By Arrangement

by Madeline Hunter

  He moved again and it was less gentle this time. He closed his eyes as if he sought to contain something, but if he fought a battle he lost it. “Aye,” she whispered when he moved hard again. It hurt a little but the power of it awoke something in her soul. She wanted to absorb his strength and his need. She wanted to know him thus without his careful defenses.

  He looked straight in her eyes and then kissed her as he surrendered. As his passion rose in a series of strong, deep thrusts and peaked in a long, hard release, she felt that she touched his essence and he hers.

  She held him to her, her arms splayed across his back and her legs around his waist, and she floated in the emotion-laden silence, feeling his heartbeat against her breast. Her body felt bruised and alive and pulsing where they were still joined.

  Slowly the chamber surrounded her again. She felt the reality of his weight and strength above her and his soft hair on her cheek.

  Still half a stranger, she thought, wondering at this thing that could connect her in indescribable ways to a man whom she barely knew. Amazing and frightening to touch the soul when you did not know the mind.

  Her awareness of the unknown half of him seeped around her. She suddenly felt very shy.

  He rose up on his arms and kissed her gently. “You are wonderful,” he said.

  She didn't know what that meant but she was glad he was pleased. “It is much nicer than I thought it would be,” she confided.

  “Did I hurt you at the end?”

  “Nay. In fact, I'm a little sorry it is over.”

  He caressed down her leg and removed it from his waist. He shifted off her. “That is because you are not done.”

  She thought of his almost violent ending. “I would say that we are most done, David.”

  He shook his head and touched her breast. Her eyes flew open at her immediate forceful response. His hand ventured between her legs. She grabbed onto him in surprise.

  “I would have given this to you earlier, darling, but you needed to need me this first time,” he said as the frenzy slammed into her again.

  He touched and stroked at flesh still sensitive from the fullness of him, and a frantic wildness unhinged her. She called out to him, saying his name over and over as her mind and senses folded in on themselves and she lost hold of everything except the ascending pleasurable oblivion.

  And then, when she thought that she couldn't bear it anymore and that she would die or faint, the tension snapped in a marvelous way and she screamed in the ecstasy of release rushing through her body.

  She rode the eddies with stunned astonishment until they slowly flowed away.

  “Oh my,” she sighed as she lay breathless and trembling in his arms.

  “Aye. Oh my,” he said, laughing and pulling her closer. He reached for the bedclothes and covered them both, molding her against his body. His face rested on her hair, his lips against her temple. They lay together in a lulling peace.

  The intimacy of their lovemaking had been stunning and poignant. This quiet closeness felt sweet and full and a little awkward. In the matter of an hour a connection had been forged forever. He had taken possession of her in ways she hadn't expected.

  She slept and awoke to a darkened room, the twilight eking through the windows. Distant sounds of voices and activity drifted toward her. She turned and found David up on his arm, looking at her.

  He liked looking at her. Like his carvings and books? It was something at least. It could have been a man who cared not for her at all.

  “I should be going back,” she said.

  “You will stay here tonight. I will bring you in the morning.”

  “Idonia …”

  “I sent a message that you were with me. She will not worry.”

  “She will know.”

  “Perhaps, but no one else will. I will get you back by dawn.”

  A shout from Vittorio echoed through the garden and into the windows. Everyone here probably knew, or would soon when she didn't leave. She thought of the sidelong glances that she faced from these servants and apprentices, from Idonia and even the whole court if word got out.

  “You will stay here with me,” he repeated. It wasn't a request.

  He rose from the bed and walked to the hearth. His sculpted muscles moved as he stretched for a log and placed it on the fire. In the sudden bright illumination she studied his body, casual and unashamed of its nakedness, and noticed the lines on his back that her fingers had felt. Flogging scars. How had he come by them? His dead master did not sound like a man to do this. He returned to her and she watched him come, surprised by the thrilling pleasure she found in looking at him.

  Pulling down the coverlet, he gazed at her body. He caressed her curves languidly. She watched that exciting hand move.

  “Are you sore, darling? I would have you again, but not if it would hurt you.”

  Again? How often did people do this? For all of Joan's bluntness, a lot of information had been left out.

  His frank statement of desire sent a tremor through her. She didn't doubt his concern for her, but she knew that his question also offered her a choice. “I am not hurt.” She raised her arms to embrace him and the wonder.

  Throughout the evening and night he forged an invisible chain of steel tying her to him. She felt it happening and wondered if it was something that he controlled. Links of passion and intimacy joined by pleasure and tenderness encircled her.

  Late at night, while they basked in the hearth's warmth, she asked him about the wedding and learned that the ceremony had also been moved. They would wed in the cathedral with the bishop in attendance instead of in David's parish church.

  “It is getting very elaborate,” she mused.

  “It couldn't be helped. Once the mayor found out that Edward was coming, the fat was in the fire. I had hoped no one would know and he could just show up.”

  He spoke of the King in a casual way. Why did she hesitate to just ask him about that relationship? Why did she feel that the topic was forbidden and that to pursue it would be prying?

  She sensed that it would be, though, and tonight she did not want to knock on doors that he might not open. She changed the subject. “David, what else do you expect of me?”

  The question surprised him. “What do you mean?”

  “Considering how stupid I was about this, it won't surprise you to learn that I know little about marriage. I haven't had a very practical education.”

  “I expect you to be faithful to me. No other man touches you now.”

  His firm tone stunned her.

  “Do you understand this, Christiana?”

  “Of course. I'm not that stupid, David. I was referring to household things. Everything here is so organized.”

  “I hadn't really thought about it.”

  Then why did you go looking for a wife if you hadn't realized that you needed one.

  “Isabele thinks that you expect me to work for you,” she said, grinning.

  “Does she now? I confess that it hadn't occurred to me, but it is a good idea. I shall have to thank the princess. A wife provides excellent free labor. We will get you a loom.”

  “I can't weave.”

  “You can learn.”

  “How much can you earn off of me after I learn?”

  “At least five pounds a year, I would guess.”

  “That means that in two hundred years I will earn back my bride price.”

  “Aye. A shrewd bargain for me, isn't it?”

  They laughed at that and then he added, “Well, the household is yours. Geva will be glad for it, I think. And the boys need a mother sometimes.”

  “One of the boys is older than me, David.”

  “It will not always be so, and Michael and Roger are far from home and could use a woman's understanding sometimes. And you will have your own children, too, in time.”

  Children. Everything he had mentioned could have been provided by some merchant's daughter who brought a large dowry. Children, too. But he
r sons would be the grandchildren of Hugh Fitzwaryn.

  Morvan suspected that David sought their bloodline for his children with this marriage. Could he be right? She found that she hoped it was true. It would explain much, and mean that she brought something to him that another woman could not.

  Late that night she awoke in his sleeping embrace. It seemed normal to be in his arms. She lay motionless, alert to his reality and warmth. How odd to feel so close to someone so quickly.

  True to his word, he brought her back to Westminster by dawn. She walked through the corridors of a building that felt slightly foreign to her. She slipped into the hidden privacy of her bed while Joan and Idonia still slept.

  A firm hand jostled her awake and she looked up into Joan's beaming face. “Aren't you coming to dinner? You sleep the sleep of the dead,” Joan said.

  Christiana thought that skipping dinner and just sleeping all day sounded like a wonderful idea, but she pulled herself up and asked Joan to call for a servant.

  An hour later, dressed and coiffed, she sat beside Joan on a bench in the large hall, picking at food and watching the familiar scene that now looked slightly strange. Her senses were both alerted and dulled at the same time and she knew that those hours with David had caused this. Joan asked her some questions about David's house, and she answered halfheartedly, not wanting to share any of those memories right now.

  Toward the end of the meal, Lady Catherine approached their table, her cat eyes gleaming. She chatted with Joan for a while and then turned a gracious face on Christiana.

  “You marry quite soon, don't you, dear?”

  Christiana nodded. Joan glanced at Catherine sharply, as if it was rude to mention this marriage.

  “I have a small gift for you. I will send it to your chamber,” Catherine said before leaving.

  She wondered why Lady Catherine would do such a thing. After all, they weren't good friends. Still, the gesture touched her and left her thinking that Morvan, as usual, had overreacted to something in warning her off Catherine.

  Thomas Holland spirited Joan away and left Christiana on her own. She returned to Isabele's deserted apartment, glad for the privacy. The court routine seemed intrusive when her thoughts dwelled on yesterday and the future.

  She went into Isabele's chamber. Four days and I leave here forever, she thought, looking out the window. She no longer feared that. A part of her had already departed.

  The sound of a door opening reached her ears. Joan or Idonia returning. She hadn't seen the guardian since her return. She wondered what that little woman would say to her.

  The footsteps that advanced through the anteroom were not a woman's, however. Morvan had come. One look at her and he would know. Was she brave enough to say “Aye, you were right and it was magic and I liked it?” His strength had stood for years between her and all men, and now she had given herself to one whom he hated.

  The steps came forward. They stopped at the thresh old to the bedchamber.

  “Darling,” a familiar voice said.

  Shock screamed through her. She swung around.

  There in the doorway stood none other than Stephen Percy.

  CHAPTER 12

  “STEPHEN,” SHE GASPED.

  He smiled and advanced toward her, his arms inviting an embrace. She watched him come with an odd combination of astonished dismay, warm delight, and cold objectivity. She noticed the thick muscles beneath his pourpoint. She observed the harsh handsomeness of his features. His blond hair and fair skin struck her as blanched and vague compared to David's golden coloring.

  She couldn't move. Confused, horrified, and yearning emotions paralyzed her. Not now, her soul shrieked. A month ago or a month hence, but not now. Especially not today.

  Strong arms surrounded her. A hard mouth crushed hers.

  She pushed him off. His green eyes expressed surprise and then, briefly, something else. Annoyance?

  “You are angry with me, my love,” he said with a sigh. “I cannot blame you.”

  She turned away, grasping the edge of the window for support. Dear God, was she to have no peace? She had found acceptance and contentment and even the hope of something more, and now this.

  “Why are you here?”

  “To see you, of course.”

  “You returned to Westminster to see me?”

  “Aye, darling. Why else? I used the excuse of the pre-Lenten tournament.”

  The tournament was scheduled to begin the day after her wedding. Stephen loved those contests. She suspected that was his true reason for coming, but her broken heart, not yet totally healed, lurched at the notion that he came for her.

  The pain was still too raw, the humiliation still too new, for her to completely reject the hope that he indeed loved her. The girl who had been faithful to this man desperately still wanted to believe it. Her heart yearned for that reassurance.

  Her mind, however, had learned a thing or two from its agony. “When did you arrive?”

  “Two days ago. I did not seek you immediately because I was with my friend Geoffrey. He is in a bad way with a fever. He lies in Lady Catherine's house in London.”

  “You are friends with Catherine?”

  “Not really. Geoffrey is, however.” He stepped toward her. “She told me all about your marriage to this merchant,” he said sympathetically. “If Edward were not my king, I would challenge him for degrading you thus.”

  She glanced at the concern in his expression. It struck her as a little exaggerated, like a mask one puts on for a festival.

  He reached out and caressed her face. The broken heart, aching for the balm of renewed illusions, sighed.

  The spirit and mind, remembering last night's passion and David's rights, made her move away.

  “You already knew of my marriage, did you not? I wrote you a letter.”

  “I knew. I received it, darling. But I never imagined that the King would go through with this. And Catherine has told me of your unhappiness and humiliation.”

  How kind of Lady Catherine, Christiana thought bitterly. Why did this woman meddle in her affairs? And how had Catherine known about Stephen and her?

  Joan. Joan had gossiped. Did everyone know now? Probably. They would all be watching and waiting the next few days, maybe the next few years, to see how this drama unfolded.

  “Perhaps I should not have come,” Stephen muttered. “Catherine assured me that you would want to see me.”

  “I am glad to see you, Stephen. At the least I can congratulate you on your own betrothal.”

  He made a face of resignation. “She was my father and uncle's choice, my sweet. She does not suit me, in truth.”

  “All the same, she is your wife. As David is my husband.”

  “Aye, and it tears me apart that there is nought we can do about that, my sweet.”

  A candle inside her snuffed out then, and she knew that it was the last flame of her illusions and childish dreams. It did not hurt much, but something of her innocence died with it, and she felt that loss bitterly.

  Through it all, she had saved a little bit of hope, despite knowing and seeing the truth. If he had not returned, it would have slowly disappeared as she lived her life and spent her passion with David, much as a small pool of water will disappear in the heat of a summer afternoon.

  What if Stephen had spoken differently? What if he had come to plead with her to run away together and petition to have both of their betrothals annulled? It was what that reserve of hope had wanted, after all.

  A week ago she would have done it, despite the disgrace that would fall on her. Even last weekend, such an offer might have instantly healed her pain and banished her doubts about him.

  Now, however, it would have been impossible. Now …

  A horrible comprehension dawned. Stephen's presence receded as her mind grasped the implications.

  Impossible now. David had seen to that, hadn't he?

  Last night had consummated their marriage. No annulment would be possible n
ow, unless David himself denied what had occurred. And she knew, she just knew, that he would not, despite his promise that first night.

  I expect you to be faithful to me. No other man touches you now.

  All of those witnesses … even Idonia and her brother.

  An eerie chill shook her.

  David had known Stephen was coming. He had been asking the pilgrims and merchants. He could not know if Stephen came to claim her, however. Nonetheless, he had still covered that eventuality. Methodically, carefully, he had made sure that she could not leave with Stephen. If she did anyway, despite the invisible chains forged last night, despite the dishonor and disgrace, he possessed the proof necessary to get her back.

  The ruthlessness of it stunned her.

  She remembered the poignant emotions she had felt last night. Twice a fool. More childish illusions. Her stupid trust of men must be laughable to them.

  A warm presence near her shoulder interrupted her thoughts. Stephen hovered closely, his face near hers.

  “There is nought that we can do about these marriages, darling, but in life there is duty and then there is love.”

  “What are you saying, Stephen?”

  “You cannot love this man, Christiana. It will never happen. He is base and his very touch will insult you. I would spare you that if I could, but I cannot. But I can soothe your hurt, darling. Our love can do that. Give this merchant your duty, but keep our love in your heart.”

  She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, how David's touch never insulted. But what words could she use to explain that? Besides, she wasn't at all sure that the magic would return now that she knew why he had seduced her. Perhaps the next time, on their wedding night, she would indeed feel insulted and used.

  Well, what had she expected? David was a merchant and she was property. Very expensive property. She doubted that King Edward gave refunds.

  Love, she thought sadly. She had thought that there was some love in it. Her ignorance was amazing. David was right. She did live her life like she expected it to be some love song. But life was not like that. Men were not like that.