Content, optimistic, at peace, she snuggled close beside Agravar, breathing his scent and falling asleep. And she was content for a while, until the dark tendrils of uncertainty clasped her in its cold, cold fingers.
Chapter Twenty
A woman was weeping.
Agravar opened his eyes and gazed at the sky. Morning. He blinked, taking in the crumpled walls, the stonework fingers clawing at the dawn. Where was he?
The sound of weeping came from beside him.
Mother? He had seen his mother weep before. Sometimes she would cover her face and sob quietly. She had never spoken to him. She had never touched him. Could this be his mother by his side, touching him now?
He reached to the head laid against his shoulder and lifted a tendril of her hair. Soft. Holding it up, he saw it was dark gold.
“Rosamund,” he whispered.
She lifted her face to him and smiled, then laughed. “Agravar. Thank God.”
He stared in wonder. It was her. Reaching for her, he murmured her name again. His hand closed over the back of her head and he brought her down to him to be kissed. She made a small noise. He thought it must be contentment, for she kissed him back.
Her hands splayed on his chest, moving restlessly. He twisted, bringing her down to lie across him. A sharp pain in his side warned him against the action, but he ignored it. It was nothing, forgotten the moment it receded.
Sliding his hand down her back, he rode the curve of her hip, to the top of her thigh. Breaking the kiss, she lay in the crook of his arm.
“I am dreaming,” he said huskily.
She smiled at him. “Nay, ’tis not a dream. It cannot be. My dreams are never this wonderful.”
“True. Then I must be awake. That means you are real. ’Tis even better.”
“Thank God, you are well. Do you know you would have broken my heart if anything had happened to you?”
“I knew no such thing. Mayhap you would have counted yourself well rid of me.”
“Never,” she said fiercely, kissing him again. “I love you, you dreadful man.” Her lips brushed along his stubbled cheek, laying tiny kisses in the corners of his mouth. “You dogged my every step, watched me until I thought I would scream, you pestered and followed and questioned and generally made me wish to have you boiled in oil.”
He drew back, staring with amused shock. “’Tis the strangest declaration of love I have ever heard.”
“Mayhap. But ’tis all of it true.”
“Aye, ’tis. I did it because you had me in your grasp from the moment you wielded my broken sword at me. I could not put you from my mind, and if ’twas one of us who bedeviled the other, ’twas I who was put upon by you.”
“You? Nay.”
“Aye. Hopelessly besotted, I was. Do not pretend you did not know it.”
“I swear!”
He ran his fingers down the curve of her neck, savoring the lazy way her eyes drifted closed. “You were always a wretched liar.”
“A fine knight you are. You kiss me, then insult me.”
“’Tis only fair play after your example. You kiss me, then strike me on the head.”
“’Twas not I!”
“Your man did it, then—the same thing. Where is Davey, by the by?”
“I left him down by the lee.”
He grew serious. “You missed your ship.”
“I came back to…” She shrugged. “’Twas my fault Davey did what he did. I had to come back. If you had perished, I would have gone insane, I think.”
“Lucien will find me, in time,” Agravar warned gently. “When they have routed out the village and the woods, they will come this way. In fact, I am surprised he has not come already. ’Tis odd, now that I think of it. I wonder what could have delayed him. The fact that I did not join him right off would have alerted him.”
“I am not concerned about the Lord of Gastonbury, nor the Lord of Berendsfore for that matter. ’Tis only the man I have before me I have a care for.”
“I had never thought to hear those words from any woman, least of all you.” He nuzzled her ear. “But I had hoped.”
“Then you do love me?”
“Have I not been saying so?”
“Actually, nay.” She erupted in wild giggles as his tongue traced the outline of her ear. The increased pressure of her hands on his shoulders told him she liked it. “You never actually said it.”
He stared at her, hard, and there was a fierce sincerity in his voice. “I do love you, Rosamund. With all my heart, I love you to madness and beyond.”
She grinned and joy shone from her eyes. “You have the tongue of a troubadour when you set your brain to it.”
“Do I? How amazing—I never knew I had a talented tongue. Allow me to show you its other uses.” Capturing her face, he brought it to him to be kissed.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed up against him, nearly stealing his breath away. He broke the kiss and slid his mouth along the delicate line of her jaw to the hollow just below her earlobe. She gave a short, crisp gasp and he answered with a throaty chuckle of pleasure. Taking the tip of his tongue, he gently ran it up the curve of her ear, touching lightly, breathing softly. At his shoulders, her fingers curled convulsively into the fabric of his tunic.
He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her face to his. Her gaze was hot, like honey warmed slowly on a fire. Her hands tangled in his hair as her eyes touched on his every feature.
“I am yours, Agravar,” she promised with solemnity. “Every bit of me belongs to you. I hardly understand it, but ’tis not something that can be subject to reason, I think. I just know deep in my soul that you are part of me, and were before we even met.”
She kissed him lightly, then deeply, then lightly again as if her emotions of tenderness and passion were all tangled up together.
“Does it sound too much like a jongleur’s song, do you think?” she asked. The insecurity in her voice made it tremble a bit. “Do you think me silvered of tongue? Or worse—hysterical? Overemotional?”
“Nay, Rosamund. Ah, my precious love, you have no idea what it is to me to hear you speak like this.” He smiled as she turned her face into his palm and placed a kiss on the callused flesh. “I never thought ’twas for me, Rosamund. I’ve waited for a sweet touch…” He broke off, ducking his head. “No matter.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“Now is not the time for that sort of musing, not when I have you. Right here, in my arms, if that miracle can be true, so let us not dwell on the bittersweet regrets of the past. Just now, Rosamund. Let us take this moment—no past nor future to dog us. You are mine, so you say, and so I will have that lovely thought for now.”
“Aye, I am yours, and ’tis forever.” She looked at him with wide, solemn eyes. “Forever in my heart. I swear it.”
“And my heart as well. I am yours, Rosamund, as true and fast as anything I’ve ever held dear.” He kissed her with passion, the demands of his flesh not fully in check.
He wanted her. So badly his whole body shook with the restraint it took to keep his hands from sliding down to the plump roundness of her breast, or from lifting her hem to test the length of her legs, the texture of their skin and the delicious curves hidden underneath the heavy folds of her skirts. But he would not dishonor her. As much as it burned inside his breast, in every limb and in the molten pit of heaviness in his groin, he refused to submit to desire.
“Come here,” he told her, and pulled her against his side, just as she had been when he awakened. She lay down, contented. A soft sigh fanned across his cheek. Her fingers traced the seams of his shirt.
“Are you feeling well?” she asked.
“Do I seem ill?” he countered with a tight laugh. The movement of her fingers set his teeth on edge and challenged his good intentions.
She nudged him playfully. “I meant your wound.”
His wound? Half of him could have been cut away and he would not have been awa
re of it. Other, more insistent, pangs were making themselves felt. “It pains me not.”
“You must take care,” she scolded. “I’ll not have you risk its healing. ’Twas in bad enough condition when I arrived and I toiled long and hard to set it aright. God, I set to trembling when I think about it even now. ’Twas dreadful.”
He laughed again, tenderness fusing with his smoldering arousal. “I like your fussing. ’Twould make me soft if I allowed it.”
“I doubt it very much.”
He lay his head back and focused on the brightening sky. It was clear, cloudless and vivid azure. Her hands were moving absently, rousing him to unbearable heights with their innocent wanderings.
He squinted, thinking of the particular mace he was having the armorer cast according to his specifications, the new chain mail he had only just purchased, and how well it was crafted. He thought of how his broadsword felt in his hands, heavy and familiar.
Anything but the stiffened part of him that was growing more difficult to ignore with each passing moment. Blast, each movement of hers, no matter how small, how innocent, sent jolts of reaction through him.
She didn’t know what she was doing, he told himself reasonably. She was but a maid. There was no way for her to realize the effect she was having on him.
Then she shifted her leg, adjusting herself tighter against his side, and her thigh brushed up against the swollen length of him.
Her eyes widened and caught his gaze.
He grimaced and sighed. “Rosamund, you must understand that men…being close like this with a woman you love—it brings on a lust in a man. I am only human, after all, though I would not—”
“Your body…it is like that because of me?”
He was stunned by her curiosity. His only ability to move was two short nods.
“Hmm,” she said, and it was as light as a sigh. “There is something inside me, too, Agravar, that feels tight and exciting…ah, but I know not how to explain it. Only that ’tis something to do with you. Only you.”
His voice was nearly a croak. “We should not speak of such things.”
“I want to know. Agravar,” she said carefully, “when you touch me, I feel…a longing.” She frowned, puzzling over the exact right words. “Or perhaps ’tis more of a need. Is it like that—?”
“Rosamund, please.” He took her gently by the shoulders and set her aside. Sitting up, he bit down hard against the pain in his side.
He got to his feet, then stumbled under the stiffness, the hurt of his wound. Beside him, she stayed seated, her legs curled around her. She appeared so fresh and young and innocent, and that made everything worse.
“Is there food?” he asked gruffly. “I am nigh starved.”
“But—” She broke off. “There is food over there.” She rose and walked past him, body rigid. “I shall get it for you.”
He felt immediate regret, but concentrated on his first, faltering steps. When he looked at her again, she was staring at him with her expression veiled. “Do not rip the wound open.” Her voice was flat.
Oh, Rosamund.
But he said, “I’ve received worse than this.”
“Of course.” Inclining her head, as if bowing to his superior knowledge in these matters, she turned and began to rummage among the items piled by the fire.
He limped over to her side. He did not bend down, though. Experienced or not, she was right about his not testing his endurance too far. The mending wound was still too new for his usual activity level. He doubted he could mount his destrier, for example.
It would not trouble him if he made love to her, he thought suddenly.
He shook the thought off, as if it were a cobweb caught in his hair. “Where did you get all this?”
She was still wounded. Refusing to look at him, she answered, “I stole it from a crofter.”
He grunted, impressed. “Let us hope he does not come hunting for the thief with a longbow and a quiver full of arrows.”
She whirled on him, retorting sharply, “And should we have starved instead? It seems I can do nothing to please you.” With that she stomped off a few paces, then stopped, her back still to him, and crossed her arms over her chest as she faced the trees.
She was in a snit, he realized, and grinned like a fool. A well-deserved one, he could admit, but he liked it all the same. It was so…normal. Lucien and Alayna had fought since the first moment they set eyes on each other, and so Agravar thought of this present spat with Rosamund as a kind of affirmation that this—what they felt, what they were to each other—was real.
And she was waiting for him to come to her and make peace. It was evident in the fact that she had retreated only a small distance away, and her stance spoke not only of her ire, but also her need to be comforted.
In confirmation of his hypothesis, she cast a quick, annoyed glance over her shoulder.
He had hurt her. By protecting her, by trying to act honorably, he had been clumsy and upset her. She didn’t understand how it was with him, with any man. God, he placed honor above all things, but even he had his limits.
He recalled her words. When you touch me, I feel…a longing. A need.
Foolish, inexperienced virgin. There was not a doubt she had no clue what it was she was inviting with those evocative words. How could he take advantage of her like that? It was against everything he held himself to be.
Unlike his father, he did not prey on the weak, the inexperienced, the vulnerable.
With a sigh, he squared his shoulders. He supposed he had to make it up to her as best he could.
Chapter Twenty-One
She heard him come up behind her. “Rosamund?” he said softly. “I did not intend to make you unhappy.”
She lifted one shoulder carelessly. “No matter. ’Tis I who needs must apologize to you. ’Tis plain I…erred. I would appreciate it if we did not mention it again.”
“Oh, nay, sweet,” he said, placing his hands on her arms. “You did nothing wrong. ’Tis only that—well, as a maid you would naturally be unaware of certain things—”
“Please, just go away. If you do not want me, I shall accept it without further complaint.” Her words were spoken bravely, but she was terrified that at any moment she would burst into tears.
“My God, woman, is that what you think?” He turned her around to face him and, when she wouldn’t look at him, tugged her chin up until her lashes lifted and she was staring into his eyes. “I love you. You are in my soul, you ridiculous creature, and you can rest assured my whole self wants you with a single-minded obsession that is near stripping me of my sanity. But Rosamund, you are but a maid, an innocent. You know not what that means.”
“Do you know something?” she asked, tilting her head to one side. Disarmingly girlish, it ill prepared him for her next words. “I am sick to death of you thinking for me. I may be a maid, but I am not an imbecile.”
It shocked him. “You cannot have thought this through.” He gave his head a definitive shake. “To act on an impulse—”
“Oh, stop it!”
He cut off, startled.
She said, “I love you and you love me, but we both know that in the end we shall have nothing from one another. But now, today, we do have this time.”
He refused to meet her eye. She tried to twist out of his grasp, but instead her breasts brushed against his chest. She heard his short, hissing intake of breath, and she stopped.
Slowly she turned her body back into his once again. Her hips molded against the rock-hard muscle of his thigh.
The tips of her breasts were suffused with a strange ache. Then she touched her body to his and the contact sent threads of pleasure into the pit of her belly.
“Rosamund. I have nothing to offer you.” His voice sounded choked. His hands shifted to her shoulders as if he would put her away from him, but he did not. “’Tis not lack of wanting that keeps me away.”
“Why do you seek to protect me from something I have no wish to be protected
from?”
He shook his head. “If we go beyond the wanting, have you not thought of the consequences? What will your husband say when you go to your wedding bed no longer virginal?” His face transformed slightly, hardening in imperceptible degrees. “What if there would be a child? If we should make a child together, Rosamund, it would be your disgrace. And the babe…you would hate it and I would have no right to see it. ’Twould near kill me to have that be so.”
“How could I not love anything of yours? I would treasure a part of you to keep with me always, Agravar. You must know that no other babe would be more loved, more welcomed, more cherished.”
He refused to be swayed. “You would be in ruins. Your reputation would be dishonored forever.”
“When I was a child, I was treated as the most vile creature God had created. I was female, and in Father Leon’s mind, I was evil, even before I took my first steps or opened my mouth. I was berated, tutored on the sins of Eve and all the harlots in the Old Testament and their ignominious fates were paraded before me. I was told I was no different from any of them.”
“Do not speak of it,” he said quickly.
“Oh, I will speak of it, and you will listen, even if it hurts you to hear it, because this is part of me, whom you claim to love.”
“God, I have unleashed a monster. Go ahead, then, and speak your peace.”
“No matter what I said, no matter what I did, I was told I was bad. Evil. I was punished. And do you know what I think, Agravar? I think it was a terrible waste not to have had the fun of the wrong-doing if I must live with the consequences of it.”
Spreading her hands out before her, she continued, “What punishment would be unbearable if I know that ’twas worth it? If in failing to remain chaste, in making one choice for my heart, it condemns me to a future as dismal as my past, ’twill be no hardship, because I will finally have had something of my own in the bargain. And that is worth everything. Everything.”
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