A PERFECT KNIGHT
(KNIGHTS OF PASSION SERIES 2)
1192AD
The troubadour sang on, a plaintive song about love and loss.
Lady Yolanda heard the words but not the voice that sang them ; she looked into space at the past, not at the man who sang in the present. Her thoughts were with her husband, who’d died on Crusade and now lay buried under a hot sky while Yolanda gazed out at the English rain.
Simon finished the song, and the room fell silent. Yolanda’s ladies glanced at each other but said nothing. After a moment Yolanda sighed, and then turned to him with her sweet smile. He felt his heart ache, worse than yesterday. He had been here at Castle Arbuthnot for four weeks now, and each day, each hour, he fell more deeply in love with her.
And she did not even see him. Not as a man anyway.
Simon knew he was young and handsome, a man who had caught the eye of many a woman, some of them grand er ladies than Yolanda. In this time, when so many knights and men were away fighting Saladin for the return of Jerusalem, he had found many conquests of his own among the lonely ranks of their women left behind.
But not Lady Yolanda. She seemed immune to his charms.
“Have you sung for Queen Eleanor, Simon?” she asked him now, her dark eyes half shielded by her long lashes. Her skin was like cream, her lips red roses and her hair . . . Simon’s poetry failed him. Her hair was long and dark, usually hidden by her veil, but once she had him sing to her in her private chamber and he saw one of her lad ies brushing it. Her hair was so long it reached below her hips in black waves that he would give anything to bury his face in.
He loved her.
He was lost.
“Once, my lady,” he said, in answer to her question. “Her court is dedicated to amour, and I sang to her and her ladies. She is old now but still very beautiful, very elegant.”
Yolanda smiled, that far away look in her eyes again. “And what of King Henry, her dead husband, what was he like?”
“He ha d a fiery temper, my lady.”
The women laughed but Yolanda frowned.
“No, I mean . . . did he love Eleanor?”
Simon paused. Henry had loved Eleanor once, their love had been legendary, but later on he preferred younger mistresses—even his son’s betrothed was not safe from his lecherous hands. Perhaps something of his thoughts passed across his features because Yolanda glanced away, back to the window and the rain outside.
“Are all men unfaithful?” she asked. “ Is there no perfect love, in the end?”
The words w ere out before Simon could stop them; the shock had loosened his tongue. “Was your husband unfaithful, my lady? How could any man betray you?”
Yolanda turned to him, a little shocked herself at his plain-speaking, while her ladies gasped. Her dark eyes slid over his face and it was as if she saw him for the first time. His blue eyes and fair hair, his handsome face with the strong jaw that prevented it from being too boyish.
Colour rose in her cheeks and she looked down at her stitchery. “You are impertinent, sir,” she said sharply.
He was on his feet at once, bowing low, begging her pardon. Then he tried to come and kiss her hand, but tripped up on a low stool on the floor and sprawled among all the cushions and the ladies laughed at him. Yolanda looked up, and she was smiling too, despite the tears in her eyes.
“Foolish man,” she scolded him . “Go away now. I have heard enough about love for one day.”
But he felt her eyes linger on him as he bowed again and left, and it lightened his heart. For the first time Simon dared to wonder whether he might one day hold the lovely Lady Yolanda in his arms, take her to his bed, and show her what it was to truly love.
***
Yolanda watched the rain.
Word had come in the autumn that her husband had been dead for six months. Half a year he had been dead and she had only then heard of it! Now it was winter and she still could hardly believe he was never coming home.
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