Fairest Of Them All (20 page)

Holly gathered up her shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Then perhaps ‘tis time you did.”

She turned, determined to leave him to make peace with his memories.

“Holly?”

She paused. “Sir?”

He shook his head with a wry wonderment that squeezed the remnant of her breath from her chest. “You’re enough to tempt me to trust my heart to a woman’s care.”

Holly had no answer for him that would not condemn her for the wretched liar she was. She could only hasten her steps toward the castle.

When she dared to steal a look back by the light of the rising moon, Ausryn was kneeling beside his mother’s grave, his big, blunt hands gently patting the earth around the bowed stem of an anemone.

Holly was lost. Running headlong through a shadow-laced forest, blinded by mist and tears. No, she realized. She wasn’t lost. Someone was lost to her. Someone dear. Gnarled branches whipped at her face, clawed at her gown, seeking to stop her from finding who she sought.

Her frantic flight ended when she slammed into an iron-banded door. She beat upon it until her fists were bloody, but still it would not yield. She sank into a despairing heap, weeping and pleading for mercy from her faceless captor on the opposite side of that door. Her hot, salty tears ignited a tiny flame at the hem of her gown. She beat it out with her hand, but another sprang into its place, then another, until her entire skirt was ablaze.

A shadow fell over her, extinguishing not only the flames but her last hope of redemption. A man’s face emerged from the darkness, harsh with contempt and accusation. Twos a face she had once caressed in tenderness, a face she had adored with both her lips and her heart.

The worst of it was that she loved that face still, loved him. Reached to draw him into her embrace even as his powerful hands closed around her throat.

Holly sat straight up in the four-poster bed, her heart thundering in her ears. The moon had dipped below the arrow loop, abandoning her to the cloying darkness. She touched her quaking fingertips to her cheeks, surprised to find them damp with tears.

Casting aside the tangled sheets, she fumbled to light the tallow stub at her bedside. Its feeble flicker did not completely exorcise the ghosts of those other Gavenmore brides, but it at least drove them back to the shadows writhing along the plastered walls. She could not say if they had come to warn her or if her dream was nothing more than the tormented ramblings of her own conscience.

She slipped from the bed and padded over to the chest. Dropping to her knees, she picked up her mother’s hand mirror and slowly turned it to capture her reflection. Relief slowed her heartbeat to a dull thud. She had feared the poison of her own guile might have transformed her into something even more monstrous than her disguise. She watched her brow crinkle in a bewildered frown as she realized she was instead gazing into the face of a stranger.

Her features had lost their haughty cast. The tension around her mouth had softened. The yearning in her eyes deepened them to misty violet pools. She lifted a hand to her sun-burnished throat, gliding it downward until her splayed fingers encountered the tingling swell of her unbound breasts. A sigh escaped her parted lips. Twas no longer the face of the fairest lady in all of England reflected in the mirror. Twas the wistful face of a woman in love with her husband.

She laid the mirror aside, no longer able to bear the transparency of her reflection. Did she dare go to Austyn now? Confess all and cast herself upon his mercy? Would he turn her away from his bed? His heart? His life? Would he believe she betrayed him, just as his mother had betrayed his father?

Perhaps ‘twould be better if she did not trust her plea to the inconstancy of words. If she simply slipped into his bed in the darkness. Burrowed against the crisp fur of his chest and coaxed his big, warm body to cover hers. The vision left her breathless, terrified, exhilarated.

Surely with his heart softened in the aftermath of their lovemaking, he would forgive her deceit

But what would she have proven? she asked herself. That she could beguile a man with her touch? Bewitch him with the velvety softness of her skin? Charm him with the sumptuous plumpness of her breasts? She’d been confident of those powers before she wed Austyn. The faceless lover he still pined for had surely offered him no less.

You’re enough to tempt me to trust my heart to a woman’s care.

In truth, Austyn’s hoarse confession, wrung from his throat in the bloody aftermath of battle, meant more to her than any honeyed words he might whisper in the dark. If she crept beneath his sheets with shadows for her shield and beauty as her sword, she might never know if he would have succumbed to that temptation. If he would have dared to trust his heart to a stocky, flat-chested, crop-curled little minx who adored him.

One day, Holly vowed to herself. She would give him one more day. If she could coax from him some gesture of affection for the woman he had married, then tomorrow night she would go to him. She would scoff at the warnings of those other Gavenmore brides and take the risk of laying her heart at his feet

Her resolve strengthened, Holly danced back to the bed, feeling as lithe as a Welsh faerie without her padding to hinder her.

“Good morn, Winnie,” Holly called out as she passed the woman bent over a laundry tub in the courtyard. “I’m off to gather some wildflowers from the river-bank.”

“And a good day to you, Lady Holly.” Winifred straightened to rub her lower back, envying the spry-ness of her young mistress’s step.

Holly swung the basket draped over her arm in cheery rhythm, humming beneath her breath a melody ripe with hope. The azure sky sprouted blossoms of cloud as white and fluffy as chrysanthemums. Twas as if the rain had baptized the earth, then sent the sun to shine full upon it to fulfill the promise of its salvation.

The crisp sparkle in the air had coaxed most of the castle residents to turn their talents to chores that could be undertaken away from the gloom of the keep, such as gathering honey from the castle hives or trimming the hooves of a placid donkey. They offered Holly jovial greetings and shy smiles as she passed.

The twin yellow hounds capered at her heels for several steps before being lured away by the aroma of ham being cured over an open fire.

Holly was relieved to find Rhys of Gavenmore nowhere in sight She had no desire to sort out her conflicting feelings about Austyn’s father on such a delicious day.

She waved at Carey as she passed the list, laughing merrily when her distraction forced his arrow to miss the target painted on a moldy hay bale. He shook his fist at her in mock anger, then blew her a teasing kiss.

Holly’s steps slowed as she passed the grave of Austyn’s mother. Much of the earth surrounding it still bore the raw scars of warfare, but at uneven intervals, scraggly anemone plants had been rescued and embedded in the dirt in clumsy splashes of crimson and purple.

Holly’s throat tightened as she saw scratched upon a large, flat rock in an unsteady hand the words Gwyneth of Gavenmore, Beloved Mother.

The moment was nearly spoiled when Nathanael came flapping after her like an overgrown crow, a sheaf of papers rolled in his fist

She hastened her steps, starting down the hillside toward the river. “I’ve no need of your pleas for atonement this morning, Nate. I chose to share my prayers with God in the privacy of my chamber and I can promise you that my soul is as shiny as a new coin.” Or it soon would be, she amended silently, after she confessed her duplicity to Austyn.

Nathanael slid after her, his sandals finding little purchase in the rocky soil. “You must listen to me, Holly. Tis not your soul that concerns me. Tis you. You’re in danger. Terrible danger.”

“I’m in danger of rolling down this hill and breaking my neck if you don’t cease trodding upon my heels. Do you know what a challenge it is to toddle about in these skirts?”

Her gentle scorn failed to deter him. He shook open the papers. They rustled with a life of their own in the sinuous breeze, “hi my extensive study of the Gavenmore history, I’ve come upon irrefutable evidence that your husband may very well be cursed.”

Holly sighed. “Cursed, eh? Eternally damned and all that rot? Tell me, does he sprout horns and cloven feet during the full moon? Cavort with demons and sacrifice maidens to his lust on a bloodstained altar?”

“Worse. listen to this. These were purported to be the words of the faerie queen Rhiannon after she was falsely accused of infidelity by one of Austyn’s forebears.” He stumbled over the uneven turf as he read, “ ‘Let love be your mortal weakness and beauty your eternal doom.’”

That those melodramatic words could actually cast a chill over the glorious summer day only exasperated Holly further. “For God’s sake, Nathanael, you’re a priest! Surely you haven’t come to believe in pagan curses.”

“The curse may not be a pagan one. Tis written this Rhiannon called the very wrath of God down upon the unfortunate fellow’s head.”

“Then I give you leave to wave a crucifix over Austyn while he naps.” Holly wiggled her fingers. “Or sprinkle some Holy Water in his porridge.”

The priest skidded to a halt, as if realizing his surrender would be more effective than open pursuit “Don’t you think it odd that so many of the Gaven-more brides have met gruesome ends at their husband’s hands?”

Holly stopped and stood with hands on hips for a long moment Then she turned and marched back to Nathanael, stabbing a finger at his chest. “You may believe whatever superstitious nonsense you like, Brother, but 111 tell you what I believe. That there’s no curse that cannot be broken by the blessing of true love.”

She left him standing there, his expression forlorn, his robes tossed by the wind. As the ancient scrolls crumbled in his grip, he whispered, “God go with you, Holly, and may He in His infinite mercy prove you right”

The river was sluggish and calm today, but Austyn’s wife, it seemed, was not He watched from beneath the sprawling branches of an elm as she waded through thigh-high weeds, snipping and snatching to fill a basket with a colorful profusion of wildflowers, muttering beneath her breath all the while.

Austyn grinned. She was so funny, so charming, so damnably bold. Graceless and yet so full of grace it made his eyes sting just to look at her.

Yestereve in the fading twilight with her eyes sparking violet fire and her mouth taut with challenge, she had been almost comely. Sunlight banished that illusion without remorse. She waddled about like a brown little butternut with legs, pausing only to swipe a stray grasshopper from her listless hair. Austyn shook his head, chuckling with amazement that he could still want her so badly. To be his wife. To bear his children. To warm his bed.

She had given him a glimpse of a different kind of beauty yesterday. A beauty comprised of courage and brutal honesty. A beauty unselfish enough to restore to him his loving memories of a mother he’d spent the last twenty years despising. A beauty that had little to do with a creamy complexion or a cascade of sable curls that required five-hundred strokes of the comb at bedtime.

Austyn reached into his tunic, drawing forth his memento from its hiding place. He recognized it for what it was now—a token of his empty infatuation with a woman he had never truly known. A woman who would have doubtlessly proved to be his damnation just as Holly had proved to be his deliverance.

Tucking it carelessly back into his tunic, he started down the riverbank toward bis wife with eager strides.

Holly was popping the heads off a cluster of marigolds with spiteful satisfaction when a wry voice behind her said, “I hope you’re not pretending I’m one of those flowers.”

She looked up from her kneeling position, her heart doubling its rate. Austyn was leaning against the trunk of a wiEow, garbed all in black except for his crimson surcoat. The sun-bronzed skin around his eyes had crinkled in a slanted grin. That frivolous dimple flirted with his jaw. He was so devastatingly handsome that she had to look away.

She nervously ripped one of the marigolds to shreds. “In truth, I was pretending they were a certain pesky priest I know.”

Austyn’s tones were carefully measured. “And have you and the young Brother Nathanael been quarreling again?”

“Brother indeed! He nags me like the older brother I never wished I had. The man is insufferable. He thinks that just because he was once my tutor, he is entitled to instruct me for the rest of my life.”

“And what did your Brother Nathanael teach you?”

Holly glanced up, startled by Austyn’s sudden nearness, the odd light in his eyes—half resignation, half amusement Before she could reply, his callused palms were cupping her forearms, guiding her to a standing position. The basket slipped from her arm, spilling her floral treasures over their feet in a fragrant shower of crimson and gold. Even in her unwieldy disguise, Holly felt very small next to him, as frail and delicate as one of the wood hyacinths huddled around the trunk of the willow.

Her voice sounded faint to her own ears, as if it were coming from leagues away. “He taught me to chew each bite of food fifty times.”

Austyn crooked an eyebrow and Holly blushed, remembering how she had wolfed down the cold meat pies on the journey from Tewksbury.

“He taught me never to speak above a polite murmur.” Her husband’s expressive eyebrow shot higher.

Holly knew she was revealing too much too soon, but she could hardly think with Austyn’s warm hands gliding up her arms, seeking the naked flesh beneath her slashed sleeves.

“Have I ever told you what entrancing elbows you have, my lady?” he murmured against her ear.

Her voice was fading faster than her reason. “Na-thanael taught me to rub cut lemons on them,” she whispered. “And he taught me never to speak with my mouth occupied by anything other than my tongue.”

Austyn leaned forward until his lips were a heated breath away from hers. “What about your husband’s tongue?”

His lips brushed hers then, as feathery and beguiling as a butterfly’s wing. Holly moaned softly, eager for more. He rewarded her with a fiercer, sweeter press, molding her lips beneath his own as if he might sculpt their malleable contours anew for his pleasure. It seemed only fitting that they should part to beckon him inside. His tongue accepted her shy invitation, its rough satin stroking deep to claim her yielding mouth with exacting mastery.