It was a devastating question, in ways he could not begin to guess. She had indeed been making her choices as they arrived, one at a time. She had told herself it had been either Ian or Duncan, and the choice had been inevitable once Ian had agreed to keep Robert's secret.
Now Edmund forced her to face a new reality. His presentation of a choice which had never existed revealed her emotions with stunning clarity. Safety with Reginald would have been the sensible, logical course.
But it would never have been the one that she took.
Edmund misunderstood her stunned silence. “Ian manipulated your situation to coerce you. A marriage made under such duress need not stand.”
“No one forced my hand to sign the contract, Edmund. I was neither drugged nor beaten into this.”
“A woman need not be beaten in order to break her. Your danger created coercion just the same. This marriage can be set aside.” He took her hand in his. A cool, dry hand, she noted, and not nearly as rough as Ian's. More like Robert's had been. The hand of a good man, but with less life and blood flowing through it than the palm and fingers of Ian of Guilford. “I am known by the bishop in Edinburgh, Reyna. When he hears how this came about, he will surely dissolve the vows.”
“And then what, Edmund? Do you now offer me the choice between Ian and Reginald that I never had?”
“My brother is out of this. I offer you freedom and safety, and my protection, which was there for you from the first. Now that the defenses of this keep have relaxed, it will not be hard to get you away. You will come with me, Reyna, and will never be in fear again.”
She gazed at the mound of soil. His last sentence summoned distinct memories of the first time she had seen Robert, and the first words he had spoken to her. He had arrived at Duncan's home for their wedding a day earlier than expected. She had not been in the yard to greet him because Aymer, angry at some perceived disobedience on her part, had dragged her to the crypt and locked her in to fight the terror and darkness.
Demanding to meet her, Robert had been brought there. For an instant, while she peered at the grave, she was that twelve-year-old child again, huddled against the crypt wall, fighting for her sanity. And then, suddenly, footsteps sounded on the stone stairs, and the flare of a torch broke the black eternity, and a hand reached through the glow toward her. You will come with me, child, and you will never be frightened like this again.
The memory fell away and she was staring down at her clasped hand. She felt Robert's presence suddenly, in an astonishingly vivid way, as if he stood beside her, no longer dead. She closed her eyes and reveled in the poignant awareness of his essence, and sensed his spirit trying to speak to her.
Perhaps the souls in heaven knew the future. Was Edmund's offer, spoken in words so similar to Robert's promise, meant to be a sign? Was Robert's spirit urging her to accept their friend and the safety he afforded? Did he know that, if she did not, it would be as Edmund predicted, and Ian would forsake her?
The image from her nightmares, of her face blue and her neck stretched, assaulted her. Ian was a brigand and an opportunist, and she could definitely be replaced without difficulty by the handsome, exciting man known as the Lord of a Thousand Nights.
“I will arrange it, and I do not misunderstand my duty like my brother. You will be long gone before your husband knows,” Edmund urged in a whisper.
She knew that she had to make a decision now, for they might never get the chance to speak alone again. She wavered with a heart full of confused emotions. Panic gripped her, and her mind clouded with doubts and fear.
Then the breeze rose and caressed her hair, much as Robert's hand had stroked her tresses when he departed on a journey. Her eyes teared while his memory and presence totally invaded her, bringing her comfort, quelling the confusion. She sighed at the relief he afforded, and dwelled in that invisible security, pulling her wits about her.
When she had calmed, she felt his presence recede, reining in all the confusion and pulling it with him as he left, moving aside the obscuring shadows in her heart so that she could see what lay within more clearly.
With sorrowful reluctance, she let his spirit ease away, then turned her inner eye on what he had uncovered. Another emotion glowed in her heart, frightened and tentative, but giving off a strong, compelling heat. She acknowledged its existence, and her acceptance acted like a fuel that made it flame.
But it is not like the love I had for you, Robert, she silently argued. There might be much pain and little contentment in it.
Again the breeze stroked her hair in that familiar, comforting way. Then the retreating memories and essence were swallowed by the night.
She carefully withdrew her hand from Edmund's. All of the logic in the world, all of the analyses of her danger and potential disappointment, had no strength against what she had acknowledged just now. She would not doubt Ian, and if he ultimately forsook her, so be it.
“He is my husband, Edmund. I have accepted him as such in my heart, and no bishop's decree can undo that.”
She saw his body tense and straighten, and felt his eyes peering at her through the darkness. “Reginald said it was thus, but I could not believe him.”
“I do not know what Reginald said, but—”
“He said this knight had played on your grief and loneliness. Seduced you. A more insidious form of coercion, but if the woman is vulnerable it is much more persuasive than violence.”
Perhaps he was right, but it did not change anything. Her decision derived from her own emotions and motives, not Ian's. “He did not seduce me. I did not lie with him until our wedding. However, there was a peculiar affection between us, and I will not pretend there was not.”
“Reyna, what you interpret as affection is no more than lust. Such hungers of the flesh pass, especially with men, most especially with men like him.”
“You do not know my husband, and yet you speak of his character and intentions with such certainty.”
“I asked about him this morning. The servants know me, and were willing to talk.”
Aye, they would fill his ears, Reyna had no doubt of that. “It may well be only lust between us, but he is my husband now, accepted by me willingly. I will not lie to a bishop in order to have that undone. Do you think me so undeserving of affection that it is impossible for a man to feel it for me, Edmund?”
“You know that is nonsense. Robert had boundless affection and deep love for you. It awed any who saw it.”
Robert loved me as a daughter, she wanted to say.
“I will leave on the morrow, Reyna. If you change your mind you must send word to my chamber tonight. Is there someone here whom you can trust?”
“Alice, but I will not change my mind. Must you leave so soon?”
“I must attend to the preceptor's work, and despite Ian's hospitality, he does not like my presence.”
While they walked toward the keep, Reyna could feel a new distance growing between her and Edmund. He was so much like Robert that it wrenched her heart to know that he was reevaluating his judgment of her, and not for the better.
They paused outside the gate. “Have I lost you as a friend now, as I lost Reginald?” she asked quietly.
He took her hands and kissed them. “Nay, my lady, I am always here for you. Still, I think it unlikely that we will meet again for a long while. Ian does not care for our friendship.”
“He will not deny me my friends.”
He gazed down at her in the torchlight. “If it suits his purposes, he will deny you everything. I fear, if he is forced to a choice, that he will deny you even your life.”
An echoing silence shrouded the keep. It was very late as if everyone slept, Reyna realized. She and Edmund had talked longer than she thought.
She climbed to the fifth level and paused in the passageway. A torch lit the space, and she guessed that Ian had ordered it left burning for her. He probably slept already, but she looked forward to lying beside him. She needed the reassurance of his stren
gth warming her right now.
As she approached the solar door, it eased open and a skirted figure slipped out. A kerchiefed head turned with a bright smile that wiped away when it faced Reyna. Eva flushed deeply, ducked away, and scurried down the stairs.
Reyna stared at the solar door. Numbness splashed her limbs down to her fingers and toes, as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy water over her body.
The bastard.
Seething with hurt and fury, she strode to her own chamber. In the moonlight cast from the windows she groped for a rush at the hearth. Bumping into the table and bed, she made her way back out and took a flame from the passageway's torch, then returned to make some light for herself.
She prepared for bed with a head full of curses heaped on the black soul of Ian of Guilford. While she pulled off her blue cote-hardie, her gaze fell on the parchments stacked on her writing table. The letter to Lady Hildegard had not progressed very far. Too many days she had sat here quill in hand, trying to form her Latin phrases, only to find the hours had passed in daydreams dwelling on the man who consumed her thoughts.
A mistake there, that was obvious. The whoreson. She wished suddenly that she were as big and strong as Lady Anna. She wished that if she used her fists on a man he would feel it. She might not be able to touch this brig-and's heart, but if he insulted her like this, it would be very gratifying to at least bruise his body.
With jerky movements she stripped off her hose and shift and threw back the bedclothes. She pounded the pillow and twisted to find some comfort in the narrow, cold bed. Maybe she should go to Edmund and tell him she had changed her mind. They might even manage to leave tonight. God knew that Ian had ample cause to sleep soundly through it all.
Her newly acknowledged love flickered through her outrage, telling her that of course she would do no such thing. She faced the emotion as though it were an invasive body that had intruded on her spirit. You will not control me, she warned it dangerously. I will not let you do so. You are a form of torture, and I will continue to deny your fire any fuel because if fed you will grow into the inferno of hell itself.
She wondered if Anna were awake still. Anna didn't like Ian either, and they could find some wine and get besotted and tear him to shreds with insults—
“What the hell are you doing in here?” The harsh low voice came from the doorway. Reyna twisted her head to see Ian. She had been so distracted by her furious thoughts that she hadn't heard the door open.
“Sleeping. It was rude to awaken me.”
“You were not asleep. I heard you come in.”
He strode into the chamber and glared down at her. She sat up against the wall and glared back, taking in the tautness of his body and the deep lights in his eyes. He looked as angry as she felt. She thought that took a lot of gall on his part.
“You were up half the night with that man,” he said crisply.
“He is a friend whom I rarely see, and we had much to discuss.”
“I'll wager that you did. Did you debate philosophy all these hours, Reyna?”
His insinuation made her blood pulse hard. He had just bedded buxom Eva, and he dared to throw accusations at her. The strain to control her fury pained her, and her head split from the effort. Deciding that speaking would undo her, she just looked at him, meeting his query with the same cold silence he had once given one of hers.
With an abrupt movement he turned on the writing table, grabbed its edge, jerked his arms upright, and threw it violently against the wall. One board split from the force of the impact. Parchments and quills flew out in all directions and fluttered to the floor like the debris of an autumn storm.
Her fragile control broke with the table. Pulling the bedsheet around her body, she bolted to her feet. “You despicable son of the devil. By what right do you—”
“You are my wife. If I ask what you have been doing half the night with a man, you will answer me.”
“We spent most of the time cursing you!”
“And the rest of the time?”
Complex, ominous emotions streaked out of him, unsettling the air in the room like lightning, but she didn't give a damn. “Is that what this is about? Is that the reason for this display of outrage now? You still cling to the notion that Edmund and I share that kind of love? You madman. He is a celibate knight. Do not judge all men by your base standards, you English whoreson.”
“My standards may be base, but I can spot a man who wants something when I see him. What did Saint Edmund want of you, wife?”
A dangerous, cold peace swept away the heat of her fury. She hadn't really calmed, but merely found the center of her storm. They faced each other a mere armspan away, two tense bodies locked over space by unwavering eyes.
“He wanted to take me away,” she said. “He doesn't trust you to protect me if you find it does not benefit you. Like a fool, I refused him, but no sooner did I climb those stairs than I regretted that decision.”
His jaw clenched. “And so you came here to your philosopher's study to reconsider? To subject that dutiful decision to cold logic and weigh your options?”
“I came here because your slut was leaving your bed when I passed the solar door.”
He didn't reply to her accusation, but then, what could he say? The winds of fury began rising in her again. “Did you intend me to find you together, Ian, or would you have been satisfied if I just learned about it from the servants' gossip tomorrow? Tell me, you rutting knave, did you call for her because I was not there to satisfy a passing hunger, or did you plan this as revenge and punishment because I dared delay with my friend and not attend on you as was customary?”
His eyes got hotter, but she didn't back down. She felt too hurt and angry to know any fear. A horrible tension arced between them. She almost hoped that he would hit her so that she could strike a few blows of her own, if only to relieve the tightness racking her.
He turned away, hands on hips. “If it had been as you say, it would have been no more than you deserved. You should have been here, and not with him.”
“Damn you. Edmund is a friend who loves me as you never will. Like a fool, I chose against all logic to trust you more than him, and like a spiteful child, you lash out because for one evening you have not had all the attention.”
He swung back to face her with a startled expression, but his face quickly retreated into its hard planes. “It is neither childish nor spiteful for a man to want his wife with him the night before he rides off to war, Reyna.”
A physical blow could not have shocked her more. The impact of his words knocked the anger out of her completely.
She felt the full onslaught of the emotions thundering out of him. The anger and desire she recognized, but there were other currents there, too, unfamiliar ones. Gusts of needs and yearnings that did not have names seemed to be feeding the storm of his mood.
“When did you learn this?” she asked.
“The messenger came just after you left the hall. I will leave in the morning.” His voice carried a bitter edge.
“Why didn't you come and tell me, or send word?”
“It was clear that you longed to talk with your knight and discuss your misfortune. I sensed that he wanted something from you, but I did not think him so bold as to violate my hospitality by trying to steal my wife.”
“That implies—it was not—” She let the explanations die. She did not want to talk about Edmund anymore. Worry and fear had replaced her anger. Edmund's warnings, Eva's smile, even this wounding argument, had become instantly insignificant.
In a few hours Ian was leaving. Going away, and not to a quick battle on the border, but to a dangerous siege where men died every day while they scaled walls on which the enemy waited with arrows and fire.
They still faced each other stiffly, like stone statues decorating a building buffeted by a soundless gale.
“How long will you be gone?”
“Two weeks. A month. Until it ends.”
Two weeks. A m
onth. Forever. “Do you go alone?”
“I will bring most of the company with me. Your Hospitaller will have to leave in the morning, because the gate will close when we depart and none will enter without my sign.” He was not looking at her directly, but she could see the steely lights glowing in the depths of his eyes.
She ached to bridge the space between them, but his stance and face said the few feet of wooden floor might as well have been a mile of cliffs. She took one step anyway, and raised a tentative hand as if to touch him. It hovered there, not completing its path, a helpless, frail command for the whirlwind to calm. “So we will live as in siege until your return?”
“You will not. Morvan has ordered that his wife and sister be sent to Carlisle. You are going with them.”
Going to Carlisle sounded so permanent, as if he were sending her to the other side of the world. “This is my home, Ian. I do not understand.”
“You will be safe there.”
“I will be safe here.”
“Not if Morvan fails and I die.”
A soul-tearing anguish full of fear and regret and love had been building inside her, and it overwhelmed her now so badly that her throat clenched and her eyes burned. Groping for composure, she took refuge in practicalities. “You are right. I should have been here. You expected me to see to preparations, and your departure will be delayed now. I will wake the servants in a few hours, and—”
“I do not give a damn about preparations.” He reached out and grabbed her and pulled her across the divide, into his turbulence. The violent movement so startled her that she cried out. Iron fingers gripped her upper arms, practically lifting her feet from the floor, and he looked at her with dark, intense eyes. “For a widow married twelve years, there is much you don't know about being a wife.”
The danger in his eyes and the brutal grip of his hands should have frightened her, but they didn't. She did not understand much about this mood, but she recognized some of it.
“Then it is for you to guide me,” she whispered.
Lord of a Thousand Nights Page 21