by Deborah Hale
Startled guilt made Cecily’s heart clench in her chest. Ducking her head, she pretended to busy herself chopping the last of the vegetables.
Con came to his feet grudgingly. “Aye, DeCourtenay.” His words rang sharp with impatience, honed sharper still by fatigue. “What is it now?”
He managed to catch Cecily’s eye as he walked away. A solemn look passed between them.
“Take that tone with me, Ifan,” Rowan growled, “and you can find yourself another lord to serve.”
“See here, DeCourtenay,” Con shot back as the pair of them moved away from Cecily. “I’ve had just about as much bullying and suspicion as I can stand from you this past week.”
“Well, that sets us even, for I’ve had more than my fill of your defiance and disloyalty.” There could be no mistaking the note of flint-hard hostility in Rowan’s voice.
Flint struck to the primed kindling of Con’s resentment was sure to spark a blazing row between them.
Why had she not stayed away from the Welshman, as Rowan had asked? She should have realized it would create ill will between them.
Cecily scrambled up to follow the men.
“Oh no you don’t, sluggard.” The cook clutched Cecily by the collar and gave her a shake so rough her teeth rattled and her knife fell to the turf. “If we don’t soon have a hot meal for this lot, they’re apt to get ugly. Now finish paring those turnips before I…”
Off in the distance, Rowan and Con’s voices grew louder and more belligerent, past caring who heard them. The Welshman tried to walk past Rowan, who deliberately stepped sideways to block his path. Con shouldered him aside. Rowan responded with a shove. Con’s fist landed a jolting blow to Rowan’s jaw.
How soon before they drew daggers? This was all her fault!
Cecily tried to pull away, but the cook’s four-fingered fist held her fast. A desperate rush of inspiration struck her.
Hopping from foot to foot, she grabbed at her groin. “But I need to go. I’ll only be a moment.”
The ruse earned her a clout across the ear. “Why didn’t ye go when I sent ye to fetch water, lackwit! Be off with ye then afore ye drench yer breeches.”
Her ear stung as though set upon by a dozen bees at once. But Cecily’s conscience pricked worse.
Like a hare loosed from the hunter’s snare, she dived for the bushes.
Behind her the cook bellowed, “Be done afore I count twenty, or I’ll come in after ye, so help me!”
As fast as her legs could pump, she scuttled through the copse. Nettles tore at her tunic and breeches. Whip-thin branches lashed her face. Gnarled roots reached out to trip her. Cecily scarcely noticed them, so intent was she on reaching the men.
At last she came to the spot in the wood closest to the combatants. They were well and truly joined now, grappling one another, then drawing back to trade blows, all the while pelting one another with foul curses and fouler accusations.
Cecily skidded to a halt and hesitated. To come between Con and Rowan now would expose her identity too soon. Her husband would surely clap her in a saddle, trussed up like a roast goose if need be, and send her back to Ravensridge under armed guard. At the very least.
With his temper roused like this, might he take even harsher measures to bring a defiant wife to heel? She had seen murder in his eyes, and even the memory of it made her flinch.
Conwy ap Ifan was not some spindly page boy taking a beating at the hands of his master. Con was a man grown. He could take care of himself.
As if in response to her thoughts, Rowan locked his hands around the Welshman’s neck. “What contemptible mischief were you up to with my wife this morning?” he snarled. “Don’t bother to deny it. Aenor overheard the pair of you.”
He could not have been squeezing as hard as he looked to be, for Con was able to hurl an answer. “If you’d kept your wife tucked up contented in her bridal bed like a good husband should, she’d have had no cause for truck with any other man, DeCourtenay.”
With a roar of mingled wrath and pain, like a wounded beast, Rowan flung the Welshman to the ground and drew his sword.
It was more than Cecily could stand. Dearly as she wanted to be present when Rowan wrested Brantham from Fulke DeBoissard, she could not risk Con’s life, or her husband’s soul.
Breaking from the grove, she leapt between the two men and doffed her hood. “Enough! Let him be, Rowan.”
He arrested his sword, scant inches from her breast. The look of torment in his eyes hewed her heart deeper than any iron forged by man.
“No mischief passed between Con and me.” She had sworn not to betray Con’s role in all this, but better Rowan should know the truth than suspect them of infidelity. “I begged him to smuggle me along in your baggage train and he obliged me.”
She tried to bite back the next words that sprang to her tongue, but they overpowered her untried caution. “It was more than you would do.”
Rowan winced, as though she’d dealt him a treacherous death blow from behind. What right had he to look so wounded, after the way he’d left her and the things he’d said?
All the same, something in her yearned to take him in her arms and love all his hurt away. As if that were possible. A more womanly creature might have managed it, but she was clearly inadequate to the task.
The sense of failure threatened to engulf her. Desperate to salvage some piece of herself intact, she lashed out.
“You promised to trust me, DeCourtenay. Already you have broken that promise. I will not live with your suspicion. If you truly believe I have played you false with any man, strike me dead now and make an end to it.”
She threw down the reckless challenge, secure in her faith that whatever else he might do, Rowan DeCourtenay would never harm a hair on her head.
Her faith and her whole world were shaken to the core when he raised the heavy sword and prepared to strike.
Chapter Seventeen
Almost of their own accord, Rowan’s arms hefted his sword aloft and prepared to bring it down. For a decade since Jacquetta’s death he had lived in emotional purgatory. He had taken a chance on Cecily Tyrell to save him.
Instead, she had thrust him into hell.
He read the doubt in her eyes. Did she truly believe he would harm a hair on her head?
With burning clarity, he recalled the wrath he had spewed on her in their bridal bed. A sword strike would be quick and merciful by comparison. He’d given her no reason in the world to trust him. Yet she had—to a point.
He had shattered even that.
Calling forth every ounce of furious strength within him, Rowan plunged his sword to earth, burying it halfway to the hilt in the soft turf of the meadow. Recoiling from Con’s and Cecily’s dazed faces, he lurched toward the privacy of the trees.
His chest throbbed as though he had thrust the weapon into it instead of the ground. He must go to earth, like a boar or bear that had taken its death wound. Perish in peace and seclusion, without the final indignity of hounds worrying him or scavengers eyeing him hungrily.
As he lumbered deeper into the copse, the toe of his boot caught on an exposed tree root. He hurtled forward, landing face first in the brook. Though the water was shallow, it numbed him invitingly, luring him to abandon any thought of struggle.
Then a hand closed around the back of his mail birnie and wrenched him clear of the water.
Cecily shook him. “If you think I mean to let you off this easily, DeCourtenay, you are gravely mistaken.”
She would not be denied—that much was evident. Wearily, Rowan dragged himself away from the brook and collapsed back against a broad tree trunk.
“Do you…” he gasped for air “…take pleasure in spiting me and holding me up to ridicule?” He swiped a sodden forelock back out of his eyes.
To his amazement, she wilted to the ground beside him, like a combatant too spent to lift herself for a final blow. Once again, her spirit amazed him. What other woman would pursue a man to confront him, afte
r he had appeared to raise his sword against her?
“What choice did you leave me?” Cecily buried her head in her up-tucked knees. “You promised me the freedom to act as I wish. Or was that only a ruse to put me in a pliant humor for bedding? The moment you had a husband’s power over me, you used it to thwart me again. Ever since I was a child, Brantham has been everything to me. I am going home, will you or nill you.”
How could she have misinterpreted his intentions so grossly? It had been easier to make himself understood by the Turks and Saracens than by his own wife. Yet he had once thought she could read his heart more clearly than anyone else.
Before he could form the words to defend himself, she added in a choked whisper, “If you don’t care for me, why do you need to control me?”
The autumn breeze rippled over Rowan’s damp clothes, chilling him to the bone. Cecily’s words chilled him more.
“Not care?” He caught her by the shoulders and looked hard into her eyes. “How can you say so, after the way I groveled at your chamber door before dawn? Did you stop your ears and your heart against me so ruthlessly that you could not spare me one word of pardon?”
Her whole face softened then, and a single keening sob broke from her lips. What could it mean?
Rowan pressed on. Having begun, he could no more stop himself than a diver could arrest his fall in midplunge. “Say you cannot, nor never did care for me. But do not pretend to believe I care naught for you.”
“You came back?” The whispered question hung between them, as light with hope and wonder as a water bubble. And just as fragile.
Fearing it might shatter beneath the weight of his words, Rowan replied with a mute nod.
She bent close, pressing her forehead to his. “I did not harden my heart to you. After you stormed off, I dressed in some of your clothes. Then I called a maid servant to stay in your chamber and keep the door barred until the army had ridden out.”
With ruthless force, Rowan quashed an answering bubble of hope that swelled inside him. “It doesn’t matter. Perhaps it is better we leave this marriage unconsummated—all the easier to break when need be. We are like chalk and cheese, you and I. I sometimes wonder if we speak the same language.”
His heart rebelled at the notion of parting from her, but his will prevailed. Barely.
He did care. He had come back. If only she had not been in such a hurry to get her own way. She might have heard him and welcomed him back into her bed—where they might still have lingered at this very moment.
The notion of it, together with Rowan’s closeness and her own tightly strung emotions, set Cecily light-headed with renewed desire for him. She had pushed him away once, without understanding how or why. When he had lifted his sword, she had feared him. Despite all her protests of trust.
Now it was up to her to draw him close again.
“We are not opposites, DeCourtenay.” She reached out to him, sliding the backs of her fingers along his bearded cheek in a slow, inviting caress. “It is true, we are different. But our differences compliment one another. You are prudent where I am reckless. I am merry where you are solemn. In those respects that count most, we are alike. We are strong….”
A ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. “And clever.”
“Aye.” She did not try to disguise the eagerness in her voice. “And courageous. If we put all our strength, cleverness and courage to work, can we not find our way to each other in spite of our differences?”
The shadows of early evening had deepened in the copse. From a distance, Cecily heard the sounds of Rowan’s men making camp. Smelled the savory aroma of mutton pottage.
In Rowan’s eyes, she read his longing. And his fear. When he remained silent for longer than she could bear, Cecily answered her own question.
“I believe we can do it, Rowan, but not while mistrust and secrets fester between us. Will you please tell me—did your first wife play you false?”
His eyelids slid shut, perhaps to keep his eyes from betraying more than they had already. Or had exhaustion claimed him?
Cecily had begun to suspect the latter when he vouched the barest nod of his head. She clamped her lips to check the rush of questions she hankered to ask him. Somehow, she knew he must tell her in his own time, in his own way. Or not at all.
At last he spoke, each quiet, reluctant word delved from the depths of his pain. “On our wedding night, I found out she was no maid.”
Cecily winced. What potent demons had she invoked with her innocent-sounding words in their bridal bed? Had Jacquetta also avowed her virginity, only to be proven false? Could she blame Rowan for holding her too close, guarding her too jealously—when she pricked his deepest anguish by consorting in so careless a fashion with every man in his castle?
“Well, I am a maid. And so I will stay until you claim me. No man has ever affected me as you do, Rowan. None, save you, has ever tempted me to mate or marry. The rest—they could be a pack of playful hounds for all I care. I enjoy their boisterous company. Nothing more. I warmed to Con ap Ifan because he reminds me of my brothers, and because he knows you so much better than I can ever hope to.”
Rowan opened his eyes again. They were less troubled than before. But no less sad. “I believe you, lass.” He heaved a great sigh. “In truth, it was never you I doubted—but myself.” He shook his head. “Never in my life have I come first in the affections of any man or woman. I believed I did with Jacquetta, only to find out otherwise.”
Cecily thought of her own hard, futile fight to come first in her father’s affections. The differences between her and Rowan were superficial. Their common ground ran deep.
“You are first in my heart.” She stifled thoughts of Brantham. It was a place and a collection of people she loved. Rowan had become the most important single person to her. “Whether you want to be or not.”
Her declaration demanded more than mere words. Awkward from lack of experience, but frankly ardent, she pressed her lips to his, silently pleading for a reply.
It came.
A flicker at first. The slightest yielding of his firm, wide mouth. A catch in his breath.
His arms raised. Hesitated.
Then pulled her toward him convulsively as his lips parted to devour her.
The power of his embrace and the hot potency of his kiss drove the breath from Cecily’s body. She melted against him, surrendering to the sweet fire that rippled through her flesh.
She did not feel entrapped, as she had in the close confines of their bridal bed, or pressed against the tower wall in Ravensridge. Instead, Rowan’s fervor liberated something wild and natural within her.
The rustle of a smoky autumn breeze through the vividly colored leaves and the elemental melody of flowing water vibrated within her. The scent of the woodland, ripe and fertile, mingled with the musk of a male creature roused to a pitch of desire. Rowan’s kisses tasted like mulled autumn cider, hot, rich and intoxicating.
Wresting her lips, unwillingly, from his, she gasped, “Is it well we never consummated our union?”
Nostrils flared like a stallion at full gallop, Rowan stilled for a moment. He answered her brash quip with pensive earnest. “No. That was badly done and I was wrong to say otherwise.”
Sensing there was more to come, she held his gaze and waited—wanting him with a fierce craving that made all her previous desire seem like girlish flirtation.
Just when she felt she could stand it no more and must hurl herself upon him or beg him to take her, Rowan found his voice again. “Is it too late to mend what I have marred?”
All around them, nature lay poised between ripeness and decay. Completing the age-old cycle of budding, blossoming, bearing fruit and abating. Nothing in life was as certain as its transience. Seasoned fruit, unplucked, only withered on the vine.
Slowly she shook her head. “Not too late at all. We must seize our time.”
The radiant expression that lit his face surpassed any smile Cecily had witnessed. It was
as though the setting sun had changed its mind and risen again, warmer and more brilliant than ever.
Rowan glanced around. “Not here, greatly as it tempts me.” He held out his hand to her. “Let us see if my tent has been pitched. It will not afford us the amenities of my chamber at Ravensridge, but it is the best I can do for a bridal bower at short notice.”
Inebriated by this sudden, unforeseen accord between them, Cecily launched herself at Rowan, sending them both sprawling back onto a bed of moss.
“Just so you take me to wive.” She nuzzled his neck, trailing light nipping kisses from the base of his ear to his collarbone. “And make a good end to all the love lessons you began to teach me on our journey. I care not where.”
His straining breath and the tight pitch of his reply gave her a delicious sense of power. “Keep on like that and I serve you fair warning, dear heart. I may not be able to hold my lust in check long enough to reach my tent.”
Scrambling up, she helped Rowan to his feet. “You can be no more eager than I.”
It was true. His words, his touch, his kisses had lit a bonfire of yearning in her loins that only he could quench.
They made their way back toward the meadow where his army was encamped, pausing now and then to indulge their mutual desire with long deep kisses and questing hands. Stoking the blaze of passion between them to giddy heights.
Perhaps the cook had learned the identity of his unsatisfactory assistant. Or perhaps he had tired of beating the bushes for the “lad” and returned to the task of preparing supper for DeCourtenay’s men. A line had formed near the cauldron where the cook now dispensed ladlesful of pottage and the hard slabs of bread they called trenchers.
As the smell of mutton and leeks wafted on the early evening breeze, Cecily’s stomach rumbled piteously.
Rowan chuckled. “Shall we take nourishment first, to fortify ourselves?”
Some of the soldiers glanced up from their supper bowls as if surprised to see Cecily returned from the copse all in one piece.
Perching on her tiptoes, she whispered in Rowan’s ear, “Supper can wait. I have a sharper appetite that demands satisfaction.”