to insult each other about. They were both strikingly pretty, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired with small figures and even smaller features, whereas she...
She looked down at her body in chagrin. She was too tall for a woman for a start. As tall as, and frequently taller than, most men, with curves in places she hated and a bosom that drew all the wrong kind of attention. She was the one who felt like a horse. A giant carthorse beside two delicate palfreys. Even her face looked wrong, her wide forehead and round cheeks a long way from the ideal of pale, fragile beauty that both of her female cousins naturally exemplified. The only thing she did like about her appearance was the dark hair she’d inherited from her mother, a thick wavy mass that reached all the way down to her too-wide hips, though even then the deep sable shade was unfashionable.
As much as she loved her cousins, it hadn’t been easy growing up with such paragons of female beauty. Men looked at them with expressions of admiration and awe, as if Isabella and Emma were somehow pure and untouchable, perfect examples of womanhood to be idealised from a distance. It was a stark contrast to the way they looked at her, their eyes raking over her figure with a darker, more primal emotion that made her feel obscurely frightened and even more self-conscious. She couldn’t help but wonder if her husband would look at her in the same way. Or would he simply be disappointed that he hadn’t married one of her golden cousins instead?
Not that it mattered what he thought of her, she reminded herself. Her marriage had nothing to do with looks, or compatibility for that matter, and definitely nothing to do with love, that all-consuming emotion the minstrels sang about. It was simply about her inheritance, about the property and fortune that nobody thought a woman ought to be allowed to keep or to manage on her own, no matter how much her upbringing might have prepared her for it.
As the only child of Philip and Eleanor Lacelby, she’d found herself one of the most eligible heiresses in the east of the country when they’d both succumbed to the same illness just weeks before her fourteenth birthday. It was a position that, according to her uncle, had left her vulnerable to fortune hunters, would-be seducers and villains alike. After weeks of attempting to assert her independence, she’d eventually realised that protestations were futile and marriage inevitable. Exhausted and numb with grief, she’d agreed to a union in name only until she came of age, though she’d still been unprepared for the consequences...
Marriage to Matthew Wintour, the eldest son of a neighbouring baron, had been the safest, most practical option, but while their union had meant he would become one of the most powerful men in the country some day, all it had made her was his wife. In a few short minutes, everything that she’d inherited from her parents had become his, including the home and land that she loved. To add insult to injury, he’d wasted no time in exerting his new-found authority either, simply adding Lacelby to the long list of properties already controlled by his family and ordering her away to be raised in her uncle’s household instead. He hadn’t even had the decency to tell her himself, leaving England a few days after their wedding without so much as a goodbye. It was hard not to feel outraged about it, even five years later. Even harder to think of him as anything other than a cold-hearted, arrogant and insensitive tyrant!
‘You’re just jealous!’ Emma’s high-pitched exclamation jolted her back to the present. ‘Everyone says I’m the prettiest. Even Tristan.’
‘He does not!’ Isabella looked as if she were about to hurl herself bodily at her sister. ‘When did he say so?’
Constance heaved a sigh and pressed her eye back to the gap in the slats, pushing reminiscence aside as she focused all her attention on the men below. There were three of them, not including her uncle, though in the murky light it was hard to make out whether they had dark or fair or even green hair for that matter. Judging by their style of dress, they were all soldiers, wearing chainmail collars above brown-leather gambesons and russet-coloured surcoats, and they were all faintly bedraggled, though since it had been raining for most of the day that was hardly surprising.
She frowned, chewing on her thumbnail in frustration. The clouds of steam emanating from their damp clothes made it look as though there were a layer of mist floating around them, obscuring her view and giving the scene a somewhat uncanny aspect. It would help if they would only turn their heads since the way they were gathered meant that she could catch only fleeting glimpses of their profiles, though no sooner had the thought occurred to her than a servant entered the hall and they all did just that, finally allowing her a clear view of their faces.
She caught her breath, examining each of the men as quickly and intently as possible. One of them was too old, in his fifties by the look of him, which effectively narrowed the choice to two. Which still didn’t help since there was nothing remotely familiar about either.
They were both above average height, with broad shoulders and distinctly weather-beaten aspects, but whereas the one on the left of the fireplace had an amiable, handsome face and what appeared to be chestnut-brown hair, the one on the right looked as if he’d never smiled a day in his life. He might have been good looking, but it was impossible to tell by the way he was glowering, as if he suspected the servant approaching them to be carrying a dagger and not a tray laden with cups. The very thought made her uneasy. What on earth could they be talking about to make him look so defensive?
She bit down hard on another fingernail, dismayed to note that in the glow of the firelight his hair looked to be fairer than that of the others, tinged with a hint of copper and swept back from a square-shaped face in which every feature, from his heavily stubbled jaw to his high-angled cheekbones looked as if they’d been sculpted with a knife. They gave him a faintly dangerous aspect, exacerbated by his scowling brows and an air of restlessness that she could sense even from her position above and at the opposite end of the hall. The longer she looked, the more she thought there was something familiar about him, too, something about the rigid set of his shoulders and the way he planted his feet so firmly apart as if he were bracing himself for something... Just as he’d stood on their wedding day.
She felt a shiver run down her spine, struck by the same glacial aspect she’d tried so hard to forget. Not him! Surely her memory was playing tricks on her and she was mistaken. She had to be mistaken! Unfortunately, she didn’t think she was. The glower, the stance, the sense of coiled, tightly leashed tension... Suddenly they all seemed too familiar... Her chest contracted almost violently as her heart plummeted all the way down to her toes.
‘Mother’s coming!’
She almost jumped into the air in surprise as William, her youngest cousin at five years old, poked his head around the gallery door where he’d been posted as lookout.
‘Come on!’ Isabella grabbed hold of her hand, hauling her back to her feet as Emma scampered quickly away.
‘Wait, I think I know which one he is.’
‘There’s no time!’
‘But that’s him! That’s my husband!’
She pointed over her shoulder, saying the words at the same moment as the object of them lifted his head and looked up. Despite the darkness, she had the distinct impression that he scowled straight at her.
* * *
Sir Matthew Wintour waved away the offer of wine with a grimace. Tonight more than ever he needed a clear head, even if none of his companions shared the same sense of caution. Laurent in particular was draining his cup as if they were toasting each other’s good health and not discussing the future of the whole kingdom. As if treason were something to drink to.
There had been noises from the gallery a few moments before, like muffled voices and the rustling of skirts, which he’d been relieved to see had been the case. He’d dimly been able to make out the shape of one woman at least, though he wondered if he’d guessed her identity correctly.
His wife’s residence in her uncle’s household had provided a good excuse for leaving the King’s increasingly suspicious court and coming to visit Roul d’Amboise so soon upon his return to England. A useful one, too, since it allowed him to bring Jerrard and Laurent under the pretence of a belated—very belated—wedding celebration, though personally he would have preferred to postpone the reunion with his wife a while longer. Another five years preferably, but now that she’d reached a more suitable age for marriage he could hardly avoid it.
It was strange enough being back in England, even stranger to believe that he actually had a wife, especially when his memory of her consisted of little more than a pair of frightened grey eyes, but strange or not, he and Lady Constance were married. Unquestionably and indisputably so. Because of his actions and mistakes, she was a Wintour, which meant that he had no choice but to do the right thing by her even if he’d managed to fail just about every other woman in his life. No matter that he’d been forced into the union, no matter how important his other concerns, he was responsible for her well-being as well as for all her lands and properties, first and foremost her castle at Lacelby. His father had taken care of the latter during his absence abroad, but now that he was back in England, most likely for good, it would be his—their—marital home, where they would live just as soon as they’d visited Wintercott. Something else he would have avoided if possible.
‘Was our defeat in France really so bad, then?’ Her Uncle Roul looked sombre after Jerrard, the most experienced soldier among them, finished giving an account of the English army’s recent campaign.
‘Catastrophic.’ Jerrard had never been one to mince words. ‘John has big schemes, but no idea how to manage an army or lead men into battle. He thinks that money solves everything and flees every time the enemy gets within fifty miles, often at the cost of our own allies. Our territories across the channel are all but lost. Anjou, Maine and Touraine. The French must be laughing at how easy he makes it for them.’