Samantha James

by The Truest Heart

  She was spent and shaking when he lifted her onto the bed. He pressed a cup to her lips and ordered her to rinse and spit into a basin. Gillian obeyed, then sagged back, utterly drained. Gareth did not leave, but took a place beside her, wiping her face with a cool cloth. When he finished, he set it aside.

  As always, she felt the pull of his gaze. She turned her head on the pillow to gaze at him. Why, he was smiling, the wretch! Never had she been so miserable in her life—and he would make light of it!

  “Oh!” she gasped. “Do you enjoy seeing me like this?”

  His knuckles skimmed down her cheek, resting there. “Don’t you know why you’re ill?”

  Aye, she knew. Deep in her heart, she knew. But she had been afraid to believe it. Afraid to acknowledge it to Gareth. Afraid he would gloat…

  As it appeared he did now, for he still wore that abominable smile.

  “Gillian,” he said softly,” ’tis the babe you carry.”

  Her bewildered astonishment made him want to chuckle. He suspected he didn’t dare.

  “I know,” she said testily. “But how do you know?”

  “You’ve not had your courses since we’ve been here at Sommerfield,” he said calmly. “I know. I watched for it.”

  His bluntness shocked her to the core.

  “My guess is that you quickened almost at once.” A light danced in his eyes. “Perhaps even the very first time we lay together.” He laid his hand on her belly. “I suspect you’re nearly three months gone.”

  “Three months!” She tried her best to glare at him.

  “There have been changes in you,” he said simply. “Have you not noticed?”

  “Changes?” Her heart was beating madly. Somewhere inside her, she knew he was right.

  “I fear there is no delicate way to put this.” He paused deliberately. A brow climbed aloft. “Your breasts, love. They have grown quite…ample.” His lips twitched. “They strain the fabric of your gowns…but quite enticingly, I might add.”

  Gillian colored hotly and dragged her arms across her chest. She had noticed. For a time, she’d thought she was merely growing fat. Indeed, she’d let out the seams in several gowns lest they burst. But she’d had no idea that he noticed. And if he had, had anyone else?

  Lean fingers wound around her wrists and pulled them away. He bent low, his aim unerring. Through the cloth of her gown, his tongue ringed the very peak of first one ripe mound, then the other. When he raised his head, his grin was purely wicked.

  “And there, my love…I’ve noticed you feel quite plump and full in my mouth…and are you not more acutely sensitive there as well?”

  Gillian sputtered. It was true, her nipples had been more sensitive—oh, for a long time now! Sometimes her breasts had even ached in a way that had never happened before. She hadn’t known such things went hand-in-hand with pregnancy. Perhaps she should have, but she hadn’t.

  “Do not look at me like that, you swaggering oaf! You boast to the king that I am with child when my womb is empty yet now I am three months gone!…Why must everything come so easily for you? And how is it you know so much about a woman with child?”

  “It does not come easily. I’ve lost half my life, lady, for I remember but half.” He tapped his head. “As for knowing such things about women…” He stopped. All at once his smile faded.

  Gillian stared. “Aye, I suppose you would,” she said weakly. “This is not new to you. You were with Celeste when she carried Robbie—”

  “Nay,” he said, his tone oddly strained. “Not just Robbie.”

  Her gaze sharpened. His expression was strange. A half-formed suspicion winged through her.

  “What, Gareth? Was there another babe?”

  Holding her breath, she sat up slowly. He never even noticed. His gaze was fixed on a point beyond her shoulder. ’Twas as if he were in another place…another time.

  “Aye,” he said slowly. “Celeste was with child when she died.”

  Gillian caught her breath. “Dear God! Gareth, I’m sorry. I-I didn’t know.”

  “How could you?” His tone was very low, almost hoarse. “I’ve only just remembered myself.”

  She looked at him sharply. A horrible thought clutched at her. “Did she die in childbirth?”

  “Nay.” He seemed to speak with difficulty. “She was like you, I think…several months gone. It was winter. She had been ill, I think. I remember…a pall hanging thick in the room. The smell of sickness. Being with her at the last. Hands clasped feebly within my own…”

  A flicker of pain sped across his features—she was certain of it. His eyes closed, then opened. Whatever she had seen was gone.

  He shook his head, “There is no more.”

  Gillian’s chest ached. Oh, God. How sad. Her throat closed, raw with tears unshed. Both for his loss…

  And her own.

  “Did you love her?” she asked in a voice that ground her very heart.

  His silence cleaved her cleanly in two.

  She looked away, a suffocating heaviness in her breast. “I’m sorry,” she said haltingly. “I should not have asked such a thing—”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  Her gaze swung back to his. “What?”

  “I cannot say that I loved her.” His tone was very quiet, his expression somber. “I cannot say that I did not. If you had not told me I dreamed of a woman with golden hair—if I’d not been told that Robbie has the same pale hair, I would not know. I have tried to recall her, but I can summon neither face nor form. When I think of her, there is naught but a void.”

  He paused. “At times it happens just as it did at the cottage—a blink of an eye…and I recall with absolute certainty. At other times, ’tis as if a door has been left ajar, and the memories creep in, little by little. But with Celeste, there has been naught to revive my days with her,” he said again. For the longest time, he said nothing.

  “What will come…will come,” he said at last. “I have accepted that there are many things from my past I may never recall—and so should you, sweet.”

  Pierced by a bittersweet pang, Gillian regarded him. Did he lie? Did he seek to spare her? Yet what reason was there? It wasn’t as if he loved her…

  Suddenly it was all rushing out. “I know what you would say, Gareth…and yet, something inside tells me it must be awful for you, being here at Sommerfield without her.”

  “Why?” he said.

  “You know why,” she said painfully. The breath she drew scalded her lungs. “Your wife—”

  With the press of blunted fingers on the swell of her lips, he halted her outburst. “Is you,” he finished. “You are my wife, Gillian.” He caught her in his arms and brought her against him, once again the commanding lord.

  “Now come here, wife…”

  Gillian clung to him—to his powerful strength—burying her head against his neck and stifling a jagged half-sob. He must have sensed the ragged tumult that crashed inside her, for he cradled her against him, easing down beside her on the bed. He stayed with her for a long while, in time tucking one arm beneath his head. His free hand idly sifted through her hair, occasionally catching a wayward lock and bringing it to his lips.

  She must have dozed, for when she awoke, the sunlight was leeched from the sky. Shadows steeped the corners of the chamber.

  Gareth was gone.

  He did not make love to her that night. Gillian suffered the loss keenly, hating the doubt which crowded her breast. For she could not help but wonder…

  …if the reason was Celeste.

  19

  IN STARK CONTRAST TO THE LOVELINESS OF THE previous day, the next was cloudy, the wind raw. Gareth had risen at dawn to begin the labors of the day. Gillian rose cautiously several hours later. As the day progressed, no more sickness plagued her, and for that she was glad.

  It was early evening when the blare of a horn sounded. She glanced toward the gatehouse, thinking it was a group returned from the hunt. She was about to tu
rn away as the body of men dismounted. But then two men disengaged themselves from the others and walked toward the hall.

  Her heart lurched. Unless she was mistaken, the two were Lord Geoffrey Covington and Lord Roger Seymour.

  Within the hour she knew for certain when Gareth strode into the room. “We have visitors,” he announced. “Covington and Seymour.”

  “So I saw.” Dark, slender brows arose. “Will they be staying the night?”

  “Aye.” Booted feet wide apart, he paused before her, an imposing figure garbed in shirt, leather vest, and tight hose that outlined the tautly muscled length of his legs.

  Her chin came up. He was so tall she had to angle her neck to glimpse his face. Her hands knotted in her skirts. “I confess I’m curious. Is it me they seek, or you?”

  Her gaze met his with a boldness that surpassed even her own expectation.

  “I’ve been summoned by the king,” he said curtly. “I ride with them in the morning to join him at Winchester for further detail.”

  Winchester was the royal castle where John’s father, Henry, had shut away his wife Eleanor for sixteen long years. The shiver that went through Gillian was swiftly suppressed. In its stead was a stinging, heated resentment.

  “Well,” she stated coolly, “I wonder who it is he would have you murder this time.”

  Strong hands seized her shoulders, hauling her upright so suddenly she was robbed of breath.

  Green eyes glittered as he cursed baldly. “Dammit, Gillian, but you are willful and stubborn. I begin to think you are not worth the trouble I’ve taken with you!”

  Her feelings lay scattered to the winds. A part of her longed to throw herself into his arms and feel them close about her with the warmth and protectiveness that only he could give. But another part longed to pummel her fists against his chest and scream her outrage that he had invited the king’s men to stay beneath this very roof.

  It was that which won out. Her icy disdain pricked his temper and fired her own.

  “Let me go, Gareth!”

  He held her fast. Stormy green eyes flickered over her. “Not until we understand each other, milady. Now. Our supper awaits in the hall. We will go down together—”

  “I will not sit at table with the king’s men!”

  The smile he offered was tight. “You will sit at table with the devil himself if I so decree, lady.”

  Their eyes locked. Her lips opened. A narrowed look from those green eyes squelched her retort, but not her rebellion.

  He scowled. “Be civil,” he growled. “That is all I ask.”

  With that he hooked his fingers into her elbows and pulled her from the room. Gillian simmered all the way down to the hall. He was right, she decided heatedly. Indeed, she would sit with the devil—all three of them!

  Both men rose when they entered the room. Gillian greeted them politely.

  Roger Seymour looked her boldly up and down. “You hide your child, well, madam. When do you expect it?”

  Gillian stiffened. It was a trap. She knew it, as surely as she knew the man was a scoundrel of the highest degree—little wonder that he served King John.

  Beside her, she felt Gareth’s tautness. From the corner of her eye, she saw he was about to speak. But her answer was surprisingly ready at the fore. “The middle of September,” she said smoothly. In truth, if Gareth was right, ’twould be nearly a month later…

  Supper was a tense, strained affair. An icy knot coiled heavy in the pit of her stomach, so that she was scarcely able to eat.

  During the meal, Geoffrey Covington leaned close. “My lady,” he said, “why do I have the feeling we’ve met before?”

  Gillian’s gaze veered sharply to his face. He was a handsome man, with russet hair and steady brown eyes. She encountered no hint of either malice nor trickery in the manner of his gaze. It was Covington, she recalled, who had urged the king to stay his punishment. She would never have trusted him—after all, he served the king! But if Geoffrey Covington had been the only one present, she’d not have been quite so wary.

  “I cannot say, sir,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ve never been to court. Indeed, I-I’d never even laid eyes on the king until his arrival here at Sommerfield.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Then it seems I’m mistaken.”

  He spoke to her several other times throughout the long meal. Gillian was not the sort to be swayed by a handsome face and a winsome smile, but with his quietly engaging manner, somehow it wasn’t as difficult to be gracious to him.

  As for Roger Seymour…she disliked him. He frightened her. His black eyes put her in mind of a wild dog, mean and vicious, darting all around. At Westerbrook, she’d seen such a dog attack a peasant once. It took two men with swords to halt the dog’s attack. The man had been covered in blood, his arm badly mangled.

  Gareth touched her repeatedly during the meal, sliding a hand along the back of her chair, toying with a lock of hair that curled on her shoulder. He even pulled her hand onto his thigh and weaved his fingers through her own. Gillian clenched her teeth; she’d not forgotten their bitter exchange upstairs. Not only that, but it was a daringly intimate gesture before others. Was it to needle her? Or for Covington and Seymour’s benefit? No doubt ’twas a little of both. Outwardly she smiled; inwardly she smoldered.

  By the time the last tray was served, her nerves were would so tightly she wanted to scream. Her head ached horribly. She longed for nothing more than to escape to her room. Robbie had been present throughout the meal as well. When those at the table began to disperse, she murmured her intention to put the boy to bed; his nurse had been given leave to retire for the night.

  His hand in hers, they made their way into the passageway off the hall. But she stopped short when she spied the silhouette of two figures a few footsteps away—a man and a woman. The angle was such that she couldn’t make out his face. He had a woman pinned to the wall, his hand up her skirts, his mouth fastened greedily on hers.

  Gillian glanced down at Robbie, who had yet to notice the pair. “Come,” she said hastily. “Let us go the other way.” It was in her mind to turn and tiptoe away, back to the hall. But then she heard a low moan.

  It was not a moan of pleasure.

  “Nay,” the woman pleaded raggedly. Her voice was laden heavy with tears. “Please, nay!”

  Gillian’s gaze swung back over her shoulder. Her eyes widened. Why, it was Lynette…

  Lynette had spied her. “My lady,” she cried.

  She did not stop to think, she simply acted. Springing forward, she grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and yanked as hard as she could. His head snapped back and he yowled.

  It was Seymour. As he whirled around to behold his attacker, his elbow came up and swung wide. It caught Gillian in the chest, sending her tumbling to the cold floor.

  There was a blur. Robbie lunged forward, sinking his teeth into Seymour’s thigh. Seymour grunted. The way his eyes widened in shock at the sight of his small assailant was immensely gratifying. But in the very next instant, he grabbed Robbie by the neck of his tunic and gave him a shove. The boy landed in a heap near Gillian. Gillian snatched him against her, enclosing him in her embrace, turning his body into hers, shielding him. Fire blazed in her eyes as she heaved herself upright. Flinging up her head, she bravely faced down Seymour’s wrath.

  Menace contorted his features. His lips drew back over his teeth in a snarl, just like the wild dog she’d likened him to.

  “By Jesus Christ, I’ll teach you, bitch,” he swore. A meaty hand clenched into a fist, he drew back his hand.

  His arm was caught and twisted behind his back. A hand like a vise wound around his wrist, the grip so merciless that his eyes bulged in pain.

  “You’ve been offered the hospitality of my home, Seymour. But if you dare to lay a hand on my wife or my son—aye, even my wife’s maid—it will be withdrawn. And I do believe I will have to kill you.”

  Sir Marcus and Covington stood near Gareth. He delivered
his ultimatum calmly, yet there was something utterly forbidding about him just now.

  Seymour was released. Gillian sensed that were Seymour to make one false move, Gareth would make good on his prediction.

  Lynette had yet to move. She stood frozen, her palms flat against the wall, still gasping in fright. Marcus stepped forward. He took Robbie from Gillian’s arms, then gently took Lynette’s elbow and pulled her away.

  It was Geoffrey who broke the tense, expectant silence with an uneasy laugh. “Well, Seymour, ’twould seem you met your match in those two.”

  Seymour glared at him, then transferred his regard to Gareth. He nodded at Gillian, still rubbing his wrist.

  “You ride with us on the morrow ’neath the king’s banner, so I will defer to you in this, Sommerfield. Indeed, I doubt the wench is worth it!” He hitched his chin toward Lynette with a sneer. “As for your wife, I vow she is as treacherous as her father, the traitor! Since you are one of us, I’m surprised you’ve survived so many weeks with her—that she hasn’t slit your throat in the dead of night!”

  Gareth greeted this with a lazily observant smile. “I have no regrets, Seymour. I daresay she is a wife well pleased, as I am a husband well pleased.” He reached for Gillian and brought her to her side. “Mayhap you should take note that you may find such a woman for yourself.”

  Gillian bristled, slightly indignant. Well pleased, was she? Well, she was that, but still…

  Gareth inclined his head with a thin smile. “I bid you both good night, gentlemen, and I will see you in the morn.”

  With that Gillian found herself hustled toward the bedchamber. Gareth paused only to order that two sentries be posted outside Seymour’s door.

  In the bedchamber, she raised her brows. “Sentries, my lord, and two of them. Could it be you do not trust him?”

  “Nay,” he said curtly. He frowned, his gaze sliding over her. “Did he harm you?”

  “Oh, so now he thinks to ask! As much as you will leave with him in the morn, would it matter if he did?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Tell me, Gillian.”