by Anne Stuart
She looked at him sternly, but he seemed totally unmoved by her disapproval. "I weep for you, my lord," she said.
"Weep for yourself, my lady. You'll be shackled to me for life."
"Ah, but you're forgetting," she said blithely. "I'll have all those stalwart knights to distract and entertain me."
He laughed, and it was a strangely charming sound. "Unless you drive me to murder you first."
"Do you murder women, then, my lord?"
"I haven't yet, my lady. I usually restrict my murderous activities to those who deserve them. But I'm open to new experiences."
It shouldn't have been a matter of jest. Men did kill their wives, in rage, in cold blood. And Alys had no doubt whatsoever that Simon of Navarre was capable of killing.
But he was no threat to her life, she was certain of it. To her peace of mind, doubtless. To her well-being, to her immortal soul, perhaps. But he would never hurt her.
Would he?
"This hall is drafty," he said with great patience, "and I have no strong desire to haul you up the stairs when you have two legs that can carry you up there."
"And why are you taking me upstairs?"
"Not to swive you," he said. "I've decided you need some training in the healing arts. If you keep putting horse dung on people they'll all be dead, and I like having my needs attended to by servants. They won't be able to do that if they're dead. Therefore, their health is of concern to me, and since they're all terrified of me, you seem the best choice to administer the proper herbs."
She looked at him, taking this all in. "Yes, my lord," she said with dubious meekness.
He wasn't a gullible man. "Yes, my lord… what?"
"Yes, I do firmly believe that you have no interest in the welfare of anyone but yourself and your only concern for others is that they are well enough to see to your comfort," she parroted. "And I will be more than grateful to learn whatever it is you wish to teach me."
He let his eyes slide down her body. "I am not convinced of that, my lady."
She fought hard against the color that rose to her cheeks. "I wish to learn about the healing arts. I'll endeavor to pass on your treatments to those in need."
He looked as if he were about to argue further, then thought better of it. "Then stop dawdling," he said in a sharp voice, and started up the winding tower stairs. Leaving her little choice but to lift her heavy skirts and scurry after him, cursing his long legs and his rapid pace.
She was a demon, sent to bewitch him, Thomas thought morosely, setting his goblet back down on the table. It was bad enough when she was tossing her sun-bright hair, teasing him, fighting with him.
It was far worse when she was sitting at the table, a woeful, lost expression on her far too beautiful face. He couldn't fight with a waif, no matter how lovely. It roused all his protective instinct, it made him want to draw her away from the rude voices, the bawdy comments floating through the air, to place her pretty face against his shoulder and cover her ears.
He was a careful man, and he kept his expression absolutely blank, but beneath it he mocked himself. She was a jade, there was no way she could be anything but, and her current megrims were doubtless due to a fit of sulks that she couldn't have her way. Though at this point he had no idea what her way was.
And in truth, she'd been oddly beguiling in the presence of that huge daughter of Satan she called a horse. She had crooned to the giant creature, stroked her silky nose, whispered loving things in her attentive ear. And Thomas had watched, and wondered if his wife had ever loved any creature on earth half so much as this pampered beauty loved her horse.
He couldn't help but approve. He had a knight's appreciation for a worthy horse, added to a natural fondness toward all animals. You knew where you stood with four-legged creatures. They were honest and true and incapable of deceit, and it grieved him to think that Lord Richard would hand such a magnificent creature to the highest bidder for his half-sister's hand. And he told himself it troubled him not at all that she, too, would be handed over to some elderly, wealthy baron who'd probably buried several wives already.
He'd been mesmerized by the sight of her hand, stroking the sleek, well-muscled flank of her horse. She wore no rings, which surprised him. He would have thought she'd be far more interested in gold and silver than a good horse. Her hand was pretty, well-shaped, but surprisingly strong-looking. But then, she'd have to have strong hands to rule an oversized creature like her mare.
Her days of riding her precious mare were done, whether she knew it or not. Lord Richard would see to it that she suffered a different kind of ride, and she would doubtless be well-pleased with her lot, as most women were. All they needed were creature comforts and the adoration of all the men surrounding them. And few men would be foolish enough to deny Lady Claire their besotted admiration.
There was a coarse laugh from beyond Lady Claire, and he looked to see Richard, wine-befuddled and belching, reach out and press a loud, wet kiss on his half-sister's mouth. "Gad, you're a pretty thing!" he shouted. "Damn me if I'm not half-tempted to keep you for myself."
The others laughed at his absurd, ribald sally, even Brother Jerome. But there was something in Lady Claire's wide green eyes, and in the furtive way she wiped the dampness from her mouth with the back of her hand once her brother had turned away, that made Thomas uneasy.
He looked closer at the faintly green tinge to her clear skin. She was going to hurl all over his lordship's trencher if he didn't get her out of there, and he decided it was his Christian duty to remove her. It mattered nothing that that was clearly what she was desperate to do for herself.
He rose, and Richard cast a curious glance at him. "Your sister is unwell, sire," he said politely. "I'll see her safely to her room."
"Sick, is she?" Richard bellowed. "Not used to good food. Take her away, Sir Thomas. And there's no need to warn you to behave yourself—that's why I chose you. I doubt you even know how to use a woman anymore. That witch Gwyneth unmanned you."
Sir Thomas didn't even blink. Claire had risen to her feet, albeit unsteadily, and he put a strengthening hand beneath her elbow. She was shaking, and it struck him that perhaps she really was sick.
"Don't worry, I'll have Grendel whip you up a potion to put starch back in the old blade," Richard said. "In the meantime, give us a kiss, dear sister." He reached for her, one meaty hand clawing at her wrist, and Thomas wondered whether they were about to indulge in a tug of war. Granted, Richard was his liege lord, but he wasn't about to release Claire when she could barely stand.
Lady Claire took care of the problem most efficiently. She look at her brother, focusing on his wet, bewhiskered mouth, and promptly spewed her supper all over him.
Richard leapt up, cursing furiously, but Thomas had already drawn her away. "I warned you she was unwell, sire," he said, trying to keep his voice deferential.
"Sickly bitch," Richard fumed, ripping his soiled tunic from his body and revealing his coarse, thickly muscled body. "Take her to her womenfolk before she hurls again!"
"Yes, my lord," Thomas said meekly. Claire looked entirely capable of it, one trembling hand pressed to her mouth, and he hurried her from the room before she could disgrace herself again.
She sagged against him, and he drew her to the stairs, sitting down and pulling her weak body against his. She was trembling, shaking so hard he thought her bones might break, and an odd, choking sound signalled that she might be ill again.
And then she looked up at him, and her green eyes were full of mischievous delight, and he realized she was shaking with laughter, and the choking sound was her attempt to stifle her amusement.
"He'll think twice about kissing me again," she said breathlessly, a stifled giggle in the back of her throat.
He wanted to jump up, denounce her as a foul, deceitful strumpet, but he didn't move. He had seen a look in Richard's eyes that he didn't dare interpret, but he sensed that Richard deserved such punishment and more.
"You're a
dangerous woman, Lady Claire," he said. "That's a formidable weapon you've got."
She still looked faintly green. "It doesn't require much," she said brightly. "Just have Richard kiss you on the mouth and you'd be able to spew as well."
Beaten. She deserved to be beaten. And he deserved to be punished for not chastising her. But he found he couldn't. He looked down into her unrepentant green eyes, and thanked Christ and all his saints that she'd just thrown up.
And that her soft, wicked mouth was no temptation for his. For the moment.
* * *
Chapter Eight
She had fallen asleep again, Simon realized. It was quite an odd habit she had, of simply drifting off in his presence. He'd worked hard at presenting a formidable appearance to all the inhabitants of Summersedge Keep, and indeed, Lady Alys was frightened of him. But quite obviously not frightened enough to keep awake.
It was one thing when he'd drugged her wine with sweet poppy. Tonight he expected her to be alert, ready to learn of the herbs he showed her, ready to argue and banter with him as she had at dinner. It was a rare thing to have anyone capable of talking back to him, and the novelty enchanted him. The fact that it was a woman he desired made it even more interesting.
But she'd sat on the pile of cushions on the floor, watching him out of her calm, steady eyes as he started to tell her of the dangers of wormwood, and then those eyes drifted closed, and she slept, her back against the thick stone wall, her legs curled up beneath her. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts with complete fascination, almost as if he'd never seen breasts before. And he had, unclothed, wondrous breasts. The soft swell beneath Lady Alys's monumentally ugly gown shouldn't have absorbed him with such intensity.
But then, he'd already accepted the fact that there was no reason to his fascination with Richard the Fair's half-sister. It simply existed, and he accepted it. Without question it would disappear once he'd bedded her. In the meantime he could simply enjoy the uncharacteristic ache she inspired within him.
He rose, moving toward the simple desk. No one was allowed to clean his rooms but Godfrey, his manservant. No one was privy to his secrets but Godfrey, and Godfrey was mute, his tongue removed by a spoiled German prince who wanted to assure himself that his servants wouldn't talk.
The German prince himself would no longer talk�Simon of Navarre had killed him, and Godfrey had followed him with patient, intelligent devotion ever since. He was the perfect servant, friend and confidante, devoted to his master, deft in his handling of herbs, thoughtful and learned. It mattered not that Godfrey could write and therefore pass on the secrets that had been silenced from his mouth. Few people—and Richard de Lancie was not one of them—were able to read.
The inhabitants of Summersedge Keep would wonder why a man with a crippled right hand would have the kind of desk used in a scriptorium. If they knew. But since very few people saw the inside of his rooms, very few people thought to question.
He took the seat, then stretched his scarred hand out fully, reaching for the quill. The page of the herbal was just as he had left it, the colors clear and bright Transcribing manuscripts had been his self-imposed treatment during the years he spent with the good monks. At first the pain had been unbearable, and his hand had shaken so badly with it that the manuscript had been unreadable. But he had persevered, through pain and stiffness, day after day, moving from the simple copying of biblical text to his own work of compiling an herbal, and the drawings were magical, vivid, glowing things.
It was his life's work, and he tended to think of it as penance for his sins. Not that he believed in penance. His sins were too great for absolution, and he no longer sought it. He simply followed his instincts, both noble and selfish, knowing he was doomed to whatever afterlife had already been decreed.
He worked for a bit, occasionally glancing over at the sleeping woman. She kept her hair tightly braided, presumably in purposeful contrast to her sister's flowing tresses. She wore a veil, and a thin circlet of gold, but the headpiece was begining to slip. He wondered how she would look with her hair unbound, her full mouth smiling. He wondered what her mouth would taste like.
He would bed her. He would marry her. And he would leave her, and all of them, when he no longer needed them. And perhaps, if she showed herself an adept enough pupil, he would leave the finished manuscript with her.
A sudden, unexpected thought came to him. Would he leave her with more than the pages of wisdom acquired from his worldly travels. Would he leave her with a child as well?
He knew how to avoid it, both by Eastern and Western means. His knowledge of herbs was incomparable, bordering on what others might call witchcraft, and his knowledge of the rhythms of a woman's life was equally profound, garnered from the physicians and wise men in the holy lands who took delight in a broken knight who wished to learn, not to kill and maim. They'd mended his smashed body, and in watching them he'd learned what to do about his twisted hand when it had healed sufficiently.
He realized he hadn't moved in several long minutes, as the memories of the past swept over him. He wasn't usually prey to wasting his time on an ancient past, but neither was he a man to deny what life demanded. He watched Alys in her gentle sleep, and thought of her lying in his arms, in that same trusting sleep, her belly round and swollen with his child.
He pushed away from the desk in sudden anger. These were the dreams of an ordinary man, not one such as Simon of Navarre, who had spent long years creating the creature who effectively terrified all who strayed into his path.
He moved to the deep set window to stare out over the night-shrouded castle. There were lights in the bake house, and he could see the tiny glow of candles from the small chapel. Brother Jerome would be praying diligently, begging forgiveness for nonexistent sins, both his own and those of his people. Little did he know the true horror of real sin.
"What were you doing at the desk?"
Alys's voice was sleepy, soft, curious. He hadn't realized she was awake, and watching him. A mistake—he needed to be preternaturally aware of her.
"Reading," he said, willing to answer her this time, even with a lie. "Your company was less than inspiring."
She sat up. Her circlet was askew, and attempts to straighten it were lamentable. He wanted to go to her and take the thing off her head, with the veil as well. He wanted to loosen her thick plaits and wrap them around his hands. Around his strong, scarred, wounded hand that symbolized all he had been through.
He curled his right hand up into its customary, claw-like position, certain she was too sleep-fuddled to notice. "I'm sorry," she murmured in her oddly beguiling voice. "I don't usually fall asleep like that."
"Perhaps my company is soporific."
She smiled at that, a small, delightful upturning of her full mouth. He liked her sleepy, her guard down. "Unlikely, my lord. Though this time the wine couldn't have been drugged. You didn't have the chance to get near the stuff I had tonight, and it lacked the sweet, dreamy taste of the night before."
"Your imagination is very energetic." He managed, as always, to keep his reaction hidden. He needed to learn that he shouldn't underestimate her.
"That is, perhaps, the only energetic thing about me right now," she said with a yawn, stretching with unconscious sensuality. In general she wasn't a sensual creature—she'd spent too many years with the nuns, too many years looking after other people's needs and ignoring her own. But he suspected that beneath her careful behavior there was a ripe sensuality waiting to be awakened.
And he was growing rapidly more impatient to awaken it. Outside the wind had picked up, whistling through the narrow arrow-slits in the thick castle wall, stirring the flames in the deep fireplace, ruffling the thick, dark tapestries.
"There's a storm brewing," he said, pushing away from the window. "We'll have rain by morning. The serfs will be glad of it."
Oddly enough, Lady Alys appeared less than pleased. "A s-storm?" she said, the nervous stammer almost imperceptible. Bu
t he was a man who missed very little.
"Have you a dislike of rain, my lady?" he questioned gently.
"Only when it interferes with my outdoor activities," she said, rallying.
"And what are those? We've already ascertained that you're terrified of horses. You seem frightened of rain as well. What else terrifies you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, clearly forgetting that one of her fears was Simon of Navarre. "I'm not afraid of rain. I'm just not overly fond of thunder and lightning."
He glanced out the narrow slit of window once more. In the distance he could see a fork of lightning shiver in the inky dark sky, but it was too far away to be of any moment.
"Horses, thunder and lightning, me," Navarre said softly. "Is there anything else that terrifies you?"
She didn't deny it, wise creature that she was. Her eyes met his quite calmly, her hands folded gracefully in her lap. "If there is I shall do my best to keep it secret," she said.
"You can try," he said, moving away from the wall and closer to her. She smelled of lavender and roses, of sweet wine and womanhood, a heady combination for his deliberately controlled senses. He knelt down beside her, and with his scarred hand reached up and brushed her cheek. She didn't flinch away in horror, as he half expected her to. She was afraid of ridiculous things, horses and thunderstorms. But a badly scarred hand left her calm.
More than calm. To his horror, she reached up and gently caught his hand in hers, and it was all he could do not to stretch it out from its false, cramped position and capture her small hand. She had good, strong, warm hands. The hands of a healer. The hands of a lover. He wondered if she'd ever touched a man with love.
It was a simple enough matter to find out. She wasn't paying attention to anything but the scarred hand in hers, and she barely noticed when he put his good hand beneath her chin, lifting her face to meet his merciless eyes.