The cottage was clean, but barren. Why would her father choose to stay here night after night?
‘You may leave now, Murine. I’ll take care of him.’
The woman drew herself up to her full height. ‘No, Mistress Clare, I will nae. I am not his wife nor his daughter, but I have been by his side these ten years. I will not leave now.’
Clare was too tired to argue. Or she knew it would be useless.
Or, maybe, she knew the woman had earned her place.
So they worked together, wiping off the blood, soothing the bruises. Murine brewed a sleeping draught and applied the yarrow-leaf ointment to stop the bleeding and the pain.
And finally, Clare knew she must leave him there.
She rose, back aching, and looked around, wondering where Gavin had gone. Then she lit a brand to take to her room.
‘Murine,’ she said, pausing at the door.
The woman looked up, barely noticing her in her concentration on her father.
‘Thank you.’
And she recognised the smile. It was the same as Euphemia’s.
The flickering brand was a small circle of comfort as she crossed to the tower and climbed the stairs to the third level. All the time he had been at war, she had blocked the thought of her father’s death. Now that he was home, it seemed impossible he could survive the battles and be bested in a drunken brawl.
To lose her father, too, was more than she could face. But the years ran swiftly. She could see frailty that she had wilfully ignored before. He must see it, too, knowing the road before was shorter than the one behind. And that his daughter must be protected before he reached the end.
Even if that meant marrying her to Gavin Fitzjohn.
In her chamber, she touched the flame to the wood on the hearth, rekindling the fire that had been smothered for the Beltane relighting.
The blaze illuminated the room, her small sanctuary of beauty and order, exactly as she had left it. Her ivory triptych. Her precious copy of Miroir des preudes femmes. The red-and-gold banker.
How could it look the same when all had changed?
When all was lost.
Her shoulders drooped. There would be no marriage to Alain. No home in France. No escape from the land of horror she had faced tonight. Nothing left of the hopes she had clung to in order to survive each day.
Numb, she changed into her night robe. She had thought she knew Alain. Had trusted her feelings and been so, so wrong. Alain had rejected her. She had even less reason to trust Gavin.
Unless she was wrong about him, too.
She heard his step in the hall. At the door.
Gavin walked in without asking leave, still covered with dirt and ash and sweat, his chest heaving as though he had run a long distance.
She had defended him against the mob, but the man before her embodied everything she had feared in him from the first.
He stepped towards her, a dare, like dark fire in his eyes.
She reached for her dirk and pointed it at him, trying to keep the blade steady. She could see his wounds. A black eye. A bloody cheek. Swollen knuckles. Chest, bared by a shredded tunic, covered with cuts.
Yet his eyes were fierce as ever.
She swallowed, trying to choke down the fear. He had said he did not burn that church, but if he had, he would certainly not hesitate to lie about it.
Yet still, her chest rose and fell in time with his.
‘No closer.’ The dirk, at the end of her arm, quivered.
‘Everywhere I’ve been tonight, someone has threatened me. Now, I’m going anywhere I please. So don’t hold that blade on me unless you mean to use it.’
He leaned closer, making sure the knifepoint touched his bare chest, moved as if, with one more step, he might impale himself on the knife.
She watched it waver, knowing that she hadn’t the strength, or the will, to push it in.
‘Look at me.’
She did.
He grabbed her shaking hand and raised the blade to the hollow at the base of his throat. There, even she could inflict a fatal wound. ‘Now,’ he said, still holding her fingers captive. ‘Run me through.’
He said it as if he would welcome death.
He let go of her hand, but his eyes did not release hers. She tried to read them in the flickering light. What could she see? Despair? Surrender?
No. His eyes asked her to save him.
And she didn’t know how.
She didn’t move the blade, but he knew, now, that she wouldn’t. He pushed her hand away and the dirk clattered to the floor.
Heat washed through her, and not just from the fire. She backed away. She should run, out of reach of his dirty, sweaty, bloody hands so they wouldn’t stain her gown.
Or touch her lips.
Or expose the secret of her desire for him.
‘You believe them, don’t you?’ Rage scorched his words. ‘You believe them all. Despite everything I’ve told you, you believe every laidly thing they’ve said about me.’
Denial stuck in her throat.
‘It’s more than that, isn’t it?’ He turned his head, studying her as if he could strip away not only her clothes, but the façade that covered everything she tried to hide. ‘Not only do you believe it. It excites you.’
‘No.’ But he was right. The game of love, he had called it. Whatever she would have with this man, it would be no game, but a wild flight of life and death.
And if she dared it, there would be no one to catch her when she fell.
Smiling. Always smiling as if he knew a jest she did not understand. ‘And now that we’re to be married, you know there will be more than kisses.’
‘Stop! Go find someone who wants your kisses.’
‘I have. You want them.’ He gripped her arms and pressed his body against her, his lips so close that she could feel his breath and almost taste the sweat on his skin.
Wanted to taste the blood on his lips.
‘Now, Mistress Clare, I believe this is where we were when we were rudely interrupted.’
She held her breath, waiting, expecting, and closed her eyes.
He plundered her mouth, tasting, taking all that he had before and more. But this time, the limits, if there had ever been any, were gone.
Swept to places she wanted, and feared, to go, she kissed him back. His sweat stained her gown and his hand cupped her breast, not with a rough grab, but with an insistent rhythm that pulled her along, made her sway against him.
Where she could feel his hardness.
He broke from her mouth and his lips moved on to her throat, kissing the moan that rattled there. And at the vulnerable hollow, the place her dagger had hesitated on him, his tongue circled, gently, pausing before it trailed down.
Her gown slipped off one shoulder. The night air cooled her breast just before he covered it with his mouth. The soft tip became a craving void, the world no bigger than her breast and his mouth and desire.
She stumbled backwards and fell on to the bed.
He leaned on his arms over her, far enough away that she could see his eyes again. ‘Not so afraid, after all.’
Dirt and blood smeared her sleeve. A stain that would never come out.
‘Get out.’ She tried to hit him with the words, but her breaths were coming fast as her heartbeat.
He stood, moving as comfortably as if the room were already his. ‘It’s not me you’re fighting, Clare. It’s yourself. So sleep well and dream of our wedding night.’
He had not taken her, but she knew he could.
And now, so did he.
Chapter Fourteen
Gavin relived the entire night in his dreams: the fire, the fight, her desire.
He woke to regrets.
The last shred of chivalry he clung to had been stripped from him last night. He had wanted to claim her, to mark her as his. Instead, he had proved again why she would never want to be his.
He had known there could be no home, no wife for him. Known that
the escape he longed for would be brief. But he had allowed a waking dream, daring to want more. These hills, this tower.
Her.
He’d had women a-plenty, but he had let none of them get close enough to see whether he was as bad as they feared. Or hoped.
He had wanted someone who could accept, even share the darkness of his soul, to open a window and let in the light, so that he would not be so alone there.
But no one could. Least of all this wounded bird of a woman, tied to another man and her past.
Last night had proved why it was impossible. To most of them, he would for ever be the son of a hated enemy. Shunned, not trusted.
To her, he would be worse. He would be the man who could release everything within her she tried to hide.
He saw beneath her veil, glimpsed what bound them. Behind her cool eyes and her stone-hard stare was a woman who feared her own desires.
And hated him for unleashing them.
Married, alone together, would there be any boundaries they wouldn’t cross?
Neither of them, he thought, was ready to find out.
No, there was no future for him here. It was time to move on.
He rose. He would tell the baron. Now.
He ducked to enter Murine’s small cottage with the smoke-blackened walls. Humbler even than the rough stone tower, yet the old man preferred it. Maybe this was his escape, from demons or memories, Gavin couldn’t guess.
The baron sat on the edge of the bed this morning, bandaged, but smiling. If he hadn’t known better, Gavin would have wondered whether the old man had exaggerated last night’s injuries.
Old man. He thought of him that way, for he was ten years older than his own father would have been.
‘Ah, there ye are, Fitzjohn.’
Murine, stirring soup over the fire, nodded.
‘How are you feeling this morning?’ Gavin asked.
‘Always better after a good brawl.’ He rotated his shoulder, as if shaking off a final twinge. ‘You?’
‘Well enough.’ He wished for someone to soothe and clean his cuts and put a compress on his bruises. Instead, he had washed in cold water, left in the basin. ‘Last night, in the heat of the moment, you said some things.’
‘Yes, I did. Told you I would.’
What could he say now? He’d sound ungrateful to refuse. ‘I wanted to tell you I would understand. You can renege.’
Murine handed the man a cup and he slurped it, then licked his lips. ‘Break my word? Why would I do that?’
Because Clare will never have me. And I can scarcely blame her.
‘Your daughter would thank you.’
He snorted. ‘She’ll thank me when she’s wed you, though she doesn’t know it now.’
No wonder the woman struggled so. Had any man—her father, the comte, Douglas—ever considered her feelings? It was a woman’s lot, of course, but she was treated with no more consideration than her birds, expected to fly and hunt on command.
‘But you saw those men last night, even a few of the men-at-arms. They wanted to kill me.’ And he had fought back.
It seemed, at least, that he was not yet ready to die.
‘You held your own. They’ll come around.’
The old man had more faith in him than he had in himself. Suddenly, he wanted to deserve it. ‘Sir.’
The baron looked up from buckling his belt.
‘Sir, I didn’t burn that church.’
Clare’s father sighed and shook his head. ‘I know that.’
‘How?’
‘You said so before.’
That had not been enough for Clare. ‘But everyone says—’
‘What they want to hear. But I’m glad to know the truth.’ The man clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come. I’ll send a message to Lord Douglas. As soon as he and a priest arrive, we’ll have a wedding!’
A wedding. To a woman who surely thought Gavin was Lucifer himself.
Well, a woman, even this one, could be lured. Like the falcon, trained to follow her natural instincts.
Even if she didn’t yet know what they were.
If Clare had hopes her father would reconsider in the light of day, they were dashed. He made a formal announcement of their betrothal at the midday meal, right after he had told the men their ale portions would be cut for a week as punishment for the brawl.
A few of the men had grumbled under their breath, but some had grown to trust Fitzjohn, so the rest, ashamed of last night’s clash, muted their complaints. She had even heard a few apologies, though not from Thom, the man-at-arms who had thrown the first blow.
Fitzjohn, at least, stood humbly quiet. She could not have borne it if he had celebrated his new power over her.
After the meal, she escaped to the mews, to cry unobserved. Through the blur of her tears, she watched Wee One, hovering close to her nest, taking food from her mate.
‘Ye’ll lose them all,’ Neil had grumbled, shaking his head. ‘A rogue tercel. Breeding birds. Ye’re courting calamity.’
She had blocked her ears. Wee One, at least, would raise a happy family. It was more than Clare could hope for now.
She came closer and saw one—no, two new eggs in the nest, each a rich, mottled reddish brown, so beautiful she wanted to cradle them in her hand.
The door to the mews opened and closed, softly. She heard Gavin’s step, but refused to turn her head.
‘You’re determined to do this, aren’t you?’ His voice, gentle.
‘As determined as you are for this wedding.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘At least she chose her own mate. Now, she’s building a family. How could I take that from her?’
Wee One turned to her nest, pushing one of the eggs towards the edge of the ledge with her beak until it fell off.
Heart pounding, Clare stuck out her hand in time and caught it. ‘What’s she doing?’ She tried to put the egg back, but the bird screeched at her and she pulled her hand away, barely avoiding being pecked.
The egg, still warm, rested in her cupped palm. Poor babe, not even born, but already rejected. ‘Why would a mother do that?’
‘Look,’ he said, pointing. A crack, barely visible, scarred the shell. ‘It would never have hatched.’
She nodded, sadly, and put it aside. Another of life’s brutalities. ‘I just thought of that poor chick, rejected before it was even born.’ Clare swallowed foolish tears, railing against something inextricably part of God’s plan.
‘She has no soul. She’s a wild animal.’
‘She’s a mother.’ Something inside her wanted to scream ‘How could she?’
Gavin’s eyes searched hers, but he didn’t answer. Silent, they turned and left the mews together. She had already let him see too much.
All over again, she felt angry at her mother, dead all these years, gone when Clare needed her. How was she to marry this savage stranger without a mother’s guidance?
And beyond that, how was she to be a mother without a mother to teach her, without a mother to ask?
Facing her future, she felt as abandoned and unworthy as the damaged egg.
She must hide whatever it was that had made her so unlovable to her mother, to Alain. There could be no more sharing with this man by her side.
Bad as he was, she must not let him leave her, too.
Joyless and uncertain, Clare began wedding preparations.
What food should be served? What dress should she wear? Each step was solitary drudgery without her mother, or at least a woman of her own station, to share it with.
A few days later, Murine knocked on her chamber door. Clare, trying to choose among three dresses draped across the bed, refused to acknowledge her at first, but the short, plump woman with a few strands of grey in her chestnut hair waited, patient, but immovable.
‘What is it, Murine?’ Clare said, finally.
‘Ye’ll be worrying about the marriage.’
She flushed. The last thing she wanted was to discuss her impending marriage with
her father’s bedmate. ‘I have nothing to say to you about it.’
‘Well, I’ve a few things to say to ye and it’s time ye listened.’
Clare blinked, taken aback. Common as she was, the woman had always known her place before.
‘I know ye don’t like me,’ Murine began, as if these were words she had practiced, ‘and why, but the truth is, I love yer fader and because I do, I love ye like me own.’
‘I most certainly am not—’
‘Hush and let me finish. Yer fader worries about ye.’
‘He waited too long for that.’ Tears stung her eyes. When she was a sad, frightened little girl who needed a father’s comfort, he had sent her away so he could dally with this woman.
‘Ye blame him for not mourning yer mither still. She was a fine woman, and he loved her dearly. But a man’s not meant to live alone. And I’ve made him glad.’
It was true, and Clare begrudged it. ‘Go on.’
‘Can’t ye accept him as he is instead of wishing he could be what ye want him to be?’
No. She could no more do that than she could accept Gavin that way.
Or herself.
‘If he truly cared for me, he would never have arranged this marriage. He did it to satisfy himself, not me.’
And even as she said it, she knew the folly of the words. What woman expected a marriage to be arranged for her pleasure?
‘I tried to make ye happy, too, but…’ Murine shrugged. ‘No one can do that if ye insist on being unhappy.’
‘You have no right to talk that way. Happiness comes to those who attain perfection with God in Heaven,’ she said, knowing how far she was from that.
‘Well, ye seem determined to avoid the bits some of us cling to here below.’
She opened her mouth to recite her woes. A motherless childhood. A distant father. A lover’s rejection. A forced marriage with a man she feared and tied to a life she hated.
But right now, the dresses seemed more important than all that. She looked at the bed and the colours blurred before her eyes. Blue, red, cream. Which was a bride’s? ‘My mother should be here to help me.’
‘Well, yer mither’s been dead these ten years. That’s a long time to carry grief.’
‘My father certainly did not carry it so long.’
His Border Bride Page 13