So wondering, she slept.
* * * * *
Alaric pushed open the library door with the toe of his boot, relieved to find the way not barred to him. Juggling the piping hot bowls of gruel, he pushed the slowing swinging door farther aside with his elbow and looked inside.
Diana lay curled up on the chair, a blanket over her. She was deeply asleep. She had returned to the place he had anticipated. Satisfied, he placed the bowls on the desk and then deliberately slammed the door.
Diana woke with a jump and looked up with bleary eyes.
“You are lax, my lady. I have been up and about for some time yet you sleep still.”
He could see her throwing off the effects of sleep, her mind racing to assimilate, to remember. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide. She scrambled to her feet, staring at him with an expression that held horror and fear.
Alaric kept his tone brisk. “Come, eat. I am in a hurry this morning and have things to do.”
A tiny frown marred her forehead.
Encouraged, Alaric added, “Haste would be appropriate, woman.”
The frown became a fully-fledged scowl, erasing the fear. She glared at him but came toward the desk anyway and sat down. He pushed her bowl toward her. “Eat.”
She was pulling her hair back, twisting it and tying it with the customary thongs. “Why such haste?” Her head stayed down as her hands worked.
“I have plans of my own. And you wanted the pruning of the vines started today, did you not?”
Her head came up sharply. “Yes.” The frown lengthened, signaling a deep suspicion.
“Then we have work ahead of us, don’t we?”
“Yes.” She bit her lip suddenly. “Last night—”
“Hurry up and eat,” he overrode.
Again, she scowled but it quickly reverted back to suspicion. She finished tying her hair and picked up her spoon.
Alaric watched her eat, watched the interplay of irritation and mistrust on her face and was contrarily happy. There was nothing of the visionary beauty about her this morning. Dressed in her tunic and trews and with the fear wiped from her face, this was the Diana he knew. He realized that this was the Diana he would prefer take to his bed, rather than be under a spell that made him act oddly and without thought.
She was eating thoughtfully, her head cocked, listening. “What is all that noise?”
The busy banging and other odd sounds were penetrating through the inner walls of the villa. Alaric suppressed a grin. “I told you I had work to do. Those sounds are my work. So eat. I grow impatient to be back there.”
Her scowl deepened and she sent him a irritated glance.
Absurdly pleased, Alaric picked up his spoon and ate the detestable gruel with relish.
* * * * *
Diana had no time to dwell on the events of the previous night, or even to consider Alaric’s mysterious tasks, for her mind was fully occupied in wonder. The day began as any other and was extraordinary for its ordinariness. It was as if a spell had been cast and everything had returned to what it had been before she had climbed upon the back of Alaric’s horse and ridden off to marry him.
No one referred to the night before. No sidelong glances were cast her way, no whispering. It was as if nothing had happened.
Although the puzzle bothered her, Diana found the lack of questions, the customary tasks and events of the day, worked a subtle healing on her. She could feel the troubling weight lighten throughout the day. But she still had the evening meal to navigate through. Surely they would not insist on this kind charade throughout the meal too?
Defiantly, Diana wore her usual clean but work-worn tunic and trews to supper, too. No more would she dress to please another.
Alaric awaited her at the door of the dining room. “Good evening,” he murmured and took her arm. He led her to her couch, the one he had occupied the previous evening. Diana knew that if she sat there and forced Alaric to sit elsewhere, the household’s censure would be complete.
“My lord…”
“Sit,” he told her shortly.
“But—”
“Sit.” His gaze was steady, implacable.
Diana lowered herself to the couch, apprehension crawling through her. She glanced around at the rest of the room. They were on their feet, waiting politely.
“No, don’t lie down,” Alaric said. “Sit.”
She swiveled her legs back around and placed her feet on the ground and sat up, confused.
Alaric sat next to her. The couch, originally made to accommodate her father’s long length, comfortably seated both of them.
“This is more appropriate, yes?” Alaric said in an undertone.
Diana felt a smile tug at her lips. “Yes,” she agreed quietly. “It is.”
Alaric grinned and leaned forward to pick up a pitcher of wine. “A drink, my lady?”
* * * * *
Diana ate more than she had consumed in total over the last three days. Her hunger seemed ferocious and Alaric kept her plate filled with tempting pieces throughout the meal. She would have finished her supper with a rare feeling of content, except that finishing her meal signaled the time for retiring had arrived.
Would she be taken to that dreadful chamber again?
Diana’s appetite faltered and she forced herself to swallow the morsel that had suddenly turned to dust in her mouth.
“More wine, Diana?”
Startled, she jumped a little, for Alaric’s voice seemed to breeze past her ear. She looked to him and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“Something is troubling you.” He spoke quietly. So quietly, Diana suspected that no one but her could hear his words. They whispered across the space between them, an unseen connection.
“It is nothing,” she replied. “A passing thought.”
He continued to study her thoughtfully and then, unexpectedly, he smiled. “I see.”
Did he really see her thoughts so clearly? Had he seen her dismay? Did he understand the reason for it? With horror, she remembered that he was cousin to Merlin, the great magician who could tell a man’s very thoughts and feelings and could predict how he would next act. “You can see my thoughts?” Diana breathed.
Alaric looked surprised. Then he laughed a little. “Your thoughts are your own, my lady. But a man can guess, given the moment, the path ahead where your thoughts may naturally wander.”
He was talking of the marriage bed. He had assumed she was thinking of the carnal acts of a man and wife.
Swiftly, with the same unexpectedness as always, the memory of that day in the barn rose to the forefront of her thoughts, blanketing all else, even her sight and hearing, pulling her into the scene. The two figures, flesh against flesh, moving together in a slow dance that ignited souls…
“Is there a deeper secret you keep from me, my lady?” Alaric murmured.
Startled, Diana refocused upon Alaric’s face, wrenched out of the memory. “S s secret?”
He was studying her again. This was the man she had seen entwined with another woman. Giving that woman discernible pleasure. She swallowed dryly.
“You wore a look of pure sensuousness. Yet no earlier than two nights ago you turned away from me in fear. I do not understand how these two spirits can be the same woman, unless you are hiding something from me.”
His gaze seemed to be drawing her toward him, bringing her closer. Diana could feel heat radiating between them, crackling along her skin, heating the air that she breathed so it scorched her lips and throat.
She dragged her gaze away from him, wrenching her attention back to her plate before she voluntarily confessed her guilty secret and the sudden revelation it had delivered—that just like that other woman, Diana too, might perhaps be able to enjoy Alaric’s company. Would he give her the same pleasure as Evadne?
“Let me give you more than that,” Alaric murmured.
Diana gasped and turned her head sharply to look at him. “What?”
He waved one hand toward h
er plate. “You appeared to have cut yourself a poor slice indeed.”
She looked down at the plate. She had partaken of the hard cheese that was passing around the table and blindly shaved off a piece that would barely feed an ant.
She looked up at Alaric again. He was smiling.
“Do you cast spells upon me?” she whispered.
“I?” His smile faded. “No more magic than mortal man could spin.”
Diana shook her head to clear the confused jumble of thoughts and feelings from her mind and pushed her plate away. Her appetite had faded beyond even the pretense of hunger.
“You have finished, my lady?” Alaric asked.
Diana could not bring herself to look at him. “Yes.”
Alaric stood and lifted her to her feet by her hand captured in his. The calluses on his hand felt familiar, this time. The big hand made her own tingle and she fought the compulsion to pull her hand away.
“I’ve something to show you,” he said.
With no ceremony or explanation, Alaric led her to the door and opened it. No one came running to take her away, or fuss over her. As far as Diana could tell, the usual post-prandial socializing carried on without a hiccup.
Alaric was leading her down the colonnade. To where? He said he had something to show her. What? Was it pleasurable?
Realizing where her mind was again wandering, Diana spoke quickly. “What did you do to everyone? Did you threaten them?”
“I? Threaten?” Yet Diana could hear amusement in his voice.
“It must have been you. They would not obey anyone else. They are all behaving…”
“Normally?”
“Yes!” She glanced at him, feeling an unexpected shyness. “You did tell them something, didn’t you?”
“Apart from the fact that I was tired of all the fuss over a simple marriage? No.”
But his tone was too casual. Diana was peripherally surprised that she recognized his prevarication so easily but chiefly, she was curious. “Why did you do that?”
“Here.” He stopped by a door and reached for the handle.
Diana looked at the door. It served the room that stood next to the library and housed two or three women of the household. “Here?”
He pushed the door open and stepped aside, waving Diana forward.
There was a lamp already alight in the room. Diana moved in, automatically obedient and curious, too.
Now she knew the source of the banging that morning, for the walls on opposite sides of the room had been punched through and framed to create doorways. One gave onto the library and the other, after a moment of thought, Diana realized gave onto Alaric’s office, for through the opening she saw his small desk and the lamp that stood upon it.
The room in the middle was dominated by a bed, a huge bed that looked as if it could comfortably accommodate three or four people. It was covered in furs. Diana’s chest stood against one wall and there were cupboards and shelves holding both hers and Alaric’s personal possessions.
On the tessellated floor at the foot of the bed a sturdy rug was spread. The rug would keep bare feet warm and added an element of comfort to the room. It was an odd idea but she liked it, she decided.
Her gaze returned once more to the bed. Its scale rivaled that other bed in her parents’ bedchamber. Such grand proportions were designed for two people. This bed had been made specifically for her and Alaric. For their enjoyment?
“This is the work you were in such haste to complete?” she asked, forcing her voice to perfect levelness.
“Yes.”
She turned to look at him, where he stood by the doorway with spread feet, both hands on his hips, studying the room.
“Why?”
His eyes were unreadable. “I know why you barred the chamber door last night.”
She swallowed on a throat gone suddenly dry. “You know? All of it?”
“Enough to guess the rest.”
She let her gaze sweep the room again, finding his direct one discomforting. Again her gaze was drawn to the bed. “You were angry, last night.” It was easy to say the words while she did not look at him.
“Angry does not adequately describe how I felt.”
“But you have since come to understand,” she concluded.
“I understood immediately.”
“But…” She frowned, looking back toward him. “That means…you were not angry with me?”
His hands dropped from his hips, as if surprised. “No, not last night. Nor the night before. Did you think…” He shook his head in amazement. “You thought my rage was for you.”
“Yes.”
“My anger was directed toward myself, although I had the bad grace to act it out upon everyone else last night.”
Alaric’s shouted words. She had heard his voice but not the words themselves. “Then you are the cause for this excessive dose of normality today.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, I am,” he said, as if the admission was not an easy one.
“What did you say to them?”
“I will tell you that some other time. For now, we have another issue to discuss.”
Diana couldn’t help herself. She looked back toward the bed.
“Yes, that’s right,” Alaric murmured, his voice low. “Diana, look at me.”
She found it difficult to comply. What would be the expression in his eyes?
“Diana.”
She lifted her head slowly and finally allowed her eyes to lift and her gaze to travel to his face.
“I see fear in your face again. Why is that? A while ago, you were deep in thought and there was no fear there then. Where were you traveling in that moment?”
She shook her head. She could not possibly answer him.
He moved a half step toward her, leaning to look at her more closely in the dim, moving light from the lamp. “You have reddened in the face.”
Diana tried to banish the memory of the barn but it swooped around her like swallows in spring, plaguing her. She attempted to keep her gaze steady upon Alaric’s face, to hide whatever signs he had detected earlier.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me. You have confessed to no less than murder before now.”
“Stop insisting!” Diana physically turned herself away from him, only to find herself facing the bed, a mere pace from the foot of the fur-covered mattress. She gasped.
“I insist because I am curious to know who or what it is that can elicit from you such ardor, when I plainly cannot. I’m surprised that anything has reached past the fear that binds you. Delightfully surprised.”
“Delightfully?” She carefully kept her head averted from him.
“Yes, Diana, delightfully.” His voice was flat with sincerity and Diana knew she had to believe him in this. “Delighted and yet I confess I am less than pleased too.”
Despite her resolve, Diana found her gaze swinging back to his face. “But why?”
“Because it is not I who creates that blind sensuality I saw in your face tonight.” He seemed to grind the words out reluctantly.
“But it is you who—” The initial words were spoken before Diana could prevent them. Sickened by her indiscretion, she turned away.
“I?”
She closed her eyes. It was too late. Too late.
“Diana?”
She shook her head again, mute.
“You may as well tell me all of it now, for I will not leave you in peace until you do.”
Again, she shook her head but she knew that Alaric would settle for nothing short of the truth. She knew too, that he would continue to question her until he got that truth. Her stomach clamped tightly at the thought of speaking the words aloud.
“How can it be I who creates that expression in your face when you fear my touch so much?” he coaxed.
Keeping her eyes shut, more for courage than fear, Diana said, “I saw you and Evadne…one day.” She took a deep breath. “In the barn,” she added, pushing the words out, then covered her mout
h with her hand, appalled at herself and fearful of Alaric’s wrath. She braced herself for his reaction.
When nothing happened, Diana looked back over her shoulder toward him.
Alaric was watching her with a half-smile. “So, it was you.”
“You knew?”
“Evadne thought that someone had been there for a while.”
Shamed, Diana turned away from him again.
“So that is where you go when your face takes on a rapture…” She heard him move toward her.
“No, don’t!” she cried, bringing up her hand to halt him. “Don’t come any closer!”
“I’ll stay here for the moment,” he agreed, his tone light. “Is it, Diana, that when you recall what you saw, that you wish to experience that for yourself?”
Diana groaned. He had guessed the final, awful truth.
“I want you to listen to me. Will you do that? Simply listen?”
She turned to look at him, surprised and suspicious.
“Don’t turn around,” he said. “There is no need to face me. All I ask is that you listen. That is all.”
Diana presented her back to him again. “I will listen.”
“Did you know that kisses can be sweeter than wine?” he asked. “A true kiss, given properly, can intoxicate faster than mead and the effects linger far longer than the morrow.” His voice was gentle, lilting. “Does that sound intriguing to you? Would you like to experience such a kiss?”
She swallowed dryly. “Yes.” Her voice was just above a whisper.
“When I kiss you…that is what you will feel, what you will discover. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.” She did believe him. Utterly. She looked forward to that moment. “Now?” she asked.
“No. Not yet.”
A miniscule thread of disappointment darted through her.
“For now, just listen to me.”
Diana realized that his voice sounded a little closer.
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