by Anne O'Brien
‘Yes…no.’ The Countess’s lips twitched. ‘Well, sometimes…’
He gave a bark of laughter, his interest caught. ‘That’s clear enough, then!’
The Countess squared her shoulders, as courageous as her daughter. ‘Perhaps I should make Rosamund’s excuses, my lord. My daughter can be…forthright, when her emotions are engaged.’
‘Then I must be sure not to engage them!’
‘That would be difficult, my lord.’
‘So I think.’
The Countess hesitated, then surprised him by placing a hand on his sleeve, her fingers curling softly into the cloth. ‘You could try to give her the benefit of the doubt, my lord. Rosamund has had a very trying time of late.’
‘So have I had a trying time.’
‘But you have the upper hand here, you have the ultimate power, and my daughter does not. It will take her a little time to learn it. You might have…patience.’
Gervase became aware that all his frustrations had drained away, a dangerous situation, under the pressure of that one small hand. The Dowager Countess was of a managing disposition, it seemed, under her mild exterior. He would do well to bear it in mind. He covered her hand with his own. ‘Lady Petronilla—you are the bringer of all good sense. Why can your daughter not be more like you?’
‘She is her own person,’ she replied calmly, ‘and I love her for it.’
‘You are an inestimable woman, I suspect, Lady Petronilla. I accept your advice.’ At the last moment Gervase prevented himself from enfolded that small hand in his and kissing her fingers with rare grace. Saluting the lady’s fingers in such a style was not in character for a marauding brigand who would rob a lady of her birthright. ‘You have intelligence as well as beauty, lady,’ he allowed himself to say. It crossed his mind that Hugh de Mortimer had better watch his step.
‘So has my daughter!’ replied the widow, blushing furiously at the unexpected compliment.
‘If she had intelligence, she would have left Clifford long ago,’ he snapped. ‘Perhaps you should warn her to use her good sense and keep out of my way in future!’
Intent on baiting the thorn in his flesh, Gervase watched her cross the bailey, skirts held fastidiously high out of the mud, allowing him a glimpse of her neat ankles. His smile broadened. If she did realise she would immediately drop the skirts in the mud, regardless of the damage. Since she did not, he enjoyed her graceful figure as she disappeared into the ramshackle hut that called itself a kitchen. Gervase promptly followed her.
She was no longer to be found there, but the cook, engaged in stirring a pot on the fire, dimpling at the arrival of the lord in her little kingdom, nodded her chin toward the dairy. Snatching up a flat bread, he pursued his quarry. Still she was not to be found in the dank cool of the room. But he could hear voices in conversation, something about the rind on the cheese, from beyond the door that opened into a new makeshift enclosure for the animals. So he would wait for her. Taking a bite of the rough bread, he felt himself under the close scrutiny of the two dairy maids who, sleeves turned back, skirts tucked up, had been churning butter. They stopped, glanced nervously through their lashes, then curtsied. He smiled vaguely at them, his mind elsewhere. Then, hearing the return of the voices, of Rosamund’s voice in particular, he seized the opportunity.
When Rosamund re-entered the dairy with Master Pennard in reluctant tow, thoroughly irritated by his lack of interest in the quality of the cheese, it was to find the bread discarded on the window ledge and Fitz Osbern with an arm around the waist of a hectically flushed dairy maid, engaged in whispering in her ear.
‘Oh…!’
Rosamund halted. Master Pennard goggled. The girls giggled, in no way put out. Fitz Osbern did not let go, but planted a kiss on the nearest pink cheek.
‘Fitz Osbern!’ Rosamund sought desperately for words. How often had this man robbed her of sensible speech? And why this little scene had disturbed her so much she had no clear idea. ‘Out!’ was the best she could do, frowning as the two girls fled, giggling still. ‘Master Pennard, I’ll speak with you later.’
And then they were alone in the little whitewashed room. And he was positively smirking at her! Those predatory eyes looked her up and down, with a very knowing gleam, from the crown of her head to her muddied feet, until she felt herself as pink and heated as the maid who had fled the scene. She could feel the scorch of his arrogant stare even through the layers of her mantle and tunics. Her breathing shallow, she raised her chin.
‘How dare you!’
‘How dare I what?’ He lounged insolently against the abandoned butter churn.
‘How dare you look at me as if…?’ She sank her teeth in her bottom lip to gain control of her temper.
‘As if…?’
Was he laughing at her, mocking her? He was certainly enjoying her discomfiture. ‘As if I were a cherry pie!’
A roar of laughter caused her blush to deepen.
‘Cherry? Too tart for that, sweet Rose. Damson, perhaps.’
She gritted her teeth against the sheer foolishness of this conversation that she had allowed herself to start. It would have been far wiser to simply ignore the whole affair. But it was not in her nature to let it go. ‘Perhaps, my lord…’ with awful irony ‘…you could find better things to do with your time than inflict your presence on my maids. They deserve your respect, even if, apparently, I do not. I am informed that one section of the palisade is in imminent danger of collapse.’ And she would have stalked past him, anything to put distance between them, but, quick as a snake, he side-stepped to bar her way.
‘I don’t think the maid objected. But I could kiss you instead, lady, if you would rather.’ And snagged one of her braids to hold her still.
‘Let go of me!’
‘In fact, I think I would far rather kiss you. Let’s try it.’
‘You will not!’ Before she could weigh the consequence of her actions, Rosamund lifted her hand to strike that imperious face, to force him to release her hair.
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Gervase’s reactions were faster than hers. He grasped her arm, but only to pull her hand to his mouth so that he might kiss the delicate skin of her inner wrist where her blood leapt and throbbed, at the same time preventing her from tightening her hand into a useful fist. ‘Such thorns for so tender a flower! You will only strike me, gentle Rose, when I allow you to do so.’
Then as her lips parted to damn him for his temerity, he dragged her close, an arm around her waist to lift her to her toes, his hard mouth, suddenly unsmiling, a bare inch from hers.
Rosamund gasped.
Gervase held her tight, his breath warm on her face, so that all Rosamund’s consciousness was wrapped up in the strong beat of his heart against hers. The awareness of his dominance, the sheer power of his body, swept through her veins to her very fingertips. Her own heart beat in unison. The heat of him against her rippled along her skin. She could feel the strength of his will, taste it. It was as if she were drowning in the gold-flecked depths of his eyes.
Then, without warning, he lowered his head to trace the outline of her bottom lip with his tongue. A little nip of teeth into the softness, followed by a soothing caress. Involuntarily, Rosamund’s lips parted in invitation on a catch of breath. A hum of impossible pleasure. A hiss of shock. And before she could retreat, his mouth had captured hers. Hard and sure he took her breath.
‘Oh!’ He had released her at last, enabling her to drag an astonished gulp of air into her lungs, but still held her firm by her shoulders. ‘I never thought…’
‘Thought what?’ he growled, his mouth enjoying the delicate skin beneath her earlobe.
Startled, confused, Rosamund uttered the first words to come into her mind. ‘No one ever kissed me like that before.’
The predatory glint in Gervase’s eyes sharpened. Angling his head, he stroked the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. ‘So I am the first, am I? Perhaps I will kiss you again.’ His fingers slid slowly alo
ng the edge of her jaw, slowly down the lovely line of her throat as he contemplated the possibility. Without pressure, his hand lingered there at the little hollow where her pulse beat strongly against his fingers, then on, over, the swell of her breast, again lingering, moulding. And Rosamund waited, tense as a bowstring, in an agony of anticipation for the descent of his mouth on hers.
‘Perhaps not. Not sweet enough for me by far.’ And Gervase dropped her back on her feet and stepped away, watching her reaction, a saturnine smile on his striking face.
Suddenly alone, ridiculously bereft, Rosamund was close to tears. All she knew was that she must escape from this room, from this man’s disturbing presence. With a flurry of her skirts, attempting to preserve her dignity, she almost ran from the room.
Rosamund was furious. How dare he treat her like a tavern slut! How dare he kiss her in her own dairy! She prayed that he had not noticed how hard her blood beat beneath the skin when he had pressed his mouth to her wrist. Or how she had melted into his arms so that there was no space, no air between them. Her cheeks coloured at the thought of the intimate caress she had allowed. But then, after the longest moment of her life, when she had abandoned her pride to admit to him that no man had wished to kiss her before, he had dropped her as if he found her somehow distasteful. As if she had not been found worthy of his kisses.
He had been willing enough to kiss the dairy maid!
Why was I found so lacking, that he wouldn’t want to kiss me again?
Well, that wasn’t difficult to determine, was it? Her attempt to strike that ruthless face would not have endeared her. And as a little knot of disappointment hardened in her heart, Rosamund ran her tongue along her dry lips and found herself wishing, helplessly, that he had repeated the dreadful offence. Then stamped her foot in the mud at the impossible conflict between her responses to the man.
So, had she known it, did Gervase wish he had carried out his threat to kiss her again as he watched her storm across the bailey in a flutter of skirts and veiling and red-gold hair, yet berated himself for ever having been tempted in the first place. Those soft lips, red as cherries and parted in anger, had lured him into what would have undoubtedly been a mistake.
So no one had kissed her like that before? Of course they would not, unless an embrace from a secret admirer frowned on by her family, or a favoured suitor who had not materialised into a husband. She was no tavern wench to be kissed and tumbled into bed by any man whose eye she took. So he was the first man to claim her mouth, was he? She would be virgin, then. No man, other than he through the protective layers of her garments, had known the curve of her breast. No man had ever known the silken length of her limbs, naked, revealed. A tremor of desire caught in his gut. He could. If he were dishonourable, unworthy of the breeding of the Fitz Osberns.
Yet would she resist if he did? She had kissed him with such sweetness, her lips opening beneath his in soft invitation. It had taken him by surprise.
He smacked his hand against the wooden door jamb of the dairy where he still stood, appreciatively following her progress across the bailey. No, he couldn’t do it. Besides, he didn’t even like her.
But Gervase was not dissatisfied. He had unnerved her—and, by chance, made one discovery. Those splendid tresses were not false. Not false at all, but soft as the silk he thought they might be beneath his fingers. It was not difficult to imagine it unbound, shimmering down over her naked shoulders. He barked a laugh at the direction of his thoughts as he loped across the bailey to inspect the weak stretch of palisade. Her hair had been as vibrant and warm as a living thing in his hand. He had enjoyed it—both the silk of her hair and the kiss.
But that did not mean that he had to live with her.
‘This has to stop, my lady!’
‘What can you mean, my lord?’ Rosamund’s eyes widened in concern. ‘Has something occurred to disturb you?’
‘I am more than disturbed, as you put it.’ Gervase Fitz Osbern glowered at her, fisted his hands on his hips. ‘And you know very well what I mean.’
Rosamund stiffened her spine as she stiffened her courage. She had known that she must face this accusation at some time and must hold her own. He stood across from her, tall, forbidding, the table on the dais providing a welcome barrier. The air of the empty Hall around them positively hummed with expectation. The greyhound waited, tense and watchful, at his side. Still in his habitual soldier’s garb, he was rough and unkempt and his temper was on a short leash. Rosamund braced herself to deal with the angry man facing her.
‘I know of some recent problems, my lord, but I assure you—’
‘Problems? As I see it, there’s a deliberate attempt to cause mischief here.’
‘No. That cannot be.’ She shook her head, a picture of innocence. ‘The household has too much respect for you. I don’t think that Master Pennard or Sir Thomas would ever undermine your authority, my lord.’
‘Nor do I. Not without provocation from another party.’
Their eyes held, his furious and glittering in the dim light, hers as mildly interested as she could manage. It was so hard not to look away.
‘You appear sceptical,’ he continued silkily. ‘Shall I list the separate instances?’
‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘I know that the pottages and dishes of boiled meat are often lukewarm when they reach our table. It is ever a difficulty—caused by the distance from the kitchens, my lord.’
‘I know about the distance. The food is stone cold, not warm,’ he snapped. ‘And more often than not congealed in sauce. And the burnt roast meat yesterday? What’s your excuse for that?’
‘Unfortunate.’ Her eyes widened in sympathy. ‘I understand the kitchen lad tending the spit fell asleep, my lord.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I doubt it will happen again, my lord.’
‘I wouldn’t wager my inheritance on it. What’s your explanation for the ale?’ he demanded.
Rosamund tilted her head as if in serious contemplation. ‘I have none. A poor brewing, I grant.’
‘Nothing to do with the brewing. That cask had been tampered with.’
‘An accident, I presume. Again, unfortunate, my lord.’
‘Very, for those of my men suffering from a sore head and a severe bout of the flux. And then there is the condition of the fire in the Great Hall.’
She shook her head ingenuously. ‘I know nothing of that. I had retired—’
‘Ah! So you are at least aware of the problem. And I imagine, by some good fortune, that the fire in your solar was not built of green wood. I imagine it did not smoke and spit and fill the room with choking fumes.’
‘No, my lord.’ Irritated at showing any knowledge of the clouds of smoke that had engulfed the roistering soldiers, Rosamund adopted a doleful expression.
‘Do I have to go on?’
‘I cannot think that there are more…’ Translucently innocent. ‘I know you have remedied the state of the midden…’
‘I have. What I have not yet remedied, lady, is the sudden surge of vermin into my rooms in the west tower. A positive army of rats.’
‘Then my advice, my lord,’ Rosamund replied, gloriously amenable, ‘is to get a cat from the stables.’
‘So the vermin have not reached you.’
‘I have a cat, my lord.’ Rosamund did not resist a smug smile.
‘Remarkable!’ He hesitated. She watched him tilt his chin, the planes of his face flatten. Warning her…Then with hands planted on the scarred wood between them, he leaned forward until he was a mere breath away, to drive his words home, low voiced with studied menace. ‘Thank you for your advice. And my advice to you, Lady Rosamund, is this. If the infestation of rats happens again, I shall be forced to take refuge from them. I shall move out of the west tower and into your solar and your private chamber. Are you willing to share your rooms with me?’
His looming presence overwhelmed. Rosamund felt the threat in his powerful shoulders, the fine muscles of his arms and ch
est as if he had actually set hands on her, as if he had taken her by the shoulders and shaken her. And she felt herself pale at the threat, knowing him quite capable of carrying it out. At the thought of him demanding admittance to her room, a shiver stalked through her. ‘But you promised, my lord, that the solar should be mine…’
‘So I did. But I have no intention of sharing my bed with a rat as big as Bryn. Quiet!’ he roared at the hound that had barked at the sound of its name, startling Rosamund. ‘I would rather share it with you, lady, vixen that you are! In fact, the thought of clean sheets with a pretty woman between them is enough to attract any man.’
‘My lord!’ The shiver intensified before she took herself in hand. She would not be intimidated! But the heat that had started in her belly and spread through every inch of flesh, to her toes and her fingertips, in liquid delight, had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with some strange longing. Silently cursing her flaming cheeks, she poured the blame for her discomfiture on to those impressive shoulders. The fault was all that of Gervase Fitz Osbern. He was a disgrace to the order of knighthood, with its tenets of courtesy and good manners. Preserving her outward calm as best she could, she expressed the words she had in mind from the beginning. ‘If you are uncomfortable here at Clifford, my lord, you can always leave.’
He smiled, a feral glint of teeth. ‘You won’t win, you know.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, my lord.’ Her cheeks grew even hotter.
‘Don’t lie to me, Rosamund.’ He leaned so close that his lips, firm, masculine, were a mere breath away. She held herself perfectly still. He had kissed her in the dairy, there was no reason why he should not repeat his offence. Would he? She held her breath. No, he drew back, to his full height. ‘And don’t forget my warning. The door to your chamber is not sacrosanct.’
‘It’s not open to you. I’ll bar my door against you.’ Quick panic rippled.
‘Will you, now?’