by Stone, Lyn
Though they spoke no more about Honor’s trip to Dunniegray, Alan did understand he had been the cause of her flight. He forgave her that. He also admitted to himself that Honor had done the only thing she could have in avoiding a marriage to the comte. It had taken courage to put both those plans into effect.
A woman could not fight injustice the same way as a man. Honor wielded the weapons she had with finesse. These past few days she plied humor like a broadsword, slapping him lightly with the flat of the blade, pricking him now and again with the sharp point. She wanted him laughing, with her and at himself.
All he really wanted to do was give in to it, then throw her over his shoulder, slap that pert wee rump of hers and haul her off to their bed. Of course, he’d had her in bed for well over a week of nights, for all the good it did.
He had not approached her as a husband in all that time. That would signal a total surrender on his part, an admission that he had overreacted and carried the retribution too far. Why he resisted, Alan couldn’t say. Pride, he supposed. Mayhaps a wee bit of leftover anger.
“Just eat,” he repeated, spearing a chunk of meat with his knife.
“Impossible. How should I eat with my mouth closed?” Her smile was so sweet.
He ignored that. She gave him a few moment’s respite while she dipped her fingers, wiped them on a cloth and then tasted her food.
Then she frowned. “Ah, this venison is undercooked. And the beets taste quite earthy, do they not? I shall tell Cook,” she said and started to rise.
Alan grabbed her elbow and jerked her back into her chair. “For pity’s sake, woman, ye’ve already alienated nearly everyone in the keep by saying what ye think. All that ye think! Cook will be serving us weeds and halfbaked rats if ye dinna mind yer tongue.”
“But—”
“But me no buts! Keep that mouth of yers closed or I’ll be closing it for ye!” he said.
Her sudden recoil told him the picture he had just put in her mind. Surely she knew what he meant! But she sat there wide-eyed, staring at his hand. Alan glanced down at it, fisted on the tabletop. Quickly, he opened it, grasped her neck and drew her to him for a hasty kiss.
Well, it began as hasty. Her lips, still opened in surprise, melted under his like spun sugar. And tasted so. What pure confection, he thought, his mind shifting from mild pleasure to dark imaginings. On and on he kissed, delving deeply as he could into the silken warmth and sweetness. Her tongue tested his own heat as he withdrew his.
Only when Janet’s delighted giggles raked his ears did Alan recall that he and Honor were sitting at table, sharing a meal with a hall full of people. Reluctantly, he pulled away.
Honor’s face had turned a shade not far removed from the beets she had mentioned. Alan laughed and again leaned close. “Very earthy,” he whispered, nodding. “But let’s not tell Cook.”
“You are a beast!” she muttered.
“Guilty,” he admitted, slicing off a small chunk of the roast and popping it into his mouth. He prepared another bite and offered it to her with a grin. She wrinkled her nose and turned away.
When she turned back, she looked prepared to speak again. “Ah, ah, ah!” he said, brows raised in warning.
“I was only about to say that you have a strange method of discipline, sir. ’Tis not much of a deterrent, your threat.” Her lips twitched as though she quelled a real smile. The urge to cover them with his again almost overcame his good sense.
He knew very well that he had aroused her. That silvery glint in her eyes told him so. Other than making jest of his stand on truthfulness, Alan was not yet certain what end she had in mind. Mayhaps he should make an end to it himself. “Flirting a bit, are we?” he accused.
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “I am. Is it working?”
“Well enough to call a halt to supper with two courses yet to be served,” he admitted boldly, intending to bring a blush. Devil him, would she? “Do ye wish to go to bed? Just say so.”
“Yes,” she answered, meeting his eyes directly. Smugly.
Truth or taunt? So she thought to make him sit here and suffer through the meal, did she?
“Verra well,” he said, standing immediately and yanking her to her feet by her arm. She gave a small yelp as his voice rose over the murmurs and laughter along the tables. “Excuse us.”
Conversation halted. Everyone gaped. Forty pairs of eyes followed as Alan swiftly conducted Honor toward the solar. Wherever this odd exchange of theirs led, he meant to get there in the privacy of their chamber. He turned at the portal and faced their audience. “Do continue the meal.”
Chapter Seventeen
“How dare you embarrass me so!” Honor hissed the moment he closed the solar door. “I only meant to—”
“Tease me, I ken that! Jeer and taunt and then tempt,” he said, abandoning his good humor. Now he believed he understood the game. “Do not think to lead me merrily along your way by my nether parts, Honor. It cannot be done. Believe me, stouter women than you have tried, so be warned!”
“Stouter, indeed!” she all but shouted. “Fat and frowsy women! Sinful sluts, no doubt!”
“No doubt,” he agreed. “But charming as they were, I kept my wits. I do as I wish! So you see, no amount of eye batting or tongue kissing sways my will even a wee bit.”
Honor leveled him with a gray-blue glare that in no way matched the lips she stretched into a smile. “Well, you are here, are you not?”
No answer for that one. He was definitely here, having left a perfectly good supper to dance to her spiteful little tune. “Why do you mock me thus, Honor?” he asked seriously. “To what purpose?”
She sighed and strolled to the window seat, looking out into the darkness. “You shame me,” she said softly.
“Just now? Ye asked for it! I—”
“No, not that,” she said, swinging her hand toward the closed solar door. “I told you true out there, I did want to go to bed,” she replied, “with you.”
He made some sound, not quite a word, of disbelief.
She faced him then, her gray eyes full of questions. “Making light of our troubles is not the answer, I see that now. So I must ask you outright. Why is it you keep yourself from me, Alan? You desire me, I know it. Yet you never turn to me in the night. You fight your feelings as though they are demons. Do you think my dishonor will taint you? Have I not promised, vowed on the soul of my child, that I will not repeat my transgressions?”
“And ye’re angry because I asked it, are ye not? That is the reason for all this spewing of truths that serve nothing these past days. Ye make a jest of your promise to me.”
“I did so only to show you how rigid is your thinking. How unforgiving you are. I lied. I admitted it, gave you my reasons and pledged not to do so again. Yet every word from your mouth challenges my honesty, questions my commitment and conveys your distrust. Now you tell me a truth, Alan. Can you never forgive me? Or love me?”
“Love?” he asked, tempted to scorn her, but unwilling to see more hurt in her eyes. And, unless he lied to her, he could not deny what he felt. “I do love ye, Honor. I think I did so even before we met. Through Tav’s praise, I came to know ye—or so I thought—and believed ye without flaw. Then,” he said, sighing, and pausing to seat himself on the cushions beside her, “I found ye played false. ’Tis devilish hard to trust a thing ye say.”
“Or to bed me.” she added, sounding a little petulant.
He shifted about so that he did not face her, lest he drag her into his arms and overwhelm her then and there. “Like as not, ye could twist me round yer finger, did I let ye rule me with that fair body of yers. Make me swear dark is light, steel is gold, down is up. Persuade me to do anything ye wished.”
“I could do all that?” she asked with a small laugh.
“Aye, and more,” he assured her angrily. “No man likes to be used in such a way, Honor. I would have ye love me for myself, not trade favors for all that I might yet do for ye.”
&nb
sp; “Ah, I see,” she said. “And you will never accept that I do love you, no matter what I do or say?”
Alan shook his head, still not daring to look at her. Not daring to believe.
“Then you may leave this room with your pride intact, husband,” she announced firmly as she put as much distance between them as the confines of the room allowed. She crossed her slender arms over her breasts. “Go, and do not trouble yourself further that I will try to seduce you to my bed or to my will. Do whatever you like, be it for me or against me. I shall never ask you for another thing so long as I live.”
“Ah. I suppose now I am to yield and offer ye something grand for that generous statement. What is it you wish for me to do now?” Alan asked wearily.
She remained silent.
“Come now, ’tis a ploy I recognize. Ye promised truth,” he reminded her.
“I pray you leave before I hit you with something hard,” she said softly, giving him her back.
He strolled over to her, trailing one finger down the side of her arm. “Here I am, playing right into yer hand, Honor. Tell me the thing ye most want.”
She whirled. “I want a real marriage! I want peace between us! I want you to cease treating me as some broken thing you cannot bear to touch!”
“Oh, I can bear to touch, I’m thinking,” he said, and cupped her left breast.
She slapped his hand away. “But not tonight!”
“Well, hell!” He stepped back, furious. “How can ye say all that and then—”
“Honestly!” She spat the word. “Very honestly I say it! Get out of here and leave me alone!”
“Done and done!” he shouted and stalked to the door. “Ye’ll let me know when ye decide on the peace between us part, aye?” He slammed the door hard, reveling in the satisfying bang.
A crash against it followed immediately. The water urn?
Then he looked up. The entire party of castle folk sat much as he had left them, mouths open and wide eyes trained on the solar. So much for privacy.
Alan resumed his seat and methodically ate every scrap served him. He met every questioning gaze with a warning glare and turned aside every attempt at conversation.
When he had finished, he wiped his eating knife and slid it back inside its sheath. “I bid ye good eve,” he growled as he left his chair. No one said a word.
As he stalked off to the stables, he grumbled under his breath. “Silly woman. Thinks to make mock of me, does she? Already has done,” he scoffed at himself. The embarrassment, he would get over. Not that he had ever cared much for what others thought of him anyway.
Hadn’t he played the fool more times than he could count? Sometimes to lighten a deadly situation or to put an adversary off his guard. At other times, he made a jest of himself simply for the fun of it all. He’d done that the night of their wedding to take Honor’s mind away from her grief over Tav’s death. Still, for her to make him out a jester did not sit right at all.
She hated that he would not trust her, but trust must be earned, must it not? Honor had done nothing toward that end. Why should he give faith freely where it was so undeserved?
Honor had stirred him up apurpose, teased him unmercifully, and then turned him away. But for long moments there she herself had worn the look of a woman aroused. Let her stew in her own juices, then. Let her worry where he had gone this night, and to whom.
And he was sorely tempted to find someone to make her worries real.
If the stables were cold, Alan did not care. ’Twould serve her right if he caught the ague and she had to nurse him through it. He kicked the hay into a deeper pile and threw himself down. God’s own truth, he did not deserve this! A shrew, she was, with a bloody fishwife’s tongue. He flounced around trying to find a bit of comfort. Sleeping with the animals again. And there was Honor, snug in their soft bed. Nay, she’d not trammel herself thinking he had sought another. They both knew no woman at Byelough would betray the lady so by taking her husband to bed. She was probably lying there in that soft warm nest, still smirking.
Love, indeed. Peace? A jest. How had he landed himself in all this? “‘Tis all your fault, Tavish Mac Ellerby!” he muttered toward the top of the bam. “Ye shoulda known I’d not be made of husbandly stuff!” He growled his frustration. “And she’s no’ the angel ye thought her to be, nor told me she was! If ye’re hanging about up there laughin’ yer ass off, damn ye for it!”
Did he imagine the chuckle? God’s bones! He jerked upright.
“Ah, lad, you remind me of myself!”
His father.
“Jesu, I thought me Tav had answered,” Alan muttered.
Adam’s hearty laughter rang off the walls. Horses nickered and shuffled in their stalls. “Ripped you up, did she?”
“Aye.”
“We heard. Ho, women thrive on such! She’s in there feeling all righteous about now. But come morning, she’ll have had her fit and be done with it all. Never a boring moment with a lass such as yours.”
Alan groaned. “I could do with a boring moment or two. She wants peace between us, and then shouts at me! She wants love, she says, then orders me to leave her be. And throws things! What am I to believe of her, I ask you? The woman is a bale of contradictions.”
“You can remedy that easily enough,” his father said. “Give her back to her father and be rid of her.”
“I don’t want rid of her. I love her, for God’s sake. You know that. Hell, she knows that!”
Adam nodded and dropped to the hay beside Alan, and assumed a half-reclining position as though he meant to stay a while. “Honor is not your enemy, son. She is but a woman afraid, and not without reason to be.”
“Meaning?”
“You expect perfection of her, Alan, and no one is flawless. She cannot please you in that. From what I gathered by my conversation with him, she could not please her father, either. I expect she grew weary of the effort and sought to please herself. Small wonder.” Adam sighed. “Even so, you should know Dairmid Hume is not your true enemy. Or hers. He loves his daughter.”
“Of course he does,” Alan said sarcastically. “I suppose that is why he pummeled her about and tried to sell her to that lecherous friend of his.”
Adam shook his head. “He simply did not know what to do with a woman who spoke her mind and demanded choices. What seemed amusing and clever in the child no longer set well with him once she came of age. Hume, by his early indulgence of her, created a being not in step with her peers, an unbiddable daughter.”
Alan laughed with scorn. “And now, an unbiddable wife!”
“A treasure. One which you will lose, if you do not have a care. Just as Hume did. Though he used a hateful approach, her father only tried to make Honor more submissive so that she would survive her marriage.”
“To a man who has buried two young wives! Did he believe her better off dead? I swear I cannot fathom a father such as he,” Alan said.
“I repeat, he is not the foe to worry over. This count he promised Honor to will come, Alan. Hume warned as much. I think he fears it more than you, both for Honor and for himself. He realizes that her life might be in danger. The choice of husband for Honor was not his idea. I believe he was forced to the agreement. We need to prepare for another attack.”
“Honor is mine. I will hold her,” Alan vowed.
“And I will help you if I can. But Byelough is not the strongest of keeps. Its best defense is that it is not easily located, but I do not doubt he will find it. After all, Hume did. What worked with Hume’s men will not work with this Frenchman. He’ll not care if you slit her father’s throat on the battlements. Like as not, that would please him well, since Honor is Hume’s heir. What will you do?”
“Prepare as best I can with what we have. The weather grows colder and ’twill snow soon. I doubt he will attempt us until the spring.”
His father grasped his arm and looked at Alan, his steady gaze imploring. “Son, you cannot depend on that. Bring Honor and come with Janet
, Richard and me to Gloucester. She’ll be safe there and so will you.”
“To England?” Alan threw back his head and laughed with real merriment this time. “Ye still dinna ken what ye’ve done, do ye? ’Tis a Scot ye’ve made of me, and a Scot I’ll stay forever!”
“Oh, do stop with that thrice-damned burr, will you? Annoying me won’t solve your problem,” Adam muttered, his frown darkening. “I think me Dairmid Hume’s not the only father without an apt hand for the task!”
He rose from the hay and brushed off his clothes. “If you mind nothing else I say, lad, at least make things right between you and your wife. Leave it too long and you will regret it. None of us knows the number of days left to us, and pride is a cold bedfellow.”
Alan did not answer. He already regretted every harsh word that had passed and every reason he had to distrust Honor. But he did distrust her still, and that was a fact he could not deny.
All that aside, whatever happened, he would protect her against any and all threats until he drew his final breath. He would never give her up.
As the days passed Honor realized that the man must have no inclination to forgive her. That last attempt at seduction had fallen so flat they could have made a hearthstone out of it. Oh, he wanted her, she knew. But he staunchly refused to act on it, and far be it from her to approach him again. Let him play the martyr if he would.
He still slept in the stable as though she had banished him to it. Would not even lay a pallet in the hall. He lived like a temporary guest at Byelough and not a very welcome one, at that. That thought gave her pause. Did Alan view himself that way?
She stared into the fire as she cradled Christiana in her arms. The child had grown fat and rosy, a winsome cherub who dimpled at everyone and everything now. At least the babe had carved a place in Alan’s heart. He could not resist her, coming each evening for his hour of play and fatherly foolishness. The memories of those hours dragged a smile from Honor. She always watched them, hanging back, hungry for a small measure of what they shared. He threw her questioning gazes at times, almost as if he wondered why she did not join in. But she would not intrude. How could she risk his rejection in the event she had misread that look?