Joy?
He took her free hand, bowed deeply and pressed his lips to her fingers. ‘The comte’s loss is my gain.’
She snatched her hand away, hating the reminder of Alain’s refusal. ‘Of course, you’ve won something much more important than my hand. This tower and land, if you can hold it.’
She chattered to keep him, the thought of him, at bay. Otherwise, there would be only a man and a woman in the dark with the thought of what a husband and wife can do together.
‘You chose your side of the border,’ she began. ‘Now, you must keep the border where it is. Because make no mistake, the Inglis on the other side of that ridge will nudge and shove and push, trying to make that line give way. And whether David or Edward or Robert or William or James or Matilda of Norway rules Scotland, they’ll keep pushing. So you had better be ready, because in the end, holding that line will be a lot more important than holding me.’
The languid, bowing courtier rose, transformed into the dark warrior she had met that first day in the hills. ‘I will hold it.’ Certainty rang in his words.
And when he raised his eyes, she saw an emotion she recognised. Elation.
So now she knew. His joy was for Scotland, not for her.
She turned away, letting the torchlight play on the rugged stones of the wall. ‘Good. Because that is the reason for this marriage. You have my hand, but that’s the only part of me you will have.’
Gavin swallowed, unable to speak, thinking of her, a home, and everything he’d ever dared to want lying within reach. ‘I hope our marriage will be about more than that.’
‘Our marriage will be about only that. My father and Lord Douglas have the right to dispose of my life as they choose. They have chosen to give it to you. And now I will be tied to this wretched place for the rest of my life.’
She hunched her shoulders and gazed towards the hilltop, crowned with flame, looking like a falcon with clipped wings.
The truth of it hit him. It had not been Alain she wanted. It was France. ‘You want to leave here as much as I want to come home.’
‘You think this is your home?’
‘It can be. I want it to be.’
‘Well, now you will have what you want.’
‘Not without you.’
She shook her head. ‘You mean you can’t have it without me, not that you don’t want it without me.’
He started to protest, but she held up her hand. ‘No flattering lies, Fitzjohn. You do not do them well. You encouraged my father’s glorious little plan. But I won’t play. If he wants to hold this castle so much, let him give it to you. Take it. Hold it. Make it yours.’
‘That’s not all he wants.’
‘I know. He wants grandchildren, blood of his loins, manning the ramparts until the Second Coming. He wants to be remembered. So how does that make you feel? Like a breeding ram?’
Her vehemence left him speechless. What had become of the lady afraid of breaking the bounds of propriety? Alain’s refusal had unleashed a new Clare: even more sharp-spoken than the one who had shut her chamber door in his face.
An ironic smile tilted his lips. ‘I feel honoured that he’d trust my blood to mingle with his. Many would spit on it instead.’
Guilt flashed on her face, then the meek lady returned. ‘I’m sorry. I should not have spoken so.’
‘You do not believe you should have spoken, yet you believe what you said.’ She coloured. ‘You are no better at flattering lies than I.’
‘I tried.’ Her words were for herself. Not for him. ‘I tried to be a lady worthy of a knight.’
‘And I,’ he whispered to himself, ‘a knight worthy of a lady. So we both have failed.’
Yet knowing what would be his, he felt like the victor instead. He took the torch from her hand and pulled her to him with his other arm. ‘Dance with me, Clare,’ he said, giddy with the scent of her. ‘No one can see us but the stars.’
She hid her face against his shoulder and he held her close. ‘You see?’ he said, as they swayed in silence. ‘I can be that man, the one who dances with you under the new moon and rides with you across the hills.’
He had hoped to make her lift her head, laugh and smile. Instead, in the silence, he felt the dampness of her tears stain his tunic.
‘Then a kiss,’ he said, tightening his hold as he felt her slip away. ‘To seal the betrothal. To celebrate Beltane and pray for fertility.’
She stiffened, as if she would do no more than stand and endure, tolerating his embrace without yielding to it. But he wanted more than that. He wanted her spirit unleashed, as well as her tongue.
He bent to whisper in her ear, ‘Think of it, Clare. Of you and me alone in the dark with no one to say us nae.’
Her breath quickened. ‘A husband has rights. You will take them.’
‘I want more than rights.’ He wanted the core of this woman. He wanted that loving, laughing partnership she had spoken of. He wanted something he had never seen, and barely imagined. Maybe it didn’t exist for someone like him. But just maybe…
‘Come now, Clare. We know you can respond to a kiss.’
He took her lips.
She had refused seduction. This was claiming.
He could not take her here, now, but tonight, he would do more than dance. He would mark her as his.
His tongue plundered the sweetness of her mouth. Something deep within her responded, despite her resistance. He could feel her ease against him, her breasts pressing against his chest, her lips softening with eagerness.
Dance forgotten, he threw the torch to the ground, needing both hands. One held her close, while with the other he explored the land that would be his. He cupped her soft cheek against his palm, sweeping the tears away. Then he let his fingers trail down her neck and come to rest on her shoulder where his thumb could explore the hollows of her delicate collarbone.
Not lifting his lips from hers, he let his hand move lower, searching for her breast through the rough wool of her dress.
She stiffened when he found it, resistance returning, but he no longer made any pretence of chivalry. He curved his fingers around her breast, then pulled his hand away until he could tweak its tip, relishing her involuntary gasp.
Her fingers fisted on his shoulders, but she did not push him away.
Frustrated with the woollen armour that protected her, he let his hand leave her breast and move lower. At first, she sighed with relief, not knowing his intent. Then he rubbed the heel of his hand against her skirt, searching through the layers for the mound between her thighs, pushing the fabric between her legs with his finger.
She gasped.
Her legs parted, her knees gave way, and she sagged, crying out, as he would hear her, soon, in his bed. He reached for her hand, pressing it between his legs where she could feel his desire—
‘Clare? Are you there?’
At the sound of Euphemia’s voice, she pushed him so hard that he stumbled. ‘Yes.’ The word unrecognisable.
The girl’s steps came closer. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No. Nothing.’
He leaned down to pick up the low-burning torch, grateful they had been outside the circle of light. Neither he, nor Clare, had an extra breath.
Euphemia joined them. ‘It’s time to pass the bannocks.’
Clare nodded. ‘I’m coming.’
‘We are not yet finished, Clare,’ he muttered.
But unless he could persuade her heart as well as her body, he feared their marriage, indeed, might be finished before it started.
Chapter Twelve
Clare, still shaking, took one sack from Euphemia and let her keep the other.
The girl smiled. ‘So you like him better now, do you?’
‘Mind the affairs that are your own, Euphemia.’
You and me alone in the dark.
If she gave him all he asked for, would he want it still? Or perhaps they were a match, his darkness visible, hers hidden.
They
started back up the hill.
She needed her mother tonight. Needed to know whether a woman might feel so desirous of a man she was to wed. Wanted to know what her mother would have thought of Fitzjohn, whether she would approve.
She scolded herself for even wondering. Her mother would have been appalled to know how close her daughter had come to succumbing to him tonight, outside, where anyone might have passed, like the most wanton harlot.
Your mother came out to play. Was that possible? Her vision of her mother, a child’s, was turning inside out as she looked with a woman’s eyes.
At the top of the hill, men, women and children jostled them, each grabbing for a cake of eggs, butter, milk and oatmeal, baked before the fires had gone dark and then brought out for feasting.
And one of them was crossed with charcoal.
Her mother had hated this part of the celebration. And so did she. It represented everything that was wrong with this pagan, superstitious place.
Good fellowship had become quarrelsome. This year, they celebrated not only the arrival of summer, but the departure of the Inglis and the war. Relief released demons. Fights broke out on the edge of the crowd.
Euphemia, flushed, happy, humming, trailed smiles in her wake, not just from the sweetness of the cakes. Could it be, after all, only her sunny disposition men liked? Like Murine, she seemed at peace, even happy, with the world, herself and her lot.
Envy stained Clare’s heart. All her life, it seemed, she had wanted to be someone or somewhere else.
She felt Fitzjohn beside her and refused to look at him, uncertain what to do. How was it possible to be wild in a man’s arms one moment and speak calmly before people the next?
She held out the sack, trying to calm her breath. ‘Do you know what this is? Everyone takes a cake. Whoever gets the marked one is made Green Man.’
It sounded like an honour. It was not.
In the hills, long ago, perhaps the marked man had been an offering to the gods, given up to be devoured by the flames with a prayer for a fruitful summer. Now, the victim was pelted with eggshells, swung towards the fire as a mock sacrifice, then shunned for the night.
He put his hand into the sack and drew out a bannock. ‘My mother’s people did it a little differently, but yes, I remember.’
She lowered her gaze. And gasped.
He had the marked oat cake.
She reached for it, meaning to throw it back in the bag, but the man next to him had noticed. ‘It’s him!’
As the men and women around him saw what was in his hand, they fell silent and stared.
He dropped his gaze from her face, and when he saw what was in his hand, he sighed.
‘So today, as on so many other days, I shall be treated as the man dead.’
He stared at the bannock, wishing he could drop it or crush it or throw it into the fire. Too late. God’s confirmation of what so many of them already thought seemed branded on his hand.
Hope’s whisper, drowned by the crowd’s rising murmurs. No home here, either. Even his bride-to-be shunned him. Well, he’d been condemned for fire. Now he would be its symbolic sacrifice.
Would this, at last, burn all his sins away?
The first eggshell hit his face.
He squeezed the marked cake in his fist, refusing to flinch. It would do no good to run. His sins and his father’s, true or false, would follow him. Inevitable.
Yet he would not, could not, deny who he was, nor seek redemption for things he had never done.
Clare flinched as an eggshell hit his cheek.
Then another. Then more. Hesitant at first. Then faster.
The custom was to be a jest, but snarls, not smiles, touched these faces. Ale fuelled suppressed fears. The mixed feelings so many held for him boiled over. He was, after all, a stranger still and easy to hate.
‘Inglis bastard!’
‘Whoreson!’
Mothers covered their children’s ears and pulled them away.
Eggshells turned into rocks.
‘Stop it! Now!’ Strange, to hear herself scream. ‘He’s not what you think.’
And she wondered how she knew, she who had scorned him even more than the rest. But she had not intended this. Never this.
A few who heard her tried to hold back the others, but two of the peasants, emboldened by drink and the licence of the day, jumped on Gavin, knocking him to the ground.
‘What if he is guilty?’ one of them yelled. ‘He started the fire too easily.’
‘And you would have condemned his soul as unclean if he hadn’t been able to spark it,’ she said, barely able to hear herself over the pounding in her ears.
‘Maybe this time,’ he said, eyes meeting hers as he was dragged away, ‘I will be reborn.’
What had she seen there? Resignation. Hope. Love.
Farewell.
Angus ran up and clung to Gavin’s leg, as if one small boy could save him. But he was no match for two men, even if they were wobbly with drink.
‘Angus! Find the baron!’ Only he could stop this now.
Wide-eyed, he ran.
Two men-at-arms joined in. Men who had eaten beside him. Each took a leg and, with the two holding his arms, they swung him towards the leaping flames. It was the usual ritual, done in jest.
She heard no laughter now.
Alain appeared beside her, but made no move to intervene.
She grabbed his arm. ‘Stop them!’
He crossed his arms, unmoving. ‘Who cares about an English bastard’s soul?’
His chivalry. All for show. ‘You have no honour if you will not lift a finger for a fellow knight.’
She looked back at Gavin. What if they slipped and flung him into the flames?
And then someone’s hand did slip. And the world stopped as he flew into the air.
But the men’s throw was as loose as their grip. Instead of landing in the flames, he fell to earth, rolled on his side, then jumped to his feet to stand between the twin fires.
He faced a mob, ready to surge.
She ran, no thought now but prayer, circled behind the fire, and reached him first.
Ashes smeared his cheek and his clothes. The flickering flames glinted on the golden streaks in his hair.
He looked like an angel unfairly cast out of Heaven.
But which one? Michael or Lucifer?
She stepped in front of him, facing the mass of snarling faces. She was the mistress of Carr’s Tower. Surely they would listen. ‘Please—’
A rock sailed out of the crowd. Gavin blocked her body with his. She flinched as the rock hit his chest. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Get behind me.’
Funnelled into the narrow path between the fires, two men, one of them a man-at-arms, ran towards him, fists raised.
‘Stop this!’ her father bellowed from the mob’s edge. ‘Stop it right now!’
A few, still sober enough to recognise their lord’s voice, paused, but most were too far gone to know anything except that they were spoiling for a fight.
The first man took a swing at Gavin, who countered with a punch to the stomach.
She crouched down to search for discarded wood she could use as a club, reluctant to pull her dagger against her own men.
Gavin felled the first man, but the next one stepped over him, fists ready. Two of the men-at-arms fought their way to the front to stand beside Gavin.
She found an unburned branch, grabbed it with both hands, and rose.
‘Clare! Get out of here!’ Gavin yelled.
The mêlée began.
Chapter Thirteen
Gavin and the two others fought side by side, protecting her from flailing fists and feet. Alain had disappeared, but Angus, determined to prove himself a man, ran back to stand with them.
She cringed as fist met flesh and strained to distinguish Gavin’s shouts from Angus’s cries and the howls of their foes. Her father had disappeared, but she thought she glimpsed Murine, tugging some of the stragglers away
by their ears and slapping them sober.
Even in the flickering, uncertain light, she could see bruises near Gavin’s eye, cuts on his knuckles and blood smeared across his torn tunic.
They seemed to gain the upper hand, slowly, as the opponents spent their energy and their intoxication.
Then, her father pushed past her, having worked his way around the crowd. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Gavin, he stretched out his arms.
‘Stop it, the whole bungfued lot of you! This is the man my daughter will marry! This is the man who will hold Carr’s Tower!’
Stunned, they stopped.
The crackle of fading flames filled the uncertain silence.
One man, head down, wiped his hand on his tunic, then held it out. Gavin, gracious, shook it.
More, but not all, followed. Some, muttering, turned their backs.
It would not be easy, as she had warned her father, for Fitzjohn to be master here.
Celebration spent, mothers lit a stick from the bonfire and led sleepy children down the hill, crumbs clinging to their cheeks. The rest trailed behind, each taking a burning faggot to rekindle the home fire.
Her father’s knees, suddenly weak, gave way. Gavin caught him. Murine came to his other side. He waved them away, but needed their support, one on either side, as he staggered back down the hill.
Clare grabbed a brand from the fire and followed, Angus at her side.
Inside the wall, Murine motioned Gavin to the left. ‘We can take him to my cottage,’ Murine said.
‘No.’ Clare put out a hand to stop them. ‘He should be in his own room.’
Murine had little patience in her glance. ‘Would you force him to mount the stairs to sooth your pride?’
The woman’s question shrivelled her tongue. The world was upside down. Knights without honour. Men against master. What difference would it make, if a lord slept in a limmer’s bed?
They carried him inside, weaker now. Angus ran for water. Clare touched her brand to the neatly laid kindling on the hearth.
The white rowan blossoms had shrivelled.
His Border Bride Page 12