“Raine will be leading Uncle Etienne. Stephen is coming with the men from the north and Gavin will arrive from the south.”
“How can you know that?”
“I know my brothers.” He smiled. “Gavin will wait a few miles away for his brothers and all three armies will attack at once.”
“Attack?” she said through her teeth.
“Don’t worry.” He ran his hand along her temple. “I don’t believe even the Duke of Lorillard will try to stand against the combined forces of the Montgomerys. He’ll be given a chance to surrender to us peacefully. And besides, his fight is about Christiana, not with the Montgomerys.”
“Christiana. The girl Roger Chatworth rescued? What has happened to her?”
“I don’t know but I’ll find out,” Miles said with such feeling that Alyx was silenced. She knew better than to try to argue with one of the Montgomery men about something he planned to do. Together they watched the approaching armies of knights and when Elizabeth awoke, Miles held her also.
Trying to cheer them, he made a bawdy jest about Elizabeth’s garish clothes.
“If Judith and Bronwyn liberated Roger Chatworth and the three of them went for help, which brother do you think they reached first?” Alyx asked.
Neither Miles nor Elizabeth had an answer for her.
“I pray it wasn’t Raine,” Alyx whispered. “I think Raine would strike first and listen second.”
In silence, they watched their rescuers approach.
Chapter 21
RIDING NEXT TO RAINE AND ETIENNE MONTGOMERY WAS Roger Chatworth, his mouth set in a grim line, his right arm—his sword arm—bound tightly but still bleeding, and next to him was Bronwyn sporting what promised to be an extraordinary example of a black eye. Roger’s arm was the result of Raine’s first sighting of his enemy and Bronwyn’s eye came about when she placed herself between Raine and Roger. Judith would have joined the fracas but John Bassett leaped from his horse, knocked her to the ground and pinned her there.
It took four men to hold Raine and keep him from tearing Chatworth apart but he did finally calm somewhat and allowed Judith and Bronwyn, who was nursing her swollen eye, to tell him what had happened. All the Montgomerys were remounted halfway through the story. When Judith told of Alyx being thrown in the cell with Miles, Raine once again leaped for Roger. Roger held him off with a sword held in his left hand while Raine’s relatives calmed them both.
They were all quiet now as they approached the old Lorillard castle.
Gavin Montgomery sat in steely silence atop his horse, three hundred armed men behind him, and watched the approaching Montgomerys. Beside him sat Sir Guy, the giant’s scarred face immobile. Guy didn’t like to remember Gavin’s explosion when he found out Judith had come to France with the men.
“She has no sense in these matters!” Gavin’d roared. “She thinks waging war is like cleaning a fish pond. Oh Lord,” he prayed fervently, “if she is still alive when I find her, I will kill her. Let’s ride!”
Stephen ordered his men to the eastern side of the castle while he and Tam rode toward where Gavin waited on the south.
“Women?” he bellowed long before he reached Gavin.
“None!” Gavin answered so loudly his horse lifted both forefeet off the ground.
In a cloud of dirt, Stephen and Tam turned west and headed for Raine. When Stephen saw Bronwyn, he nearly cried with relief, then frowned at her swollen eye. “What happened?” he shouted over the sound of the horses, not touching her but eating her with his eyes.
“Raine—” was all Bronwyn got out before Stephen let go with a bellow of laughter. He looked fondly at Raine’s big form held rigidly in the saddle.
Bronwyn didn’t bother to look at her husband again but moved to the far side of Tam.
“Stephen,” Judith called. “Is Gavin with them?” She point
ed south.
Stephen nodded once and Judith, John behind her, was off like a shot of lightning toward the southern group of Montgomerys.
There was no fighting.
The new Duke of Lorillard, obviously just roused from his bed, his eyes red, his skin gray green from a night of excess, had not lived to his great age of fifty-eight by trying to fight the nearly one thousand angry men who now surrounded his house. Showing his faith in the honor of the name Montgomery, he walked into the armed knights and told Gavin that if he were given his freedom, the Montgomerys could have whatever, or whomever, they wanted from his castle without the loss of a single life.
Raine didn’t want to accept the man’s terms because the duke was surrendering not only his land but two of his sons as well. Raine believed that a man who’d do that should die.