By Arrangement Part 10

"I will not return here, Christiana. We will do it your way. Today I learned that Edward will attend our wedding. Your brother and the King will deliver you to me two Tuesdays hence. If you have need of me before that, you know where to find me."

He turned to go. Out of the jumbled confusion of her mind a question that she had pondered leapt forward. Without thinking, she blurted it out. "Who is Frans van Horlst to you?"

Perhaps because it was so unexpected and so irrelevant to what had just occurred, it startled him. He quickly composed himself.

"He is a Flemish merchant. We have business together."

He was lying. She just sensed it. Dear G.o.d, I don't know hint at all. Twelve days and I don*t know him.

The shock to her emotions had made her very alert, very awake. Inconsistencies about David suddenly presented themselves. She had never noticed them before. She had never paid attention. There were a lot, and her suspicions about Frans van Horlst only added to them. What were these trips he took? How did he have access to Edward? Why offer for her and pay a huge bride price? Why did he have a servant who looked like a soldier? How did he know that Stephen was not coming?

He knew that for sure. She just felt it.

Finally she spoke. "Who are you? Really?"

The question startled him anew. For the briefest instant the mask dropped, and in those eyes of lapis lazuli she saw layer upon layer of shadowed emotions. Then his careful expression returned and he smiled at her. It was a faint smile that revealed nothing.

He opened the door. "You know who I am, my lady. I am the merchant who paid a fortune for the right to take you to my bed."

She stood with her arms embracing herself in the towel and listened to his steps recede through the anteroom.

He had responded to the last question just as she had asked it, in perfect Parisian French. Christiana waited until the deep of night when the apartment and the castle were silent before slipping out of her bed. At the end of the room, Lady Idonia slept the sleep of the dead. Christiana wasn't surprised. Idonia had returned from her ride with Sieg flush faced and bright eyed, looking very young for her thirty-eight years. Kerchief gone and hair disarrayed, she had only halfheartedly mumbled some criticisms of David's presumptuous servant and of David himself, who had ordered Sieg to carry her off. She padded the few steps to Joan's bed and slipped between the curtains. She sat on the bed and jostled her shoulder. Total darkness wrapped the bed, and that suited her just fine. She felt like an idiot and didn't need to see Joan's amus.e.m.e.nt during this conversation.

She sensed Joan jolt wake and heard her sit up.

"It is I," Christiana whispered. "I need to speak with you. It is very important."

Little stretches and yawns filled the tented s.p.a.ce. Joan shifted over to make more room. Christiana crossed her legs and pulled part of the coverlet over them.

"Joan, I need you to tell me what happens between a man and a woman when they are married."

"Oh my goodness," Joan said. "You meana no one evera Idonia didn'ta"

"Idonia did. When I was about ten. But I think that I misunderstood." Christiana remembered well what Idonia had said to her. In its own way it had been quite straightforward, up to a point, and had struck her at the time as very peculiar and not very interesting. She suspected that Idonia had a.s.sumed that over the years common sense would fill in the essential gaps, but until this afternoon her imagination had failed her.

"You marry in less than two weeks, Christiana."

"Which is why I need to know now."

"I would say so. The notion usually takes a while to get used to."

"How long?"

"For me, about three years."

Wonderful.

"So tell me."

Joan sighed. "Let's see. Well, haven't you ever seen animals mating?"

"I have lived at court since I was seven. Where in these crowded castles and palaces do animals mate?

The stables? The kennels? Not the dinner hall or the garden. I didn't grow up on a country estate like you, Joan."

"Dear saints."

"Tell me bluntly, Joan. Plain language. No gaps."

Joan took a deep breath and then explained quickly. Christiana felt more the fool with each word that she heard. Deep in her heart she had known since David touched her that it was thus, but her mind simply wouldn't accept the appalling logic of it.

Jokes suddenly made sense. Vague lines in songs abruptly became clear. Stephen's hand pushing apart her thighsa He had not done this thing to her, but he had planned to. Only Idonia's arrival had saved her from that brutal shock. She hadn't even known what he was about.

Davida good heavens.

"Can a man tell if you have done this before?" she asked cautiously. She could feel Joan's eyes boring through the blackness. "Usually." Joan explained how they could tell. Christiana winced at the description of pain and blood.

"Are you saying that you did this and didn't know it, Christiana? That doesn't make sense."

"Nay. I thought that I hada I told David that I had."

Joan barely suppressed a giggle. "Well, that is a switch. Normally girls need to make excuses why there isn't evidence of virginity. You, on the other handa"

"Don't laugh at me, Joan. This is serious."

"Aye. He may think that you lied to get out of the marriage, mayn't he?"

Aye, he may, Christiana thought dully.

Joan's hand touched her arm. "Who was it? I didn't realize there was someone. No wonder that you have been so unhappy about this betrothal. I never saw you even speak with a man more than once or twice, except maybea" Her hand gripped tighter. "Is that who it was? Stephen Percy? Oh, Christiana."

She neither agreed nor disagreed. Joan knew she had guessed right, though, and in a way she was glad. It felt good to finally share that agony, even if the pain had been dulling for some time now. Joan's hand sought hers in the dark. When she spoke, her voice was low and sympathetic. "I must tell you something. You will hear it soon, for it will be all around the court in the next day or so. Stephen's uncle was on the bridge, and Thomas and I spoke with him. He received a messenger today from Northumberland." She squeezed Christiana's hand. "Stephen was betrothed ten days ago. The match had been made when he was just a youth."

A huge, deep fissure opened up inside her, slicing through her soul as if it were carved by hot steel. It reached down to the deepest reaches, releasing at last all of those fears and suspicions and forbidden doubts. They surged and overwhelmed her.

"I am sure that he loves you," Joan said soothingly. "His family no doubt forced him to this. It is common enough when early matches are made."

Aye, common enough. Men married women they did not love or want and amused themselves elsewhere as they pleased. She suddenly and clearly saw Stephen's wooing of her as the insincere, dishonorable thing it had been. A game of seduction to pa.s.s the time even while he knew his future wife waited back home. Had Morvan's threats made the siege more interesting, more exciting?

She thought of the letter she had sent him. Had he laughed? Her ignorance about men and women had been making her feel like a fool this evening, but that was nothing compared to the devastating desolation this news of Stephen caused. Her body shook and her heart began burning and shattering. She released Joan's hand and scooted off the bed.

"I'm so sorry, Christiana," Joan said.

Controlling her emotions by a hairbreadth, she pushed through the drapery and rushed to her own bed. She threw herself on her stomach and, biting a pillow to m.u.f.fle the sound, cried out her humiliation and bitter disappointment.

Chapter 8.

She remained in bed for two days. During the first one, she wallowed in a bitter pain full of memories suddenly seen anew. Stephen's words and face had not changed in them, but different meanings now became terribly clear. The truth mortified her, and by day's end she was close to hating Stephen Percy for having used and humiliated her.

The next day she lay in a dumb stupor, floating mindlessly through time. The numb daze was soothing and she considered staying forever in it.

On Sunday she rose from her bed and dressed. She managed not to think about Stephen much at all, but on the few occasions that she did, a raw sore of pain and anger reopened before she pushed his memory out of her mind.

By Tuesday she felt much better and more herself again. She even laughed at a little joke that Isabele made while they dressed in the morning. The glances of relief that Idonia and Joan exchanged made her laugh again.

And then, right after dinner, the tailor arrived for the final fitting of her wedding gown, reminding her abruptly that in exactly one week she would marry David de Abyndon.

That reality had been neatly obscured by the violent emotions that had ripped through her upon hearing the news about Stephen. As she stood motionlessly in the silvery pink gown, however, she knew that it was time to face the facts about this marriage.

It was going to happen. In a week Morvan would literally hand her over to him. She would live in the house that she had refused to visit, and be mistress to a household whom she had refused to meet. The center of her life would move from Westminster's court to the merchant community of London. Her life would be tied to and owned by this man forever.

Nothing would be the same. She looked at Joan and Isabele. Would they remain her friends? Perhaps, but they would drift apart because her life would not be here. She thought about the animosity between Morvan and David. Would her husband let her see her brother again? It would be in his power to refuse it.

During her years at court, she had always been a little adrift, but her brother and her few friends had served as anchors for her. After she married, she would have only David for a long while. Without him she would be completely alone in that new life that awaited.

As she turned this way and that while the tailor inspected his work, she contemplated David. She desperately wanted to hate him for being right about Stephen, but she could not. If David had not pointed the way to the truth, would she have ever seen it? How much easier to make excuses for Stephen like Joan had done. How rea.s.suring to avoid the real pain and continue the illusion of a true love thwarted. She didn't know David very well, but she had come very close to not knowing him at all. In the face of her indifference to him and blind loyalty to Stephen, he had tried to prepare her. She had left things badly with him. True to his word, he had not come back to Westminster. She had insulted him that day in ways that she didn't fully understand.

The tailor left, and she walked over to a window and gazed down into the courtyard. She pictured David riding in and dismounting, and imagined his steps coming toward the apartment. In her mind he kissed her and her skin awoke with the warmth of his lips. She let the memories fuse and progress, and she felt his firm hand on her breast. She clenched her teeth against the desire that phantom touch awakened. Finally she forced herself to picture the joining that Joan had described. Her imagination failed her and the image disappeared as if a drape had dropped in front of it. Pain and blood the first time, according to Joan. Lured by pleasure into horror. He would not come. You know where to find me, he had said. An invitation. To what, though? His company or his bed?

It surprised her what these thoughts were doing. Her heart yearned to indeed see him appear in the courtyard below. She missed him, and the knowledge that he waited for her went far to ease the pain of these last days. The fear of what he awaited could not obscure the images of his kind attention to her. Thinking of Stephen still opened hollows in her soul, but David's memory soothed the devastation. It was whispered that he wanted her so much he had paid that bride price to have her. The idea of the marriage bed filled her with dismay, but at least David had pursued her honorably. He hadn't tried to steal what he wanted in a dusty room in a deserted pa.s.sageway as Stephen had. He had a right to know about Stephen. More importantly, she needed to explain the stupid mistake that she had made about that other thing. The world treated virginity as very important, and so she suspected that such things mattered much to men.

It would not be easy to go to him. She steeled her will. They faced a life together. She could not meet him at the wedding with what stood between them unresolved.

Tomorrow she would go and find him. She would ride her black horse and wear her red cloak. She would also deal with one other problem as well.

That evening she went down to the hall well before supper and sought out Morvan. She found him with a young widow who had recently come down from the Midlands to visit Philippa. His black eyes sparkled with their dark fire. The poor girl looked like a stunned animal caught in the light of a torch. Christiana knew well this feminine reaction to him. Now, however, she understood exactly what he was about. Marching over, she interrupted his seduction with a loud greeting and a rude dismissal of the woman.

"Later, Christiana," he snapped.

"Now, brother," she replied. "In the garden, where we can be alone, please."

Fuming silently he took leave of his helpless prey and followed her through the pa.s.sageways to the garden. The sun had set and twilight dimmed.

He was still annoyed. She didn't care. The stories about her brother were some of those things that made far too much sense all of a sudden. He was little better than Stephen from what she could tell, except that he didn't ruin virgins.

"Tomorrow I want to go and see David in the city," she explained. "I want you to take me to him."

"Send word to him and let him come here."

"He will not come. I left things badly when last we met."

"Then let him wait until the wedding to see you."

"I must speak with him, Morvan. There are things that I need to discuss."

"You will have years to talk, thanks to the King. I will not take you to him." He turned to leave. She stomped her foot and grabbed his arm. "He thinks that I am not a virgin, Morvan."

That stopped him. He regarded her carefully. "Why?"

She faced him bravely. She understood her brother now, and his overbearing protection. Like David, he knew men well. He protected her from such as himself.

"Because I told him that I was not."

"You lied about such a thing? Even to avoid this marriage, Christiana, such a liea"

"I thought it was the truth."

The implications sank in. "Who?" he asked quietly. Too quietly.

"I will not say. Do not think to bully me, Morvan. It is over and done with and thanks to Idonia I am whole. It is partly your fault, brother. If you had not scared off every boy, I might have had some experience in knowing a man's intentions. As it was, I was helpless against them and, until three days ago, didn't even know what he wanted from me."

He stood silently in the gray light. "Good G.o.d," he finally said.

"Aye. Eighteen and as ignorant as a babe. I came close to learning the hard way, didn't I? And almost went to my marriage bed a complete innocent."

"h.e.l.l."

"So, I did not lie to David. What had occurred between me and this other man seemed to fit all of the requirements as I stupidly understood them."

"And this merchant, knowing this, still took your hand?"

"Aye. I told him before the betrothal. He said that repudiation would ruin me."

He shook his head thoughtfully. "This marriage never made any sense."

"Nay, but I cannot worry about that now. I must see him before the wedding. I want to explain this."

He brought his arm around her shoulders and began guiding her back toward the castle door. "It is well that you explain. He might hurt you more than he has to if he doesn't know."

The very frank way he said this surprised her. So did this new ambiguous piece of information. Perhaps she should have talked to Morvan instead of Joan. She smiled, picturing her brother's distress as she demanded blunt descriptions with no gaps.

"If you go to him, he will misunderstand why you have come," he said. "It is said that he wants you badly. Perhaps that is the explanation for everything after all."

"Then I wish I had not been so unworldly. I might have traded my body for my freedom that night."

"It doesn't work that way, Christiana."

How does it work? she wanted to ask. "Well, I marry him in less than a week. When he hears what I have to say, he will not misunderstand why I have come. I must go, and I want you to bring me."

A torch by the doorway illuminated his handsome face. "So you go to him before the wedding, and I take you there? Of your own will, prior to the King's command? Having just learned what this man expects from you?"

"I face a life with him, Morvan. I want to see him and start it well. And I want him to know that you accept it, so that perhaps he will not stand between us. Aye, I go of my own will and I want him to see that I do."