She turned in his lap so that she was facing him, her legs straddling his. She lifted her layers of skirts and pushed them behind her. The pressure of his hard groin pressed against hers was maddening.
"Love me," she whispered.
"I do." He covered her breasts with wild, fleeting kisses, his breath coming as fast as her own. "I am."
"No," she whispered, taking his face in her hands so that she could peer directly into his eyes. "Love me. Here. Now. The table." She couldn't believe she was saying such a thing. But it was what she wanted. What she felt. "The floor. I don't care."
She stared into his eyes for a long moment and her heart began to sink. Griffin wasn't going to make love to her. She could tell by the way he looked back.
"Julia." He pulled her against his chest, her head on his shoulder, and hugged her tightly. "Julia, Julia." He stroked her hair. "No."
"No?" she whispered weakly, hurt by his answer even knowing it was the right one.
"No." He lifted her face so that she could look at him. He brushed away the hair from her eyes. "Not because I don't want to make love to you," he said fiercely. "God knows I do. But because it wouldn't be right. You're right. I can't marry you. I can't give you a home. I have no right to you."
She smiled sadly as tears splashed down her cheeks. The hurt was gone, though the ache of desire still throbbed in her groin. "You're a good man, Griffin."
He gave a dry laugh. "What little good it's done me "
"Oh." She stroked his cheek. "I would venture to guess it's done someone some good."
They held each other for another moment, and then she slipped off his lap. She covered her breasts without feeling any shame. The shame would come when she had to bare them for Simeon. "I have to go."
"I, too. I've a message of importance to deliver. I shouldn't have dallied as long as I have." He rose from his chair; the wood scraped wood. "But I must say it was an enjoyable dalliance."
Somehow she found the ability to laugh.
Griffin laughed with her as he fetched her wool cloak and draped it over her shoulders. "The wedding next week. I've business elsewhere. Would you be hurt if I didn't attend?"
She wanted to say that she needed him there, needed his strength, but that sounded ridiculous even in her own mind. "I won't be hurt," she managed bravely. "I wouldn't be there if I didn't have to, either." Then she imitated his grin.
"You're a rare woman, Julia," he said softly, with the saddest smile she thought she'd ever seen. Then he kissed her.
"Farewell, my love."
Her fingers caught his as he walked away. She felt as if she were walking to the Tower steps never to descend again. Next week she would be married. She would never kiss Griffin again, never feel his touch. She felt the last brush of his fingertips as he walked out the door. "Farewell," she whispered, and wished that she was dead.
Chapter Eleven
"And why are you so morose today?" Lena peered over her canvas as Griffin posed in contemplation in the window seat. "No sword fights this morning? No villains to the Tower? London unbearably dull? Hm?"
He cut his eyes at her, but did not stir from the pose. "If I'm morose, which I'm not, it might be because every time I call on you, you make me sit in this damned window for hours on end while you paint lousy portraits."
With a chuckle, Lena drew her brush across the canvas. "Must be serious that you would speak so severely to an old, decrepit woman."
"Old and decrepit, my ass. You can ride astride longer, further, faster than I can any day. And I vow you're better with a sword. Always were."
He glanced out the lead casement window at the dark clouds rolling in off the horizon. It was going to rain. He wondered if that was a bad omen on the day of a woman's wedding. He pressed the pad of his finger against the cold glass and drew swirls in the condensation. He couldn't recall. He wondered if Lena would know.
Lena dipped the tip of her brush into a pot of red ochre paint and stroked again. "You really are upset," she said gently. "What is it, Griffin? Tell me so that I can help."
He shifted his gaze from the window to Lena, his sweet Lena. He had told the truth when he'd told Julia that he loved her. He did. More than anyone . . . until Julia had magically appeared in his life.
Lena looked no different to him than she had when he'd been a child on lead strings. Tall, willowy, and graceful, she had a mane of red hair that was still as bright as it had been in her youth. He sometimes wondered if she dyed it, for surely a woman in her mid-seventies would be gray, but he had never had the nerve to ask.
Though there were a few age lines on Lena's classic oval face—laugh lines, she called them—her brilliant blue eyes still shone with the excitement of a sixteen-year-old. She was still as limber and as active as she had been in her youth, hunting regularly, walking her grounds, and swimming in Bath each summer.
The woman was truly amazing. She had lived through years of civil war, seen one of her ancestral homes burned to the ground by an army, buried three husbands and nine children, and still managed to catch the eye of many a gentleman on a ballroom floor. Whenever Griffin commented to her that she seemed not to be aging, she joked that somewhere in the castle cupboards there was a portrait of her in which she was growing older by the year.
"Griffin," Lena said. "Tell me."
No longer able to hold his pose, Griffin rose from the window seat to pace. "This is one situation you'll not be able to rescue me from." He glanced at her. "Disappointed as you may be."
Lena signaled to a footman standing invisibly near the doorway. "Zeus. Refreshment please. Something sturdy."
"Yes, my lady." He nodded and disappeared through a draped doorway.
Lena set down her brush and came around the easel. She was dressed in hand-painted silk robes from the Orient, with a turban binding up her waist-length hair. Her face, unpainted with powder and rouge, was remarkably youthful and full of life. In many ways she reminded him of Julia . . . or did Julia remind him of her?
"You can't come to my home in a sulk and then refuse to give an explanation." She lowered her hands to her shapely hips. "Give it up, Griffin. You'd not have come if you didn't want to tell me."
"You talk to me as if I'm a child." It was true. She always had, but it didn't offend him. In fact, her mother-henning comforted him. That was one of the reasons he came. This was the only place in the world where he could come and permit someone to care for him, listen to his woes.
"All men are children who want to be suckled at a woman's breast. It's their nature."
He ran his fingers through his shoulder-length hair that sorely needed trimming. Only here in the privacy of Lena's home could he go without a periwig. "Well, thank you," he said dryly. "I feel much better now."
She sighed and looped her arm through his. "Come, if you must pace, let us do it together. I need to stretch these old bones anyway." She started along the wall of windows that faced the west. "Tell me." She patted his arm. "You'll feel better. You know you will."
It was a long moment before Griffin could bring himself to say anything. "A woman," he finally confessed.
"You've hanged her, or simply thrown her into the Tower?"
"Lena!" He glanced at her. "Neither."
"Don't look so shocked. It's not as if I don't know what it is you do. I'd certainly hang a woman to protect my king."
He knew she spoke truthfully. Lena was stronger than any woman or man he'd ever known. "It has nothing to do with the king, dear wife."
Her face brightened. "You? A personal life? Sweet Mary, mother of God, it's about time. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to have a life of your own beyond chivalrous duty."
He threw up one hand. "I don't know why I come here." They passed another window. Rain was beginning to splatter the glass. "You do nothing but torture me. I come for peace and get nothing but fishwifery."
She patted his arm and cajoled, "You can tell Lena. It's a woman you're in love with, isn't it?"
; "Aye. A woman."
"Well, don't sound as if it's the end of your life." She pushed him playfully. "It was what God intended you know, man and woman, not man and king."
He laughed. Another reason why he loved Lena. She knew him so well, she could always make him laugh, even at himself. "All right, all right, I confess." They turned at the end of the gallery and started back in the other direction. "I've met a woman and fallen in love with her."
"And this is why you sulk?"
"I don't sulk. Men who have fought in foreign wars, men who carry the king on their backs, do not sulk. We . . ." He gestured, searching for the right word. "We . . . brood."
"So, you've met a woman. Wonderful. Divorce me. Have the marriage annulled. Whatever." She gestured with a flourish. "Marry her."
His forehead wrinkled. "Divorce you? I would never divorce you."
"And why not? You don't take me to your bed. I have to find my own men. I was seriously considering divorcing you on those grounds anyway."
He shook his head slowly. "Lena, Lena. You say the damnedest things."
"And you do the damnedest things. Or don't do them, as the case may be."
"Even if I could marry her, which I can't, the church is not going to give us a divorce after thirteen years."
"Details. Details. Tell me about this woman. A redhead, I hope."
He had to laugh. "How did you guess?"
"Woman's intuition. I knew that when you finally fell, it would be hard. Only a redhead would ever catch your eye."
"Her name is Julia. Her hair is a lighter red than yours, like the morning sun. She has the most perfect smile, a husky laugh that reaches to my toes. She can beat me at backgammon and knap and slur."
"Good heavens, then you'd best marry her. I always said the basis for a good marriage was compatibility at the gaming tables, as well as beneath the bedsheets."
He exhaled with a rush of emotion. "I loved her the minute I first laid eyes on her."
"So divorce me and marry her. Or just go elsewhere and be a bigamist until I make my ascent. It's time you had children, Griffin. You know you're not getting any younger. What's the good of having all this damned land and money if you've no one to share it with?"
To Griffin's chagrin, tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. He looked away with embarrassment. "I can't marry her."
If she saw the tears, she made no indication. "Can't or won't?"
He halted. "Can't."
"Can't, why? Certainly not because of me."
"I can't because . . ." He walked to a window that was dappled with raindrops. The tears dissipated and he saw clearly again. "I can't because she's St. Martin's wife."
"Oh," Lena exhaled, her vivacious energy suddenly deflated.
"Aye. Minor obstacle." He lifted his hand in a weak gesture. "But who am I jesting? Even if she were free, I'm not. My responsibility is to my king right now. Everyone and their brother is trying to see him dethroned." He clenched his hand in a tight fist. "I vowed to watch over him. I swore to protect him."
Lena stood behind him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You made that vow to his father a long time ago. You've surely done more than could be expected out of any mortal man. I'm sure His Majesty would allow you to retire from your position. As much as you may hate to admit it, you are not the only competent Englishman on the face of this earth. Griffin, there are others to intercept messages and creep down back-staircases."
He shook his head, still staring out the window into the rain. "Doesn't really matter." He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. Lena's warm hand was a comfort. He had known that if he came here, he would feel better. "She's his—or will be in a few hours."
"Today's the wedding? Hell, that's right. I did receive that invitation months ago."
He nodded, afraid to speak. All week he had told himself over and over again that he had accepted their fates. He thought he had convinced himself that if Julia was strong enough to accept St. Martin as her husband, he was. Only now he felt as if he were crumbling from the inside out. Right now he didn't care about his king, or his England, and he was ashamed. All he wanted was to hold Julia, to run his fingers through her thick hair . . . to make her his own.
"Griffin, Griffin." Lena slipped her smaller hand around his and squeezed it. "Would that I could take this pain from you."
"Doesn't matter anyway. She wants to marry him. Insisted she must."
"Wants to, or must?" Lena led him to the window seat where they sat side by side, she still holding his hand.
"You know." He gestured. "Says she must. Responsibility to her family and so on."
"Ah. Duty. A woman's duty is to marry the man her father chooses, the man who can offer the most money, the most power, the most safety to her family. It's a woman's lot, Griffin. Has been for centuries. We marry to make alliances that will protect our unborn children."
"I can't blame her for marrying him when I can offer her nothing. You did the same . . . more than once as I recall, seeing as how I'm husband number four."
Lena chuckled and rose, slapping him on his knee. "Christ's bones, it's a difficult life we lead, isn't it?"
He drew up one knee and leaned on it, staring out the window. "This is all my own fault. I should have stayed away from her to begin with. I should never have allowed myself . . . allowed her to get to me."
"You men." Lena went to a small table and poured them both a portion of brandy wine. "You think love is something you can control as you control most everything else." She pushed the brandy into his hand. "But you're wrong. I always thought love came when you least expected it." She lifted the glass to her lips. "And when you needed it most."
Griffin took a sip of the brandy. It burned a path down his throat to his stomach. "I left Bassett Hall because I was a coward. I didn't want to see her marry him. I didn't want to see her dance in his arms. Only . . ."
Lena swirled the brandy in her glass. "Only?"
"Only I know she wanted me to stay. She said she didn't, but I know she did."
"You were right to come here. If she has made her choice, you can't interfere. St. Martin is a dangerous weasel of a man. He can't be trusted, never could be, not even as a child. You knew that when you joined his household in those silly costumes of yours."
"Let's not start that again."
"Yes, yes, yes." She fluttered her hand to pacify him. "A place to reside in Londontown and a respected man to hide behind." She smoothed the silk of her gown. "All the more reason why you shouldn't go. Every coat of arms in the kingdom will be represented there. Your enemies will be there cloaked as wedding guests."
"Julia might need me. Tomorrow she will surely need me." He glanced up, trying not to think of her in Simeon's arms. "I'm the only friend she has. Her mother is useless, and her sister is weak-minded. I should go back to London now."
Lena started to say something, then stopped.
"What?" Griffin demanded.
"Nothing." She sipped her brandy.
"Nothing? Since when have you had no opinion? You were going to say something."
"All right, I was. But it's only a waste of my frail breath."
He waited, knowing she would continue.
"As your friend, as your wife," she said, "I have to say you should stay here. If St. Martin ever realizes what has passed between you—"
"We didn't." As he spoke the denial, he wished desperately that he had made love to her that night in the tavern. At least then he would have that part of her to carry with him always.
"If he finds out what has passed between you, even in thoughts and words," Lena continued, "he'll have you cut into bits and thrown to the fish in the Thames. There's nothing a man hates more, even than a man who sleeps with his wife, than a man who is loved by his wife." She took a sip of her brandy. "But," she added more softly.
His gaze met hers. "But?"
"But as a woman." She raised a long, delicate finger. "If it were me marrying St. Martin, I would want the man I loved to be there
for me in the morning. To comfort me. To lend me his strength to go on."
Griffin rose, leaving his glass in the window seat. "Thank you." He kissed Lena as he passed her in his rush to get out the door. "My horse," he ordered the servant. "And a fresh mount as well."
Lena smiled sadly and caught his hand as he went by. "Promise me you'll be careful. You'll be no good to any of us, me, Julia, or our king, if you're at the bottom of the river."
He squeezed her hand and pulled away. He had to get back to London. He had to get to Bassett Hall. He knew he would miss the three o'clock wedding, but at least he would make the evening's celebrations. "I'll be careful."
"Swear it, Griffin."
"I'll be careful," he repeated as he pushed through the draped doorway.
"Do not sleep with her, Griffin!" Lena caught the heavy drapes to hold them open. "Tell me you won't," she called down the hallway. "You sleep with St. Martin's wife, and I'll be a widow again."
"I won't sleep with her!"
Lena let the brocade drape fall as Griffin's footsteps faded. "Right. You won't sleep with her," she declared aloud, tossing up both hands. "And I'm the Queen Mother."
Julia sat stiffly in the carriage beside her husband, surrounded by mountains of pink satin and lace.
Husband. Her face was without expression, her heart without emotion. She was now the Lady St. Martin, wife to the Earl of St. Martin, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in all of England.
The carriage bounced, sending its occupants swaying. Simeon's leg touched hers before he righted himself by grabbing one of the leather handholds attached to the wall and jerked his leg away from hers.
"If the debt is not repaid with interest in thirty days, the lands will be confiscated." Simeon gestured with his hand to Mr. Gordy, who was attempting to write a letter in the rocking carriage. "So on and so forth. The Earl of St. Martin, dated yesterday."
Across from them, Mr. Gordy nodded as he dipped his quill in a tiny ink bottle atop the traveling desk and hurried to complete the letter.
"Now, you have the list of whom I expect in my private quarters tonight. Be certain that they are not aware of the others."
In Love with the King's Spy (Hidden Identity) Page 11