Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “That’s right, my lord,” Joanna said. “Serjant Fox returned to Normandy three weeks ago.”

  “So I must go to Normandy. It’s high time I made amends for having failed Graeham so miserably. I won’t be able to live with myself—nor,” he added with a sheepish smile, “sleep with my wife—until I meet him and acknowledge him openly as my son.”

  Joanna smiled. “I know that would mean a great deal to him, my lord.”

  “My only regret,” said the baron, “is that I didn’t come to my senses a little earlier. Then I might not have had to miss his wedding.”

  Hugh stilled in the act of bringing his goblet to his mouth. “His wedding?”

  “Ah, you didn’t know,” the baron said with a grin. “Graeham married someone named Phillipa in Paris about a week ago. I take it she’s a ward of Gui’s or some such.”

  Blood roared in Joanna’s ears.

  “Are you sure?” Hugh asked.

  “Lord Gui told me all about it in his letter,” said Lord Gilbert. “It had been planned for some time. He set the wedding date for August second when Graeham wrote him that he was returning.”

  “Jesu,” Joanna whispered.

  The baron seemed oblivious to her consternation. “They’re going to live in England. Lord Gui is granting him an Oxfordshire estate—fifteen hides, not bad. A reward for this mysterious mission of his, apparently.”

  Joanna felt the cold drain of blood in her head, a roiling sickness in her stomach.

  Are you so chivalrous, then, she’d once asked him, that you’d go to all this effort for no reward at all?

  Perhaps I am.

  He’d lied to her.

  Not for the first time. Not for the last time.

  I’ll return to England in a few weeks, he’d said. Only he’d failed to mention that he’d be a married man. Did he think she’d consent to be his mistress?

  She clutched her churning stomach. This was a hellish dream, a nightmare.

  Christ, no wonder he’d never returned her declaration of love. He was using her—and God help her, she’d let him, she’d walked right into it, eyes open. Right from the very beginning, he’d exploited her, first to advance his mission, and then for sex. How could she have let it happen? How could she have lowered her guard, especially after Prewitt?

  “My lady, are you all right?” asked Lord Gilbert. “You’re so pale.”

  Joanna felt a whirling sense of unreality, as if she’d drunk too much wine. Then she felt Hugh’s arm around her, guiding her along the bank of the stream to a boulder, urging her to sit, to lower her head.

  The voices of the two men sounded muffled to her ears. Hugh seemed to be telling her to take deep breaths. He was explaining to Lord Gilbert that her stomach had been troubling her today, and perhaps she was ill.

  If only that was all there was to it. Merciful God, what would become of her now?

  Dimly she became aware that Lord Gilbert was bidding Hugh good-bye and saying he hoped she would feel better soon.

  She raised her head and saw him walking away. “Wait! Lord Gilbert!”

  The baron came back. “Yes, my lady.”

  She tried to rise, but everything twirled slowly. Hugh pushed her gently back down onto the boulder.

  “I...I wonder if you would take a letter to Serjant Fox for me when you go to Normandy,” she said.

  “Certainly,” said the baron. “I take it you want to congratulate him on his marriage.”

  “Something like that,” she said. “I’ll bring it round to you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll send a servant to your house for it—say in the afternoon?”

  “‘Twill be ready then. Thank you, my lord.”

  “My pleasure.” He inclined his head and walked away.

  Hugh knelt in front of Joanna, took her icy hands and chafed them between his. “Joanna, I’m—”

  “Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” she said in voice that sounded strangely hoarse and faraway. “You tried to warn me. I wouldn’t listen. You tried to warn me about Prewitt, too, and I wouldn’t listen then. This is my own fault. No one’s to blame but me.”

  “I brought him to you, Joanna,” he said, his hands closing tight around hers. “I installed him in your home. I should have known better than to trust some stranger I’d only met, just because he seemed like a likable fellow.”

  “Nay,” she said. “I have a weakness for men like that—handsome devils. Handsome, charming, unscrupulous devils.”

  “What are you going to write in your letter to him?”

  “I’m going to tell him I’m moving to the country and I’ll never see him again.”

  “Thank God! You mean you’re finally going to take my money?”

  “Only enough to get me settled somewhere far away from London. I wouldn’t do it...I didn’t want to do it...I was hoping Graeham would come back and marry me, but now I...I don’t feel as if I have any choice, not considering...oh, damn it all.”

  “Swearing again, are you? I’ll warn you—country folk don’t take very well to ladies using rough language.”

  “I’m pregnant, Hugh.”

  His eyes widened in shock. He leapt to his feet, his face a mask of outrage, spun around, fists clenched, stalked away from her and then back. “I’ll kill him. I’ll find him and wring his goddamned neck.”

  “I thought you were going to slice off his, er...”

  “I’ll do that first, and then I’ll wring his goddamned neck.”

  “Hugh,” she said, striving for calm in the face of her own tumultuous emotions, “you knew we were sleeping together.”

  “Aye, but there are ways to prevent...” He gestured in the general vicinity of her stomach. “Things a fellow can do to keep from...Jesu, Joanna, he should have known what to do.”

  “He did,” she said, feeling heat flood her face. “Except, well, for the first time.”

  A wolflike snarl rumbled out of Hugh. “Did he know? Before he left?”

  “Nay. I’ve only known myself for three weeks.”

  “Are you absolutely positive you’re...” His gaze lit on her stomach.

  “Quite.” Her purgation was due the day Graeham left for Paris; never had her courses been late. And then there were her stomach troubles, the fluxes and vomiting.

  Squatting in front of her, Hugh took her hands again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was waiting to tell Graeham first, when he came back. I was sure he’d marry me and we could move away from the city, and...” She shrugged helplessly.

  “This letter you’re writing to him. Don’t you think you ought to tell him?”

  “Nay.” She shook her head resolutely. “He made it clear he never wanted to sire any bastards.”

  “But now that he has, shouldn’t he know about it? He’s a man of property now. He could provide for the child.”

  “Don’t you understand, Hugh? He’s a married man now. ‘Twould be humiliating for me to force myself and my child on him, knowing he doesn’t care about me, about us.”

  “Doesn’t he?”

  I wish to God I didn’t have to leave you....I’ll miss you.

  “Perhaps a little. I have no way of knowing for sure. He was always so credible when he wanted to be, so lethally charming. All I know for certain is that he didn’t care enough—and that he was using me. I was convenient and willing.”

  “And now you’re carrying his child,” Hugh said.

  “I’m not sorry about the baby, Hugh, in spite of everything. I want this child. I’m glad I’m carrying it. I can’t stay in London now, though.”

  “Aye, once you start to show, you’ll be the talk of West Cheap. You’ll be ruined.”

  “‘Tisn’t my reputation I’m thinking of. I don’t want to raise a child in that city, and I can’t bear to stay there any longer myself. The house reminds me of Graeham now. I need to get away from there.”

  “That’s all well and good, but don’t ignore your reputation. Promise me
something, Joanna. When you settle down in the country, let people think you’re a recent widow and that the baby was your husband’s. No use making things any harder on yourself than you need to.”

  “All right,” she said. “But you have to promise me something in return.”

  “What?” he asked warily.

  “That you won’t seek Graeham out and...mutilate him.”

  Hugh rolled his eyes and wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword. “I swear on the baby Jesus’s manger hay that I’ll keep my sword away from Graeham Fox’s privities.”

  “And your dagger.”

  “And my dagger.”

  “I know you’re furious with him,” she said. “Imagine how I feel. But time will lessen our rage. I just don’t want you to do anything rash in the meantime.”

  “Time will have no impact on the anger I feel toward that lying whoreson,” Hugh said, his expression murderous.

  “Nonsense. You’ve never been able to stay angry at anyone.”

  “I’ll stay angry at Graeham Fox until I draw my dying breath,” Hugh said grimly. “Just see if I don’t.”

  Chapter 26

  An October chill was in the air when Joanna stepped out into the slanting late afternoon sun to feed her chickens. The autumn-hued leaves on the big oaks overhanging her little wattle-and-daub cottage rattled as a breeze wafted out of the woods just beyond her front pasture.

  Perhaps someday she could afford a sheep or two to graze in that pasture; the wool would come in handy. She could use a few pigs, too. Pigs weren’t much trouble; they could forage in the woods during the summer and feed her all winter. In the meantime she’d make do with her chickens—for she got a half-penny apiece for the eggs—and her goat, which provided the milk she’d been craving in gluttonous quantities of late.

  Manfrid strode in front of her as she crossed to the poultry house with her sack of feed. He threw himself to the hard-packed ground at her feet, belly up, a silent but plaintive entreaty. Joanna crouched down to stroke his silky stomach, causing him to squirm in delight and emit that remarkable grinding purr of his.

  Like cartwheels on gravel, Graeham used to say.

  Manfrid had missed Graeham after he was gone. For days the big tom would wander in and out of the storeroom, as if hoping Graeham would suddenly materialize if he just kept checking.

  ‘Tis a mystery to me why you keep him, Graeham had once said about Manfrid. He’s too timid to be of any use. But he’d befriended him anyway, and lo and behold, he did prove to be of rather significant use eventually. For to hear Graeham tell it, it was Manfrid who’d awakened him that eventful day when Rolf le Fever’s ugly blue and red house had burned to the ground.

  Joanna was glad she’d taken the trouble to transport the two cats to her new home. Petronilla kept the byre in back of the cottage free of vermin, and Manfrid...well, Manfrid was Manfrid. He kept her lap warm at night. He kept her from getting too lonely. Her few neighbors lived too far away and were too busy to visit frequently, and Hugh had set off for the Rhineland last month after making sure she got settled into her new house.

  She ought to be used to being alone, after all those years of making do virtually on her own, but having Graeham around had spoiled her. God help her, she missed him more than ever, despite his duplicity and the fact that he was married and living on some grand Oxfordshire estate by now. He’d been like wine for her soul. For the first time in years, she’d felt as if she were a part of someone else, not just desired, but well and truly loved.

  It had all been an illusion, of course, crafted partly out of whole cloth by Graeham Fox and partly out of her own loneliness and need.

  Never again. No handsome devil would ever use her like that again. Ever.

  She’d made sure Graeham Fox would never use her that way again by moving here to this remote corner of the Midlands, far from her former life. No one in London knew where she’d gone; it was as if she’d disappeared from the face of the earth. Graeham couldn’t find her in a thousand years, even if he wanted to. That knowledge both comforted and depressed her.

  She treated Manfrid to one last, indulgent scratch behind the ears and then stood, fighting a wave of disorientation. These dizzy spells were much less frequent now, in her fourth month, than they’d been in the beginning. In addition to all the nausea and weakness, she’d actually fainted several times. But according to the local midwife, all that would taper off completely soon, and she’d have more energy than ever.

  Manfrid made that funny little sound in his throat he sometimes made—almost like a dove cooing—and leapt up, suddenly alert. If he’d been Petronilla, Joanna would have assumed there was a field mouse lurking about somewhere, but Manfrid doggedly avoided the prey that his sister found so compelling. The big cat strolled over to the dirt path that cut through the pasture and sat, staring off in the direction of the woods, his tail twitching.

  Joanna turned toward the poultry house, then turned back around as something caught her eye—a movement at the edge of the woods. Squinting against the low orange sun, for the woods were to the west, she identified the source of the movement—a man on horseback.

  All she could see of him was the distant, dark shape of man and horse advancing toward her along the path. She wondered who he was. Most folks around here rode mules unless they walked. Horses were a luxury.

  She touched the dagger hanging from her girdle, a concession to the riskiness of living alone in relative isolation. Pray God this fellow was some local nobleman, or perhaps a priest, and not...

  Joanna shielded her eyes, peering at the horseman’s hair, gleaming rustily in the golden sunlight. It hung in waves over the collar of his brown, split-front riding tunic. His long legs were encased in leathern leggings secured with crisscrossed thongs.

  “Nay...”

  Joanna focused on his face, her heart skittering in her chest. “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

  The feed sack thudded to the ground.

  It was him.

  Thank God he found her.

  Oh, God, why did he have to find her?

  Joanna pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach, mentally scolding herself for her lack of backbone. She hated Graeham Fox. She despised him utterly for lying to her, using her, getting her with child, then leaving her to marry the lovely and learned Phillipa.

  How the devil did he find her? Only Hugh knew where she was, and Hugh was in the Rhineland.

  Graeham slowed his dun stallion to a walk as he got to the end of the path. Those earnest, dazzling blue eyes of his still had the power to steal the breath from her lungs, damn him. Something looked different about him; she realized his nose had a bump halfway down that never used to be there, and his forehead was marred by a livid little scar that cut through the outside edge of an eyebrow.

  Reining in his mount, he said, “Joanna...my God, it really is you.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at him.

  His expression sobered. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the limb of one of the oaks. Manfrid rubbed deliriously against his legs. Graeham squatted down and stroked his back. “You’re happy to see me, aren’t you, boy?”

  Manfrid purred lustily. Graeham looked up and met Joanna’s gaze as he petted the cat. “Christ, Joanna, I’ve missed you. I thought I might never see you again.”

  He stood and took a step toward her.

  She backed up a step.

  He stopped in his tracks. “I know you’re...put out with me.”

  “You have no idea,” she said, her voice low and unsteady.

  “I just need you to listen to me.” He held his palms up placatingly, started walking toward her. “Just that—hear me out.”

  “Roast in hell.” Joanna stumbled backward as he advanced on her, his strides growing swift, determined. She backed up against the poultry house and she turned to flee, but he seized her by the shoulders and pressed her against the earthen wall. She pushed against his chest, but it was like trying to budge a wal
l of rock.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said, his gaze feasting hungrily on her hair, loose and uncovered, her eyes, her mouth, and lower, to her swelling breasts and the belly that pushed stubbornly against her snug violet kirtle.

  He lowered a hand to her stomach, caressed the slight roundness, his expression one of wonderment.

  So. He knew.

  Looking into her eyes, he said, “You’re even more beautiful now. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

  His face was very close to hers now, too close. He was bending his head to hers, his gaze on her mouth. She tried to shake her head no, but that only brushed her lips against his.

  A whimper of longing rose from her as he closed his mouth over hers, his lips so warm, so demanding. He framed her face with his hands, threaded his fingers through her hair.

  The world spun as he kissed her. She grabbed fistfuls of his tunic, her heart pounding, reeling with riotous emotions—love and hate, desire, bewilderment.

  How could he do this to her? What kind of power did he have over her? She felt drugged by his nearness, his kiss, his warm, familiar scent that she’d missed so much.

  He broke the kiss with a breathless whisper. “I love you.”

  “Oh, God, more lies.” She covered her ears with her hands. “Stop lying to me, Graeham, that’s all I ask of you.”

  He pulled her hands away from her ears. “‘Tis the truth, Joanna, I swear it. I should have told you long ago, but I was an idiot.” Lifting her hands to his mouth, he kissed them. “I love you, Joanna. I do, I—”

  “What of Phillipa? Do you love her, too, or did you just marry her for the land?”

  Releasing her hands, he lightly stroked her cheek. “Joanna...”

  “Did you seek me out thinking I’d be your leman, that you could come to me whenever the fancy struck you and I’d just spread my legs like some twopenny—”

  “‘Tisn’t like that, Joanna.”

  “Go back to your wife, Graeham.” Joanna pushed against him as hard as she could. He staggered back a step, just enough for her to sidestep him.