The Wife Test

by Betina Krahn

  “Chloe?” His face lost all trace of amusement, his hands tightened on hers, and he drew her closer to search her face with an unsettling intensity. “Where are you from, fille? How did you come to the convent?”

  “I was brought as an infant, Your Grace. I have been there all my life.”

  “And your mother?” The pressure of his hands on hers grew alarming.

  “I never knew her. I think she must have died.”

  “Her name?” The duke seemed quite affected by something about her.

  “I do not know, Your Grace.” Chloe felt something happening that she didn’t understand. But something made her repeat what had become for her the new foundation of her identity. “All I was told was that there was a scrap of hide in my basket bearing the name Gilbert.”

  She sensed that there were many eyes watching their exchange and thought it best to add: “It was only of late that I learned you were my father.”

  He looked as if she had slapped him and abruptly released her hands. He stared at her with barely contained emotion for a moment longer, then turned and stalked away. She was too stunned and embarrassed to react at first. For the second time that day she’d been publicly rejected … first by a husband, then by a father.

  Her sisters crowded around her, comforting her and speculating on what had caused the duke’s reaction. It couldn’t have been her claim of kinship, they reasoned, otherwise he would have responded that way to all of them.

  They had no time to dwell on it. The bishop and the priests of the king’s chapel quickly called for them to present themselves in chapel for the vows. Each of the maids was claimed by her intended husband … all but Lisette and Chloe. They looked around nervously for Sir Hugh and Sir Graham, but the pair were nowhere to be found. Then, just as they decided to go on to the chapel in hopes of locating their husbands, Sir Hugh and Sir Graham came striding up with wet hair and freshly battered faces. Grimly they seized their brides’ arms and ushered them without ceremony into the rear of the crowded church.

  The duke stood in the midst of the couples, his fists clenched and his face like a thundercloud. As the bishop began to ask the appointed questions and direct the exchange of vows and the placing of rings, the duke’s gaze kept returning to Chloe. But each time it did so, it seemed that some of the heat and intensity left his stare. By the time the bishop came to Hugh and Chloe, she was so thoroughly rattled that she could scarcely mind her words or recall what she was supposed to do.

  Sir Hugh took her left hand in his, looked down into her eyes, and in tones clipped with annoyance, promised to love, honor, and cherish her, to live peacefully with her all the days of his life, and to protect and provide for her. With some prompting, she promised to love, honor, and obey him, to live peacefully with him all the days of her life, and to bear his children as God saw fit to grant them. When it came time for the ring, he waved the bishop on, saying there had been no time for such things.

  “I have a ring.” The congregation parted reluctantly to allow the speaker to approach the couple. The well-dressed man was a bit shorter than Hugh and some years older, but aside from the graying temples and a bit of thickness around the middle, the two could have been twins. “It belonged to my sons’ mother.”

  He held it out to Hugh on the palm of his hand, and after a long, tense moment, Hugh picked it up and slid it over the tip of the first and second fingers of Chloe’s left hand before bringing it to rest at the base of her third finger. When instructed to give his wife a “kiss of peace,” Sir Hugh glared at the bishop until the cleric simply cleared his throat and declared them husband and wife.

  Chloe managed to stay upright through the mass that followed and to exit the chapel under her own power. She endured a seemingly endless round of blessings and good wishes, and managed to return similar sentiments to her newly wedded sisters. Then, when they reentered the hall and the duke gave each of his daughters a benedictive kiss on the forehead, he again gripped Chloe’s shoulders tightly and stared into her eyes with a turbulent expression.

  What had she done to deserve such wretched treatment from an adoptive father who only adopted her in order to use her to pay his ransom? How much of a disappointment could she possibly be?

  Thoroughly dispirited, she sat at the king’s linen-draped table, suffering endless toasts to the felicity and harmony of her marriage and feeling like an impostor at her own wedding feast. Sir Hugh had abandoned her the moment they were seated, and she was certain that everyone in the hall had taken notice. It was only when an uncannily familiar face and frame loomed up before her with an elegant bow that her reluctant husband reappeared at her side.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” Hugh demanded in a combative tone.

  “Good to see you, too,” the Earl of Sennet said with defiant geniality. “And in better company than usual. Not a tonsure in sight.”

  “This”—Hugh gestured to Chloe and then the feast beginning around them—“changes nothing.”

  “This”—the earl extended his hand for Chloe’s and, when she yielded it to him, brushed it with a gallant kiss—“changes everything.”

  “How did you know I was to wed?” Hugh demanded. “I was only commanded to do so this morning.”

  “The king sent for me three days ago.” The earl gave him a superior sort of smile that taunted Hugh with the idea that certain things had been withheld from him. Hugh stiffened and shot a resentful look toward the king.

  “Damn his devious hide.”

  “I fear I shall have to welcome you properly to the family at a later time, my lady,” the Earl of Sennet said, giving her a dazzling smile that made her wonder if that was how Sir Hugh would look if he was ever moved to a true expression of joy or pleasure.

  “Things are never so bad that they can’t get a bit worse,” Hugh muttered, unaware that he’d spoken aloud until he sat down again and found himself caught in a searching gaze.

  “That is your father?” Chloe asked, looking between him and the earl.

  “Only in the biblical sense.”

  “He certainly is … is …” She sorted through a barrage of impressions for a word to sum up the earl’s powerful presence.

  “Loud?” Hugh supplied several possibilities. “Arrogant? Overbearing? Infuriating?”

  “Striking.” She glanced at the earl, who was busy charming noble ladies and serving women with equal familiarity. “You look very much alike.”

  Hugh looked as if he’d just been doused with icy water.

  “There is no need to be insulting.” He rose, cup in hand, and abandoned her at the table until the food was served.

  After the wedding dinner, the company adjourned to the knights’ practice field to witness impromptu contests staged by a number of the younger knights and squires. Then as the sun lowered and the rest of the day went from tedious to terrible, tension over the coming night built steadily in all of the maids.

  Despite the two full cups of unwatered wine, drunk in quick succession, Chloe’s body ached with tension, her hands were cold, and her tongue felt thick and clumsy. Her condition was not improved by rowdy voices recounting increasingly explicit stories about wedding nights and couples who managed their first bit of “night work” with something less than success.

  How bad could it be? Chloe asked herself as Lady Marcella herded her and her sisters up the stairs and deposited them each in a borrowed chamber with a giggling maidservant. In her mind’s eye rose a vision of Sir Graham’s pale face and drink-dulled eyes. Apparently bad enough that experienced knights could dread it. And she had a good bit more to dread than the average knight or bride.

  It was some time later that Sir Hugh arrived at the borrowed chamber with a group of ale-soaked well-wishers at his back and propelling him through the door toward the final step in forging a marital bond. As the maidservant slipped out and the door slammed shut on them, he blinked and looked around the small chamber, taking his bearings.

  The furnishings were simple but plea
sant; a modest-sized bed; a tall, delicately carved wooden chest; a brazier that at this time of year was empty; a table with two simple straight chairs; and a gold damask bed curtain that hung from the ceiling and was pulled back and tied on each side of the bed. They had been supplied with fresh linen, a flagon of wine and cups, and a sizable pair of fragrant bee’s wax candles that even now were supplying gentle golden light and sending their honeyed fragrance all through the chamber.

  Chloe stood in the shadow of the bed curtain, wearing her spare shift and her hair down over her shoulders. She had given up trying to think of something clever or profound or even marginally charming to say. It was just as well; the sight of him standing there with his doublet loosened, his hair tousled, and his eyes dark and smoldering would have robbed her of speech in any case.

  Her pulse began to skip and her lips felt bare and strangely warm. Every inch of her skin came alive beneath her shift, aching, yearning for contact of a sort that could only be satisfied in the depths of bone and sinew itself. Longing migrated inward along her limbs to pool in her middle. It felt strangely like physical hunger, and she suddenly understood why desire and appetite were often spoken of as one.

  The way her body sprang to a life of its own, preparing, anticipating, shocked her. In a desperate bid to assert control over her own impulses, as well as the situation, she searched for a voice and found one. That of her inner abbess.

  “This is all your fault, you know.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hugh stood in the small chamber, inhaling the honey-sweetened air, looking at the woman who had diverted his ambitions and by any standard wrecked his life, and told himself he was in deep trouble. He had already run the gamut of emotions from outrage to self-loathing and had taken out his frustration on his father, his friends, and even his confessor. Poor Graham had the misfortune to confront him and demand to know how he could have betrayed their friendship so foully, and had ended up with a cut lip and an eye nearly swollen shut. Not that Graham hadn’t managed to land a few well-placed blows, also; Hugh was sporting a smashed mouth and few bruises himself.

  It was just as well. They both worked their anger out and afterward were able to think more clearly. And all of his thoughts kept circling back to one thing: he had no one to blame for his predicament but himself. He had made the choice to intervene, and now had to live with the consequences. Literally.

  Why in Heaven’s name had he inserted himself into a situation that was well on its way to resolving the prime conflict in his life without his help?

  “You’re right,” he declared, folding his arms and widening his stance. “Foolish me. All I had to do was stand there and watch you sacrifice yourself to your sisters’ happiness and marry decrepit old Ketchum, and I could have gotten on with my life.”

  “Why didn’t you?” she said.

  “Because …”

  In order to do that he would have had to ignore the misery evident in her face and the overwhelming urges of protection and possession roiling inside him. He would have had to somehow forget the feel of her, the taste of her, and the longing in her eyes the previous night when she confessed that in her darkest moment her thought was of him. He would have had to somehow lock away the memory of her naked body, and the feelings she stirred in him every time those azure-sky eyes drifted over him.

  Flawed and errant creature that he was, he didn’t want to forget any of it. He wanted to rescue her from an intolerable fate and claim her for himself. The highest and noblest of his impulses had bonded inextricably with his lowest and basest ones. Together they overwhelmed his better judgment, and he found himself striding into the fray.

  “Because … I was charged by the king to administer the wife test to you. And it was clear as rainwater that old Ketchum was not suitable for you.”

  “I would have married him,” she protested.

  “No doubt you would have.”

  “And I would have made him a proper wife.”

  “You wouldn’t make anybody a proper wife,” he countered. “Proper wives are biddable and demure and helpful and respectful and diligent.”

  “And I am not?” She stalked closer to him, unwittingly putting herself between him and the candles.

  “Hell, no.” He stalked closer to her, his blood heating at the way the light filtered through her shift, outlining her body. “You’re overeducated and arrogant … outspoken to the point of brazenness … stubborn and willful … and without the slightest shred of modesty or deference for your betters.”

  Her nostrils flared.

  “While you, on the other hand, are the very pinnacle of husbandly virtue,” she charged. “Learned and wise beyond your years, uncompromising in both inner virtue and outward rectitude … patient as Job … enduring as the blessed saints … with the stamina of a warhorse, and no doubt the heart of a lion …”

  “The king has declared that I am,” he said archly. “It must be so.”

  Her mouth opened and closed without releasing a sound.

  “You know, of all your shortcomings, my lady, the most unappealing is ingratitude. The least you could do is thank me.”

  “Thank you? For making me a laughingstock? For making me sound like an intolerable, unnatural shrew?”

  “For rescuing you,” he said, edging closer and breathing deeply, inhaling her lavender scent. “For sacrificing my future for yours.”

  Sacrifice, she thought. So that was what he called it. He rescued her out of the great “nobility” of his heart and now insisted she eternally laud and honor his selflessness. With no hint that he might have had other motives, like caring about her. Or less than altruistic aims, like taking pleasure in her. Even after going to astonishing lengths to keep her from marrying someone else, he still wouldn’t admit that he wanted her.

  “I am not ungrateful for your help,” she said, reining her emotions, making herself think. “In truth, I am so mindful of it and so inspired by your example that I am now willing to make a sacrifice of my own. In honor of your selflessness, I intend to renounce my wifely rights to you.”

  “What?”

  “Is that not clear? I intend to see that these vows go unconsummated. That will constitute grounds, in the clerical courts, for annulling the marriage.”

  “Don’t tell me there is a lawyer inside that devious little head as well.” He fell back a step, looking genuinely astonished. She could see him struggling to make the wheels turn in his mind. “Church law, important as it may be, is not the final authority here. The king himself has decreed we are to be wedded, and”—his eyes darted back and forth as if searching for a plausible objection—“refusing to comply, especially in nuptials related to a treaty, would be tantamount to treason. Kings take a rather dim view of treason.”

  “The king needn’t know anything about it,” she said, shrugging and sending her shift sliding off one shoulder. She saw light flare in his eyes as they fixed on her bared skin. “We can pledge ourselves to a ‘spiritual marriage’ … agree to live as brother and sister … and after a time you can petition to enter the monastery, as you’ve always wanted.”

  “There are more obstacles to my entering the monastery than just this marriage. My father and his accomplice, the king, will not be content until I produce an heir.” He forced his gaze up to her face and dropped his arms to his sides. “Spiritual marriages do not produce heirs.”

  “True. But there are instances of married persons being admitted to monasteries once their duty to their line is done. It shouldn’t take too—”

  He seized her by the shoulders.

  “Why this sudden desire to escape the vows you took today?”

  “I don’t want to escape them, you do.” Her voice thickened as the heat and scent of him filled her head and began to curl through her veins. “I am merely accommodating you. Out of gratitude.” She saw the conflict in his eyes and watched him realize that she had just met his stroke and effectively parried it. His hands tightened on her arms.

  �
�I don’t want your gratitude,” he ground out, his breath coming faster, his eyes beginning to shimmer in a way that made her heart beat faster.

  “Then what do you want, Hugh of Sennet?” Her body migrated a provocative fraction of an inch toward his. With her next question she drove her point straight to the center of his heart. “What are your preferences?”

  She watched his eyes darkening, saw him lick his lower lip as he stared at hers, and sensed the primal pull her body exerted on his. She waited, praying that his desire for her could overcome the years of arid, loveless doctrine and give her a foothold in his heart.

  “This. I want this.”

  He lowered his lips to hers and elation surged through her as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her fully against him.

  This was what she had desired, craved, and literally prayed for. His lips were warm and wine-sweet, and his body was hard and indelibly male against hers. She wrapped her arms around him and ran her hands up his broad back, finding an anchor for her new life in the thick columns of muscle running up the center of his back and the sinew fanning up and over his shoulders. More than once his powerful frame had been shelter and safety to her in perilous times. At that tactile reminder of what he already had been to her, she relaxed and entrusted herself to the hope of all he could someday be.

  His hands slid down her back and along her sides, claiming every line and curve, every responsive shift and quiver of her body. She began to anticipate the flow of his hands and moved to meet his touch, then to coax and direct it with her responses. He slipped his hands beneath her shift to touch her skin directly, and the heat of his big, callused hands seemed to melt her very bones. She sagged against him, clinging to his broad shoulders for support, and suddenly he was lifting her, carrying her to the bed.

  As he discarded his garments, she lay on the feather-filled ticking feeling warm and supple and lush with sensual possibility. Knowing that he watched her, she experienced a new and heady sense of power emanating from the deepest core of her woman’s nature … the power to create desire, to evoke need and longing … and the power to fulfill that need and slake that desire.