By Arrangement Part 28

"However, kin or not, I do not think that he will allow me to leave here alive if I refuse him."

She wished that he had indeed lied. "Then you have no choice."

"Of course I do."

She felt sick. On the one hand, status and wealth awaited. More than he had ever expected in life. Senlis was his right and his due and he should take it. But, dear G.o.d, men whom she knew and loved would ride those ships to France. Her brother, her King, Thomas and othersa and now he had all but said that Theobald would kill him if he did not cooperate.

It should not matter to her. He should not matter.

She almost embraced him and begged him to find a way to take both choices and thus none at all. She returned to the stool. "Were you truly almost captured?"

"No one challenged or questioned me. The armor proved a good disguise, since there are knights moving everywhere in England. Even here, it helped me travel without suspicion."

"The coat of arms on your shield?"

"Do you like it? I could hardly pa.s.s myself off as a knight with a blank shield. Fortunately, I met no heralds who would know it was new and unofficial."

"You followed me north, then?"

"Aye." He shot her a piercing look. "Do not worry. He was not harmed. Although when Sieg threatened to make him a eunuch, I thought he might die of fright. Since I saved him from that, he will probably be glad to lay down his life for me now."

She glanced to the hearth, not much caring if Sieg had made Stephen a eunuch, whatever that was.

"We were further delayed when Oliver insisted on taking the girl with Stephen under his wing and trying to save her from her family's wrath."

She barely heard him. She went over to the hearth. A bucket of water warmed there and she picked it up and carried it the few steps to the tub.

She noticed David looking at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Didn't you hear me? Aren't you jealous? I said he had a girl with him."

She narrowed her eyes. "For a clever man, you can be an idiot!" she shrieked, pouring the water over his head. She upturned the bucket, slammed it down to his ears, and stomped away. She stared at the wall, blind with fury. She heard him leave the tub and dry himself. A few moments later he came up behind her.

He touched her shoulder lightly.

"You still do not believe me," she spat, shrugging off his hand. "You have told me lie after he, while I gave you nothing but the truth from the beginning. Do you a.s.sume that everyone lives the kind of deceptions that you do?"

"I believe you. But I wonder if you still love him. You never said that you had stopped."

"I told you it was over."

"That is not the same thing."

"You should have just asked me, then, if you wondered."

He stepped closer and spoke quietly. "I did not ask you about this, just as you did not ask me about France, and for the same reasons. We have not spoken to each other about the things which might pain us. I never asked you, because I feared the answer. I hoped that time would deal with it. But we have run out of time and I am asking you now. Do you still love him?"

She closed her eyes and savored the sound of his beautiful voice and wished that its quiet tones were not asking questions which led down this path. She feared where it might lead. Still, he was right. Finally, today, he had given her honesty. She should not start her own deceptions now. But honesty about them, the two of them, could well leave her bereft of everything even as it destroyed the fragile resolve with which her anger had conquered her pa.s.sion and love.

"I no longer care for him at all and doubt that I ever loved him."

"Why do you doubt it?"

Because I know what love feels like now, she almost said.

The silence pulsed as he awaited her answer. She suddenly felt terribly vulnerable. This was the second question that if answered honestly would demand an admission of love from her. Why not just tell him? Admit the truth, and then walk out the door. She grimaced. A grand gesture totally lacking the hoped-for drama and impact. He would simply let her go, and then proceed to live the life he chose for himself. He did not care enough to be touched by either the admission or the rejection.

"Why do you believe me now about that meeting, David? Did Stephen tell you the truth? Did you believe that fool when you hadn't believed me?"

"He told me, but he would have sworn to being chaste from birth under the circ.u.mstances. It did not matter because I already believed you. Whenever I thought about that day, I kept seeing a beautiful girl running into my arms. Full of joy, not guilt or fear." His hands gently took her shoulders. "What was it you wanted to tell me then?"

Again a probing question.

He suspects, she realized with shock. His mind's reflection has seen what his anger did not. She became acutely conscious of his warmth and scent behind her. The silence tightened as something else flowed from him. Something expectant and impatient.

She ached to say it, but she thought about the things she had thrown at him that afternoon in their chamber. She remembered how she had avoided him and his affections during their betrothal. She imagined the apprentice being tortured at the will of the n.o.ble Lady Catherine. She certainly could not tell him now. Even if he put some small value on her feelings for him, he would think that his change in fortune from merchant to baronial heir had made her find sudden love.

"I do not remember," she muttered.

He stayed silent, softly stroking her arms. She closed her eyes and absorbed his touch and closeness. His exciting intensity surrounded her in a luring, seductive way. Despite the knot into which the day's revelations had tied her emotions, despite her decision to leave this stranger, she drew amazing comfort from his slow caress.

"I need to know some things from you now," he finally said.

"No story I can tell will be nearly as interesting as yours."

"Were you harmed at all?"

"Nay. Not really. We rode for days and my rump got sore from the saddle and my skin red from the summer sun, but that is all. At nights we stayed in rude inns and all shared one hot chamber, but the men did not bother me, although one looked at me too boldly for comfort. The food was horrible and the sea trip frightening, and I arrived looking like the worst peasant, and smelling too ripe for decent company, but I was not harmed."

He turned her around. He had thrown on a loose, long robe, like something a Saracen might wear. She looked up into his face and saw things hiding beneath his calm expression that she had never witnessed in him before. Worry. Indecision. Doubt. He looked much less contained than he had in the bath. He touched her face. "If I do this thing, you need not stay. Very soon Edward will accept that you were no part of it. You can return home."

She gazed at him, her love twisting her heart. This small contact of skin on skin was enough to awaken all of her senses to him. "That is why you put the properties in my name, isn't it? So they could not be confiscated."

"Aye. There was always the chance that Edward would learn enough to suspect me, no matter what my intentions. I did not want you left dependent if this dangerous game went wrong."

"Why didn't you wait? To marry? You said that this began long before we met. Long before you offered for me. Why complicate things thus for yourself?"

Even as she said it, an eerie sensation swept through her. A knowledge that she did not want to face stretched and stood tall and presented itself squarely. An explanation for one of the first and most enduring questions she had ever had about this man stared at her.

Dear G.o.d. Dear G.o.d. Even that had been a lie, an illusion! It hadn't been much, but at least, as her love sought a compromise with her life, it had been something to hold on to. His fingers still rested on her face. She looked desperately into his blue eyes and sought all the awareness she had ever had of him during their closest intimacy. She gazed through the veils and intensity, trying to see his soul.

"You never offered for me, did you?" she said. "It was Edward's idea. He proposed this marriage, for my sake perhaps, but also to get money out of you. You could not refuse him."

He took her face in his hands and bent closer. He looked straight back at her. The control and restraint fell away and he permitted her to see what she sought. He let her look through the shadows and layers, down to his depths. Naked of all defenses and armor he met her inspection. Her breath caught at the emotions suddenly exposed to her.

"Nay," he said quietly. "I saw you and wanted you and paid Edward a fortune to have you. And I did not wait because I could not. It was selfish of me." His thumbs stroked her cheekbones. "I am out of time, Christiana. I need to know my true choices, and what I gain and what I lose. If I do this thing, are you going to stay with me?"

She barely heard his words because the stunning truth written inside him made the events which had created this marriage suddenly irrelevant. She could not turn from his warm, binding gaze. She did not want to lose this soulful connection, this total knowing that he offered her. She doubted that he had ever before let anyone, even his mother, see him thus.

Everything was reflected in those deep eyes. Everything. His guilt at endangering her. His fear of himself. His hard hungers and conflicting needs and dark inclinations. But illuminating all of those shadows, warming their chilly depths, flowed a sparkling emotion that she recognized for its beauty and joy and salvation. Her own love spread and reached out to meet it gratefully. His lips parted and a glorious warmth suffused his gaze. An exquisite, anguished relief poured out of him.

"Will you stay?" he repeated, his face inches from hers.

"I will not leave," she whispered, for there could be no other answer after what she had just seen.

"n.o.ble or merchant, I will stay with you."

He pulled her into an embracing kiss. She grasped his shoulders and lost herself in a warm rush of poignant intimacy. For a breathless, eternal moment, their bodies seemed to dissolve within the dazzling brilliance flowing between them.

The connection and knowing was so complete that she felt no need to speak of it. But David did.

"What did you want to say to me that day, Christiana?"

"Couldn't you tell? I was sure that you would see it at once."

"My anger and pain blinded me to everything else. I stepped off that boat with a head and heart full of love for you, and Oliver's tale cut me like a dagger and made me a madman."

She lifted her eyes to his, rendered speechless by this calm articulation of what she had just seen and felt in him. In speaking first, he made it easier for her. He had always done that, every step of the way. Out of sympathy and understanding at first maybe, but later because of his love. She touched his face. She let her fingers drift over the tanned ridges of his cheekbones and jaw, and caress his lips. "I wanted to tell you that day that I was in love with you. I realized it when Catherine delivered me to Stephen. The love was just there, very obvious and completely real. I knew that I have loved you a long while."

He kissed her again, so gently and sweetly that her awareness of his love filled her to the point of weightlessness.

His lips moved to her ear. "They took you from my chamber. Upstairs. Geva had touched nothing when I returned."

His quiet, beautiful voice warmed her as much as his breath and touch. A delicious peace flowed through her like a breeze. She was grateful that he knew that she had loved David the mercer long before she learned the whole truth about him. Glad that he knew that she had returned to him of her own will.

"Do you want me, Christiana? Will you come to bed with me now?"

"You know that I do. You know that I will."

He held her and let her innocent love and joy overwhelm him. Ever since he had returned to the house and seen that disheveled bed, his physical desire for her had beat a low, constant rhythm in his soul and body. Now, however, he resisted the movements that would take her to bed. Her loving embrace soothed him as no pa.s.sion would.

n.o.ble or merchant, I will stay with you. More than he had asked for or expected. Far more than he deserved.

She broke his long kiss and smiled up at him. "Has it been so long that you have forgotten how to do it?"

He laughed. "Aye. Perhaps I should have kept in practice."

Her brows rose in surprise and he laughed again. "There has been no one else. I found sitting near you at the hearth more compelling than seducing my way into some strange bed."

She frowned. "It is strange, David. I sat there loving you and you sat loving me and we didn't see it. Why not? You see everything. Can thoughtless, cruel words build such walls?"

"It is over. We do not have toa""

"I want to. I spoke to hurt you, and you did the same. We threw the other's fears and illusions at each other and we each believed the words even though the truth stared us in the face." She gazed intently at him. "If I had thought clearly then, as I have since, I would have known that you never thought of me as property. In fact, you behaved just the opposite. If you had bought yourself a n.o.ble wh.o.r.e, you certainly did not make much use of her, did you? Why?"

She surprised him. She was growing up fast, and her sharp intelligence, freed of its isolating shelter, had already learned to see to the heart of things.

He loved the girl. He suspected that he would worship the woman.

"You were very innocent, darling."

"Not so innocent. Women speak to girls before they marry. I knew that men usually expected more than you ever asked of me. I knew there could be more to lovemaking than you ever sought."

"We were not together very long, Christiana."

She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. "I do not think it was that. You knew your blood, but I did not. I think that you worried that I would indeed feel debased and used. For all of your pride, David, you did not meet me as an equal in our bed."

She astonished him. He had been very careful with her. He had never gone beyond the impulsive acts of their wedding night. The restraint had come naturally to him and he had never thought about it, but now he had to admit some truth in what she said.

A very worldly and determined expression flickered in those diamonds. "I have been jealous, you know. I do not like knowing that you did things with Alicia and others that we never did. n.o.ble or merchant, I will stay with you, David, but not as some precious vessel that you fear to break."

Playfully, she pushed him back, up against the post of the bed. She leaned up into him, pressed her body along his, lowered his head with her hand, and kissed him. He accepted her erotic little a.s.sault. Lightning flashed through him and the tightness grew and spread.

She glanced up, very pleased with herself. He grasped her hips and pulled her closer and she deliberately rubbed against him. Weeks of need and waiting responded forcefully and he lifted her into a devouring, obscuring kiss. She gave herself over to it and their pa.s.sion melted them together. But then her hands smoothed over his shoulders and down to his chest and she subtly pushed away.

"On my wedding a day, a servant gave me some very explicit lessons," she said, looking more to his chest than his face. "She said that men like to watch women undress. Would it please my merchant husband if I undressed now?"

She looked up at him and blushed. He thought his heart would tear his chest open. She turned and walked away, her hands plucking at the knot on her gown's laces. The simple gesture almost undid him. He leaned against the bedpost and crossed his arms over his chest.

He had seen her undress many times, of course, but not like this. She moved so beautifully, so elegantly, that her sudden awkwardness at finding herself watched thus almost wasn't apparent. But he could tell that she immediately found it harder than she had thought. He managed not to smile at the slight flush on her face and the hot look in her eyes as she turned to him and let the gown slide to the floor. She bent to her hose.

"Nay," he said. "The shift first."

She straightened. Crossing her arms over her chest, and appearing very much the shy virgin she had so recently been, she slid the shift off her shoulders. Her hands and arms followed its descent, unfolding to reveal first her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then her hips and thighs.

The thin garment fluttered to her feet and she stepped out of it. She looked at the floor a moment before raising her eyes to his. The glint in those diamonds told him that she had discovered that this could arouse the woman as much as the man.

Her beauty mesmerized him as always. Her frank desire to give him pleasure transformed the pleasure itself. His storm of need subdued itself into a threatening but controllable gale. He knew that he could ride its wind indefinitely.

"Now the hose."

She bent and her graceful arms reached for the garter of one forward-stepping leg. He glimpsed the taper of her shoulder to her waist and the gentle flair of hips beyond. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, tight with need, hung for a moment like two perfect half globes as she rolled the hose off her leg.

"Turn for the other."

She glanced over in surprise, but then did as he asked.

The graceful curves of her hips and b.u.t.tocks fell into erotic swells as she bent to untie the garter. She must have sensed her vulnerability, because her bravery deserted her and she made quick work with the hose.

She straightened and faced him with eyes like liquid stars. He let his memory be branded with her image. Not short and not even small, but beautifully formed in her slender fullness.

"Your hair, Christiana. Take down your hair for me."

Her arms rose as she sought the pins. The movement brought her b.r.e.a.s.t.s high and their hard tips angled upward. She unplaited her raven locks and they began spilling around her. He made no effort to hide what he felt from her gaze.

"Come here, my girl, and kiss me the way a bride in love should."