By Arrangement (6 page)

He rose. Apparently his oblique scolding was finished, and Christiana felt confident that he would leave. She glanced at Joan triumphantly.

David looked down at her. “The day is fair. Perhaps all that you need is some fresh air to clear your head.”

“I'm not at all sure …”

His gaze lit on the closest ambry. “Are your things in here? We will get you dressed and I will take you out for a while.”

She narrowed her eyes at David's handsome face. One farce after another. She couldn't claim to be too dizzy to go out but also too well to see a physician. He had cleverly, elegantly manipulated her ruse against her.

“I am already dressed,” she announced, throwing back the coverlet and sitting up, admitting defeat.

“So you are,” he said quietly, coming toward her with a vague smile on his face and her old cloak in his hand. “What a disappointment. I was looking forward to that part.”

That smile made her very uncomfortable. She would admit defeat, but not surrender. “Unfortunately,” she said regretfully, “I cannot go with you. It is a rule. None of us can be with a man alone.”

Joan nodded her head vigorously in support.

“Lady Idonia is gone, and unfortunately Joan has to meet with her brother soon,” she added.

Joan continued nodding even though she had no such plans.

“It is a most serious prohibition,” she emphasized. “As you can imagine, the consequences for disobeying are dire.”

“Dire,” Joan echoed helpfully.

David gave them both a look that indicated he thought that consequences had not been nearly dire enough for the two of them over the years.

“I might risk it, except that the Queen is most strict and …” She threw up her hands.

David flipped the cloak out and around her shoulders. He bent to pin the brooch under her neck. His closeness,
and his hands working near her body, made her yet more uncomfortable.

“I am not just a man, I am your betrothed. What is the worst that can happen? If I ravish you, it simply means that the marriage is finalized that much earlier. Perhaps they would thank me for taking you off their hands. Besides, it is for me to punish your future bad behavior and not Lady Idonia and the Queen.”

He was talking to her like a child again. In fact, he was dressing her like a child. Furthermore, this was his second reference to
that
, and she really could do without his innuendos. They prodded at something inside her that she didn't want to think about. Since they insinuated a familiarity that simply wasn't going to develop, she thought that it would be nice if they didn't even jest about it.

This merchant's presumptions indicated that he was taking his betrothal rights far too seriously. She did not want to be alone with David de Abyndon any longer than necessary, and she had ruined the chance of getting Joan to come with them. While he put on his own cloak, she caught Joan's attention.

Idonia
, she mouthed.

She stood up to leave. With a smooth movement David bent and scooped her into his arms. She cried a startled “Oh!” and stared at him.

“I can walk.” She fumed when he laughed.

“There are steps. If you get dizzy again, you might fall and break your neck.”

“It is more likely that you will drop me.”

“Nonsense. You are very light.”

“Oh, dear saints,” she groaned, letting her head fall back in exasperation. “Well, at least go down the back stairs to the entrance there. I don't want the whole court to see this.”

As he carried her out, she turned her head and looked desperately back at Joan.

Send Idonia
, she mouthed again.

He set her down at the back entrance that led to a small courtyard beneath Isabele's windows.

“There are some benches here and the sun is warm against that wall,” she suggested. “Let us sit here.”

“I think that we would prefer to take a ride.”

Idonia would never find them and rescue her then. “
I
would prefer to sit here.”

“Soon the shadows will move over that wall, and then you will get chilled. A ride in the sun will be better.”

Walking beside him around the corner of the manor, she wondered if all men got so willful after one got betrothed to them. Would Stephen stop speaking pretty words when they were married? Was that just something done beforehand to lure women? The chansons weren't much help with this question. The couples in those romantic songs were never married. She immediately felt guilty for equating Stephen with this merchant. Stephen was a chivalrous knight, and poetry and romance flowed in his blood.

David took the reins of his horse from the young groom who had been holding them.

“I will send for a mount from the stables,” she said.

“You will ride with me. One of the problems with being dizzy is that you cannot ride a horse unattended for a while.” He lifted her up to the front of the saddle and swung up behind her.

She had never sat on a horse with a man before. The perch up front was a little precarious, especially if one leaned forward as she strained to do. This promised to be backbreaking and her mood did not improve.

They rode out the castle gate and turned upriver. The road grew deserted once they moved away from the castle and town. A few carts straggled past, and in the river an occasional barge drifted by. They were less than two miles from London's wall, but suddenly a world away.

They rode in silence for about a quarter of a mile. Christiana focused her attention on avoiding any contact with the man a hair's breadth behind her. Her back ached from the effort.

Suddenly and without warning, David pushed the horse to a faster walk. That did it. The gait threw her backward against his chest and shoulders. His arm slid around her waist. She tensed in surprise as that peculiar intensity flowed and embraced her more surely than his arm.

She noticed the solidity of his support and became acutely aware of his arm resting lightly across her waist. She looked down at the beautiful masculine hand gently holding her, and felt the soft pressure of his fingers as he steadied her. There was something tantalizing about his warmth along her back.

The oddest tremor swept through her. She tensed again.

“Are you afraid of me, Christiana?” he asked.

His face was very close to her head, and his voice barely louder than a whisper. His breath drifted over her temple, carrying his words. The warm sound mixed with the warm air and caressed her as surely as if fingers had touched her. Despite that warmth, a chill trembled down her neck and back. A very peculiar chill.

“Of course not.”

“You act as if you are.”

He had noticed the tremors, she thought, a little horrified but not sure why.

“I am a bit cold is all.”

In response he drew the edges of his own cloak around her.

He seemed closer now. She could feel the muscles of his chest all along her back. His breath grazed her hair, making her scalp tingle. He was virtually a stranger, and the subtle intimacy of being cocooned inside his cloak with him did make her a little fearful now, but of what she couldn't say. She squirmed to let him know that she wanted him to let go.

He did not release her. Instead he bent his body over hers. Soft hair brushed against her cheek before he turned his head to kiss her neck.

The heat of his lips against her skin produced an incredible shock. He kissed her again, increasing the pressure, and the warmth of that mouth penetrated her skin, flowed down her neck and arms, and streaked through her chest and belly. The pure physicality of the sensation stunned her.

His arm pulled her tighter. His lips moved up her neck. Quivering, delicious tremors coursed through her. He nipped lightly along the edge of her ear. A hollow tension exploded, shaking her, and she gasped.

The sound woke her from the sensual daze. She turned her head away from his mouth. “Now I am afraid of you,” she said.

“That was not fear.”

She pushed against his arm. “I want to get down. This familiarity is wrong.”

“We are betrothed.”

“Not really.”

“Very really.”

“Not in my mind, and you know it. I want to get down. Now. I want to walk for a while.”

He stopped the horse and swung off. She braced herself
for his anger as she turned to be lifted down, but he only smiled and fell into step beside her.

Even walking apart from him, she could still feel the pull of that unsettling intimacy. This man had made her feel uncomfortable and vulnerable from the first time she had seen him, and it wasn't getting any better.

She felt an urgent need to banish the last few minutes from their memories, and took refuge in conversation to do so.

“Lady Idonia told me that the Abyndons are an aldermanic family in London.”

“My uncle Stephen was an alderman about ten years ago, at the time that he died. I have an uncle Gilbert who would like to be.”

“He did not come Saturday.”

“We are estranged.”

“And your parents did not come. Are they dead or are you estranged from them too?”

He didn't answer right away. “They did not tell you much about me, did they? My mother is dead. I do not know my father. Abyndon is my mother's name.”

He was a bastard. Of all of the topics to choose for conversation, this had probably been the worst.

“Your brother knows of this,” he added.

“It is a common thing. He would not find it worth while to comment upon it to me.” That was a courteous lie, of course. It wasn't
that
common.

“Is there anything else you want to know about me?”

She thought a moment. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“And you were an apprentice until twenty-five?”

“Actually, twenty-four.”

“So how did you get so rich so fast?”

He laughed a little. A nice laugh. Quiet. “It is a long story.”

“Not too long, if you are only twenty-nine.”

He laughed again. “My master, David Constantyn, bought his goods from traders who came to England. Italians mostly, from Genoa and Venice. When I was about Andrew's age, twenty, I convinced him to send me to Flanders to purchase some wool directly. The prices at which we sell are regulated, so the only way to make more profit is to buy more cheaply.”

“Your trip was successful?”

“Very much so. We did that for a year. Then, one day he came to me and agreed on another idea I had proposed. He gave me a large amount of money to try my luck elsewhere. I was gone for three years, and visited many of the ports around the Inland Sea. I sent back goods, became friends with men who became our agents, and established a trading network. We had a large advantage after that.”

He told his tale as if men did this all of the time, but of course they did not and even a girl like her knew it. “You were still his apprentice then?”

“In the eyes of law. But he had been more like a father to me for years. As soon as I received the city's freedom and citizenship, he made me his partner. He was a widower and had no children, and left me his property upon his death. His wealth went to charity and for prayers for his soul.”

She hadn't thought of a merchant as an adventurer. In her world only a knight errant or crusader might wander thus. “Where are some of the places that you traveled to?”

“I went by ship down the coast of the Aquitane and Castile and into the Inland Sea through the Pillars of Hercules. Then along the coast of the Dark Continent first.”

“Saracen lands!”

“One must trade with Saracens to get anything from the East.”

“It must have been dangerous.”

“Only once. In Egypt. I stayed too long there. The ports welcome traders and depend on them. No one wants to discourage commerce by killing merchants. After Egypt, I went up to Tripoli and Constantinople, then sailed to Genoa. I came back through France.”

She pictured the maps of the Inland Sea that she had seen. She imagined him riding through deserts and passing over the Alps. She glanced at the daggers he wore. One was a decorative eating tool, but the other was large and lethal looking.

“It still sounds dangerous. And very risky.” Actually it sounded wonderfully exciting and adventurous.

“The risk was real enough, but mostly financial. David Constantyn was probably a bit of a fool to agree to it. Only as I see Andrew approaching the same age do I see the faith that he had.”

“Will you have Andrew do as you did?”

“Nay. But I will send him to Genoa soon, where the agents send their goods for shipment here. I need a man there, I think, so that I do not have to travel down every other year.”

There were many Florentine bankers and Italian traders in London, and tales of that sunny land had filtered through the court over the years. She felt a little envious of Andrew. The idea of spending her years embroidering in one of Stephen's drafty castles suddenly seemed very dull.

“I came to speak with you about something, Christiana,” he said. “I was at Westminster to discuss the wedding. The spring and early summer are out of the question. There will be times when I will be out of London unexpectedly.”

Spring and summer were the times when many trading fairs were held. Presumably he would need to attend some.

“Next fall, then,” she offered. “October or November.”

“I think not. Before Lent. The end of February.”

“Five weeks hence! That is too soon!”

“How so?”

She glared at him. They had been having such a nice talk, too. He knew “how so.” She marched on a little quicker, her gaze fixed on the road ahead.

He kept up by simply lengthening his stride. Finally his quiet voice flowed around her. “I said that I would step aside if this man comes, but you cannot expect me to arrange my life for his convenience. If he wants you, he will be here very soon.”

She turned on him. “You are conceited and arrogant and I hate you. You are deliberately doing this to make things difficult for me.”

“Nay. I only seek to avoid difficulties for myself that might complicate my business affairs. Five weeks is enough time for a man to decide that he wants a woman. I made my decision in a matter of days. A man in love should be even quicker.”