She walked to the hearth and held the parchment to the embers until it began to smoke and caught fire. When it was nothing but ash she extinguished the lamp she held.
There was a chair in the room where Robert slept, hard and uncomfortable even with the thick pillow that was on its seat. She sat there, in the dark, hands folded in her lap. The sounds of the castle drifted in for an hour or so, drunken stumblings past the door, faint strains of music fading in and out. It grew quiet as she sat unmoving, all the world asleep as she looked back at the path that had led her here.
She thought of Gwenllian as a child, her grubby face by candlelight and her sweet sleeping breath as Eluned decided she must let Robert go. But Gwenllian was grown now, and fierce, and feared no man – just as Eluned had wanted. She thought of Walter’s fervent praying, the strength in his hands and the wildness in his eyes. But Walter was dead. Her fate was no longer bound to him.
Tentatively, by slow and timid degrees, as though something in her expected disaster if it was done too freely, she let herself remember the feel of Robert. First, his hand in hers, fingers entwined as he swore he still saw the girl he had loved. Then his kiss. His arms around her. His mouth on her. A tangle of vivid memories undimmed by time: he sorted her hair into a braid as she hummed a Welsh melody, her heart soaring at the sight of him returning from his meeting with Aaron, the feel of her face stretched wide in a helpless smile while he admired the elusive dimple in her cheek.
A dream. It was all a beautiful dream. And so she had told herself for years. Now she looked at the bed curtains as they were gradually lit with the breaking dawn, and allowed herself to believe it was possible. The dream could be made real. There was no unbearable price, no delicate balance to consider. She could have what she wanted. She truly could.
If he still wanted her.
Eluned gathered her arms around herself under the cloak. She wanted more than anything to enter the warmth of his bed, slip behind the curtains and burrow beneath the covers, wrap herself around him until no part of her was cold. But she had no right. She could only wait for his waking as she carefully examined a lifetime of choices and desires and defenses.
When the sun was fully up, she heard him stirring. Before she was ready, he was there, pushing aside the bed curtains and grimacing against the light as his feet dropped to the floor. He stopped, the smooth flow of his movements suspended when he saw her, the simple shirt he had worn to sleep in pulled crookedly across his chest, gaping at the throat. He blinked in surprise. Her heart beat out of control as his glance flicked over her, no doubt wondering why she was here after so many days of their cordially ignoring one another.
He was drawing a breath now, opening his mouth to say something. He would admonish her to leave him in peace, or say something cutting, and she must speak first to stop him.
“I was not a girl,” she said, nonsensically, her mind serving up an obscure insight that had moments ago floated through her thoughts. It was the wrong place to start; he could not be expected to understand, but she persevered. “All these years, I have remembered myself as a girl who foolishly fell into love, reckless and rash. I told myself…that we must all leave youth behind, and childish impulses, and girlish infatuations. But it was a lie.” Beneath the cloak she pressed her hands hard against her chest, willing her breath to slow. “I was not a girl. I was a woman grown, and I loved you with a woman’s heart.”
He looked at her, faintly perplexed but silent as she searched for more words. She had known, once, how to speak the truth of her heart – unvarnished, with no art and no caution. Had she lost that, too? As she hesitated, he began to move. He was going to stand and walk away and dismiss her, and the thought of it brought her to her feet. She held her hand out, a staying motion.
“Robin. Please.”
At the sound of his name he stopped his movement. He looked at her outstretched hand as though transfixed, and lowered himself again to sit on the bed. She looked down at his hair, tousled from sleep, and wanted to smooth it with her fingers. It seemed to her that she must explain herself, every moment that she had lived and how she had lived it, since she had parted from him in the dark with unseen bruises on her jaw and the taste of her tears mingled with the smell of rosemary. But there was so much, and she was so weary, and she only wanted to put herself in his arms.
She feared he still preferred to hunt wolves in the snow than to be in her presence. She stepped forward, close enough that she could touch him if she dared. She did not, yet.
“You said that loving me was the making of you. But it was losing you that was the making of me.” She breathed the next words, the bare truth of it too awful for anything but a whisper. “I do not like what it has made me. Nor can I be what I once was. Not without you.”
He turned his face up, a wary look. “What do you ask me?” His voice was hoarse with sleep. The wintry light picked out the lines around his eyes, just as she was sure it highlighted the years in her face. There could be no illusion that she was very far, in every way, from the young love whose image he had cherished for so long.
“I ask…” It felt wrong, standing above him like this, so she lowered herself slowly to her knees. Her hands folded over his where it rested on the bed. “I ask if you will trust me with your heart again, cariad. I ask you will not forget the woman who loved you with abandon, lest I forget her too. I ask…” Her breath caught as she looked at him and saw the careful reserve on his face. “I ask too much, because you are right when you say I dream no small dreams. I am greedy beyond reason, that I should ask to be your lover as well as your wife.”
He looked away. His hand moved under hers, flexing into a fist that pressed into the bed as he spoke. “I have been blind to so much. A willful blindness, and it is only now that I begin to see it as my own failing.” Still he did not look at her. “Yet though I may blame myself for it in the end, I am certain sure I cannot forgive you if you will embrace me again only to flee from me in the night and turn cold in the morn.”
She tightened her hand around his. “I swear by my hope of heaven, Robert, if you will have me in your bed again all the armies of the king could not drag me out of it.”
She felt the skin of his wrist gather into goosebumps, heard his exhalation of breath that might be a laugh. But when she looked in his face there was only wariness and caution.
What would she become, if he would not have her? It raised a dread and a desolation in her breast, an icy clutch at her heart, and her words tumbled out. “There is much to tell you, I know. In faith I cannot be unchanged by so many years and haps you will not want me as before, is in our nature to–”
But now his hands were moving, seizing her face with a sweeping motion to bring his lips to hers and he was kissing her, paying no heed to her babble of words. The threatening panic in her breast burst instead into warmth and color, a chaos of feeling that she recognized. It was of a piece with the sunlight on her back, the feel of his hair between her fingers, this old familiar craving that had never left her.
When she reached to remove her belt, he found the clasp of her cloak. Their hands moved in concert to peel off her surcoat, he pulling her undertunic over her head while she rid herself of her shoes, only breaking the kiss when they could not help it – practiced movements, learned together and never forgotten. He leaned back into the bed and took her with him, until she was braced on her forearms above him.
Oh, let him not regret it. Let him not see all of her in the daylight again, and regret how different she was from their youth. There would be time enough, when she told him of her many sins, for him to reckon the distance from that summer. But for now let her look at him stretched beneath her as she sat up, straddled across him, the ache between her legs pressed against his hardness as she unraveled her braid. Let her have this moment, little though she deserved it, when he watched her with something like reverence in his eyes and raked his fingers through her hair until it spread free across her shoulders.
“I dr
eamed of this,” he said. He curled a handful of her hair around his fist, looking at it transfixed. “For so long, I dreamed of it.”
She smiled a little wistfully. “Too long. In your dreams there was no silver in my hair, or yours.”
“There was,” he said, pressing his lips to it, pulling her gently down to him. “That was the dream even then, that we would grow old together.”
She hid her face against his neck, too overcome to do anything but stay there, her arms wrapped around him. The heat of him soaked into every part of her, banished the cold that had been her nearest companion for so long. His hands smoothed down her back, his hips lifting a little under her, stoking the hunger in her. She kissed him then, as they shifted and moved to bring him into her. Their breaths mingled and she held him there, deep inside.
It felt new and miraculous – and comfortable and familiar and true. She could not fathom that she had ever been so foolish that she had wanted anything else, ever in her life, but to have this.
She pulled her head back so she could see his face. “I love you, Robert,” she said into his eyes. “I love you.” She said it again, between kisses on his lips and across his face until she reached his ear, where she whispered it again and again until she was breathless and gasping.
Years and years to make up for, she told herself as he moved in her. And she would fill the days left to them with loving him freely – declaring it, gasping it – in daylight and in darkness. However it pleased them, so long as he would have her, she would love him with her last breath.
Chapter 12
The Bright
Robert moved his mouth up the furrow of her spine, taking his time to kiss every inch of it. He had meant it to tease her gently awake so that she might kiss him back and take him in her arms again. But if it did not cause her to wake and respond, then it allowed him to savor the taste of her naked skin at his leisure. By the time his lips reached the nape of her neck, he decided he was not sure which he wanted more. They were equally delightful prospects and he really only cared that she was here in his bed.
In spite of the cold, he’d pulled the bed curtains open just enough to let in the sun. It was too irresistible, to make love to her in the daylight and to watch it touch her nakedness while she slept next to him. It was in daylight that he had always known her, had always pictured her during their years apart.
She came awake with a soft little sigh and pushed herself against him, comfortable and inviting, her bottom pressed against his erection. It banished all the idle thoughts from his mind and set off an animal hunger. His teeth against her neck, her hand coming up to the back of his head to hold him there, the wetness that was between her legs when his fingers parted her flesh – it was feeling and not thought, nothing but raw sensation. He took her from behind, her gasps and moans fueling his movements until they both collapsed together, limp and sweaty limbs entwined in the sunlight. All of him ached with the familiarity of it, the delicious delight.
Eventually she turned over beneath him, sighed, and declared herself desperately thirsty.
“Is strange the servants have not come,” he noted, eyeing the window where the light streamed through. “It is well past the hour to break fast.”
“I have told them they must not disturb us unless we call them. Last night, I thought if…” Her smile dimmed a little, as though she was loathe to introduce even the idea of uncertainty. “But first I told them to leave drink and some small refreshment. There will be that, at least, in the outer room.”
“Then it is for me to bring it here, for you have sworn that you will not leave my bed,” was his happy reply as he pulled himself up on his elbows to hover over her. “And I shall hold you to it, cariad.” He kissed her deeply.
“You may hold me any way you like,” she answered, smiling against his lips.
He indulged in one more kiss before dashing out to find the tray. The air was cold so he was quick, but still there was something lost when he returned to her. It was the first bit of awareness, the first recognition that they could not go on as though the world had fallen away. She was looking at the little window of opaque glass, an echo of sadness in those great gray eyes. Daylight had its drawbacks.
“If we must reckon with reality, let it not be on an empty stomach,” he said, and set the tray on the small table beside the bed. He poured sweet water from the jug into a cup and as he handed it to her, she held out one of the stuffed wastel breads from the platter. She tucked her feet under her and drank. He sat in front of her in the same pose, their knees touching, and broke the bread in half. There were bits of apple in it, and he held out half to her.
She took it, but did not eat. Instead she pulled a blanket across her shoulders, another across her bare legs, then drank and watched him eat. Finally she set the cup aside and looked down at the bread.
“It shames me that I have thought little, and spoken even less, of the lordship that will be yours, what best to do with the lands and for the people…” Her fingers were now pinching off bits of the bread, rolling it between her fingers restlessly. “And verily, they will be your lands and your people – yours to rule as you see fit and as your king commands it. Nor would I want ever to dictate or interfere.”
He tried and failed to suppress his grin. “But?”
She looked up, those heavy lashes sweeping in a way that drew all his attention, the answering quirk of her lips unmistakable before she pressed them together. “But I have considered such improvements to Dinwen as I think are not amiss, which will make it a fit place to live until the castle that Edward commands is built. I would…if you will not object, I would know where towns will be chartered, so to have some say in their placement if it is possible.”
“I am not such a vain fool that I must pretend a superior wisdom in this matter,” he said easily. “They will be our lands, and our people. Not mine alone.”
He was gratified to see her relax at this, and take a bite of the bread before laying out her thoughts. Indeed it seemed to release a floodgate of words and ideas, her speech gathering momentum so that she often forgot her mouth was full as she detailed her plans. She seemed to be thinking it through for the first time, ideas sprouting forth and feeding off each other, her brow furrowed in thoughtfulness as she flicked a look up to him from time to time, asking, “Would that not be too soon?” or “Unless you would prefer to invest elsewhere?” or “Is that right? Is there aught I have forgotten to consider in my haste?”
It was a joy to watch her come alive with it. For the first time since their shared youth, she did not carefully choose her words. He thought he might like to stay here and listen to her unguarded talk and eat bread until he became fat and old. And happy. Terribly, terribly happy.
When she began to ask about the vineyards and the money to be made from the wine – how much he expected and what must go back into the French estate to best increase its yield – he dragged himself out of his happy stupor to answer her. He estimated barrels of wine, the cost of transport, and at her suggestion the price he might pay for his own ships. “I will have my steward send copies of the ledgers,” he said finally, knowing she had an itch that would only go away when she could see every fact laid before her.
“I will satisfy myself that your steward is honest,” she said, straightening her spine a little. “But though I would learn enough that I am not entirely ignorant, I would not take the management of it from you. It is the Welsh lands that are to be made England that I would concern myself with, as much as you think it good and proper.”
“I will gladly heed your counsel in the matter of those lands and those people.” He would not have thought it needed saying, but she had the air of someone who was determined to stake a claim. “Already have I said that I am not such a vain fool, Eluned. You understand these matters more deeply, just as I better understand the French lands.”
A smile spread across her face, a lively delight that she buried in the cup from which she drank. She swallowed and looked up at
him with a more sober expression. How like her, to forgo the use of her smile, her eyes – all the feminine wiles that might easily dazzle a man, make him agree to anything. She never used them, at least not with him. She never had, and he wondered if she even knew the power she possessed.
“The towns, I think,” she was saying. “If we can but influence their number and where they are placed…Know you yet how far west it will reach?”
“Simon will know,” he said, busying himself with pouring more drink for them both. “He can say what boundaries are considered, and where Edward is thinking to build castles and towns.”
Something must have shown in his face at the mention of Simon. As he pulled his blanket up further to cover his shoulders, he felt her touch on his knee, gentle and uncertain.
“Have you argued with your brother?” She said it almost teasingly, but when he met her eyes she took her hand from his knee. “You need not confide in me, Robert. Only please do not say that all is well when your disquiet is plain to me.”
To think she believed he would not tell her of it, when he had longed for it from the moment it had happened.
“Never have I had a hope of deceiving you, nor even the desire. I am only reluctant to tell you of my own witlessness and pride.” He curled his fingers around his cup, to have something solid to hold on to. “I have an uncommon talent for deceiving myself, I think.”
He told her, then, of everything his brother had said and all that his father had done. He could not banish the near memory of Simon’s unhappy face as he confessed the ruse, nor the specter of Kit’s concern these many months and his wife’s worry, their son’s unjust treatment. All because he could not let go the habit of spiting his father. He did not try to put it into words, but trusted her to understand the breadth of his failings. He only said that he had not thought his father would strike so low a blow. “Beneath the bitterness, I believed there was some love between us. Nor did I even know I believed that, until I saw there was not.”
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