He felt a roaring wash up the back of his skull, blowing white noise through his body. Was the bed shaking under him? The muscles in his arm, which had been propping him up, felt weak.
She kissed him, then sat up. “I would like to show you something.”
He gave a ragged laugh and dropped back to the bed. “All right.”
She started pushing the covers aside. “You have perhaps spoken with Angus, and he has perhaps told you what I did to his table?”
Jamie laughed. “I have and he did. I think you made a Christian out of him again, Eva, and that was a bone-hard task, for Angus has been past penance for many years now.”
“He is hurting, that is all.” She slipped her pale undertunic over her head and reached for his hand. It tingled, as if she were lightning touching him. She squeezed, then unfolded her graceful body and got out of the bed. “But he is quite angry with you. I encouraged him in this, of course.”
He felt the smile rise up out of the wash of his head, bold and wide. “Of course.”
“We are not fond of knights, he or I.”
“Nay.”
“But I very much like to paint.” She smiled at him. “And I very much loved your mother.”
“Did you?” he said, but it sounded dim to his own ears. The center of his chest suddenly went heavy and crushed, as if a steel punch had landed. Dense, as if packed with a hot ball of heat.
A heart, he thought dimly. This is what it feels like to have a heart.
She was wrecking him. Ruining him for ruin.
She walked to the brazier. “I have never met Angus’s mother, but he thought it was a goodly recollection nonetheless. But, Jamie, I lived with your very good mother for many years, and I would like to paint her for you.”
“I would like that,” he rasped, and did not recognize his own voice. He pushed himself up to sit against the bedstead. He felt drunk. He felt sparkling. He felt as if a ghost had punched him in the head and gone right through him, so while there was no pain, he was reeling. Eva walked to the wall.
“Angus will not mind that I brought these little paints with me,” she murmured, “but it is mostly with charcoal from the brazier.”
Then, across the whole of the chamber wall, while she told him about his mother and the small things they’d shared during the years Eva had lived there, and how the countess had pined for Jamie on the ramparts each evening, willing her son to come home, believing when no one else did that he was yet alive, while Eva did all these heartrending things, she painted his mother across the wall of the room with her fingers and hands, until they were black and red and blue. For him.
When she was done, she stepped back and turned to face him, smiling, her arm flung out, gesturing to the wall, as if he had not been watching every motion of her generous, dancing body for the last half hour. He felt as if the freshest breeze were blowing. The moonlight spilled over his bare feet, sliding down his shins, and he sat, stunned.
“Is this her, Jamie?”
He felt as if he’d run up a mountainside. He felt as if he’d tumbled down a crevasse. He felt as if he were a mountain, pushed up out of the hard-rock past that was his life.
“That is her,” he rasped, pushing to his feet.
The power washed back into his stunned limbs. The room felt smaller, he felt taller. He was the mountain. He took three steps to reach Eva’s side and pulled her to him. He lowered his mouth over hers and paused just above her lips. She brought her painted hands down and rested them on his shoulders.
“For twenty years, I have been a man of one deed, Eva. But you are my mission now. You are wind and water and air, and you—”
He stopped short. There was no end to that sentence; it might go on for years, all the things Eva was, so he simply stopped talking and kissed her.
They stood in the moonlight, their arms resting on each other’s hips, and softly, slowly, kissed each other for a long time.
“So you will not tie me to a tree and leave me for dead?” she murmured as he began to move his attention down her neck. She put her hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him up.
He resisted, but he did pause and throw her a glance. “I did not tie you to a tree.”
“No, that is so. And yet, is it chivalrous of you to mark the distinction?”
He moved down her neck, every so often scraping the edge of his teeth against her hot skin, until he felt her body begin to press into him. “I will not leave you for dead,” he said, his words muffled by her neck.
“But will you,” Eva gasped as he nipped her earlobe, harder than she’d expected, “tie me up?”
He lifted his head from his ministrations. “Would you like me to?”
And, oh, as Jamie was naught but dangerous by any measure, the danger of this notion, with his darkened blue eyes on her, his callused palms cupping her naked chest, was almost dizzying.
He leaned close to her ear. “Shall I, Eva?” Even as his voice, soft and gentle in its rough-edged rumble, coaxed her to relax, his hand made a wonderful, snapping tension sizzle through her blood. He skimmed his hand up the side of her ribs, up to her arm. Then he grasped it loosely but indefinably trapped it behind her back.
“Shall I do that, Eva?” he said, keeping up his quiet, sensual demands that were making her dizzy. “I am yours. I will do as you wish.”
Fire exploded in her body, already arched up to his. His fingers closed around her other wrist and he pressed them together.
“You see?” she gasped, as his eyes darkened even further. “I knew, in the end, you would be chivalrous with me.”
“This isn’t the end, Eva,” he growled. “And I am not chivalrous. Stand against the wall.”
Her mouth rounded, half between a gasp and a smile. “The wall? Why?”
He looked at her. “So you do not fall over when I make you come.”
Her jaw dropped entirely as he cupped the nape of her neck and, holding her, walked her backward. When she hit the wall, he reached over to the bed and plucked up the ribbons that had been discarded, tangled amid their lovemaking.
“Turn around.”
“Jamie,” she whispered, cautionary.
Hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face the wall, then, in silence, raked his fingers through her hair, from her skull to the ends in his hand. Eva’s head tipped back into the shockingly gentle caress. Slowly, inexpertly, he braided her hair with the wine-red ribbons. Each tug of his fingers sent shivering cascades of chill down her scalp and back. Her whole body trembled, as if she’d been caught in a rainfall.
“Look at me,” he ordered in a low voice, and when she turned again, he bent to kiss her, first her mouth, then her neck; then he dropped to his knees before her, his mouth sliding down her body, kissing as he went.
The air rushed out of her lungs. “Jamie!” she cried.
Although it was the first evidence of true exclamation that he’d heard since he’d known her—he must try this activity more often—Jamie chose to ignore her. Or rather, overwhelm her. He began by affecting nonchalance. And great ignorance.
“What?” he murmured, testing the span of her ribs with his hands.
“What are you doing down there?” she asked worriedly.
He slid his palms up, resting his thumbs beneath the curve of her breasts. “I dropped something.”
She laughed. It was an ineffable sensation, her body vibrating from enjoyment he had given her. To the extent it was in his power, he would give her everything her heart desired, except that she desired nothing but peace and leeks and a little cottage by a river. So he would give her those things. And this. He slid his mouth lower. As often as she wished. Should she evidence a desire for horses or castles or cabbage, he would see to those things as well.
He ran his mouth across her belly like he was measuring the space of a room, from one side to the other, marking her with slow, tender kisses. It was painful, holding himself to such gentle measures when she was making unsteady little sounds of desire, when her hip
s occasionally arched out from the wall, pushing against his collarbone in unbridled little thrusts.
When what he wished to do was spin her around, bend her over, plant her palms on the wall, and thrust inside her so hard she’d throw back her head and howl.
But she might misunderstand the generosity of the gesture. So instead, on his knees, he kissed her slowly and wetly, with only the lightest, sweetest nips. She possibly didn’t even notice his hand slipping up her inner thigh. The curls at the ends of her long hair and the silken shreds at the ends of the ribbons tickled his ears and nose. He pushed them out of the way.
His reward came a moment later, when her fingers fluttered down to rest lightly on the top of his head.
He slid more boldly up her thigh and pushed against her knee with his forearm, nudging it to the side. “Now, Eva,” he murmured, “do not make this difficult.”
Her fingers tensed in his hair. “Make what difficult?”
He bent to the dark curls and touched his tongue to the heated juncture below. Her hips whipped out from the wall on a shocked gasp, which only served to bring them closer together, so that his hands cupped her buttocks, his mouth pressed tightly to her hot, scented wetness.
“This,” he answered thickly, and flicked his tongue up, hard on the slicked crest of her.
Her fingers clenched in his hair and her head dropped back against the wall on a long, low moan. No, she would not make this difficult.
With one hand, he exerted a small pressure on her leg, urging her to lift it. She did, bending her knee, and he draped it over his shoulder. This made her womanhood his entire world, the focus of his devotion, and he let her know it. He spread her apart with his thumb and licked her senseless. Her hips moved with reckless little pushes that forced his tongue and teeth against her harder. His head spun, his cock pounded, and his breath came as ragged and shallow as hers as he delved into her with his tongue, then slid back up to the swirling nub and sucked it into his mouth swiftly. She gave a strangled cry. He sucked again, teasing her, sliding his fingers around her slippery entrance, but not pushing in.
“Please, Jamie,” she whispered.
He savagely pushed one up inside her. She gave a low, sobbing cry.
“Please what, Eva?”
Her knees were weakening, he felt it. She tilted her face down, making her hair fall in a dark curtain around him. “Please, find what you were looking for.”
He gave a low laugh and knew, in that moment, the world meant nothing. All that mattered was right here, assuring Eva she’d done the right thing by giving herself over to him. Eva, his love. “I’ve found it.”
Tongue, thumb, fingers, lips, he focused everything on her, glorying in her response as she exploded into a passionate, unbridled orgasm stretched between him and the wall, until her legs gave out entirely and she slowly, gracefully, collapsed to the floor.
“You fell even though the wall was there,” he murmured, catching her.
“I am a weak woman. Floors are not for . . . this,” she whispered, just barely, in his ear. Her arms were weakly draped around his shoulders.
“Floors are for anything I need them for.” But notwithstanding such talk, he lifted her in his arms and dropped her onto the bed.
They did not sleep for a long time. They talked, languidly, in the rhythm of sated lovers: words, then silence, then more words, as they watched the moon unfurl its full light. They spoke of animals they might keep and the best angles for roofs and where Roger might wish to stay when he found a woman of his own. Neither of them pointed out that, of course, Roger would be staying in England now. He was the d’Endshire heir.
Neither spoke of Jamie’s being Everoot’s heir.
Nor did they speak of Father Peter or King John or anything farther off than the walls of this room and their hopes.
For the first time in her life, Eva felt safe. She was embracing this night of brightness, of Jamie and all his dark goodness. There was only one blemish on it all, and no matter how she turned her back or looked the other way, still it lay there, a shadow on her sun.
Jamie thought her an orphan. But she was not. One must have dead parents to be an orphan. Hers were not dead.
It was much worse than that.
“SOMETHING is wrong,” the king muttered.
Brian de Lisle, his chief commander and right arm to Jamie’s left, looked up from the papers he’d been delivering. He’d been headed to Windsor when an outrider had found him and detoured him here to this small, wooded encampment, a day’s ride from Everoot. He had been quite surprised to learn the king was in the North, heading for Everoot in secret and in haste.
But then, John was known for his energetic and abrupt itinerations. And his paranoia. And his inability to tolerate even the smallest dissension amid his noble ranks.
Which is, of course, why he had so much dissension amid his noble ranks.
“My lord?” Brian said, laying down the papers. The king did not so much as glance at them. The wardrobe official did, but he quickly sat back again when John rose from his seat.
“Something has happened. Something is amiss.” The king swung about, the hem of his robes rising, then settled back as he fixed his gaze on Brian.
He raised his eyebrows. “My lord?”
“Everoot and d’Endshire have been empty too long. They have plagued me too long.”
There was nothing new here.
“I am going to ensure, once and for all, that they cease to be an albatross.”
“How, my lord?”
John pulled the papers to him, glanced at them idly, then looked up. “I shall grant them. To the highest bidder.”
Sell them, Brian thought, impressed. The king was going to sell the estates of the missing heirs.
“Everoot has been a thorn in my side for far too long. It is a curse, which is why I have ne’er tried to fill it,” the king snapped. But Brian knew a better reason to explain John’s reluctance to fill the Everoot earldom, even after the decades-long absence of the heir: fear.
If the powerful Everoot heir was out there somewhere, lurking... well, in short, the king was afraid.
Additionally, of course, for the king to seize yet another estate from another noble family would only hammer another nail into his political coffin. But in the end, John had not filled Everoot because of fear, fear the heir was out there, lurking. Fear of what he would do when he discovered the king had taken his birthright.
Perhaps retrieve those fabled treasures in the vaults and bring John’s kingdom crumbling down?
“How much loyalty do you think Everoot could buy me, de Lisle?”
“A great deal, my lord,” he said slowly.
The richest honor in the realm, the earldom of Everoot. The powerful barony of d’Endshire all along its eastern borders. How often did such glittering riches come up on the auction block?
Once in a lifetime.
God’s bones, de Lisle might just bid on it himself.
The king gave a clipped nod. “Deliver the news to these few select men.” He rattled off a few names. “Keep it secret; no one else shall know until the deal is struck. Then they all shall find out together: the rebels, Langton, the French king. The country shall fall, shire by shire, and there will be no need for any charter a’tall.”
Fifty-three
They stood in the stables early the next morning, checking weapons and speaking in low murmurs by the light of torches that burned against the foggy air with a ruddy glow.
“There should be a back entryway to the vintners’ hall,” Jamie said in a hushed voice as he rechecked the buckle of his sword belt. Roger handed him another small, thin blade. He bent and tucked it in his boot. “It may be guarded, but you can manage that, can you not? You and Roger?”
Roger snapped a nod. “Aye, sir.”
Ry looked equally grim and far less enthused. “Aye.”
Jamie paused in sliding a dagger back into its sheath on his leg and tipped his head up. Dark hair fell forward to his
jaw. Eva resisted the urge to push it back. She was always resisting hair-pushing urges for the men she loved. Instead, she listened to him address Ry’s unspoken but loud concern.
“Have you something to say, Ry?”
Ry’s regard was close and level. “You need to have a better plan than ‘I go in and come out with the priest.’”
Jamie paused. “It sounds like a goodly one to me.”
“Aye,” Roger whispered.
Ry and Eva exchanged glances of the long-suffering sort. “I believe Ry speaks to the ‘how,’” Eva explained kindly, to ease their way through this complicated idea.
Jamie shoved his last blade in and Roger turned to her. They both shoved hair behind their ears. She sighed quietly.
“I shall go in however needs must, Ry, but only if it comes to it will I draw a sword. We’ll be in and out before they can gather their wits.”
“That takes care of coming out the door, Jamie,” Ry pointed out. “First you must get in.”
“How about if I break down the door?”
“And then? When they all jump you and grab you?”
“You’ll come crashing in?” Jamie said hopefully, but with a hardness to his voice. Eva saw an equally hard look on Ry’s face, perhaps because, in this, he realized Jamie might at last accomplish his purpose of discovering the danger that was too much. Ry did not know Jamie had made her a promise to no longer do such things.
“I can only do so much,” Ry insisted.
“It will have to be enough. I have nothing more.”
“You have me,” Roger said into the tension. Jamie and Ry turned. Roger looked pale, but he repeated himself. “You’ll have my arm.”
Jamie clapped him on the arm and nodded.
“And as for me,” Eva chimed in.
They all turned and looked at her.
“You,” Jamie said coldly, “will wait here with the horses. Right here.” He pointed at a particular spot. Eva moved an inch to the left to occupy it. He was not amused.
“Precisely. Right there.”
The curt order belied the emotion she now knew underlay it. His face was set in hardness, his jaw tight, his eyes shadowed by dim torchlight and banked emotion. He needed focus and single-mindedness now, not worry or strong emotions. As she had no intention of doing anything but waiting here with the horses, very docilely, she gave a tranquil nod.
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