An Excerpt from

WILD WIND

by Patricia Ryan

Chapter 1

July 1073, Normandy

 The Rouen palace-prison of William the Conqueror,

Duke of Normandy and King of England

"Alex, who is that woman? Do you see how she's looking at you?"

"Which one, Faithe? Is she pretty?" Alexandre de Perigeaux shielded his eyes against the morning sun and scanned the sizeable crowd assembled in the courtyard of the Tour de Rouen, grateful for some diversion from such a long wait in such hellish heat.

Faithe of Hauekleah, Alex's sister by marriage, shifted the babe on her shoulder and cocked an eyebrow. "I thought all women were pretty," she teased, flinging his own, oft-repeated words back at him, "if you but looked at them from the right angle."

"Cheeky wench. So they are." Alex studied the multitude of lords and ladies--the flower of Norman aristocracy--garbed in peacock-hued finery, fanning themselves restlessly as they anticipated the upcoming ceremony. Some had gravitated around a jongleur accompanying himself on lute, who serenaded them with a long and lyrical chanson about knights going in search of the holy Grail. At the outskirts, clerics chattered in small groups, like clusters of blackbirds.

"She's wearing white," Faithe offered. "An exquisite silken tunic."

"No lady in white is looking this way." Worse luck. A little harmless flirtation--and perhaps a bit more, if the fates favored him--was just what he needed to adjust his bodily humors, unbalanced by having re-crossed the English Channel for the first time in seven years. It should gladden his heart to stand on Frankish soil, the soil that had bred and nurtured him, after so long an absence. And it wasn't as if he was alone here, his brother's family having journeyed with him from their Cambridgeshire farmstead for this great occasion. Yet he missed England--missed it terribly--and had from the moment he'd left its shore.

Perhaps he should have stayed there. Having little tolerance for court life and less for standing about waiting, Alex wondered how he would bear up under the full week of royal celebration to come.

Faithe peered into the crowd. "She must have turned back round. Her mantle is blue."

"Little help there." The courtyard was a sea of blue-cloaked backs.

Faithe patted the squirmy infant Edlyn. "She turned and stared at you, with the most curious expression. I thought she must know you."

"There you are, brother!" Luke of Hauekleah greeted Alex with a slap on the back that he felt in his bones. "Do you never tire of flirting with my wife?"

"Never. You'd best stop wandering from her side, lest I resolve to steal her from you."

Faithe rolled her eyes. Luke guffawed. Even five-year-old Robert, perched high on his father's shoulders, smirked at the familiar empty threat. Luke and Faithe's middle child, Hlynn, oblivious to the adult banter, gripped her father's hand and sucked her thumb as she gazed with wonderment at the grand noblemen and their ladies milling in the courtyard. The three children were identical in coloring, with their Saxon mother's creamy skin and calm hazel eyes, and the distinctive blue-black hair that Luke shared with Alex and the rest of their swarthy kin.

"Steal her from me, eh?" Luke exchanged an amused but softly intimate look with his wife. "You'd have to kill me first. And I don't die easily."

"The Black Dragon didn't," Alex conceded. "But the Cambridgeshire farmer standing in front of me hasn't defended himself with a weapon in years. I, on the other hand" --he patted the hilt of his broadsword, sheathed on the belt buckled over his ankle-length, ceremonial overtunic-- "have been honing my skill in the service of our liege for fully a decade now."

"Almost a decade," Luke corrected with an ostentatious yawn. That was true. The de Perigeaux brothers, knights of Aquitaine, had been recruited by William, Duke of Normandy, when Alex was seventeen and Luke four-and-twenty, which would be but nine years ago. They both served their Norman master--Alex with his sword and Luke with his crossbow--through the conquest of England and the duke's ascension to the throne of that kingdom. But whereas Luke had eagerly traded his crossbow for Hauekleah, Alex continued to reject King William's offer of honorable dismissal and an English estate in recompense for his service--to the puzzlement of all, save perhaps for Luke and Faithe.

"Almost a decade then," Alex said. "And before that, I did naught but study the arts of war--I was swinging a sword when I was smaller than Robert here. So I daresay I could take you, brother. And then I'd have your lady wife all to myself." He bowed with mock formality in Faithe's direction.

"Let's settle this now." Grinning, Luke handed Hlynn to her mother and bent over to lift his son down. "Like men--with our fists."

"Suits me." Alex slammed his fist in his brother's stomach as he was rising, earning him an answering blow that stole his breath, if only for a moment. The two men grappled in their long, elegant tunics, laughing breathlessly, as people turned to watch and the children rooted loudly for their father.

"Stop that!" A furious yank on his hair made Alex turn to find his sister, Berte, scowling at her younger brothers and casting anxious glances toward their audience. A formidable personage, Berte had inherited the de Perigeaux height, making her half a head taller than her round and balding husband, Baron Landric de Bec. He hovered behind her, clucking in sympathy with her outrage. "Have you two no sense of decorum whatsoever?" she demanded.

"Nay," Alex answered.

"None," his brother concurred.

"'Tis my fault, my lady." Faithe looked as if she were fighting a smile. "I should have stopped them."

Berte shook her head, her expression doleful. "One may as well try to stop a raging storm. These two have always done just exactly as they please, and living on that barbaric island seems only to have made it worse."

"Quite so," Landric agreed.

Faithe raised an eyebrow at the slur to her homeland, but wisely kept her counsel.

"Now everyone is staring," Berte fretted. Alex followed her mortified gaze toward the onlookers, chuckling as they disbanded.

One figure, a woman, stood perfectly still amidst the swirls of multicolored silk, the ripple of veils and glint of jewels. Pale and slender, as unreal as a church statue carved of pearly marble, she met his eyes across the courtyard...

Across the years, for she'd looked much the same the first time his gaze had fallen upon her nine long summers ago. Her beauty had a transfixing harmony to it--high, wide cheekbones, sharp little chin, willowy throat. She'd worn white that day, too, although then her hair had flowed in a gleaming flaxen stream down her back. Today it was plaited in two braids over which a veil of gossamer sendal silk trembled in the sultry breeze. Then, as now, her sea-green eyes were large and quiet and intent.

"That's her," Faithe said. "The woman in white. The one I told you about."

From the corner of his eye, Alex saw Luke turn toward the woman in question. Recognizing her instantly, he shot an apprehensive glance toward Alex.

Faithe noticed this. "You do know each other."

"She's Nicolette de St. Clair." Alex fingered the worst of his scars from that misbegotten summer, a puckered little rivulet that snaked down his forehead, carving a small bare patch through his right eyebrow. "My cousin's wife."

He definitely should have stayed in England.