“Then why fight me?” Morse demanded. “This is not your fight.”
“She is under my protection. She is to be treated as a guest in my castle,” he proclaimed.
“Then my fight is with you,” Morse replied, and ran at Reese, screaming his rage, his frustration.
Jayce gasped as Reese stepped into the swing, catching his brother’s sword with his blade. He grabbed Morse’s arm and yanked him to the ground with one pull, stepping on the wrist of his sword arm. Reese pressed the tip of his blade to his brother’s neck. “How many times do I have to warn you about rushing someone in anger without thinking? It’s amazing you’ve survived this long.”
Morse struggled in frustration.
“Yield,” Reese urged, pressing the sword closer to Morse’s throat.
Morse’s fight left him, and he glared at Reese. “I yield to you,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
“Apologize to Lady Jayce,” Reese encouraged.
Morse’s dark eyes danced with flames of anger and defiance, as he snarled, “I apologize.”
Reese withdrew his sword and offered Morse his hand.
Morse clasped his arm, and Reese pulled him to his feet. Reese shook his head. “After all those years of training, I can’t believe you forgot what I taught you.”
Morse sneered at Reese, then stormed off toward the castle. Reese watched his brother go, then slowly followed in his footsteps.
Jayce saw Reese pause once to glance over his shoulder at her. She felt his eyes on her like the heated sun, felt the confusion in his gaze.
Around the field of honor, the crowd broke up, heading back to work or returning to the castle. She stood like a statue, willing their sympathetic stares to bounce off her. But somehow they didn’t seem to bounce; she absorbed them, each slashing her heart until it was left in tatters.
A warm arm draped around her shoulder. “Come on,” Nicole whispered.
Jayce shrugged off her arm, shaking her head. “No,” she answered, trying to keep the quivering out of her voice. “I think I’ll stay out here for a while.”
Nicole nodded and moved past her toward the castle, casting Jayce a commiserating look.
*****
Morse stomped into his room, ripping the gauntlets from his hands and throwing them on the bed. He thought this time he could defeat his brother, give Reese a taste of the humiliation that had filled his life. Instead, his brother embarrassed him in front of everyone! He took that little wench’s side over his own kin!
Morse shook his head, pulling the dust-filled tunic over his head and tossing it to the floor. Well, Morse vowed silently, gazing at the flickering flame of the torchlight on the wall, I will see to it the girl will never be a Harrington.
Chapter Thirteen
Jayce wandered through the fields closest to the castle. She avoided the peasants and knights, avoided the sympathetic looks they cast her way. Not a wife. Not a guest. She was caught in a tormented limbo.
As the sun set, Jayce sat beside a wooden fence. She wasn’t exactly sure where she was and didn’t really care. Could it be any less welcoming than the castle she could see in the distance? Than the husband who would never accept her as a wife? And what of the tender touch he had bestowed on her? Jayce was beginning to believe she had imagined it. After all, how could he be so gentle one moment and proclaim to all within earshot she meant nothing to him the next?
Jayce sighed and leaned back against the fence. What had her father done to her? Why had he forced her on a man who didn’t want her? Surely there had been other lords willing to marry her. She and her father had not been as wealthy or as powerful as Lord Harrington, but they were not poor either.
Suddenly, behind her, a horse whinnied and a man’s stern voice rang out. Jayce turned her head, peeking through the slats in the fence to see a beautiful black warhorse. The animal snorted and reared slightly. A man, looking very small in stature compared to the magnificent animal, yanked on a rope around the horse’s neck.
Slowly, Jayce climbed to her feet. The horse snorted again, its thick black mane tossing as it rebelled against the rope. The man pulled hard on the rope, cursing. He raised his hand and Jayce saw a black coiled whip clutched in his fingers. He drew his hand back and the whip unfurled like a thick black snake striking at its prey.
Jayce jumped as the man brought the whip down hard across the animal’s shoulders. She had believed he was going to crack it in the air, not over the poor animal’s hide!
“No!” Jayce screamed, and raced for the man. She rounded the fence just as the horse reared, and the man brought the whip down over the animal’s back again.