Templar Knight, Forbidden Bride

She propped her small hands on her hips. ‘I wish to travel beyond Granada. I am curious about the world.’

He scowled down at her. ‘You were always curious. I expected you would grow out of it.’

‘Well, I did not,’ she snapped. ‘I am interested in things besides pleasing a man.’

By the saints and angels, did she not understand? ‘You are reaching for disaster. Being a troubadour is not for a woman. Especially not one such as you.’

‘You are wrong, Rey. Your view is jaded because of your own inner wounds. I will not let your distrust of the world spoil my dream. Besides there is naught you can do.’

‘Your father—’

‘Will not know.’

‘I fear for you. You do…the unexpected. You know nothing of the world.’

‘I am learning,’ she snapped. ‘You should be pleased for me.’

He gritted his teeth. ‘I am not pleased.’

‘Is that what you wished to say to me?’

‘Aye,’ he said in a hard voice.

She straightened her spine. ‘Well, then, my lord, is there a song you would hear?’

Reynaud groaned. ‘We had no minstrels in the Holy Land. God knows, we had little cause for singing.’

She nodded in understanding and sent him a half-smile. ‘Since you had no minstrels, your heart must be hungry.’

He flinched as if struck. His jaw muscles tightened. No one had ever come nearer the truth.

‘I will sing for you three tunes in the Catalan style, and you may judge which you like best.’ She tugged him to face her and gazed up at him, her usually downturned mouth curving so deliciously he wanted to put his hand over her lips to hide them from his sight.

‘Do not be angry with me, Rey. I seek only to be happy in this life, as do you.’ She moved towards the doorway.

Reynaud moved to block her way. ‘How would one such as you know what I seek in this life? Do you think making oneself happy is all there is?’

Leonor brushed away both questions with a wave of her hand. ‘Come,’ she urged again. ‘Your songs await within.’

At her entrance, a cheer went up. Leonor inclined her head in acknowledgement, then took up her harp. Reynaud stood off to one side in the shadows, his mind in turmoil.

He tried to concentrate on the sound of the harp, the words of the verse half-sung, half-spoken in the blend of Sephardic and Arabic tongues known as Ladino. Something about a knight and four maidens. He glanced around him at the avid dinner guests in the over-warm hall. The men were entranced.

She began another song, a lai in triple time, the rhythm an intricate variation of the Arab zajal. Reynaud struggled to close his ears to the entrancing sound.

He leaned against the hard stone wall at his back, shut his eyes and steeled his spirit to listen to the seductive rise and fall of Leonor’s voice. Her final song cut deep. The heartrending melody full of longing and passion wound its way into his gut. His throat closed suddenly into an aching knot.

And then a line of verse leaped into his consciousness. ‘Know you the silver swan?’

Instantly, his entire body stiffened, his heart plunging into an irregular thumping. He stared across the room at Leonor. By all that was holy, she had sung the coded words de Blanquefort had entrusted to him.

Thunderstruck, he could not make a sound.

Chapter Six (#ulink_037e50c5-190b-56d7-9ac6-75b447fa8ff5)

Benjamin looked up from his writing table as the sound of Leonor’s harp, and then cheers, drifted to him from the hall below. He cocked his head, listening with undisguised pleasure.

Good. She had been accepted. Nay, revered, by the sound of shouts and the din of banging cups. Excellent! If she wished, his precious lamb could make her way from castle to court with her art. Now the whole world lay at Leonor’s fingertips.

A shadow fell across the open doorway. Benjamin started, and a blot of ink fell on the page before him. ‘Who comes?’ His voice grated in the silence.

The Templar stepped across the threshold. The knight’s wintry green eyes flicked to meet Benjamin’s gaze. ‘Shalom.’

Benjamin blinked. ‘And to you, peace also.’

Reynaud studied his old tutor, his lips widening into a broad smile. ‘Greetings, Benjamin. Alea jacta est.’

Benjamin’s black eyes snapped. ‘What’s that you say?’

‘That was the first Latin sentence you ever taught me. Do you not remember?’

Benjamin half-rose from his seat. His gaze travelled from Reynaud’s face to the scarlet cross stitched on the front of his surcoat, then dropped to his sword belt.

‘So I see,’ Benjamin murmured. ‘Truly, the die is cast.’

He stood and clasped Reynaud in an embrace so tight the old man wheezed for breath.

‘Gently, my son, gently. Your mail shirt cuts the skin. It is like grasping a tree to one’s breast!’

Reynaud laughed. ‘A tree, am I?’

Benjamin beamed up at him. ‘Very like. Thou art a man, in esse. Now I wish to hear what you are doing here in Moyanne? I know about Hassam asking protection for Leonor…now I would know the rest of it. The truth.’

‘I was sent. By the Templar master, Bertrand de Blanquefort, in Acre.’

‘Acre,’ Benjamin breathed. He raked crabbed fingers through his thick grey beard. ‘And how goes it in Acre?’

‘Well enough,’ Reynaud answered. ‘Christian fights Christian for power in Jerusalem. How goes it in Granada?’

The old man smiled. ‘Well enough. Brother fights brother, as you well remember. Arab fights Christian and Arab as well. Al-Andalus cannot long survive with such division.’

‘Nor can Jerusalem.’ Reynaud eyed the older man. ‘The pomegranate will be devoured, seed by seed. Think you that men are greedy for power, or just fools?’

‘Fools. Greedy for power, yes, but fools. And that is dangerous.’

‘I fear you are right,’ Reynaud said on a sigh. ‘Hassam taught me to think first and draw my blade second. But in Outremer, one does not long hold to that philosophy and live. Now I strike first and ask afterwards.’

Benjamin said nothing. Gesturing for Reynaud to sit, he blotted up the spilled ink and quickly poured two cups of wine from the wooden pitcher at his elbow. He handed one across the writing table to Reynaud. ‘To your health.’