By Possession (20 page)

He had returned to the kitchen and listened through its closed door to the sounds of water splashing. He pictured the lush body hunched in the tub, sleek with water, clear eyes turning to his approach. And then other images showing acts of love and punishment, of tender pleasure and harsh profanity, crashed through his mind. He had almost entered and thrown Jane out so as to assert his possession and demand her submission as his blood raged to do.

Instead he had forced himself from the door and walked outside to where the garden once spread in neat beds and pruned orchards. In its current condition one could imagine it was a field far from this city. Weeds reached his thighs while he strode to the back, as far from her as possible. The sounds of town life dulled here, and the buzz of bees and scratching of rodents could be heard. He lay down in some grass and wildflowers and looked up
as he had done on days during his enslavement when he sought to pretend that he was home.

The sky god Perkunas's endless domain had stretched cloudless like a serene lake, a cool eternity that could absorb any earthly strife. Slowly, imperceptibly, like so many inaudible murmurs, the spirits of the garden began their rhythmic chorus. Not dead or silenced in this land after all, as he had learned that night in the hay mound. Just so restrained that only a soul open to them would ever feel their presence. Their whispers soothed him, like old friends accepting his fury without argument and thus gently defusing it.

Not an abandonment, he had finally acknowledged. Not like Claire. This one owed him nothing except a serf 's obligations which she had never even accepted as his due. A quiet voice carried in the breeze said to let her go, that he could bind her no more than garden walls could hold these spirits, but the last hours had proven that he could not do that now. His physical hunger might be relieved by some other woman, but his soul would find solace with no one else. Recognizing the weakness of his need alarmed him. He had survived six years of enslavement because he had learned to need no one and nothing, and now that he was free and restored to his homeland, unexpected chains weighed him more surely than any slave bonds had done.

He had finally climbed the steps to this solar, following the wet footprints that marked her recent passing. The hunger and rage still trembled but its roar was low and contained now. He had found her standing near the window, limned by soft light while she watched the city street, draped like a mendicant in her brown blanket. He had watched her while she contemplated her private thoughts, realizing that he did not know what to say to her. And then she had turned suddenly and caught his naked gaze and seen more than he would have liked.

She looked so beautiful and vulnerable there with damp waves cascading to her hips. She clasped the blanket together above her chest and only a small triangle of skin showed at the bottom of her neck. Bare feet and ankles poked out below the flowing folds. He had never noticed before how lovely her feet were. Slender and delicate like her hands. Her clear blue eyes watched him cautiously from the shadows.

Part of him still wanted to vent his outrage that she had insulted and betrayed him. Another part wanted to ask how she could have left him bereft of her comfort and peace. But the man who had been a slave knew the answer to that already, not that he would ever admit the dependency that the question revealed. The resurrected Lord of Barrowburgh might be furious, and the knight adrift in his homeland might be injured, but the slave of the
kunigas
understood her far too well. She had seen her chance for freedom and had taken it.

She moved one step forward, a brave woman prepared for the worst. “Let us be done with this, my lord.”

“Be done with what?”

“Whatever your reason for demanding my presence here. If you intend to punish me, let us be done with it.”

“I said that you do not have to fear me. I never thought to punish you,” he lied.

“Nay? Then you perhaps want to command me in my service to you. I can see that this house needs work as you thought it might. It will take time, but with Jane and Henry's help I will get it in order so that it befits you. Do not trouble yourself that I might not understand my duties. I know my place.”

“It is good that one of us does. Is that why you think I have you here? To punish or to command?”

“I pray so.”

“You pray in vain.”

Dismay broke her composure. She licked her lips and lowered her eyes. “Aye. I feared as much. I beg you then not to misuse me, my lord,” she said softly.

Her sudden fragility and deference wrenched something inside him. Her plea had been an old one spoken since time began by the weak to the powerful, but hearing it from this proud woman tore at him. “What makes you fear that I plan to, Moira? I have not done so before.”

She passed a hand over her eyes, as if her vulnerability embarrassed her. “Perhaps it is because I stand here naked but for this blanket, at your insistence. Jane would not loan me one of her gowns after she burned my clothes.”

He had been so absorbed in just looking at her that he had not realized that she was naked, nor wondered why she had wrapped herself in a blanket on a summer day. “I will have your cart gotten soon. Are there garments in it?”

“There is a gown. Between today and that day when those men … my others have been ruined, but I have a little coin and will buy some cloth.”

With the cost of cloth, it would take whatever she had to buy some. He walked to the chests along the wall and opened one. “Come here.”

She hesitated, then emerged from the shadows and obeyed.

“This chest holds some of my mother's things. Take what you need. Take it all.”

She knelt beside him. She curiously lifted the edges of folded cloth, then bent and began methodically stacking the garments aside, examining them one by one. The movement caused the wool to creep down her shoulder, exposing the top of her creamy back an inch from his knee.

“It is all too fine. Silks and such.”

I would see you in silks and jewels every day.
“Better they are worn than that they rot.”

“They will not rot if cared for. When you marry, your lady will be glad to have them.” She began putting them back in order. She still clasped the blanket with one hand, but the other arm moved back and forth, causing a gap to form. Little flashes of breasts and thighs fluttered beneath the moving edges of wool, inflaming him.

“If I marry I will have the wealth of Barrowburgh with which to buy more. Take them. I do not have coin to waste purchasing simpler things if we can use what we already have.”

She knelt back with a linen robe in her hand, considering it. The loosened blanket fell back off her shoulders. Skin and chestnut hair hovered beside his thigh, mesmerizing him. He lightly stroked the bare shoulder with his fingertips.

“I do not think to punish or command or misuse you, Moira. I would have you at my side by day and in my arms at night.”

She stiffened, then rose quickly and faced him, casting the robe aside. “Better to punish, my lord. The strap's sting ends.”

“You speak coldly for one who was so recently an affectionate lover. Has one day of freedom changed your heart so much?”

“Nay, because in my heart I was always free. 'Tis a few hours of bondage that have chilled me.”

His hand still rested on her shoulder. He drew her forward. “Then let me warm you.”

Something at his core groaned with relief when his arms closed around her. Her feminine softness seemed to absorb the worst of the sharp emotions that had been driving him this day. He splayed his hands over the hills of her curves and tasted the fresh cleanliness of her pure shoulder.

She
was
chilled, whether from the bath or exhaustion
she could not say. The strength and warmth of his arms promised an enticing comfort. She tried to squirm in resistance against the sudden embrace, but somehow the movement transformed into a pliant molding against his chest.

Lips brushed her hair and temple and cheek with careful gentleness, as if he sought to prove that the danger she had glimpsed did not really exist in him. A soulful yearning cried inside her when he pulled her closer. Firm palms caressed her bare back and found her skin through the gap in front while he pressed kisses to her neck and finally her mouth.

She let him, reveling in a glorious, final taste of what could never be. She let the sensations cascade through her body, evoking the bittersweet longing one feels at any parting.

“I have spent the hours since I rode through that gate to find you gone asking if I had misunderstood somehow,” he muttered into her hair.

She closed her eyes to savor the strokes of his hand raising wonderful heat on her thighs and buttocks, sorry that he had spoken so soon. “You misunderstood nothing, but I want us to stop this,” she whispered, blinking back tears.

He pulled away to look at her, but he did not release her. “Can you say that these hands misuse you, Moira, and that you are not willing?”

She sorrowfully extricated herself from his hold and stepped back. She hitched the blanket back on her shoulders and grasped it closed. “I am weak to the pleasure, but what you offer me will someday bring misery and I will not endure it. I swore when just a girl that I would not be any man's whore, least of all one to a knight or lord.”

Gold fires flamed. Dangerous fires, that spoke of more
than thwarted desire. “You say that often, and insult me with it. 'Tis you who misunderstand, and who think the worst of me without cause. Those garments are not meant as a bribe to buy a bedmate for a few nights. I do not seek to make a whore of you.”

She had suspected as much when she saw him at the doorway. Better if he did only want her for brief pleasure. “What you call it will not matter. All others know such women for what they are.”

He paced away, his face set in stern planes of confused annoyance. He shot her a glare over his shoulder that flashed with those emotions she had glimpsed when he entered. “What of Edith? She lived with her lord in affection. All could see what was between them. Is that how you knew your mother? As Bernard's whore?”

“It is how
you
knew her, do not deny it. What you and all the others called her, if not to her face then among yourselves. My mother knew more than affection, she knew love with Bernard. She was his lehman but she had more than most wives do of her man's heart. She had it the best that such a woman can ever have, but still she was shamed.”

“None will shame you if they want to keep their tongues.”

“They need never say a word for me to know their minds. Please listen to me and hear what I say and try to understand. You cannot even give me what Bernard gave my mother. Bernard had his son and was growing old. He had done his duty to his family and honor and chose not to remarry. He could treat my mother as his lady because no real lady presided at Hawkesford. It will not be thus for you and you know it. The Lord of Barrowburgh is no Lord of Hawkesford, but the king's man with a position of superior prestige and no serf-born woman can sit at your
high table. And you are still young. If not for more sons then for the alliance that will secure your hold on your honor you will marry again, Addis.”

He could not refute the truth of it and she was grateful that he did not try.

“She will accept it. She will have to.”

“
I
will not accept it. I will not be the woman kept in the south tower, waiting for the lord to steal time from his family and duties to lie with me. I will not be the lehman whose children are bastards, desperate for the lord's recognition.”

“Can you doubt that I would care for any child of my blood?”

“I will not be the bondwoman fretting while she ages that the lord's eye will be caught by a younger woman, or growing jealous of the affection that he shows toward his wife.”

“I too will be aging, Moira.”

His insistence threatened to erode her resolve. “I will not be denied a home of my own, a place in which I know love and security. I have lived on the margins of other people's lives too long, Addis. I will not knowingly choose to do so again, not even if that life is yours and not even for the passion you can make me feel. I am tired of being the shadow.”

He walked to the window and gazed out, crossing his arms over his chest. When he finally turned back to her she looked in those deep eyes and knew that he understood, but that it counted for little in whatever compelled him.

“Do you expect me to accept this, Moira? To forget the peace and contentment that I find with you in my arms? To ignore the hunger I have had since I first saw you in that cottage?”

“If you cannot accept it then let me leave! Send me
back to Darwendon at least. Release me for good and forget about me! Some other will give you that contentment soon enough.”

“You go nowhere but with me!”

“Then what, my lord? You put us into an impossible position. Or will you force me and thus corrupt the affection that we have shared?”

He did not offer the reassurance she desperately hoped for. He only looked at her so long that she began to feel naked despite the blanket. Her arguments suddenly seemed meaningless as that gaze grew invasive in the old way, summoning memories old and new, demanding that she remember their intimacy and passion, raising images and sensations that her tired spirit tried to reject with little success.

She was waging a battle that a part of her did not really want to win. Her body responded to that probing connection with a flush of warmth and anticipation that both frightened and seduced. Her fortitude began crumbling. Yearning filled her reckless heart.

“I do not think it will come to force,” he said, as if he had seen into her mind and assessed the weak forces commanded by her good sense. He held out his hand. “Lie with me now, Moira. You will see that all will be well.”

The order jolted her with shock and something terribly like excitement. She looked away from the strong hand reaching for her. “Nay.”

“Remove the blanket and come lie with me. I would see you and take you in the full light of day.”