Page 11 of The Champion

Henry watched as his old friend took up pacing in the open area between his chair and the doors. He knew what vexed Lionel. “She won’t decide?”

“Decide? Nay, Majesty. She won’t agree to anyone at all. She has some foolish notion that she’s a teacher and wants to set up a school.”

Henry groaned at that. Lady Rowena was an heiress whose wealth was not so great in coin. Her desirability lay in the fact that she was heiress to practically the whole of southern England. Whoever married her, would control the border of his kingdom and separate the northern part of England from his lands in France.

With all the trouble he was having with Phillip of France, the last thing he could afford was for that land to fall into the hands of anyone who was less than friendly toward him. In the wrong hands, that land would spell the end of his monarchy.

“What was wrong with Lord Ansley?”

“He, like the others, is knighted. She says she will not consider a knight.”

Not marry a knight? Was the woman mad? He had to have someone he could trust who was able to guard his lands marry her.

“Then force her!” Henry snapped.

Lionel sighed. “I wish it were that simple, Majesty. The last time I tried to force her hand, she ran away to the continent and was gone until I agreed to forget my plans for her to wed. I sent out more than two score men to find her and was unable to do so. She only returned because I signed a document swearing I would allow her the power to nay-say any man I proposed to be her husband.”

Eleanor laughed.

Both men glared at her.

“Forgive me, gentlemen,” she said, smiling. “I have to say that I admire the girl’s temerity and wherewithal.”

“Will you admire it when Phillip sits upon Our throne?”

She sobered instantly. “Calm yourself, Henry.”

Lionel raked a frustrated hand through his graying brown hair. “I fear I shall just have to live forever. I can’t die and allow her lands to go to a man who can’t protect them.”

Henry snorted at that. “No offense, Lionel, even now We worry at your abilities to hold her inheritance. There are so many men out there who grow impatient with her indecision. Sooner or later one of them is bound to pounce.”

“No offense taken, Majesty. I have the same fear every time one of those greedy beasts comes calling for her hand. I know you speak the truth and I appreciate it.”

The king pulled the cloth from his brow. “What is the matter with the youth of today?” Henry asked the ceiling above them as if addressing heaven. “In my day, we married when we were supposed to and we married who were supposed to. Now, I have an earl who refuses to take a bride and a strategically placed heiress who would sooner cut off her head than take a knight for husband. There has to be some solution to this.”

Eleanor sat forward.

“Nay, Nora.” Henry shook his head as he noted the speculative look on her beautiful face. “Say not what I know is in your mind.”

She waved his words away with her hand. “They would be perfect together. Who better to guard Our border than Stryder of Blackmoor? He is one of the few whose loyalty is above question.”

“Aye and look at what happened when I tried to marry him off to Kenna. The man still hasn’t forgiven me.”

“That’s because you ordered him to, Henry, and need I remind you that he would have obeyed you.”

“Aye, but an irate earl in Scotland is one thing. An irate earl sitting entrenched in lands that divide my kingdom in half is an entirely different matter.”

She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair and didn’t appear to be listening to him. Typical. Eleanor only heard what she wanted to. “I have known Rowena since she was just a girl. Like Stryder, if you tell her to go right, she will go left. Put them together and-”

“Rowena will geld your knight, Your Grace,” Lionel said, interrupting her. “She despises all knights.”

“But there is no woman whose heart is immune to Stryder of Blackmoor,” she countered. “Rowena is a woman and he is not the usual knight. Put them together and I am sure they will suit.”

Henry narrowed his eyes. “I’m not so sure I agree with you.”

“You seldom do.”

He ignored the venom in her voice. “But I would like to see the two of them married. What do you suggest?”