The Earl's Entanglement (Border Series Book 5)
Cecelia Mecca
1
Clave Castle, Northumbria, 1273
“I neither want nor need a wife.”
Garrick Helmsley crumpled the missive in his hand and tossed it unceremoniously into the fire. He walked to the small window that overlooked the North Sea and opened its wooden shutters.
“Her messenger waits below for a reply,” Sir Conrad said.
The iron bars did little to detract from the view, which he’d sorely missed during the years he’d spent in battle. The great chamber, a private room behind the hall and just up a set of stairs, had always been one of his favorite rooms in his ancestral home, which was why he’d led Conrad here for their private conference. Though more sparsely furnished than most, with a table for dining and a hearth in the corner, it was the view that brought him here. The steep decline beneath him was scattered with flowers and plants stubbornly refusing to allow the surrounding rocks or the salty gales off the North Sea to stifle their growth.
A wife.
“Garrick?”
His friend was persistent, but he could be more so. “Remind me why you’re here?”
Having come to Clave as a boy to foster with Garrick’s father, he’d never really left. Conrad navigated the room, coming to a stop beside him. “Clave is much better-looking than Brookhurst. Besides, when I return, my parents are likely to marry me off to some poor, unsuspecting gentlewoman.”
Conrad laughed at his own jest, but Garrick was not inclined to laugh along with him.
“Then you should hurry back to Brookhurst at once to remind your parents of how irritable you are,” Garrick said. “Maybe they’ll reconsider.”
“Tell that to the buxom maidservant in my bed. She found my presence quite charming last eve.”
Though the hour was early, Garrick had no doubt his friend was telling the truth. Well, he wouldn’t remind Conrad that the girl had only turned her attentions his way after Garrick rejected them.
“Tell her yourself,” Garrick said.
“Gladly, but your mother’s messenger awaits in the hall for an answer. Since I have to pass through there on my way back . . .”
“Leave it be, Conrad. Mable is attending to the messenger.” Clave’s steward, as always, was extremely efficient.
Conrad rolled his eyes. “The poor man will be finished breaking his fast shortly. He claims to have traveled through the night, and your mother’s instructions were quite clear.” Conrad adopted a tone Garrick supposed was to mimic his mother’s voice. “‘Deliver that message, my dear boy, and make it quick. The earl’s daughter will not be delayed. Tell my son—’”
“Enough!” Normally amused by his friend’s antics, Garrick couldn’t abide them at the moment. “I woke you for counsel, not for a poor imitation of my mother. Who, I’ll have you remember—”
“Recently lost her husband. I know, Garrick.” His tone softened. “Your father was a good man.”
“The best,” he amended.
“And died how he’d have wanted. In battle, fighting alongside his son.”
The two men fell silent. Unfortunately, Conrad’s silence didn’t last.
“You pulled me from a soft feather bed for my opinion?” Conrad asked, eyebrows raised.
“I just said as much.” He began to pace the chamber, crossing the room in long strides only to turn around and retrace his steps.
“Marry her.”
Garrick’s fists clenched. He continued his pacing until Conrad stuck out an arm to stop him. He knew that look. His friend had finally dropped the jovial facade. He was ready to offer serious advice.
Though different in many ways, in temperament and looks—Garrick was dark and tall, Conrad his lighter counterpart—both men loved the borderlands and would do anything to protect them. And they shared an appreciation for women. On that, they were similar. Which was one of the reasons for Garrick’s hesitation now.
“The thought of an acquiescent noblewoman trained since birth to be docile and proper.” He shuddered. “Give me a bathhouse in Acre and—”
“This”—Conrad indicated their surroundings—“is not the Holy Land. It is your inheritance. And an earl needs a bride.”
Garrick refused to accept the finality of his words.
“A bride, perhaps. But certainly not a Scottish one. Nor one I haven’t met.”
He hated Conrad’s shrug.
“I asked for your counsel, and you joyfully condemn me to life with a foreigner.”
Garrick had already known before sending for Conrad. He had known the moment the messenger handed him the missive. His mother had hinted at this, and now that his father was dead, the only way to secure his Scottish inheritance was to take a bride—one whose power was greater than his uncle’s.
Conrad had simply confirmed the life sentence he’d expected. Now that he’d returned, it was his duty to Clave Castle, to his mother, to the earldom, to bring home a suitable bride.
“Having a bride does not preclude enjoying comely women in your bed,” his friend said, clapping him on the back as if his words offered anything by way of comfort.
Garrick stared out the window for another long moment. Just a few months earlier, he’d stood next to his father contemplating a very different view. The Crusades had been tearing apart families for years, and now the bloody battle had woven its way into his life in the worst way possible. “I’ll not dishonor my wife that way.”