She turned to him, rolling with startled fear, instinctively bringing her pillow with her and hugging it to her breasts. Her eyes came to him ... silver, growing wide, and then narrowing.
She knew it was me, he thought. She knew it was me when the door opened, yet she is startled, for none knew when I would return. And is she glad, or is she not?
Neither of them spoke. He came to her at the bed, and he caught her chin in his hand, staring warily into her face, and suddenly curious.
She was as beautiful as ever, if not more so. Silver and gold and cream and rose ... her lips were rose, aye, yes! Like the flower, like the red rose . . .
But she was paler. Her face was thin and ashen.
“Are you ill?” he demanded, and he was startled at the hoarse rasp of his own voice.
She tried to free herself from his grasp. He let her go and she took her pillow defensively, backing up to curl against the headboard, as if he were an unknown enemy again.
“I asked you. Are you ill?”
She shook her head. He felt at a loss, and because of it continued harshly.
“Come here!”,
She trembled then, but her chin rose and those magnificent silver eyes of hers sparkled out a fresh fire.
“Who do you think that you are, milord de la Tere! Gone for months, and then you return, and—”
“My whereabouts, milady, are none of your concern. Rest assured only that I am here now.” He stretched out a hand to her, and when she did not take it he caught her arm and pulled her to him. She swore, lashing out at him, but he laughed, determined to have none of it, and he kissed her with such need and such passion that she had no breath to fight him. When he drew back his head from hers at last and gazed down at her she was hypnotically splendid, with that brilliant fire in her eyes and her lips parted and damp and her breasts heaving beneath that white linen.
“Let me go!”
“I cannot.”
“It is morning—”
“I have missed you.”
“Oh, I’m quite certain. You have been off to Henry’s Court, going forth in battle again, fighting, burning, pillaging, plundering, raping, ravishing—”
“Ah. You are jealous. You’re wondering whom I ‘raped and ravished.’ ” He laughed. “Milady, this might quite well shock you. Most of your sex might well be eager and anxious to rape and ravish me.”
“You conceited oaf! Bastard! I do not care in the least, I assure you! Go back to them then, just let me—”
She broke off, catching her hand to her mouth, swallowing fiercely. Her eyes were suddenly huge with misery and alarm.
“What is the matter?” he demanded of her, so startled that he eased his hold, and she, scrambling like a nimble deer, leapt from his hold to the ground, barefoot, shaking her head, and trembling.
“Damn, Genevieve, you’ll not—”
“Please! Please, can’t you leave me for a minute!”
He stood up curiously. She looked fragile and tremulous and more ashen. Beautiful and delicate ...
It dawned upon him slowly, very slowly. He came to her, as if in a dream, and though she exclaimed something and tried to elude him, she had nowhere to go. He caught her and with no passion tore open the night dress, encircling her breast with his hand, and knowing the weight to be great, the tiny blue lines of the veins to be more prominent, the nipples wider and darker . . .
And his hand came quickly with no tenderness low to her belly, and she shook like a wild mare captured, straining with that wildness against the manacled vise his fingers held upon her wrist.
“Damn you!” she swore. “Will you leave me be! I am sick—”
Something horrible and cold swept over him; he felt as if an icy blade pierced his heart. Visions spun before his eyes, visions of blood and of death . . .
“My God, I could wring your lovely neck!”
She had never, through everything, heard him speak with such quivering fury, and it astounded her. Deeply. So deeply. For she was the wounded party here, she the wretched one, with illness claiming her each morning, and the knowledge that life could never be the same, that society would ban her, that her dreams of any future were dead.
“God damn you!” she said, her voice low. “It is hardly my fault!”
He just stared at her. So rigid, so cold. She had not known what reaction to expect, but never this! She had thought that he might be amused, that he would laugh. But he was furious.
His eyes were cold as death and so shockingly full of hatred that she railed against him in panic again.
“Don’t worry—it is none of your concern!”
He just kept staring at her. Helplessly she said whatever came to mind.
“I can be gone! It—it can be gone! There are ways, there are things to do—”
He slapped her, hard.
She fell to her knees with the force, and screamed when he wrenched her by the shoulders.
“Don’t you ever, ever say such things again. Ever. You understand that there is nothing to be done! By the saints, I swear, you do anything about this and I will teach you that the world can be merciless. I will flay you alive.”
As abruptly as he had come, as he had touched her, he dropped her, his eyes blacker than any pit of hell, and he left her.
Seventeen
There was something awful inside of him, a pain that threatened to rend his head asunder, as if a sword had split his skull.
Outside the tower room, Tristan staggered to the stairs, holding his head between his palms. He was only dimly aware of the things that he had said, and he knew that he had struck her, that some simmering emotion churned and roiled deep in his gut, that he was appalled by his own behavior. Yet he wasn’t really a part of it, not that he could touch or reach, because he could only feel the pain.
His footsteps clattered hard down the winding stairs. At the landing he braced himself against the stone, then ran down the second stairway to the hall below. Jon and Edwyna were still there, in chairs before the great hearth in the hall. They stared at him sharply; he did not see them. He went. out to the yard, heedless of Jon’s voice calling to him.
He knew where he was going—to the sea. To the wind, to the beach where winter’s breeze would be colder than his heart, where he could hope to purge the curious rage and agony that had so suddenly seemed to rip him apart. He could barely remember his own actions or his own words, but he could remember hers. There were things to be done, she had told him, there were ways . . .
Edenby was alive with the day. Within her walls metalsmiths worked and peasants traded their wares. The guards and various men on duty saluted Tristan, yet their greetings died upon their lips, for he did not hear them or acknowledge them. He was anxious only to reach the sea wall and the parapets—and a place against the rock and the sand where he could be alone.
At last he reached his destination: a place on the beach where rock just joined sand, where he could sit upon stone and stare out at the waves, gray today, crashing hard against the land. The water swirled and thundered treacherously; whitecaps rose and slammed themselves into oblivion, and the back wash bore them away again. The air was wet and cold and tasted of salt. Tristan dragged it raggedly into his lungs, pressing his temples inward now, closing his eyes to breathe, and struggle for control, struggle for understanding.
God, how he hated her at times! With what longing he had ached to see her, and yet how he had recoiled in touching her. And before all the saints, he could not, now, with logic returning, begin to understand why! Any man knew the natural conclusion to the mating ritual! Only a blind fool would not have expected to sire a child upon a woman he had taken again and again . . .
He looked up at the sky, where the sun fought a valiant battle against the winter gray of the horizon. He stretched his hands out before him and stared at his fingers, and in time their trembling ceased. He knew that he had acted like a madman.
He groaned out loud and stood, and walked closer to the surf, hearing the cr
unch of his boots against the sand.
It was the past that haunted him, he knew. It was that murderous scene at Bedford Heath.
He swore again, clenching his teeth and throwing back his head with his eyes closed, inhaling the salt air sharply.
There were things that could be done, she had told him.
Yet she spoke of mercy. Had she none herself?
His lips compressed tightly as he stared on unseeingly to the roil of the water. Could she really hate him so much?
He closed his eyes again, and at last he felt the sharpness of the cold. She was always so beautiful. And so defiant. Ever ready to fight him, to do battle.
But not over this.
“Tristan!”
Startled, he swung around at the sound of the call. Jon was there, standing high upon the rock. He waved, and picked his way slowly and carefully down to Tristan. They stood apart from one another, and Tristan was further startled when Jon suddenly threw his arms up in disgust.
“By God, Tristan! She’s pregnant with your child!”
“You should have warned me.”
“A man does not treat his enemy so poorly on a battlefield!”
“I!”
“You came after me once, for the way I dared to treat Edwyna! Yet I loved her, I married her! While you—”
“Damn you, Jon, if you’d warned me—”
“Warned you? Come, come—your grace! You’re older than I and well aware of the way of the world! Were you not expecting such a thing to occur? Where one tarries, as we all know—”
“Jon, damn you—”
“Nay, Tristan, damn you! Much can be laid at her feet, aye! But this?”
“Jon!” It was deadly harsh, but Jon ignored the tone.
He spoke more softly. “By God, Tristan, if any man can understand, it is I. Yet how you can find such cruelty in your heart to rail against her?”
“Nay, Jon!” Tristan cried out. “You do not understand!” Bitterly, he continued. “Always, always, she cries out that she is denied mercy! Yet what she wants to do—” He broke off, choking at the bile that seemed to fill him, and Jon stared at him incredulously.
“What are you talking about?”
“She wants to devise a way to rid herself—”
“You are mad!”
“I am not! I was with her, I heard her! You know that she despises me. Why not the seed that grows within her?”
Jon shook his head, staring at Tristan. “Perhaps her heart does not abound with love—why should it? But I promise you that she is not horrified. Nor was she surprised. The lady, it seems, lacked your naivete on certain natural inevitabilities!”
“Jon, I tell you—”
“Nay! Let me ask you a question, Tristan. Duke of Edenby, Earl of Bedford Heath—and whoever else you may be after your last adventure on the King’s behalf! How did you take the news, sir? How did you greet your lady prisoner? With a grim countenance, with remonstrance? What then would you expect her reaction to be?”
Tristan stared at Jon blankly; Jon returned the stare. The wind rose between them, sharp and keening, but suddenly Tristan felt warmer, and he smiled very slowly. Jon smiled, too, and they began to laugh, and embraced, still laughing.
“I promise you this, friend. She pines for escape, aye—but she plans no harm against herself—or the babe,” Jon said.
“She still plans escape?” Tristan queried. “For what? What does she think that she will do?”
“Reach the Continent eventually, I believe.”
Tristan stared down at the sand, digging a heel into it. “Then she is a fool,” he said gruffly. “I shall never marry, and her child might well stand to inherit.”
“There are laws against bastards inheriting.”
“Not when there are no legal heirs.” He gazed back up at Jon. “Strange,” he murmured. “One would imagine that she would hope to stay. That she would at last become meek and sweet, in the hope that I would marry her and make the child a legal heir.”
“Oh, she’d never marry you, Tristan,” Jon said cheerfully.
“And why not?”
Jon laughed. “Tristan, have you lost your senses entirely? You battled against Edenby, you took everything that was hers, and you—” He broke off, shaking his head. “She simply will never surrender, friend, and that is that.”
“Then that is well,” Tristan said softly. “But she will not escape. Not now.”
“You cannot mean to keep her in the tower—”
“Nay, I do not.”
“then?”
Tristan blinked. “With me, Jon. For—now.”
“Perhaps—”
Jon broke off and they both stared upward at the sudden commotion high atop the rock and parapets.
Genevieve . . .
For a moment she was framed there, against the gray of the winter’s sky, and she was like a ray of sun. Hair unbound and streaming like banners of gold, tall and proud, her shoulders cloaked in white velvet that seemed to float about her. Slim and graceful, she seemed like some mythical maiden sent to dance upon the rock in enchanted splendor . . .
But the agile grace was no dance at all, Tristan thought, and neither was she myth, nor in truth anymore a maid. He remembered that he had left her door unbolted and the guard dismissed. Bless her, shrewd lass, if she had not taken the opportunity to elude them all.
She, too, had reached out to the sea for peace. The surging whitecaps and the blustering gray sky were a soft balm to her soul. Freedom had been her goal, and she had come this way, a nimble goddess, scampering over rock and shale, wall and parapet, as wild as the eternal tempest of the sea.
Tristan’s grin deepened suddenly; seeking escape she had come here—straight into his arms. Her startled discovery of him and Jon below had brought forth a cry; when she had spun to retreat she had but looked into the faces of his men-at-arms, stationed on the wall. Neither up nor down—she had no way to go.
“Genevieve!” Jon called out her name with alarm, and Tristan quickly saw that her light slippers were no good against the rocks, dampened and icy as they were. She was a child of this place, as fleet-footed as a deer, yet she scampered dangerously along, seeking now to elude them by veering northward.
“She’ll stop, surely,” Tristan murmured.
But she did not. She did not attempt to take the path downward; she leapt from rock to rock, seeking greater speed, the wind carrying her hair behind her like shimmering sun rays, the white velvet of her cloak a cloud of light against the gray.
“Genevieve! Stop!” Tristan commanded. She did not hear him—or she chose to ignore him. Her beautiful features were knit with care as she perused each step she might choose to take.
“Damn her!” Tristan swore.
He started to run along the beach, anxious to reach her. He caught up easily, since he could run on sand, and at first she was so intent in her preoccupation with her movement that she did not see him, so close. Clutching the ragged edge of one of the great boulders, Tristan sprang upon it and began to ascend toward her.
She looked up then and saw him, and her eyes grew wide as saucers, silver-blue in alarm.
“Genevieve, stand still!”
“Nay!” she cried.
“I’ll not hurt you.”
She did not believe him, he saw quickly as she measured the distance from level footfall to level footfall and leapt down and away from him toward the beach. But she miscalculated the distance of one step, and she landed hard upon her hands and knees, giving a little cry. Tristan’s heart stood still with alarm as he watched her just barely make the jump; he pictured her falling, tumbling down the rough and jagged edges, landing upon the sand with the white of her cloak and the gold of her hair ever marred in a pool of blood.
“Genevieve, damn you, stop! Where do you think you are going? Stand there, stay. I’ll come to you—”
“I cannot—I—”
He jumped to another stone, closer, keeping his eyes locked with hers. “Genevieve, wha
t do you think you’re doing?”
Her eyes sparkled like diamonds, and he wondered if the glitter might not be tears as she lashed out at him in turn. “I was merely attempting to—leave. I wasn’t trying to harm myself or ...”
“Stay, there’s nowhere—”
Her laughter interrupted him and for a moment she looked splendidly triumphant.
“Ah, but there is my lord! You simply do not know Edenby well enough!”
She turned then, and leapt again and again. Swearing, Tristan took flight in her wake, glad of his boots and worried about her slippers sliding against the rock.
But she was as agile as any wild creature as she went from rock to rock . . . until she could leap to the sand. Jon, down the beach, shouted, and started racing toward her. Genevieve was headed toward the north, toward rock; but even as he stared incredulously, he saw a crevice in that rock and knew that she meant to make good her escape there.
“God’s . . . blood!” he swore, and he leapt back across the boulders, trying to reach a point above her again; his only hope of stopping her was to leap upon her.
Panting, gasping, Tristan made that flying leap, sweeping her down hard upon the sand, landing atop her, and rolling with her.
“Oh!” she sobbed out in a gasp, and she was flailing away at him, tears streaming down her cheeks, fighting him as she had not since . . . the beginning.
“Genevieve!”
He caught her flailing wrists, dragging them high above her head, straddling over her in the sand and gasping for breath.
He stared into her woebegone face, saw the sparkling brilliance of her eyes and the state into which they had both fallen, soaked and sandy and gasping and desperate. And suddenly he started to laugh, and again her tears fell and he found himself leaning forward, not angry at all, just determined. He kissed her lips lightly, tenderly, heedless of the sand, of the sea, of Jon thudding along the beach toward them. He tasted her tears and he tasted the grit and he kept laughing once they parted, and she stared at him then in silence, convinced, he was certain, of his madness. He released her and she scrambled quickly and desperately to her feet, backing away from him, her hands behind her to feel for the rock since she kept her eyes carefully locked with his.
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