Chapter One

Year of Our Lord 1247

Axminster Castle

Seat of the Earls of Axminster

The rain was pouring.

The thunder was pounding.

Lightning streaked across the sky as the battle for control of Axminster Castle entered its third day. Three days of severe weather, chaos, blood, death, and frustration.

But the battle, in truth, had started long before the armies took the field.

It all began when a certain Lord Rickard Tatworth of Tatworth Castle, about ten miles to the north of Axminster, offered for Lady Isabel de Kerrington’s hand. As the sister to the Earl of Axminster and heiress to the earldom because her brother was childless, she was considered a prestigious marital prospect, if not a little old, and Tatworth had ambitions that he should be the next Earl of Axminster when Eduard de Kerrington keeled over. The man was of bad health, anyway, and that wasn’t a secret. He was married, once, but his wife had produced no children.

That left Lady Isabel as a very great prize.

But Isabel was also quite intelligent—and past childbearing age herself—so when Tatworth began to send missives of his admiration and even love for her, she burned them. Eduard thought it was quite hilarious that his spinster sister should have a suitor, which only made Isabel furious. Even at their ages—with Isabel at forty years and Eduard at fifty years and four—they fought like siblings often fought at much younger ages. Eduard teased and Isabel was stoic until they were alone.

Then she used any weapon she could get her hands on against him.

Axminster, however, continued on as a great seat of training and learning in spite of the antics of the brother and sister who were at her helm. Eduard was a great earl, benevolent and generous to his vassals, and Axminster had become a training ground for royal troops because of his relationship with King Henry III. Eduard was a personal friend, a man who had supplied the king with both support and money when he needed it, and Henry had a high regard for Axminster.

He had an even higher regard for Lady Isabel, who had created a school of manners and learning for the daughters of the nobles of England, a school of such reputation that everyone wanted to send their daughters there. Under Lady Isabel’s tutelage, young women learned skills and grace to become some of the finest ladies in all of England and highly sought-after wives. Axminster Angels, they were known as. Young ladies with the most excellent grace in all the land.

Even if their patroness, Lady Isabel, chased her brother around the castle with a hot fire poker from time to time.

Not surprisingly, the de Kerrington spinster was a formidable woman, and when Tatworth started his campaign of love and devotion, Isabel was not only annoyed, she was also embarrassed. It was made worse by Eduard’s taunting, but that taunting caught up with him. Through karma or fate or divine humor, Eduard was teasing her one night and laughed so hard that he choked on a chicken bone. It pierced his throat and he died of an infection almost a month later. Though Isabel was saddened, it seemed that she had the last laugh in the courtship of Lord Tatworth.

So she thought.

As the heiress, and calling herself the Countess of Axminster after her brother’s death, Isabel ruled Axminster with an iron fist, far stronger than her brother ever had, but Lord Tatworth, only seeing a vulnerable woman—because the man was clearly blind—and enraged by her constant rejections, decided to take matters into his own hands.

And that’s why the battle was raging.

Tatworth fielded a large army. Reinforced with an ally in Richard St. Martin of Wardour Castle, he threatened to march on Axminster and force Lady Isabel to marry him. She refused, in no uncertain terms, but she also secretly sent word to an Axminster ally who had the biggest army she could think of—

Christopher de Lohr, Earl of Hereford and Worcester.

Hereford could field thousands of men. She knew this because she’d heard her brother speaking of the man he fondly called “Chris.” But she didn’t only send word to Hereford—she also sent word to the Earl of Coventry of Isenhall Castle, Antoninus de Shera, as well as to Roger Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk at Arundel Castle. Those men alone brought thousands with them, and when Norfolk brought his own reinforcements in the House of de Winter, it turned out to be ten thousand men against Tatworth’s four thousand. A four thousand he had been very proud of until de Lohr rolled down from the north like a ball of fire.

It had been three very long, very difficult days.

Axminster, as a royal training ground, had about a thousand men inside the castle, which was kept bottled up while Tatworth and St. Martin tried to scale the walls and gain access. Once de Lohr and Bigod arrived, however, it turned into a massacre because Tatworth’s men refused to leave. They didn’t merely try to defend themselves—they fought like banshees, and when they’d managed to capture a few of Norfolk’s men, they cut them into pieces and launched them back at the surrounding army.

There were pieces of chopped soldiers all over the place.

Even now, Hereford’s men were walking around a pile of limbs and other meaty parts, which had been collected from the mud and placed in an area near the surgeon’s tent. But there were still things sticking up out of the mud, and as the thunder continued to roll overhead, there was a meeting taking place in the tent of the Earl of Hereford and Worcester. His blue tent with yellow lions was recognized all over England. The meeting hadn’t started yet because they were waiting for one man, who quickly came from the direction of the castle and dashed into the tent. Shaking himself off, he pulled his helm off to reveal a flushed, wet face and soaking hair.

“How nice of you to join us, West.” The man standing near a cluttered table, surrounded by a half-dozen soaking, smelly men, glanced up at the latecomer. “Any late news to bring us?”

Westley de Lohr, the youngest son of the Earl of Hereford and Worcester, nodded his head at his eldest brother. “Aye,” he said. “My apologies for being late, but this was just hurled over the wall. One of our men picked it up.”

He was holding up a rock with something strapped to it, and handed it over to Curtis, who was not only his father’s heir but also the Earl of Leominster in his own right. It was evidently a rock wrapped in oilcloth that was held on with a pair of belts. Curtis set the rock on the table as he and another man fussed with the ties on the belts.

“Careful, Curt,” the man said. “It’s dripping water on whatever is inside.”

Curtis acknowledged the advice from another de Lohr brother. Douglas de Lohr was three years older than Westley, the fifth of six de Lohr brothers, but the brother with perhaps the most maturity and wisdom out of all of them. He was also highly intelligent. But the brains and good character he had were encased within a form that sent many a maiden swooning. With his long blond hair, sky-blue eyes, and muscular body, he looked like a Viking god.

Tales of Douglas de Lohr’s beauty were legendary.

“Right,” Curtis said, peering at what seemed to be underneath the oilcloth. “It looks like vellum.”

Douglas took the rock from the table and finished stripping off the leather belts. The oilcloth fell away and a piece of folded vellum did indeed slip out, falling to the ground. Curtis quickly retrieved it, opening it up and reading it as the men in the tent crowded around the table.

“What does it say, Curt?”

A tall, powerfully built man had asked the question. He was older, with dark hair that was turning to gray and the worn lines of a face that had seen much in his lifetime. He also happened to be Curtis’ brother-in-law. Antoninus de Shera, Earl of Coventry, was married to Curtis and Douglas and Westley’s youngest sister, Olivia Charlotte, otherwise known as Honey. He had a great sense of humor but was impatient at times.

“Well?” Antoninus demanded again. “What does it say?”

Curtis finished reading it and handed it over to Antoninus. As the man took it, reading it greedily, Curtis turned to the group.

“It seems that Lady Isabel wants to open the gatehouse and let her army into the fight,” he said, raking his fingers through his dark blond hair. “I cannot say that I blame her. If we open the gates, it is a two-front battle.”

“But we also risk Tatworth men rushing into the fortress and attacking the keep,” another man said. Attention turned to Grayson de Winter, Earl of Radnor, a man who was a close friend of de Shera and de Lohr. He was also the one in command of not only his men, but of Norfolk’s army as well. “We have to be prepared to send men in to protect the keep. There are about fifteen women in that structure that I’m sure Tatworth would love to get his hands on, not to mention the greatest prize of all in Lady Isabel.”

Curtis nodded. “I realize that,” he said. “Grayson, can you organize the defense of the gatehouse? Let no Tatworth man into the bailey. I will maintain my post out here on the walls. We have Tatworth where we want him and I would like to see this battle over by nightfall.”

Grayson nodded, glancing at his son and heir next to him. Davyss de Winter, something of a knightly prodigy at his young age, nodded firmly. With Grayson and Davyss in charge of the gatehouse, surely no man could make it through their line.

“Good,” Curtis said, looking at the other men crowded around the table, all of them taking a turn reading the missive. “Then it is settled. If Lady Isabel wants to open the gates, let her. We will end this skirmish once and for all.”

“As if you could stop her from opening that gate,” Antoninus said with a twinkle in his eye. “Honestly, I’m surprised she’s not out here with us, swinging a sword. The woman is formidable.”

The men chuckled to varying degrees because he was correct. Isabel de Kerrington was a strong, determined woman if there ever was one.

“There is great truth in that statement,” Curtis said. “I think it will be a task simply to prevent her from leaving the keep and taking a stick to Tatworth. The man’s very life is in danger if she gets half a chance.”

“Must we send men to protect him, then?” Douglas quipped.

Everyone laughed at the expense of Tatworth, and Lady Isabel to a certain extent. Curtis shrugged his big shoulders.

“Quite possibly,” he said. “She will be furious enough to beat him soundly about the head and shoulders. But what we must do is protect the keep in case Tatworth men get by me or Grayson. Douglas, that will be up to you. Choose the men you would take with you carefully and go to the keep. You will be the last line of defense if anyone slips through.”

Douglas nodded. He already had his squad in mind, men he’d worked with for years. Men he trusted.

It was going to be a long afternoon.