Free Untamed by Elizabeth Lowell

close to his head underneath a helmet and his beard was gone. The effect was to make him more formidable, rather than less. Without the softening effect of the beard, there was nothing to mute the angular lines of his cheekbones or the stark, inverted V of his black eyebrows.
    â€œAre the preparations complete?” Dominic asked as he dried his face.
    â€œThe chapel is ready,” Simon said, “your knights wait to stand with you in front of God and the Saxon rabble, and the men-at-arms are looking forward to the wassail and wenches.”
    â€œWhat of the bride?” Dominic asked. “Has anyone seen her?”
    â€œNot in the flesh. Her handmaiden is everywhere, running about like a chicken with its head cut off, shrilling at the laundress for a garment still damp or at the seamstress for a poorly sewn hem or at the tanner for shoes too harsh for noble feet.”
    Dominic grunted and rubbed the drying cloth over his powerful body.
    â€œIt sounds like I won’t have to go and drag Lady Margaret from her rooms,” he said.
    â€œI hope the lady dresses grandly,” Simon said after a few moments.
    â€œNo matter. ’Tis not her clothes I’ll be marrying.”
    â€œYes, but the bride is supposed to be the best-dressed of all the maids at the wedding, is she not?”
    Dominic raised one black eyebrow at his brother in silent demand.
    â€œMarie is wearing the scarlet silk you gave her,” continued Simon slyly, “and around her forehead is the golden circlet with its fine rubies that was your present after Jerusalem fell.”
    â€œIf Lady Margaret wishes such baubles to wear, she will have to be more civil to her husband,” Dominic said under his breath. He threw the drying cloth with emphasis onto the table. “A great deal more civil!”
    Simon snickered. “Perhaps you should send her to Marie for instruction.”
    Dominic ignored his brother in favor of Jameson.
    â€œNo,” he told the squire, “I’ll need heavier undergarments than that. Dress me for battle.”
    The squire looked surprised. “Sire?”
    â€œThe hauberk,” Dominic said impatiently.
    Jameson looked shocked. “For your marriage ?”
    The look on Dominic’s face sent a surge of red up the squire’s smooth cheeks. Hurriedly the boy retrieved his lord’s soft leather undergarments from the wardrobe. Next came the chausses, whose metal bands would protect Dominic’s shins from blows during a battle.
    A curt movement of Dominic’s head refused the chausses. Relieved, Jameson went to the wardrobefor the chain mail tunic. The garment was slit in front and back for riding and quite heavy. With every movement, the metal rings on the hauberk sang quietly of battle and death.
    â€œGod’s teeth,” Simon muttered as he watched Dominic’s squire fasten the flexible metal tunic into place. “I’ve never known a bridegroom to go to his wedding wearing a hauberk.”
    â€œPerhaps I’ll start a new fashion.”
    â€œOr bury an old one?” his brother asked silkily.
    Dominic’s smile was like a drawn sword. “See that you follow my fashion, brother.”
    â€œWill you wear it to the bedchamber?”
    â€œWhen you handle a brancher,” Dominic said dryly, “caution saves many regrets.”
    Simon laughed aloud at Dominic’s comparison of his future bride to a young, recently captured falcon that had never known man’s touch.
    â€œShe is hardly a fledgling snatched fresh from the branch,” Simon said. “She has barely a handful of years less than you.”
    â€œTrue. What you forget is that we fly females rather than tiercels in the hunt because the female is not only larger than the male falcon, she is far more fierce.”
    Dominic settled his hauberk into place with a muscular shrug that spoke of a decade’s experience at war. The heavy hood lay on his shoulders in