By Arrangement (29 page)

Her mind clouded with horror at hearing him speak so coldly of their marriage. There had certainly been evidence that he thought of her thus and had even seduced her to lay claim to what was his, but to hear the words bluntly spoken and to have the confirmation thrown into the face of her love sickened her.

“Property …” she gasped.

“Aye. Bought and paid for.”

Her eyes blurred and she thought that her heart would shatter. But his words also insulted her pride and her fury flared.

“I don't choose to be property to be used at your convenience,” she cried, twisting and kicking to break free. “You will not do this in anger and punishment.”

Her struggle only infuriated him. With two rough moves he pinned and immobilized her against the window.

“You are my wife. You have no choices.”

She screamed as he lifted her and carried her to the bed as if she were a carpet. When he threw her down, she rolled away and tried to scramble free. He caught her and pulled her to him, pressing his chest into her back and throwing a leg over hers.

He held her until her thrashing stopped. She emerged from her delirium of rebellion. He softly stroked her hair and back as if she were a skittish animal.

Devastation flooded her. She bit her lower lip and fought back tears. She thought of the stupid and trusting joy which she had carried down to him just a few hours before. Love, alive but battered, searched for shelter somewhere inside her.

He shifted off of her and ran his hand down her back. His fingers pried at the knot of her cotehardie's lacing.

“I'm sorry if I frightened you, but I share you with no man, least of all that one.” His voice came quietly and gently, but anger still radiated from him, mixing with the passion of his body. “You must never go to him again. If you do, I will kill him.”

He said it simply and evenly, in the voice of the David she knew. The hands that she relished stroked her back through the loosened garment, their warmth flowing through the thin fabric of her shift. Her foolish love glowed in response. Her bludgeoned pride pushed it back into a corner.

She turned onto her back. His mood had not improved much although he tried to hide it now. She gazed at that handsome face that could so easily make her heart sigh. His expression softened, and he caressed her stomach and breast. A pleasurable yearning fluttered through her and it horrified her that she could respond under these conditions. Her love started stringing through her, offering to weave an illusion for escape.

His blunt words repeated themselves in her head. She grabbed his wrist and stayed his hand. Love or not, she could not delude herself about what was about to happen and why he did it and what it meant to him.

“So, we are down to base reality at last,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “How tedious it must have been to have to pretend otherwise with the child whom you married.”

He stared at her. His lack of response and denial turned her anguish to hateful spite. “The merchant has need of his property, much as he rides his horse when it suits him? Well, go ahead, husband. Reclaim your rights. Show that you are equal to any baron by using one of their daughters against her will. Will you hurt me, too? To
make sure that the lesson of your ownership is well learned?”

Still he did not react. Her heart broke with a suffocating pain and she threw out whatever she could to hurt him, in turn. “Do not bother with seduction and pleasure, mercer. Soil feels nothing when it is tilled, nor wool when it is cut. I will think about who I am and what you are and feel nothing, too. But be quick about it so that I can go cleanse myself.” And then she looked at him and through him the way she had that day after her bath.

She thought that he was going to hit her. In that brief moment of his renewed anger, as he drew up and his eyes darkened, she rolled frantically off the bed and half ran, half crawled to the door of the wardrobe.

She slammed and barred it just as he reached her. A vicious kick jarred the door and bolt. She pushed a heavy trunk over against them and stood back fearfully as he kicked again.

Then came only silence. She ran to the door leading to the exterior stairs and barred it too. She waited tensely a long time but the quiet held and he made no more attempts to enter.

Heaving breaths of relief, she sank down on a stool and finally let the tears flow. She cried long and hard, awash in misery and shock, his cruel words echoing in her ears. Her pathetic love fluttered out of hiding and added to the agony.

Eventually a numb stupor claimed her. Only one thought came clearly, over and over again. She had to get away and leave this house and this man. She would not, could not, live with the reality he had forced on her this day. Not now. Not for a long while. Maybe not ever.

The rain pounded relentlessly, its blowing spray stinging David's face. He stood on the short dock and watched the patterns that the drops made in the muddy Thames. Beautiful, rhythmic splashes, full of faint highlights of purity, existed for split instants before the dirty flow absorbed them.

He let the rain wash over him. It soaked his clothes and plastered his hair to his head. After a long while it cleansed the black anger from his mind.

And then, with the madness gone, he faced the memory of what had occurred. That would never wash away and he lived it all again. His spiteful words. Her harsh insults. His vicious debasement of her.

Thank God she had gotten away.

They knew each other well enough to point the daggers expertly and draw blood from each other's weaknesses. He would never forget what she had said, but he couldn't blame her for admitting those feelings and thoughts. Since the day she had come to him, she had tried valiantly to ignore what this marriage meant to her life.

He had never been as cruel and hard to a woman as he had been with Christiana this day. Oliver and Sieg had been right. He should never have returned home and confronted her while the knowledge of her infidelity still flared like a fresh log tossed on a fire. He had known that they were right even as he ignored their advice and entreaties.

He pictured Oliver sitting across the tavern table from him and Sieg, listening with studied absorption to their tale of waiting on the Normandy coast for signs of the fleet passing. David described how the days had turned dark with storms and how he had realized that this month at least he would be spared the decision awaiting him in France.

And all the time that Oliver carefully listened and prolonged the tale with questions, he had watched the signs of ill ease on his old friend's face. They betrayed him worse when David asked after Christiana. Poor Oliver. He had tried to lie and then to equivocate when he probed for details. David knew that his own expression had turned dangerous when he felt Sieg's hand on his shoulder and that lilting voice urging him to stay away from the house for a few more days.

Impossible, of course. He had to see her at once and look into those diamonds knowing what he knew. He wanted and expected to feel dead to her, to be free of the love that was complicating his life and making him suddenly indecisive.

For when he had stepped off Albin's boat this morning after two treacherous days at sea, he had known that he loved her. He had recognized the feelings for a long time, but in Normandy he had put the name to them. He had sought out Oliver before returning home, because he knew that when he entered that house he would not want to leave again for a long while.

In his mind he saw her running to him, face flushed and eyes bright. He had watched her exuberant greeting with dark fascination. He had not expected her to be so good at deception. And mixed with that initial reaction had been the appalling realization that he still wanted her.

A dangerous mix, he thought now as he raised his face to the rain. Anger and desire and jealousy. Why had he let her play the game out? Why had he permitted those hours to pass as she pretended that nothing had changed and his own rancor grew? He grimaced and wiped the water from his face. He had been watching and waiting and, aye, hoping. Waiting for a confession and hoping it included the admission that her infidelity had been disillusioning.

Waiting for her to beg forgiveness and say that she now knew that she no longer loved Percy.

Fool. Unfaithful wives never did such things. Even when cornered with the evidence, the prudent course was to lie. Honesty was too dangerous. Men reacted too violently. He had certainly proven that today, hadn't he? He had forced her into lies born of her fear.

He closed his mind to the memory of her shock and terror.

She had denied it, but he didn't believe her. She loved Sir Stephen and her knight had been leaving for war. Her own testimony suggested that Stephen had no skill as a lover, but that did not reassure him in the least. A woman in love sought more than pleasure in bed and would forgive any clumsiness.

He contemplated that denial as he walked back to his horse. One part rang true.
Lady Catherine brought me to Stephen unknowingly
, she had said. He believed that, and it was something at least. Christiana had not arranged that meeting on her own, but had been lured there. Considering how she felt about Stephen, perhaps the rest had been so inevitable as to make her practically innocent.

As for Lady Catherine and her role in this …Well, when he settled this new account, he would permit himself the pleasure of revenge and not just justice.

He couldn't stay away from the house forever, and so he rode back, not knowing what he would say to Christiana when he got there. The temptation presented itself to pretend that the whole day had never happened, that he had never confronted her in his rage.

Would she accept their behaviors as an effective trade? One infidelity and betrayal for one attempted rape? If it had just been that, the accounts might be cleared, but his words and manner had insulted her more than any
bodily assault could. To hurt her, he had told her that she was only a noble whore whom he had bought. She would not quickly forgive him that.

He rode into the wet courtyard and handed his reins to the groom. As soon as he entered the hall, a corner of his soul suspected.

The house felt as it had before their wedding. It had been his home for years and he had found contentment in it and so he had never noticed the voids that it held after his mother and master died. Only after Christiana filled those spaces with her smiles and joy had he realized their previous vacancy. Now he heard his footsteps echo in the large chamber as if all of the furniture had been removed. He paced to the hearth, avoiding the confirmation of his suspicion.

Geva entered from the kitchen with crockery plates in her arms. She glanced at him and shook her head.

“You be soaking wet, David. Best get out of those garments,” she scolded.

He turned his back to the fire. Geva hummed as she set out the plates for supper. She acted as if nothing was amiss, and his foreboding retreated. With one final glance at him, she disappeared back into the kitchen.

He looked at the tables. He counted the plates. One short. The foreboding rushed back.

He slowly walked across the hall and up to his chambers, knowing what he would find.

In the wardrobe, hanging on their pegs and folded in trunks, were all of the garments that he had given her, including the red cloak. He flipped through them, noting that her other things, her old things, were mostly gone. Not all of them, however. One trunk still held some winter wools. He lifted them to his face and savored her scent, and an invisible hand squeezed his heart.

He left the wardrobe and passed quickly through the
bedchamber, not wanting to look at that space that still held the vivid images of the wounds they had inflicted on each other.

Sieg squatted in the solar, building the fire. He raised his eyebrows at the soaked garments.

“Did you throw yourself in the river then?”

David ignored him.

“Did you harm her?”

He shook his head.

Sieg finished with the fire and then rose. “I told you to wait, David. Your mood was blacker than night. I've not seen you like that, even when the Mamluks first threw you into that hell with me after that slut sold you out to them. Not even during our escape when you killed the one who had flogged us.”

“I should have listened.”

“Ja
, well you never have where this girl goes, so this is no different.”

David hesitated. With any other man he would not have asked, but Sieg had seen him weak before.

“Where is she?”

Sieg's eyes flashed and his posture straightened. “Hell! You don't know? I swear she told me that you'd agreed to it or I'd not have taken her …”

“Where?”

“Back to Westminster.” He turned toward the door. “I go and get her now. Hell.”

“Do not. Leave her stay awhile.”

“Do you mean to say that you will stand down to this fool of a knight who steals your wife? You will permit this?”

“If it comes to that, I have driven her to it,” he said. “Do you think that she plans to remain at court? Did you sense that she intended to continue on elsewhere?”

“She promised to remain there, which I found odd, since she owes me no explanation.”

“Sir Stephen left for Northumberland several days ago. Oliver told me. She knows that I will know, or find out. Her promise was to assure me that she does not go to him.” He smiled thinly. “I said that I would kill him if she did. My behavior gave her reason to believe me.”

Sieg threw up his hands. “It makes no sense, David. If this man is up north, why does she just go to Westminster? If she doesn't go to him, why run away at all?”

David didn't reply, although the answer was obvious.
She does not run to Percy
, he thought.
She runs from me
.

Christiana sat in a garden redolent with the scent of late May flowers. She gazed at the pastel buds and smiled. Being a woman instead of a child wasn't all bad. Last year she would have taken the flowers' beauty for granted. Today she carefully admired their fresh purity.

David had taught her this. To pay attention to the fleeting beauties in the world. Not a small gift.