“A fine thing to go shouting over the countryside,” Gloriana said huffily, helping herself to a ration of food and sitting down at the table, like a civilized person. “It’s no use hoping someone will hear you, you know, and come to the rescue. Everyone believes Kenbrook Hall is haunted, and you’ll be taken for a spirit.” She could not resist a little sting. “An evil one, at that.”
Dane turned from the window, bearing a dark expression. One would not have believed he was the same man who had loved her so patiently, so passionately, only a few hours before. “They’ll have to come back to bring us food and water, unless they mean us to perish of starvation and thirst,” he said. “When they do, we’ll overpower them. God’s blood, when I get my hands on Gareth, he’ll wish he’d died in infancy!”
Gloriana ate with precise motions designed to keep her temper in check. “You are overly optimistic, sir,” she said, in tones equally measured. “As strong as you may fancy yourself to be, you surely cannot hope to prevail against half a dozen of Gareth’s best men.”
Kenbrook scraped back a chair, turned it round, and sat astraddle it. His eyes, as he glared at Gloriana, were narrowed and full of blue fire, while his hair only looked more wonderful for being in disarray. “You liked me better last night, methinks,” he said, “Called my name, over and over, you did, and if Gareth’s men were posted in the hall, they’re sure to think their purpose has already been served.”
“Stop,” Gloriana said, and the word was half a plea, half a command.
He took a bite of cheese, chewed ponderously, and finally swallowed. “It was that very chair, wasn’t it,” he went on, in a relentless undertone, “where you stood with one foot up, while I—”
“Yes!” Gloriana cried, red from her knees to the roots of her hair, “Yes, damn you, it was this chair! Why do you torture me?”
Kenbrook’s magnificent face softened. “An apt question,” he conceded. “Perhaps I should put you through your paces again, good wife, thus rendering you mild and sweet-spirited. At least, until you catch your breath and can harangue me once more.”
Gloriana lowered her eyes, mortified that a part of her wanted to submit to him, even then. “I confess,” she said shakily, “that I have never known such feelings as you made in me. I would remind you, however, that my body is my temple and my own to command. Husband or none, you have no rights to it.”
Dane was silent until she looked up and met his gaze. He had speared a piece of bread on the point of his knife, and although he put the morsel into his mouth in the most ordinary way, something about the gesture made Gloriana squirm on her chair.
“I suppose it is inevitable,” he said, “that we shall mate. Gareth has judged me well—I cannot endure many nights like the one just past, without breaking.”
“You would force me?”
He cut off another chunk of bread and once again ate from the knife. “I would not be required to force you, Gloriana,” he said with pointed indulgence, after a lengthy silence designed, surely, to nettle her. “You are a hot-blooded little thing, and I could make you want me without laying a hand to you.”
Gloriana, who feared he was right, was infuriated by his arrogant presumption all the same. “You are not so charming, sir, as you seem to think.”
Kenbrook merely smiled at this. “Last night was only an introduction to the pleasures of the flesh, you know,” he said, and there was a dark sensuality in the languor with which he spoke that entranced Gloriana, almost like a wizard’s spell.
She gave herself an inward shake, but she still felt as though her muscles were turning to warm honey. She sat very straight in her chair and looked through Kenbrook as though he were transparent, willing herself not to listen, not to think, not to feel.
Kenbrook began to describe, in slow, vivid words, how he would prepare her, how he would tease her, how he would bring her to the edge of satisfaction and then deny her, beginning the process all over again. He told her what she would say to him in her abandon and what he would say to her, and how he meant to arrange her for his convenience and her delight.
Gloriana shifted on her chair.
Dane went on painting verbal pictures, impossibly erotic scenarios that caused her blood to simmer in her veins and her womanplace to ache. He talked and talked, never raising his voice, never hurrying, until Gloriana was fit to swoon. Her skin felt slick, all over, and she wanted him a hundred, nay a thousand, times more than she had the night before.
She had no way of knowing how much time had passed when Kenbrook said, in that same quiet, untroubled voice, “Come here, Gloriana.”
Gloriana stood, fully aware of what she was doing, and moved to Dane’s side.
Without speaking again or rising, he used his knife to sever the laces that held the bodice of her gown closed, and the garment fell back over her shoulders. With one tug of Kenbrook’s hand, it fell to the floor in a soft pool of fabric, leaving her bare before him except for her thin linen chemise.
He set the knife aside to trace the shadows of her nipples with the tip of one finger, and the expression on his face was not that of a conqueror, but of a reverent pilgrim who has at last reached his place of worship.
“What of this, Gloriana?” he asked, in a throaty voice, bunching the gauzy cloth of her undergarment in his fist, “What would you have me do?”
“Tear it away,” she whispered.
Ever the gentleman, Kenbrook complied.
Chapter 8
Had Kenbrook not already been sitting, he knew he would have been felled, as if by a blow from a broadsword, at the sight of Gloriana standing before him, naked, in all her purity and perfection. In that moment, he saw the whole of his future, as if some seer had conjured it before his eyes, complete in every detail.
He whispered something insensible, out of his awe, and at last reached down to the floor and snatched up the chemise he had sundered, at her request, with his hands. He shoved it at her and said in a hoarse voice, “Cover yourself.”
Gloriana pressed the fragile cloth against her breasts, her eyes great pools of confusion and hurt as she watched him rise to his feet and move away from her. “What is it?” she asked.
Dane strode across the room, selected a ewer filled with wine, and poured himself a double portion. The stuff tasted odd, but then it was English and crude in comparison to the offerings of France and Italy. “I have had a change of heart,” he said, turning to face her, the cup in his hand.
It was the greatest understatement he had ever uttered.
A fetching blush rose to pulse in her exquisite face. “Perhaps you sought to humiliate me,” she said quietly. “If so, you certainly succeeded.”
Kenbrook swallowed another sip of wine, frowned at the cup, and set it aside. “I have no desire to do anything at this moment except hurl you down onto yonder bed and make you truly mine, once and for all. Since that would hardly be an auspicious beginning, I shall control my animal impulses as long as I am able.”
Her wonderful, gem-bright eyes widened. “I don’t understand.”
“I am certain you do not,” Kenbrook assured her, “and who could blame you? I only made the discovery myself a few moments ago, though I suspect the matter has been brewing somewhere in the back of my brain since I returned to Hadleigh and saw you again, grown into the full flower of womanhood.”
Gloriana swallowed visibly, and her eyes showed plainly that she was trying not to jump to conclusions. It wrung his heart to see that she cared so much.
Dane took a step toward her, meaning to reassure her, then stumbled. His vision, clear an instant before, underwent a violent shift, and he could see nothing but a blur of shapes and colors. Perhaps, he thought numbly, raising one trembling hand to his head, the wound had been worse than he’d guessed. He took another step and then fell headlong into a spinning darkness.
Gloriana watched in horror as Kenbrook struck the heavy timber floor with his full weight, and was kneeling beside him before she’d consciously decided to mo
ve. She said his name, and he responded with a groan but did not open his eyes.
Panicked, Gloriana called to him again and shook him, but he made no answer, nor did he waken. She scrambled to get water and doused his head with the stuff, and still he failed to stir. Finally, she tried to drag him across the floor, hoping to hoist him onto the bed, but his inert frame was so heavy she could not manage even an inch of progress.
Tears burned on her cheeks as she dashed back for a pillow and blanket.
“Dane!” she called, patting his face smartly.
He merely sighed.
Gloriana barely heard the noise at the door at first; then she realized Gareth had returned and was about to enter. She dashed behind the folding screen and wrenched on a plain brown kirtle, never bothering with a chemise.
“Gareth, hurry!” she shouted. “Something is wrong with Dane!”
The ancient lock turned, and then the door opened, and two of Gareth’s biggest men entered, looking cautiously from right to left, obviously expecting an ambush. Their eyes fell on Kenbrook, lying prostrate in the middle of the floor, and one of them actually smiled.
“All’s well, your lordship,” the man called over his shoulder. “The trick worked, and Lord Kenbrook is having himself a wee rest.”
Gloriana stood over Dane, her hands bunched into fists, her whole being suffused with rage. It was the wine, she thought, recalling that her husband had taken a deep draft just before collapsing. They’d drugged a portion of it, with an eye to subduing Kenbrook, that they might enter the prison chamber without fear.
Gareth followed close behind the two giants, who kept watchful eyes on Kenbrook despite his insensate condition. Seeing the look on Gloriana’s face and interpreting it accurately, her brother-in-law raised one hand in a bid for silence.
“It will do him no lasting harm,” he said, sparing no more than a glance for his brother. He smiled fondly. “You look well, Gloriana. Are you happy here?”
All that kept Gloriana from flinging herself upon her alleged guardian, snarling and scratching like a she-wolf, was the sure knowledge that he would find such an attack merely irritating, perhaps even amusing.
“How did you know that Dane would take your poisoned wine?” she asked. “If I had been the one to drink it, and he had kept his wits about him, you would be better off closed up in this room with a field bull than with Kenbrook!”
Gareth sighed. Behind him were servants, huffing and blowing, bringing barrels and a large copper bathtub, among other things. “You hardly drink at all,” he replied, “but Dane likes his wine, and I knew he would be ready for the second ewer sooner or later. It was mere good fortune that it happened so quickly.”
“I shall never forgive you for this,” Gloriana said. There was no inflection in her voice at all, only a cool smoothness.
“On the contrary,” Gareth replied, with the utmost gentleness, “I have every reason to believe you not only will forgive me—in good time, of course—but declare your undying gratitude.” He crouched beside Dane and touched the pulse at the base of his brother’s throat with an almost tender solicitude. Gloriana could not doubt that, however bizarre his means of showing it, Gareth loved Dane in spirit and in truth. “He’ll come round in an hour or so, I trust,” he mused, and rose again to face Gloriana.
The servants Gareth had brought were all over the chamber it seemed, laying out a meal and fresh garments for both Gloriana and Dane, setting water to heat over a special brazier brought for the purpose. One, a woman Gloriana knew well from the castle, went to the bed and tossed back the rumpled covers.
“Not yet,” the chambermaid said, in answer to her lord’s unspoken question, which had been asked with a mere raising of his eyebrows.
Gloriana’s face burned. “Perhaps,” she muttered bitterly, thinking of the conversation she’d had with Dane the night before, “you will require witnesses.”
Gareth looked away, ashamed, but when he met Gloriana’s gaze again, she saw purpose and resolve blazing in his blue eyes. She realized then that he was as stubborn as the abbess’s little gray mule and wondered why she had not seen it before. “Do not try my patience,” he snapped. “Nor is it prudent to taunt me with suggestions you would not wish me to enforce!”
She subsided, but only slightly. A new truth was dawning on her in those moments, a soul-shaking surprise that her pride would never allow her to confess, except in her private prayers. She, Gloriana, who treasured her freedom, did not truly wish to leave the tower just yet. She wanted to stay there, alone with Kenbrook, until they’d settled what needed settling, for good or for ill. The outside world held too many distractions.
“What has Edward to say of my disappearance?” she threw out.
Gareth was already turning to leave, but he paused at her question and, with an expression of deep chagrin, replied, “Poor lad. He believes you and Kenbrook have reconciled and gone off to celebrate the resumption of your marriage in the usual way. There’ll be no help from that quarter, if that was what you were hoping for. The boy is heartbroken, I confess—but also resilient, as youths always are. He’s already set himself, our Edward, to the task of consoling the mademoiselle.”
With that, the servants went out, followed by Gareth and, finally, the soldiers. The door was soundly closed and locked behind them.
Gloriana looked round and saw that they had filled the copper tub and set out soap and cloths for drying. She knelt again and shook Dane. “Awake,” she told him, in a voice at once stern and kindly. “If you do not, I shall take your bath for myself, and you will have none.”
Miraculously, Kenbrook opened his eyes. If it hadn’t been for the bewilderment she glimpsed in their blue depths, Gloriana would have suspected him of deliberately feigning unconsciousness all the while Gareth was in the chamber.
“Ah,” he said, levering himself onto an elbow, “but I would see you unclothed.”
Gloriana smiled, more than passing glad that Dane had come around, and was willing to overlook his impudence. Letting his comment pass, she said in exaggerated tones of sympathy, “You have suffered sorely, my lord, between that lump on your head and your swooning spell.”
Kenbrook gained a sitting position, then stood, wavering. “I did not swoon,” he said pointedly. “I presume this was some trick of Gareth’s—the wine tasted odd, I will say, even for the poor swill that it is.”
“You presume aright,” Gloriana replied. “You were drugged. I suspect your brother arranged the tampering not so much to subdue you, as I first believed, but to ensure that you would not be harmed in a struggle.”
Kenbrook made his unsteady way to the tub and hauled his tunic off over his head before ridding himself of his shirt and breeches and woolen hose, as well, and stepping into the water.
Gloriana watched him, unblinking, the whole while, thinking how splendid he was, even though he bore the scars of fierce battles upon his chest and right thigh. He settled into the tub with a lusty sigh.
“We were having a conversation just before you collapsed,” Gloriana reminded him, busying herself at the table, where a basket full of cakes and other delicacies had been left by one of the servants.
Kenbrook made a lengthy enterprise of remembering. “Ah, yes,” he said. “You had just offered yourself to me, as boldly as a tavern wench might do, and I, in my knightly virtue, had set the whole of the chamber between us, in order to save you from your own base nature.”
“You are past arrogant,” Gloriana said, biting into one of the little honeycakes from the basket, but there was no venom in her voice.
“Pray, come here and scrub my back, fair Gloriana.”
“Scrub your own back,” Gloriana replied promptly, sitting down at the table. For the moment, she was more interested in the honeycake.
“There was a time,” Kenbrook informed her in long-suffering tones, “when women obeyed their masters. The world is changing.”
Gloriana thought of the airplane that had originally brought her to Engla
nd, as the child Megan Saunders. “Yes,” she agreed. “You cannot begin to imagine what lies ahead.”
“And you can?”
She did not respond, for the temptation to tell him her strange story was perilously strong. She wondered where her writings were, the bits and scraps of parchment upon which she had so busily scratched out her memories when she was yet a child. She supposed Edwenna had destroyed the scribblings or hidden them, as she had the doll and clothes. But they had not been in the trunk in the attic of Cyrus’s house, with the other things.
Kenbrook was luxuriating in his tub. If the treated wine had left him with any ill effects, he hid them well. “There is something very unusual about you,” he said, tilting his head sideways to consider her. “You are stronger than most women, and bigger. Your skin is good and your teeth are uncommonly sturdy.”
“You make me sound like a horse to be sold or traded at the fair,” Gloriana commented, without particular concern. She was perishing to know what he’d been about to tell her when the drugged wine had brought him low, but she wasn’t about to ask.
He smiled and sank to his chin. “You know I speak truth,” he said. “You are different from other women. You get odd ideas—the sort an ordinary female would blush to consider, let alone execute.”
“Perhaps I am mad,” she suggested, rather blithely, “like the lady Elaina.”
“Elaina is not mad,” Dane responded, without a hint of reprimand in his voice. “She merely sees and hears more clearly than the rest of us do.”
Gloriana sat very still. She might have spoken, might have told him everything she knew and had guessed about herself, but suddenly the room was filled with a strange whirring sound, as though from a swarm of bees. A blue mist rose all round, blotting out the light, obliterating Dane, moving and changing like a gossamer curtain.
She watched in horrified fascination as the tower room changed before her eyes into a strange version of itself. The floor was different, and the walls were hung with brightly colored paintings. People in strange dress moved about, studying the artwork and talking among themselves in that odd, quick language she remembered from earliest childhood. Gloriana was yet seated, but the table had vanished, and she had no sense of the chair beneath her. A very little boy in short pants, a shirt, and shoes like the ones hidden away in the attic of the village house was the only one who seemed to see her.
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