By Arrangement (24 page)

He let her lips and tongue caress him a while longer, and then gently turned her on her back.

“I think that I promised you slow pleasure,” he said. “Let us see how slow we can make it.”

Much later, for David could make the pleasure very slow when he chose to, they lay together on the darkened bed, the curtains pulled against the dimming sounds and lights from the wedding party. Christiana began drifting into sleep in his arms.

She felt him move, and sensed him looking at her nearly invisible profile.

“Did you speak with him?” he asked quietly.

She had forgotten about that. Had forgotten about Stephen Percy and her anger and hurt with David. This day and night had obscured her suspicions about his motivations with her, and she really wished now that he hadn't reminded her.

He lives with realities
, she thought.
You are the one who constructs dreams and songs.
But he had written that song about her, hadn't he? Not a love song, though. He thought her beautiful and had written about it. Perhaps he composes such melodies about sunsets and forest glens too.

“Aye, I spoke with him.”

“What did he want?”

“Nothing honorable.”

He was silent awhile.

“I do not want you seeing him,” he finally said.

“He is at court often. Are you saying that I cannot go back to Westminster again?”

“I do not mean that. You know what I am saying.”

“It is over, David. Like you and Alicia. It is the same.”

“It is not. I never loved Alicia.”

She turned her head to his. He had opened this door and she felt a compulsion to walk through it now.

“You never planned to let me go with him, did you?”

“I did not lie when I said it, but I was sure it would not come up.”

“And if it had?”

His fingers touched her face in the darkness. “I would not have let you go. Early on I knew it.”

Why? Your pride? Your investment? To save me from your mother's fate?
She could not ask the question. She did not want to know the true answer. A girl should be allowed some illusions and ambiguities if she had to live with a man. There was such a thing as too much reality.

“How did you know that I would come that day?”

“I did not expect it. I planned to go and get you.”

“And if I wouldn't come and agree to your seduction?”

“I would not have given you much choice.”

She thought about that.

“You were very clever, David, I will grant you that. Very careful. Lots of witnesses. Your whole household. Idonia. How thorough were you? Did you even save the sheets? Did you leave them on the bed until Geva had seen them the next day?” Her tone came out more petulantly than she felt.

He kissed her temple and pulled her into the curve of his body. “The first time I met you and every time after you told me that you loved him, Christiana. Up until last Wednesday itself. Despite what happened between us when I kissed you, despite his misuse of you. Aye, darling, I was thorough. And calculating and clever. I deliberately made this marriage a fact and bound you to me. I took no chances that he might tell the lies that your heart wanted to hear so that he could misuse you again. Would you have had me do otherwise? Should I have stood back from this knight like the merchant I am? Would honoring my promise to let you go have pleased you?”

She trembled a little at the blunt force of his words. It sounded very different when he put it that way, when she saw it through his eyes. It had been so easy to forget how she had been before last Wednesday.

“Nay,” she whispered, and it was true. She would not have been pleased at all if he had proven indifferent and had simply let Stephen lure her away. Another reaction that she feared to examine too closely.

The silence descended again, and after a time she relaxed in his embrace. Sleep had almost claimed her when she heard him laugh quietly in her ear.

“Aye, my girl, I was thorough and took no chances. I saved the sheets.”

CHAPTER 14

D
AVID WAS DROWSILY
aware of the curtains being pushed back. He turned his face away from the flooding light.

“Hell,” a man's voice said, pulling him awake.

He opened one eye a slit. Unless he was still dreaming, his wife was gone and the King of England stood beside his bed.

“Damnation, David.”

Not dreaming.

“My lord?” He rose up on his elbows.

The King stared down with a frown. “Will you be wanting to repudiate her? Philippa assured me the girl was whole, I swear. I told her we should have her examined, but she and Idonia …”

David looked to where the King gazed. The coverlet and sheets were bunched over to reveal a bloodless marriage bed.

Hell. The last thing he had expected was someone
looking for evidence of Christiana's virginity. What was Edward doing here, anyway?

“Do not let it concern you, my lord. There will be no repudiation.”

Edward's frown relaxed. “Damn chivalrous of you, David.”

“I am a merchant and we are apart from chivalry. That is reserved for your knights. I assure you that my wife came to me a virgin, though. If I had thought that someone would seek the evidence this morning, I would have bled a chicken.”

Edward looked at him blankly.

The man was still half besotted. David noted the red robe. The King had been here all night. Where and with whom? David decided that he didn't want to know.

“Do you need to see the original sheets? I have them,” he offered with a laugh, but as soon as he said it he realized that Edward's mind had moved on.

“I want to speak with you. It will save you a ride to Westminster.”

David glanced around the bed. Christiana's and his clothes were still strewn around the posts and floor. “Perhaps in the solar?”

Edward nodded and drifted off.

David grabbed a robe off a peg in the wardrobe, threw it on, and followed. Edward stood by the solar windows with a speculative, hooded expression on his face. David joined him and glanced down at the courtyard. A redhaired serving woman from a nearby house lounged against the well, surrounded by the litter of the night's revelry.

Edward sighed. “I suppose I have to give her something, eh? Hell, I can't even remember.” He patted his robe for evidence of a purse or coins.

“She is not a whore,” David said. “Wait one moment.”

He went back to the wardrobe and returned with a purple silk veil embroidered with gold thread.

Edward examined it. “Awfully nice, David. Don't you have something plainer? I don't even know if I enjoyed myself. This would be good for Philippa, though. Peace offering …”

David went to the wardrobe once again and fetched a blue veil with no embroidery.

“What, do you keep a whole box of them to give to your women?” the King teased as he stuffed them in his robe. “Best hide them from your wife. See my wardrobe treasurer about them.”

David pictured himself arriving at Westminster without a debenture or tally to claim payment for two veils purchased by the King for his slut and his neglected wife.

“Consider them gifts,” he said dryly. “You wanted to speak with me about something?”

“Aye. The council met two days ago. It was decided to embark right after Easter. I'll summon the barons shortly.”

David waited patiently for the rest of it.

“We received word that Grossmont engaged with the French and has secured Gascony,” the King continued.

David nodded. Gascony, below England's Aquitaine on the west coast of the continent, was territory held by Edward in fief to the French king. Among the many points of contention between the two monarchs had been the degree of control which France wanted to exert there. Henry Grossmont had been sent to stabilize the area.

“Furthermore, he has pushed as far north as Poitiers,” Edward said. “The port of Bordeaux is secure now. We will go in that way, join with him, and head northeast. I'll not be needing that last bit of information from you after all.”

“Poitiers is a long way from Paris. The spring rains will make movement difficult.”

“The council considered all of that. Still, our army and Grossmont's will be a formidable force. And debarking at Bordeaux will be riskless.”

Presumably the council of barons knew what they were doing. They were experienced soldiers. But it struck him as a fruitless strategy.

Edward watched him with an amused expression. “You do not approve. Speak your mind.”

He knew that a merchant's mind was irrelevant, but he spoke it anyway. “Bordeaux is a seven-day sea voyage. A long way to take an army by boat, and you risk bad winds. The French already await you at Poitiers. Even with a decisive victory you will be a long way from Paris. If the French crown is your goal, you must take that city and the royal demesne, must you not?”

“I will have twenty thousand with me,” Edward replied jovially. “We will cut through France like a hot blade through butter.”

Like all armies paid with spoils, yours will slog through France like a feather through cream
, David silently replied.

“Those weapons you offered me,” Edward mused. “Where are they?”

“Nowhere near Poitiers. I have one here, outside the city. If you have room on one of your ships, it is yours. Send me some men and I will train them in its use.”

“Ah well, one toy is probably enough. I will need the maps that you have been making of that region. Do you have them ready? We will want to know all of the possible routes and the best roads. Especially where to cross the Loire river during spring floods.”

“They are in my study.” The King followed him through the door by the hearth into the small chamber.

He took some rolled parchments off the shelf and placed them on the table. “This one is of the north. This other is Brittany, from Brest to the marches of Normandy. The large one shows the routes out from Bordeaux.” He unrolled the largest parchment. “Remember that I was there in November, and the marked river crossings are based on conversations that I had with the people in the area, and not on what I saw for myself. The conditions of the roads were obvious even in late autumn, however.” He pointed to one line. “This road is fairly direct for your purposes and lies on high ground, so it should be in better condition than the main one. It passes through farmland, and there are few towns along it.” Few opportunities for looting. The barons would press for the muddy low road so that they could pay their retinues.

Edward admired the drawing. “You have a knack for this sort of thing. I told the council that you would do the job and none would be the wiser.”

“Do you want them all?”

“You can bring the others later. This one I will take now. We are itching to begin our plans.” He took the parchment and tucked it under his arm. “A clever idea, to have you map out three possibilities. I know your own mind on this, but it will be Bordeaux.”

Aye
, David thought.
The army will land and engage. Battles will be fought and towns besieged, and knights and soldiers will grow rich from the looting. And after a summer of fighting, you will come back and nothing will have been resolved. Until you take Paris, this will never end.

What this decision meant to him and his own plans was another matter, and one that he would consider carefully later.

A sound behind made them both turn. Christiana
stood at the threshold to the bedchamber with a startled expression on her face. She carried a tray with food and ale.

“My lord,” she said, stepping in quickly and placing the tray on the table. “My apologies.”

They watched her go.

“Do you think that she heard?” Edward asked, frowning.

“If so, she will say nothing.” It really didn't matter. One could hardly sail hundreds of ships down the coast of Brittany and France and not be noticed. There would be little surprise when this invasion finally happened.

Was it over? He smiled at his King, but already his mind began recalculating.

On the fourth morning after their wedding, David told Christiana that they would ride north of the city a ways.

“I recently acquired a property in Hampstead,” he explained as they headed out the city gate side by side. “We will go there so that you can see it. I have to speak with some workers, and there are other matters to attend.”

“Is it a farm?”

“There are farms attached to it, but it is the house that you should see.”

“Many farms?”

“Ten, as I remember.”

“Aren't you afraid that the income will put you over the forty-pound limit? That Edward will force knighthood on you?” she teased.

“Aye. That is why I put the property in your name.”

“My name!”

“Yours. It belongs to you, as do the farms' rents.”

She absorbed this startling news. Married women
almost never owned their own property. It went with them to their husbands. The only woman she knew who owned land outright was Lady Elizabeth. Joan had told her that Elizabeth always demanded property in her name as part of her marriage settlements to those old men.

“The dowry manor that Edward settled on you is yours as well, Christiana.”

“Why, David?”

“I want you to know that you are secure, and without land you never will feel thus. I am comfortable with wealth based on credits and coin, but you never will be. Also, I take risks in my trade, sometimes big ones. I want to know that should my judgment fail, you will not suffer.”

It made a certain sense, but still it astonished her.

“There is something that you should know about this house,” he said later as they turned off the road onto a lane. “It came to me through moneylending. You should also know that it was owned by Lady Catherine. If you do not like that, you can sell it and purchase elsewhere. Near London, though. I want you to have someplace to go when the summer illnesses spread in the city.”

The twinge of guilt that she felt at this news disappeared as soon as she saw the house. Wide and tall, its base built of stone and its upper level of timber and plaster, it sat beautifully inside a stone wall at the end of the lane, surrounded by outbuildings and gardens. A bank of glazed windows on the second level indicated its recent construction.