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  Knights of the Round Table

  Book 3

  GAWAIN

  by

  Gwen Rowley

  PRAISE FOR Knights of the Round Table: Lancelot

  “Though Camelot is in the background, this tale is more a Dark Ages romance between individuals with a mutual past to overcome if both take the steps that love offers them . . . Lancelot is a fascinating character . . . Historical romance readers will enjoy this fine interpretation of the mists of Camelot.” —The Best Reviews

  “The legends of Lancelot and his place in Camelot are well-known, but in Knights of the Round Table: Lancelot, Gwen Rowley puts a refreshingly unique spin on the myth . . . An intriguing twist on the famous legend, Lancelot, the first book in the Knights of the Round Table series, shows a totally different side of Camelot and should not be missed.” —Romance Reviews Today

  “Fascinating . . . Rowley takes one of the focal stories of Western European literature and puts her own spin on it . . . [giving] us a surprisingly twenty-first-century Sir Lancelot.”

  —The Green Man Review

  “Rowley passionately pens the romantic scenes between Lancelot and Elaine with simple grace and elegance . . . The whole book is written just superbly, and I loved every minute reading it.” —Romance Reader at Heart

  “The enticement of Rowley’s reimaginings of the Camelot legend is how cleverly she manipulates the myths surrounding Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, adding touches of reality and twists of plot that leave us to wonder what might have been.” —Romantic Times

  Don’t miss the previous novels in the Knights of the Round Table series ...

  Lancelot Geraint

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  KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE: GAWAIN

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / September 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  All rights reserved.

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  ISBN: 978-1-436-25412-0

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  For Kat and Danny

  In destinies sad or merry,

  True men can but try.

  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  Chapter 1

  SIR Gawain detested magic.

  As Inglewood Forest loomed before him, it seemed the space between the trees was filled with shifting shadows and its very air was redolent of sorcery. But he steeled himself and galloped on, catching up to the king just outside the entrance.

  “Did you really think you could sneak away?” he demanded, pulling up his charger beside his uncle’s.

  “A king does not sneak,” King Arthur answered loftily. “I told you I meant to do this on my own.”

  “And I said I was coming with you.” Gawain repressed a shudder as they passed into the cool dimness of the forest. “In fact, it would be best if you turned back and let me—”

  “No,” the king said sharply. “And if you ask again, I will send you back to Camelot.”

  “I am not asking,” Gawain replied with straining patience. “I am telling you—”

  “And I am telling you—I am ordering you to stay out of it. You cannot keep fighting my battles for me, Gawain, it just won’t do. First it was the Green Knight, now it is this Somer Gromer Jour—”

  “I am only doing what I have sworn to do—what every one of your knights has sworn—”

  “Yes, but none of them stepped in and took the Green Knight’s challenge, did they? I’m not saying I’m not grateful—you know I am—but it’s enough. Somer Gromer Jour is my opponent, and I would thank you to let me deal with him on my own.”

  Gawain drew a long breath. “Arthur—”

  “Gawain,” the king mocked him. “You should hear yourself—no, really! For a moment there, I could have sworn it was my old nurse talking. Next you will be after me to change my shoes and wear a flannel on my chest!”

  Gawain’s mouth twitched, but he repressed his amusement and fixed his uncle with a stern glare. Arthur merely grinned and spurred his horse ahead.

  It was Arthur’s way to face danger with a smile, and had they been riding into battle, Gawain’s heart would have been equally as light. But this Somer Gromer Jour was clearly an unnatural creature, appearing out of nowhere as he had last year to challenge the king to private combat. And then, once Arthur was defeated, had the knight sought any sort of reasonable terms? No, he had posed the king a question so peculiar that no honest man would even think to ask it, and demanded that Arthur—on pain of death— present himself in one year’s time with the answer.

  What do all women desire?

  How could any man possibly divine the answer to such a riddle? What would be the point?

  The whole business reeked of sorcery.

  “Arthur, this is serious,” he said as he drew level with the king.

  “And well I know it.” Arthur cast a rueful look at his saddlebag, bulging with a thick tome bound in leather, the result of a solid year’s worth of painstaking labor on both his part and Gawain’s. “Who wo
uld have thought it would be so difficult to get a straight answer to a simple question?”

  “Me. Women can no more say what they really want than a hen can fly to the moon! In fact, given the choice, I’d wager on the chicken.”

  Arthur’s brows lifted. “Was that a joke? Oh, well done, Gawain, I was beginning to think that you’d forgotten how!”

  “This is no laughing matter. Somer Gromer Jour has bested you once already—no doubt by use of sorcery—”

  “No doubt,” Arthur agreed wryly.

  “And the task he set you is impossible, as well he knew.”

  Arthur acknowledged the truth of that with an exasperated sigh. He could hardly deny it after the past year, which they had spent—wasted, Gawain thought now—in canvassing the female population of Britain for the answer to Somer Gromer Jour’s deceptively innocuous question.

  “Impossible or not, I did accept,” Arthur pointed out. “I have given my word, and I will keep it.”

  “I have given my word, too, and I refuse to stand by and let that man—that sorcerer who will not even give his proper name—take your life because you could not find the answer to his ridiculous riddle!”

  “I don’t think it will come to that,” Arthur said. “We have a whole book here—”

  “And for every answer in that book, we have its opposite, as well.”

  Arthur nodded glumly. “I thought we were onto something with the grand marriage. We had a lot of those.”

  “We did,” Gawain agreed. “But it was not unanimous.”

  “Did you mark how many said they wanted to be widowed? A bit depressing, that. And then there were the nuns,” he went on, aggrieved. “They put paid to wealth and beauty. As for wisdom—”

  Gawain snorted. “I told you that one was a nonstarter.”

  “Damn it all, what do you think women want?”

  “A man to tell them what to do,” Gawain answered promptly.

  “Yes, well, if you notice, we didn’t get a single one of those.”

  “That’s because women lack the wit to know what they want. Even if they did know, they wouldn’t say. Women like their secrets, Arthur—they’re cunning creatures.”

  “They can’t be witless and cunning,” Arthur protested. “You have to pick one.”

  “No, indeed, for they are both,” Gawain assured him gravely. “Even the dullest will seek to deceive a man, and the more wit they have, the more dangerous they are.”

  Arthur sighed. “You are very hard upon the ladies.”

  “I speak as I find,” Gawain answered with a shrug.

  “This past year hasn’t done you any good at all,” Arthur said regretfully. “I was sure if you were to get out, meet some lasses who are, well, a bit different . . .”

  “Did you think some simple goose girl would alter my opinion?” Gawain demanded, his lip curling in a contemptuous smile. “I knew quite enough about women before I started out, and greater knowledge has only confirmed my worst suspicions.”

  “Well, I still think it’s a grand marriage they want,” Arthur said a little grumpily. “It’s what most of them said, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but the question isn’t what most women want—it is what all women desire. All. Which is precisely why it is impossible. Arthur, you must let me take this challenge for you.”

  “Must, eh? Who is king here, I’d like to know?”

  “You are. And you will go on ruling so long as I draw breath.”

  Arthur laughed. “Oh, Gawain, I am fond of you! I honestly don’t think it has occurred to you that some heirs would take a very different view of the matter. A clever nephew would be pushing me forward with one hand and arranging his coronation with the other.”

  “I will not rule—” Gawain began.

  “You damn well will if I die without issue. That is what it means to be my heir. I chose you and I expect you to do your duty.”

  Gawain let out a long breath and said with straining patience, “That is what I am attempting to do, sire—”

  “Oh, so now it’s sire, is it?”

  “—And what I will do. Arthur, I am taking this challenge.”

  “I forbid it,” Arthur said. “And if you ask again—hello, what’s this? Oh, damn it all, I think he’s thrown a shoe.”

  AISLYN stood, resting a hand against the tree trunk, absently brushing a strand of red-gold hair from her eyes as she peered down at the forest path. Her heart stuttered when she glimpsed a flash of crimson between the leaves, still far off in the distance. King Arthur. It must be. And another rider, no doubt his squire. Though they were too far off to make out their words, she was almost sure she caught the sound of laughter. King Arthur must be either a brave man or an utter fool. Did he not realize he was riding to his death?

  She settled down again, her back against the tree trunk, bare feet dangling above the road. Another few minutes and he would be upon her. What would she do then? Only a fool would throw away the security she had worked so hard to gain, and a fool Aislyn certainly was not. She’d been one once, but now she was . . .

  The witch in the wood. That’s what they called her. Someone to be approached only as a last resort. The peasants never spoke to her; they never even came as far as the door of the abandoned charcoal burner’s hut she had taken as her own. If they had, she wouldn’t answer. They left their offerings of food and cloth on the stump and when they returned, they found whatever potion it was they needed. It had been a good enough arrangement for the first few years, when she desired nothing but solitude, but now . . .

  “Not much of a life, is it?” she asked a squirrel on the branch above her, but its only answer was a flip of the tail before it vanished up the trunk.

  No, it wasn’t much of a life, but at least she was alive. Which she would not be if Queen Morgause learned who had foiled her plot against King Arthur’s life.

  Of course Morgause was behind this. Aislyn knew her former mistress too well for doubt. The riddle was one Morgause had used of old, and the entire business had been carefully designed so no blood guilt would stain the queen’s white hands. The challenge accepted freely by the king, the champion to do the deed itself—oh, it was clever, but Aislyn had never taken Morgause for a fool.

  She was, after all, the reason Aislyn had spent five years hiding in this forest. Morgause still sought her former pupil—and the grimoire Aislyn had stolen from her, the queen’s own book of spells—and would not give up the hunt until one of them was dead. So far Aislyn had managed to elude her, but what now? She, Aislyn, the witch of the wood, held a king’s life in her hand. What was she to do with it?

  To save him was to reveal herself, for even if Morgause did not guess from whom the answer came, she would bend all her considerable powers to the problem. Yet to simply sit and let the king ride past was tantamount to murder. Which would it be? His life or hers? Or was there a way both could be saved?

  She had no proof, nothing but her own word against that of a queen who was, moreover, King Arthur’s half sister. Would the king believe her? Even if he did, would he thank her for such information? Would he not want to hush up the entire matter . . . including the messenger?

  She had asked herself these questions a thousand times over the past few days, and the answers still eluded her.

  The sound of a horse’s whinny shattered her reverie. They had stopped; the king was off his mount. The moment of decision was upon her. She alone could stop Morgause. She alone could save the king. And then where would she run?

  “Oh, bugger it,” she muttered, jumping down to land noiselessly upon the path. “I’ve nothing else to do.”