by Jen Black
“Wharton? Your father is…”
“Sir Thomas Wharton, Deputy Warden of the West March.”
She sat down in the chair she had vacated so recently. He was still a puzzle. If he had flaunted his father’s name instead of hiding it, she would have found it more natural. “Why should Sir Thomas’s son hide his identity?” She tossed her plait back over her shoulder with an inpatient gesture. His gaze flickered away from her. Alarm rushed through her. “You weren’t spying, were you?” She leaned forward and grasped one of his warm hands. “Harry, were you spying on my father?”
He shook his head. “I volunteered for a task in Edinburgh and my father did not want the name Wharton attached to it.”
Relief rushed through her. His mission had nothing to do with her family. It was something, at least, but she had to know more. “What kind of a task in Edinburgh?”
“Must you know?” He flicked an assessing sideways glance at her.
Another rebuff. Alina swayed back in her chair and surveyed him while she gathered her thoughts. “I ran away from home for you, Harry. I have nowhere else in the world to go yet you still do not trust me.” It was mortifying. She inhaled deeply, and lifted her head. “Yes, I think I must be told.”
He stared into the flames. “It’s nothing that’s going to bring harm to anyone. In fact, it should have been beneficial, both here and in Scotland.”
She raised her brows and waited.
In brief, simple sentences he described how he bribed several Scots to bring the baby queen to England, at a date as yet unspecified, for a marriage with King Henry’s son. “It would have brought our two nations together and hopefully prevent more bloodshed,” he finished.
“You mean they would kidnap her? A babe only months old?” Alina did not hide her shock.
Harry nodded.
“But such a child may not survive rough handling! Her mother will be distraught! Did you think of that?”
Regret flitted across his face. “No, I didn’t,” he confessed. “My father wanted it done, and I wanted to do it. I did not think about it too much at all. Perhaps she will be older when—”
“You are no better than all the reivers who rape and steal!”
Harry jerked his feet under him and sprang from the chair. “It was done with the best of intentions.”
“But with little thought, Harry.” She gazed after him as he prowled the room. “What if it were your child?”
He wheeled round to retort, and then reconsidered. Tight-lipped, he returned to the fire, hunkered down and settled a new log on the fire. Sparks flew high and vanished up the chimney.
“You may be right.” He remained crouched before the hooded fireplace, frowning into the flames. “But there is no guarantee that it will ever happen. It was probably all a waste of time, for the Treaty of Greenwich took place while I was heading north. That’s a formal agreement to marry the little queen to the prince nine years hence.”
Alina relaxed. “Exactly what you wanted to happen! But it will happen properly, with the little queen’s mother present.”
He rose effortlessly to his feet again, stared down at the flames adventuring around the new wood and shook his head. “All that effort for naught.”
Alina eyed the slope of his shoulders. “Don’t be despondent, Harry. I am sure your father appreciated your efforts.”
“Hopefully, yes.” He did not look around.
“And I appreciated it,” she added softly. “For without it we would never have met.”
He half-turned and regarded her. His grim face made her unaccountably wary. “Are you glad, Alina? Here you are, run away from a marriage, outcast from your family and all because of me.”
“All because of you? You have a good opinion of yourself, sir.” She tried to smile, but her mouth quivered. Surely Harry was not regretting what she had done?
“It is a serious matter. I shall have to marry you.”
The words reverberated through the quiet, firelit room. Swallowing the rising lump in her throat, she met his gaze steadily. “I thought that was what you wanted…what we wanted. I thought you…” Her hands crept together in her lap, twined around each other for comfort. She swallowed again, quickly. “Have you…have I done the wrong thing?”
He took a swift stride and knelt at her feet. “No, of course not. I am of the same mind. I’m tired, so I express myself badly. Forgive me. But I regret that you and your family are estranged. I wish it could have been done a different way.” He cradled her interlocked hands within his own and dropped a kiss on her knuckles. “I have a plan to present to your esteemed parent,” he added with a wry smile. “Somehow we’ll have to approach him and explain everything.” He looked down at their intertwined hands. “If we marry, we can make everything good with your family. My father knows and he has no objections.”
“You spoke of me to your father? To Sir Thomas Wharton?” Suddenly things did not seem so bad after all.
He nodded. “He was surprised, I must admit. He said he would ride over if he could and lend his support with…with your father. But meanwhile…”
At last, his lashes lifted and his blue eyes spoke of matters that warmed her blood and caused a quiver of unease deep in her belly. “Meanwhile?”
“We are here, together, and alone.”
There was no mistaking what he meant. Oh, yes, Harry! She wanted him, but her stomach knotted on the thought. “I want to know more about you. Tell me about your family. I want to be sure you are Harry Wharton, and not Harry Scott or Harry Jones.”
Harry groaned. “Now who doesn’t trust whom?”
“I haven’t been traipsing around the countryside under a false name. You have.”
“But—”
“You know exactly who I am and where I come from. You’ve met my parents, my brothers and our servants. I suspect that I am not what you wanted in a bride, but—”
“Where shall I start?” He cut in before she could voice her doubts.
“At the beginning,” she said pertly, pleased with his capitulation. “How old are you?”
“I was born in ’21.” From kneeling beside her he slid back into the chair on the other side of the hearth without actually rising to his feet. His agility was a constant surprise to her.
So he was older by little more than two years. “Do you have brothers? Sisters?”
He had realised what she wanted, for he took her next question out of her mouth. “Look, let me give you the potted family history and save time, shall I? Edward knighted Gilbert de Querton in 1292 and seven generations brings us to my father. My mother was Eleanor Stapleton. She comes from Yorkshire. Wharton Hall is the family home on the banks of the river Eden in Cumbria. I have one older brother, George, and two younger sisters, Joan and Feorina. One son died in infancy. Yes, Father has been promised a barony for his work at Solway Moss last November, but who knows? Our king is an unpredictable man. Speaking of which, have you heard that he has another wife?”
“What? A sixth wife?” It took a moment to adjust to the new subject. “How do you know?”
Harry grinned. “Hearing things early is one of the better aspects of being the son of the Deputy Lord Warden of the West March. Messengers scurry about the countryside on a daily basis so my father is one of the most knowledgeable men in the country. She married him a week ago tomorrow.”
Alina sank back in her chair. “It is not yet two years since he beheaded Queen Katherine.” She shuddered, and crossed herself. “Marriage is such a shaky business these days. She must be a brave lady, whoever she is.”
“Her name is Catherine, too. Catherine Parr, recently widowed last March by Lord Latimer. I doubt she dared refuse and I am sure her family will have urged her to take him. Already her thirty-year-old brother is Lord Warden, much to my father’s chagrin.”
She knew she stared, but couldn’t help it, for he moved in circles she did not know. He must surely have hoped to marry a fine lady somewhere and take charge of her lands, whereas she
could offer very little. This house, perhaps, if she was lucky.
Alina shook her head. “Women do not do well out of marriage on the whole. Look at me, sold to the Erringtons by my own father, the man who should care most for me…”
Tears pricked behind her eyes, and her throat tightened and made speech difficult. “I have been so foolish…I see now that I bring you nothing, Harry. You should aim so much higher than me. You should have a wife who can bring you property, and a title.” Her throat ached and tears threatened. “You deserve that, I think. I must go back and make amends, beg to be accepted. I cannot do anything else.”
Chapter Eighteen
For the second time that night Harry slid off his chair and went to his knees before Alina. He did not speak, for he could think of nothing to say in the face of her distress. He pulled her down and into his arms and rocked her back and forth before the fire, crooning wordlessly against her cheek.
Her sudden changes of mood confused him. What had made her decide so suddenly that she should not marry him?
Her face was hot and wet against his throat. Laying his cheek against the top of her head, his gaze sightless on the bare stones of the kitchen floor, he held her until she calmed.
“What is it?” He asked when the sobs died away. “I know it is a stupid question, but why are you giving me up? And what makes you think I want to go jaunting off around the countryside looking for a rich and titled woman to wed?”
She hid her face against the already damp surface of his doublet. “You said that was what you wanted. Men always seek wives who bring lands and estates. Why should you be different?”
Her hair smelled of smoke, not the roses he remembered from the first day they met in Corbridge market. She hadn’t been tending her own fires then, as she was now. “But I don’t want some rich heiress. I want you.”
She stilled in his arms. A moment later he heard and felt the huge breath she took as if steadying herself to reject him again. He pulled a piece of linen from his doublet sleeve. “Here. I can hardly understand you.”
Alina took the fabric, blew her nose, tossed her hair back and regarded him with pink eyes.
“Ah,” he said, “you’ve made your eyes sore.” He leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her lips. She lurched away from him and scrambled back into the chair behind her.
“The day you escaped the Leap and disappeared,” she said, with heavy emphasis on the last word, “was the very day Father told me John Errington would be my husband. John rode over to Aydon the next day, and came courting every day after that.”
Harry remained on the flagstones at her knees. Had she grown fond of the man? Was she regretting running away from the marriage? “Do you like him?”
She shrugged. “He is a nice man. Our families have known each other a long time.”
Harry ground his teeth together as she spoke. “But did you want to marry him?” His question sounded sharp in his own ears. A dark feeling he did not recognise twisted his innards in its grip.
“John is kind, considerate and I think he would have grown fond of me in time. What more could I have expected? Every woman expects to marry to her family’s advantage.” She flicked a wary glance in his direction.
“I expect a lot more than that from any wife I take.”
Her head lifted slowly. “I know. You want land, castles and riches before you’ll accept her.”
It occurred to him that he could give her nothing better than Old Lammerside. Perhaps she wanted a man richer than himself. “Errington would give you those, Alina. Can’t you answer a simple question?”
Her eyes widened. “What answer? You haven’t asked a question.”
“Perhaps you should have married him.” The words came without warning. He stared at her. Why had he said that? The words were exactly the opposite of what he intended. “Christ!”
“You want me to marry him? You really don’t care about me?” She ground her hands together in her lap.
Harry shook his head. “No—”
“John won’t want me now, so—”
Harry grasped her shoulders and shook her to silence. “Of course I don’t want you to marry Errington. I want you to marry me.”
Her reaction was slow. Her eyes widened, chestnut and gold in the firelight, and her lips parted. Gazing at him, searching his face, she raised her brows.
Harry nodded.
“Do you mean it?”
“Of course I mean it. I love you.” There it was. He’d said it, and he meant it. It hadn’t been so hard after all.
Alina slid out of her chair, landed on her knees before him and grasped his arms. “Oh, Harry! What have we been arguing about?”
“Unhand me, woman.” He growled at her, but could not repress the smile that wanted to burst through. “I didn’t invite you to throw yourself all over me. Think of the scandal if someone walked in.”
By the time he got the last word out, he was grinning like a boy and wrapped his arms around her.
“No one knows we’re here, Harry.”
Her soft lips tantalised him. He breathed deep, wondered if he breathed air that had been inside her body. Firelight flushed her pale skin to the colour of honey. Above the tight bodice, the drawstring neck of her linen drooped low enough to reveal the slender lines of her collar bones and the soft shadows where the bones met her throat. She breathed in fast, shallow gasps that made the shadows move and change.
Her lips met his, tentatively, a mere whisper of flesh against flesh. Harry’s heart lurched as her lips touched him again, moved to the corner of his mouth. She laid her cheek against his and rolled her head against him, over and over, as she murmured his name.
He grasped her arms, and held her off. “Alina—”
She looked at him with such adoration his heart leapt up, knocked against his breastbone and he forgot what he had been about to say. A pulse jumped and fluttered in her throat. She leaned slowly towards him and pressed her lips to his.
He groaned. “Alina, should we…?”
He really ought to stop her. If he was wise, he would. If he didn’t, there was no going back. What was he thinking? Already there was no going back. His old cynical reflexes kept getting in the way of this astonishing new direction in his life.
She went on kissing him, smothered his words with her mouth. Briefly, laughing, he pulled back. “If we must, then we must.” On a surge of breathless laughter he added, “I’ll say you forced me.”
“We must.” She ignored his attempt at humour. “But I don’t know where.”
He ran a line of kisses from her temple to her jaw. Slowly, as her words sank in, he paused. His brain didn’t seem to be working properly. Even his words blurred together when he finally spoke. “Whaddyamean, where?”
She sat back. “There’s little furniture here. It’s all at Aydon.”
“All we need is a bed. The house full of furniture can wait,” he murmured, his mind concentrating on the information streaming through his fingertips. The sense of what she said coalesced all at once in his mind. He stopped caressing her and jerked back. “Are you telling me there’s no bed upstairs?”
“No bed, no bolster, no blankets. My mother is a good housewife and she took everything we needed to Aydon. The house is nearly empty.”
Harry stared at the stone flags of the kitchen floor. Impossible to make love there. The narrow wooden settle offered no safe refuge. Had they been practiced lovers, the chair or the table might have sufficed, but Alina was far from practiced. He groaned, ran a hand through his hair and met her amused glance.
“There’s always the stable.” Her smile was innocent. “They didn’t take all the straw.”
Their eyes met in mutual delight. “You have a wicked mind, Alina.”
She grinned as if at a compliment, shuffled off his lap, and waited.
He did not move. “It will be cold, you know.” Was she really suggesting they should go and make love in the stable?
“I have my cloak. We can make a n
est in the straw. Did you never do that when you were a child? Or are you so old you cannot recall your childhood?”
She teased him, he knew. He wanted her so badly he ached for her but he tried not to appear too eager. “In daylight, yes. But never in the cold of night.”
“It is summer, Harry. Jesu, what ails you that your blood runs so thin?”
He rose and grasped her before she could back away. “You have a bright, brave adventurous spirit, Alina Carnaby and I salute you. But you have changed your mind several times this night already. Remember, when you turn to an icicle in the straw, that this was your idea, not mine.”
She laughed, and made for the door.
Harry threw a glance at the fire, decided it would burn for an hour unattended, and grinned as he strode after her. He got to the door, hurried back and pulled his cloak from his saddle bag.
His mare snuffled a welcome as they clattered into the stable.
“We should have brought a lantern,” he muttered.
Alina guided him to the narrow set of rickety steps against the side wall and followed him up. Together they groped through the darkness. Harry used his knife to slit the twine binding a couple of straw bales and spread the fresh straw out on the loft floor.
“Imagine it makes a soft, golden bed.” Alina’s subdued whisper came out of the shadows and made his skin twitch.
“I suppose we’ll be able to see something when our eyes adjust to the darkness. Where are you?”
“Here.” She was a substantial form, warm between his two hands. Her wandering hand found his face, and the other joined it. “Let me spread my cloak and then—oh, Harry!”
The straw rustled and released the scent of summer fields about them.
“This is hardly what I imagined.” Guilt, an emotion he rarely felt, flickered through him. “You should have a featherbed, Alina, and silks and jewels on your wedding day.”
Her palm drew his face towards her. “But I shall remember this more than any featherbed.” Their mouths met, joined and explored. Her hand clamped over his and held it still. “You do love me, Harry? We will be together always?”