The Black Thorne's Rose

by Susan King

  “But he may fall,” she said.

  “Then he will learn not to take foolish risks.”

  She drew in her breath sharply. “He is only a child.”

  “And you are as protective as a mother wolf,” he murmured. “Let the boy come down on his own. He is near fostering age.”

  Emlyn lowered her eyes, knowing the baron was right. Christien would be seven on his next birthday, and should be allowed his pride. She sighed and nodded.

  Nicholas leaned into the wide crotch of the split trunk, his arm brushing against her shoulder, and tilted his head back. “Listen well, Christien. Slide down a bit farther … there. Now stretch your left foot toward that branch beneath you … nay, the other foot. Aye. Reach, lad.”

  Christien crept backward on the branch like a timid caterpillar. Emlyn squeezed her eyes shut for an instant, then quickly opened them to see her brother reach, miss the branch, then grab hold of the trunk to avoid failing. His swinging feet caught two apples and sent them thunking down toward the ground.

  Emlyn stepped out of the way and bumped into Nicholas. He placed a steadying hand on her elbow while he spoke to Christien.

  “Reach down with your leg, boy,” he called. “Good. You must hang there, and jump a little. You can do it easily.” He glanced at Emlyn. “If he looks to be in trouble, I will get him quick enough.” His soft voice thrummed intimately in her ear, reverberating through her spine. The gentle pressure of his fingers on her arm sent tendrils of charged sensation all the way to her fingertips and toes.

  Solid, tall and muscular, his body against her back felt comforting and safe. The subtle physical awareness that had begun with his touch on her elbow spread in minute shivers to her breasts and into her lower belly. His feathery touch was utterly, sinfully, subtly pleasurable. Though she knew it was improper to stand so close, she did not, could not, move away.

  Whispers of a dream from a few nights ago clung to her thoughts: she had felt and seen Thorne, returned slow, luscious kisses, but he had become the baron just before the dream dissolved. Breathing in the sweet tang of apples and dispelling her wayward thoughts, she laid her hand alongside his on the curving trunk. Together they looked up at the boy.

  “You are nearly there now,” Nicholas encouraged Christien. “Just reach with your foot. You will not fall—you climbed all the way up there without mishap.” Christien nodded nervously, and slid his torso off the branch to which he clung, stretching his toes to connect with the foothold. With a little leap, he landed on the lower branch and crouched there, hanging on.

  “Excellent!” Nicholas called, removing his hand from Emlyn’s elbow to applaud Christien’s efforts. “Brave lad. Now make your way down again. Aye, like that. ’Tis easier from there.”

  Emlyn listened while Nicholas talked her brother down to a safer perch, grateful for his soothing, protective patience. She remembered when she had clung terrified to the slippery side of a rocky gorge, and had relied on Thorne’s calm instructions.

  Suddenly her concern and fear for Christien fled, leaving her with a single, shocking thought. She turned in wonder to look up at Nicholas de Hawkwood.

  Dappled flakes of cool green light scattered over his head and shoulders as if he stood beneath a swirling, rising dome made of irregular slices of thin green glass. Looking at the underside of his jaw and at the upsweep of his coal-black lashes, Emlyn narrowed her eyes and imagined him with a beard.

  Christien climbed to a lower branch with steadier control and began to clamber down toward them, chattering like a squirrel. Emlyn hardly heard him, her gaze fixed intensely on the baron.

  Nicholas grinned and looked down at her. “By Saint George, the lad is no fledgling,” he said, his voice warm with pride and touched with humor. “He did well.” In the colored light, his eyes sparkled, fringed in sooty black, his irises as green as the buckthorn pigment she had used that morning in her manuscript. A soft grayish-green. Moss over stone.

  “Mother Mary,” she breathed.

  “Oh, my sins and saints!” Hearing this, Emlyn tore her gaze from Nicholas to see Tibbie hurrying across the garden with Harry in her arms, and Godwin and Isobel running beside her.

  “The lad is fine,” Nicholas called out, stepping away from Emlyn’s side. Christien jumped down to the ground, grinning proudly. Tibbie breezed forward to gather him under her free arm, shifting Harry to one wide hip.

  In a daze, Emlyn heard Tibbie scold Christien and Isobel. She heard Godwin lecture the boy about climbing and thank the baron for his help. As their words fluttered around her like the rustling, breeze-blown leaves of the apple tree, she remained silent and still, watching Tibbie and Godwin walk to the garden gate with the children.

  Nicholas stood quietly beside her under the green canopy. She turned to stare up at him. Leafy patterns reflected in his eyes like light shining through emeralds. He glanced down at her, looking slightly puzzled. “Do you go to the keep, madame?”

  “Your eyes,” she said.

  His smile faded quickly. “My eyes?” He glanced sharply upward at the crowning leaves. Then he swung his gaze full at her, a green intensity, keen and deep and completely aware.

  “Green.” She took a deep breath, the scent of apples nearly choking her. “Not gray. Green.” Thorne’s eyes. Thorne’s voice, and hands, and Thorne’s breath at her ear, a few moments ago, sending shivers along her spine.

  He looked down at her and tilted an eyebrow. All pretense fell away between them in the lift of that brow, in the knowing cast of that look. Emlyn realized dimly that she had exposed her identity to him. She did not care. He hardly seemed surprised, seemed to know her without question, as she knew him.

  A rambling anger gathered within her, as if thunderclouds rolled full speed toward each other. Her heart hammered wildly. “ ’Twas you in the solar that night,” she said. “You! Thorne!”

  He sighed. “Lady, this is no place to—”

  “What a simpkin I have been!” she cried. “A dunceheaded fool, not to have seen this!” Picking up her skirts, she stomped away along the flagstone path, passing quickly through the summer flowers, through fragrant, sunny patches of lavender and marigolds. She heard the scuff of his boots behind her.

  His hand closed around her arm. “Emlyn,” he said.

  She whirled to face him, unable to think clearly. The revelation of who he was pounded at her mind and heart. She shook his arm off angrily.

  “Emlyn,” he said again. “I have known you from the first.”

  “Yet you said naught!” Embarrassment flashed through her in the midst of anger. Breath heaving, cheeks burning, she began to see that she had been manipulated into marriage, drawn into his trap. In marrying Thorne, she had married the baron. “Why have you done this?” she hissed.

  “ ’Twas necessary,” he said evenly. “I could ask why of you as well. That nun’s garb is hardly an adequate disguise. Tibbie and the children must know.”

  “Of course they do,” she snapped. “I thought you—the baron—would not recognize me.” The words were bitter on her tongue. Her lip trembled and tears rose in her eyes, followed by a fog of fury that collected in her belly and rose into her throat.

  Release was imminent, like a pot of stew about to boil and overspill the kettle’s edge. She stepped toward him, breathing fast, her confusion almost painful.

  His eyes softened as he looked down at her. “Emlyn, I—”

  Reaching out suddenly, she slapped his face. Startled by her own action, she gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. He stared down at her, his lips tightening, the imprint of slim pink fingers printed across his cheek, a slow flush collecting beneath the sting of her slap.

  Gathering up her skirts, she ran through the open gate and quickly crossed the bailey to the keep. Running up the outer steps, she yanked open the heavy wooden door as it if were made of dry leaves, and disappeared inside.

  Stunned only for a moment, Nicholas ran after her.

  His iron-trimmed boots thundered
on the curved steps. Ahead, he heard the soft shushing of her gown and shoes on the worn stone, past the level of the great hall to the upper corridor. At the last turn in the stair, he glimpsed her slipping into the nearest unlocked chamber. His. The door slammed shut in his face as he ran forward, blowing his hair back over his shoulders. He heard the iron bar scrape across the planking.

  “Open the door!” he yelled, pounding his fist heavily against the oak and rattling the iron latch uselessly. Unless she lifted the bar, naught but a battering ram could force the door open. Turning, he ran to the solar door. Locked. He smacked at it with the fist of his hand and strode down the hall again.

  “By God’s feet!” he roared, thumping on the oaken planking. “Open this door!” From within the room, something hit the door with a resounding crash, and the wood reverberated under his hand. He cursed loudly, leaned both hands against the door and hung his head down between his arms.

  There could be no worse moment for Emlyn to learn the truth about him. Nicholas had resolved, the day he had argued with Whitehawke, to speak with her, but he had left Hawksmoor the next day and had stayed away longer than he had planned. Nearly as soon as he had returned, the abbot of Wistonbury had sent a messenger requesting that he bring a garrison to the dale.

  Now, severely pressed for time, he had neither the time nor the energy for a confrontation. Whitehawke’s men, the abbot had written in his message, harassed the villeins with renewed ferocity. The abbot hoped that Nicholas could speak with the earl and discourage him until the bishop could send someone to negotiate peace.

  Even now, his men were in the bailey preparing to leave. He had been there himself, until he had heard distressed voices in the garden. Through the little window at the end of the corridor he could hear dozens of horses stamping in the yard, and heard his men shouting over the faint jangle of armor and harnesses. He had not yet donned his chain mail, nor spoken with his seneschal about arrangements at Hawksmoor in his absence.

  A movement in the hallway caught his attention. He turned to see Lady Julian and Lady Maude peering at him from the open threshold of the ladies’ chamber, their mouths agape. He scowled at them, and their eyes popped wide.

  Thunder of heaven, now tongues will waggle, he thought.

  Well, the damage is done, and a hell of a ruin it is. Worse than Whitehawke’s wall. He turned to bang both fists against the thick wooden door. “Open up!”

  “Nay!” Emlyn screamed. “Swineshead! Sod you!”

  Lady Julian gasped to hear such profanity from a nun. Maude pulled her mother back inside the chamber. Tense silence filled the dim stone-vaulted corridor.

  Nicholas tipped his forehead against the wood and groaned. “Lady,” he said quietly, trying to summon control, “let me in. If you will not, I must talk to you from out here. All will know what passes between us.” He waited, his heart pounding fiercely.

  After a few moments the bolt slid free. As he eased the door open, a blue and white jug sailed across the room, crashing into the jamb. Ceramic splinters tinkled onto the floor.

  Shutting the door, he pushed at the pieces with his toe. “My lady, your temper is violent and your aim is lamentable. You missed me with a chess piece at Ashbourne, and near unmanned me with an arrow in the timber wood.”

  She stood beside the hearth, her fists clenched at her sides. “Would to God I had not missed that day in the timber wood! I wish the arrow had gone straight into your black heart!”

  “Do you?” He stepped toward her.

  “Aye!” She whirled away, and turned back again. “How could you do this? I thought Thorne—my husband”—she ground the words out between her teeth—“was away in the dale, keeping Whitehawke from the monks’ land!”

  “Well, I have not abandoned those duties,” he said simply.

  She glared at him, her narrowed eyes sparking blue and gold. “You are a snake! Have you lied to me in everything?” Lifting a silver goblet from a small table, she threw it on the floor, where it clinked and bounced, newly dented, against the hearthstone. She waved an arm wildly. “And is this the bit of land and the house you mentioned? A fine hole for a snake!”

  He held up his hand and advanced slowly toward her. “Speak not of lies to me, my lady. You are no nun, and I am baron here, and have been for years. I would have told you who I was when the time was right to do it.” She backed away as he came closer, and he flashed out his arm to rescue a second goblet from her hand, slamming the cup down on the table and glaring at her.

  “The proper time to tell me was before you wed with me!”

  “Would you have wed me, knowing that?”

  “Never!” she snapped. Then a light in her eyes glinted, like a blue flint struck in the dark. “Ah, my lord. A clandestine wedding suited your purpose well, since I did not know who you were in truth.”

  “I meant no betrayal,” he said firmly. “I meant to keep you safe from Whitehawke, and to honor—” He stopped, not ready yet to explain why he had a rightful claim to her hand in marriage. Let her absorb this first, and take the rest in time.

  She stared coldly at him for a moment, her chest heaving like a soft bellows. “And I know why I did not see you as Thorne until today. These several weeks, you have avoided me.”

  “I have spent little time at Hawksmoor this summer,” he admitted cautiously.

  “Aye, and when you were here, you kept well away from me. When I entered a room, you left it, or spoke to me from behind, or in candlelight—”

  “For both our protection, lady,” he said. “And do not forget that when I came near, you turned away so that I would not recognize you. I had no choice but to speak to that wimple.” With one hand, he flipped at the voluminous headdress.

  “Then we have played each other for the fool,” she said. Suddenly she stepped sideways. He reached out and grabbed her arm, spinning her to him as if she weighed no more than a pillow, and pinioned her wrist against his chest. Through the woolen gown, her body was warm and yielding along the length of his own, her heart thudding just below his.

  “Is it foolish to love you, lady? For I do,” he murmured, certain then that he spoke the deepest truth he had ever uttered. She stared up at him wordlessly, then flicked her eyes away. He thought he sensed softening anger in her long exhalation.

  Though she resisted his grip, she responded to his nearness, her hips shifting slightly, her hands resting on his forearms. She arched her neck to meet his eyes, her jaw set, her eyes blazing like deep blue lakes in bright sun.

  “Thorne or Nicholas, which are you?”

  “Both, lady, and husband to you still,” he murmured.

  “Both, sir, and neither one trustworthy,” she snapped.

  “I have many reasons for my deceit, Emlyn, but you have only one, to steal the children from here.”

  She pulled against the strength of his grip. “Steal them? They are my family! Prithee say what you did at Ashbourne, sirrah, if not abduct children!”

  “I obeyed my king!” he snapped.

  “Aye, obeyed your king, and cuckolded your father as soon as you could!” The insult hung in the air, vicious and biting. He choked back a sharp retort, and felt a kindling flare of his own temper in the face of such bitter anger. Aye, he thought, he loved her well—but she could spark anger from a stone.

  She looked up at him defiantly, her breasts rising and falling quickly against his chest. Two spots of color suffused her cheeks with a dusty, rosy blush and heightened her luminous eyes to azure flecked with gold, beneath dark, frowning brows. Nicholas thought of a painted carving of a furious, righteous angel confronting a miserable sinner.

  “You are no honorable man!” she said accusingly.

  “Nevertheless, you are wife to me,” he growled. “Would you rather be my stepmother?”

  “Neither! You had my trust. Yet you betrayed me!”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek. “ ’Twas for your own safety that I wed you. I could not have spoken openly then.”

  “Wou
ld that I had seen to my own safety, and never met with you in the forest!” she exclaimed between clenched teeth, pushing against his chest.

  Pinning her wrist firmly, he slid his other hand to her back and pulled her closer, until her toes scuffed unwillingly into his boots. “By the rood,” he said, exasperated, and bent his head nose to nose with her, “you were the one said you wanted to be free of the betrothal. I saw ’twas done.” He crushed her so tightly to his chest that she was forced to tilt her head far back to glare up at him. “You are my wife, lady,” he growled, “and this game of ruse is finally over.”

  A blue flint in her eyes sparked an answering flame in his, an ember long denied. Holding her tight against him, he swelled at the grazing pressure: so long without her, so often near her. His body surged, and he lowered his head to capture her lips.

  She pushed at him briefly, then, with a little cry in her throat, relaxed her hand on his chest and tentatively returned the kiss, her lips trembling. Sighing into her slightly open mouth, he loosened his iron grip on her hand.

  Emlyn broke the kiss and tried again to pull free. “Pray do not muddle my mind further. I cannot reason when you touch me.” The inherent husky warmth of her voice had cooled to a brittle frost. “How could we be wed in truth, when your part of the pledge was false? You wed me to spite your father, to use our vows as a weapon against him.”

  “Nay,” he said. “Nay.” He placed his fingertips under her chin, soft and warm as the underside of a rose in the sun. His mind was muddled, too, by her warm, firm body pressed against his, and by his anger, fanned beneath her temper. “The pledge is valid, Emlyn. Private vows are a sacred pact. Who I am cannot undo what we said.”

  Closing her eyes at his touch, she turned her face to the side, her jaw trembling in his fingers. “ ’Tis honorable to release me from vows I spoke in ignorance.”

  Fury collected in his blood. He had risked much to keep her safe. “I will never release you,” he said gruffly.