For My Lady's Heart (28 page)

“Lady,” he whispered, “God shield me, I have thoughts in my head that are
very madness.”

“What is thy true name and place?” she asked softly.

A distant part of him seemed to know what came to him, what gift of
unthinkable value, but his tongue felt near too numb to form the words.
“Ruadrik,” he said in a dry throat. “Wolfscar.”

His hands where they gripped her arms were trembling. Only her steadiness
held him motionless.

“Sir Ruadrik of Wolfscar,” she said, “here I take thee, if thou will it,
as my husband, to have and to holden, at bed and at board, for better for
worsen, in sickness and health, til death us depart, and of this I give thee
my faith. Dost thou will it?”

Only a little shiver beneath his hands and a break in her final question
gave a hint that she was not calm.

“My lady, it is madness.”

Her body tightened in his arms. “Dost thou will it?”

He stared up into the dark at her, bereft of words.

“Dost thou believe it is no bargain for me?” she asked in a voice spun as
fragile as glass. “I told thee what I would give to be wife to thee. Dost
thou will it?”

“Lady—have a care of your words, and make game of me nought, for I haf
the will in my heart to answer you in troth.”

“In troth have I spoken. Here and now I take thee, Ruadrik of Wolfscar,
as my wedded husband, if thou wilt have me.”

He turned his right hand, lacing his fingers into hers. “Lady
Melanthe—Princess—” His voice failed as the immensity of it overcame him. He
swallowed. “Princess of Monteverde, Countess of Bowland—my lady—I humbly
take you—take thee—ah, God forgive me, but I take thee with my whole heart,
though I be nought worthy, I take thee as my wedded wife to have and to
hold, for fairer or fouler, in sickness and in health—for my life so long as
I shall have it. Thereto I plight thee my troth.” He closed his fist hard
over her fingers. “I have no ring. By my right hand I wed thee, and by my
right hand I honor thee with the whole of my gold and silver, and by my
right hand I dow thee with all that is mine.”

For a long moment neither of them moved or spoke. Beyond the heavy
curtains there was a faint sigh of coals falling in upon themselves.

“Ne do I have flowers, nor a garland to kiss thee through,” he murmured,
cupping her face. He leaned up and pressed his lips softly against hers. At
first she seemed frozen, cool as marble, and a bolt of apprehension passed
through his heart, for fear that she had done it all as a mocking jape—but
then she gave a low whimper and kissed him in return, hard and ruthless, as
her kisses were wont to be. She put her arms about his shoulders and held to
him tightly, her face pressed into his throat.

He lay gazing upward, full of bliss and horror. The world seemed to go in
a slow spin about him. He did not know if it was drink or amazement.

Then he embraced her and rolled her onto her back, overlying her, using
his hands to master the awkward tangle of her skirts, his rigid tarse to
search out her place urgently. He mounted her, sinking inside with a groan
like a beast. A fearsome ache of pleasure shot from his belly through his
limbs. It drowned his senses; from a distance he felt her clutch at him,
heard her swift breath—but with all the strength in him he could not stop to
satisfy her. With a violent thrust he spilled his seed in her womb.

He used and possessed her to bind his right, before God, sealing her
beyond resort or recourse as his wife. And when it was finished, he laid his
face against her breast and wept for Isabelle, for joy, and for mortal dread
of what they had just done.

She held him as he grieved, and lay waking long after the shudders of
rough sobs had passed through him. He wept like a man who had lost child and
kin and future. And then he slept profoundly, weight upon her such that she
could hardly breathe, but she never ceased stroking her fingers through his
hair.

She was jealous of his silly and dangerous wife, that he mourned her so.
And yet Melanthe thought that it was his lost years and distorted vision
that he mourned—pure and gentle nun that he had seemed to make the woman out
for be. Melanthe remembered a shrieking and offensive female, full of
herself and her prophecy, and a part of her longed to recall it to him in
forceful detail. But she thought, with a little wonder at herself, that she
did not care so much for her own discontent, if to undeceive him would cause
him further pain.

Lying with him seemed enough. It was entirely new to her, so different
was he from Ligurio, and from Allegreto’s lithe and constant tension that
had haunted all her nights. Ligurio had been gentler, without urgency,
courteous in his dealing with her. She suspected now that he had already
been ill when he had consummated their marriage, coming to her bed for the
first time on her sixteenth birthday, and seldom enough in the year after,
until he had not come at all.

She felt now as she thought other women must, with her lover sprawled
warm and heavy upon her in trusting insensibility. Where Allegreto had the
supple light shape of a beardless youth, Ruadrik’s arms and shoulders were
solid, hard-muscled, his cheek prickly on her bared breast and his leg a
dense weight across her thigh. Even to bed, Allegreto wore hose stuffed to
make him appear full intact and more; Sir Ruadrik lay with the broad expanse
of his back naked to the night air, quite undeniably whole and male, having
wept and gone to sleep still filling her, sliding gradually free until she
felt the strange touch of his parts, heated between their bodies, a feather
brush now where he had been stiff, a gentle pressure instead of invasion.

She ran her fingers down his body and then pressed her arms lightly
around him. She hoped his man’s sperm engendered a child in her already; and
let the king ...

God shield them, let the king and the court not know until she had time
to consider. Never until this extraordinary hour had it come into her mind
to make a secret marriage, and to such a man as this. It was incredible. She
would have scorned to ashes the witlessness of any other woman who was so
foolhardy assotted of a lover as to put her possessions in such peril.

Neither crown nor church would dispute her right to marry—but to wed
without the king’s permission, to carry her vassal lands with her to a man
without her liege lord’s approval—that was another offense entirely. Not a
jury in the land would uphold her claim to such a thing She might find
herself a poor goodwife in truth for this night’s work.

And yet she cared naught. If she could have him lie over her all the
nights of her life, if she could bear his children— iwysse, she would sweep
the hearth herself if she must.

But she wound her fingers through his hair and considered. It was perhaps
not so impossible a thing that she had done. The old king, assotted himself,
might be persuaded to smile upon her, a weak-willed and love-smitten female.
It was not a match that would threaten any royal power or prerogative.
Indeed there were advantages. She had not thought of marrying because she
had never thought she would care to marry again. Certain she had never had
the uncouth thought she would marry beneath herself, or relinquish her
lawful right to refuse any man below her station.

But now that she gave her attention to the matter, she saw that to make a
humble marriage was not an ill solution. She would have a man’s protection,
and the crown would have the certainty that she could not join her property
to another great domain that might threaten the throne. Wherever this place
of his might be, this Wolfscar, she had never heard of it. Another Torbec,
no doubt, some remote and paltry manor he would be glad to forget.

And there was Gian ... but Allegreto was dead, and Gian had lost his
ability to daunt her, so far away he was. She had left him with the smiling
promise that she would return to him with control of her English possessions
and income, for the greater glory of Monteverde. It would take him a long
time to fathom that she did not intend to come back, if he fathomed it at
all. Every man had one blindness, Ligurio had taught her, no matter how
clever he might be. Gian’s was Monteverde. When he learned where her
quitclaim had gone, he could turn his obsession to a new center and leave
her in peace to marry whom she pleased.

Not that he was like to leave her entirely in peace, but his reach was
not long enough to be fearsome here. And he was not a man who wasted his
energy in any task, including revenge, that did not move him toward his
goal.

Yes, a mere goodwife of far distant England, quitted of all claim to
Monteverde, was of little interest to Gian Navona. And the king was pliable,
his favorites unprincipled and open to bribe.

Melanthe smiled, smoothing her husband’s unruly hair. She toyed with one
lock that would not lie straight, curling and uncurling it about her
forefinger as she fell into sleep.

In the frigid dawn light of the stables, Ruck saw to Hawk’s keep, giving
the horse-groom twopence for his work. The man had cleaned Hawk’s harness,
for which Ruck was grateful—between his headache and his gritty eyes and the
uneasiness of his belly, it was all he could do to examine the gear. Bending
to pick up the destrier’s hooves was beyond his power without feeling as if
his stomach would bolk.

He would have thought the past night a dream, but for the way he felt
this morning. Sometimes he still thought he must have imagined it in a
drunken haze, but it had been no fantasy that he had woken this morning with
the Princess Melanthe’s hair spread across his arm and her body curled into
his embrace.

He walked back into the yard, holding his cold fingers stuffed under his
arms, and stood staring up at the window of the room where they had slept.
Where she slumbered still, languid and warm as he had left the bed.

When he had married Isabelle, her father had given a betrothal feast, and
they had lived together in his house. There was to have been a mass and
wedding on the church porch, and another greater celebration, but when Ruck
had gotten the opportunity to go to France, they had hurried the thing
forward and wed in the street instead, so that if he were killed all her
friends and relatives would know her a lady and his true wife. Her father
had been anxious for a public show of that.

The burgher had wanted his grandchildren to be called gentle and had been
furious when he heard that Isabelle had left Ruck for a nunnery. The man had
dragged Ruck into the same street and declared to all the passersby that he
washed his hands of his daughter. Ruck had visited him twice after, but it
had been no comfortable thing. When he went a third time, and found that the
man had died of an ague, Ruck had not been over sorry to be relieved of the
duty.

Everything about his first marriage had been open and public. But he knew
this second one to be as binding. He had heard of men divorced from a wife
when another woman had sworn to earlier vows spoken rightly, witnessed or
no, whether it be in a tavern or under a tree or in bed.

It was a true thing, sealing them until death.

He had meant it to be.

This morning, feeling stuporous and ill, he could not believe he had
possessed the boldness. He pushed his hair back with cold-clumsy fingers,
wondering if she would laugh at him now, and say that she had slipped in
some stipulation that he had not heard—she married him if he would bring her
the Holy Grail, or some such thing as peasants said to one another when they
were playing May games.

It did not matter, he thought sullenly. He had spent thirteen years as
one half of a marriage—if he was to spend the remainder of his life the
same, what of it?

He nodded to one of the young hedge knights who crossed the yard yawning
and carrying a mug of ale. The fellow gave Ruck a grin and a shove on the
shoulder as he passed. “Long night in the lists?”

Ruck caught his arm, took the mug, and drained it, ignoring the yelp of
protest. He stood still, trying to decide if he would cast or not, concluded
that he would not, and opened his eyes. He handed the mug back. “Grant
merci.”

This one was not quite as old as his friends, sandy-haired and
high-colored, wearing a doublet of surpassing shortness over flesh-toned
hose. He gave a cheerful, wry shrug. “And welcome.”

Ruck paused. He looked the young man in the eye. “Take heed,” he said
quietly. “Ne do nought be here amongst this company when Sir Geoffrey
returns.”

The youngster gazed at him warily.

“There will be a fight.” Ruck nodded toward the hall. “They will lose.”

“What dost thou know of it?”

Ruck put the heels of his hands to his eyes, rubbing. “Enow.”

“Art thou from Sir Geoffrey?”

He dropped his hands and grimaced. “No. It is only free advice. My thanks
to thee for the ale.”

He walked on, turning in to the door of the hall.

Melanthe was dressed in her own gown again. She had not let it out of her
sight, not with these “ladies” so willing to help, offering to take things
away to mend or brush. The day before, to evade their endeavors, Melanthe
had made a show of being afraid of Sir Ruck, who had given all her clothes
to her and demanded that she repair his cloak with her own hands. The other
women had nodded in ready understanding of that and agreed that she would be
prudent not to risk his temper.

Obtaining a pair of scissors, Melanthe had sat down in the tall-backed
chair and spread the corner of the mantle across her lap, pretending to work
it, managing to cut off Gryngolet’s bells under cover of the wool. She sewed
them to the collar tips, remarking that the embellishment had been about to
fall off the cloak earlier, and it was well that she’d noticed and thought
to pull them free and secure them in a pocket.

The ladies had showed little interest in the bells or the plain mantle.
They were far more fascinated by her ermine and her jeweled gloves, brushing
them reverently and remarking on the great French lady who must have owned
them. But even that attraction had not kept them when the shout had gone up
demanding their attendance on their lordships in the hall. With smiles and
chortles they had flocked down the stairs, leaving Melanthe and Gryngolet in
peace but for the spy peeks.

She was well-pleased to be departing this place, and worked to have what
little there was to do in readiness before Ruck came back. Gryngolet had
fouled the floor beneath the chair arm, but Melanthe obscured that by
turning over the rush mat. No one seemed to be at the peeks this morning—all
lying abed dissipated from drink, she supposed. She was surprised that Ruck
had managed to rise and dress and leave the solar before she woke.

She was not concerned that he had gone far, for his armor and sword
remained. But the sun was well up and the yard full of servants’ voices
before he returned to their chamber.

As he came in, she looked up quickly, finding her heart abruptly in her
throat. She had a smile ready, but he did not smile, or even look at her. He
glanced toward the peekholes and then walked over to his armor and bent to
pick up the plate.

A strange alarm possessed her. She looked at him with a feeling of having
gone too fast. Was she married to this man—actually bound—united to him for
all of the unknown future?

“We wenden us the moment ye are ready, my lady,” he said to the cuirass
in his hands. There was no welcome or fondness in his voice, only a stiff
and brooding subservience.

“Good morn,” she said. “Husband.”

He held the armor, his head bent. She could see color in his neck.

He lowered the cuirass. Quietly and fiercely, without lifting his eyes,
he said, “Yea, husband. I swore nought in jest, my lady, though ye may
regret it this morn.”

She pressed her lips together. The fear rose higher in her, the
realization that she had given him a power over her; that even if she should
regret it, she could not undo it. Bone-deep, she felt the weakness he
represented. She had made a vow to him. And worse, oh, worst of all—she had
let herself love him.

He threw the armor down with a clash and a wordless curse. He turned his
face from her, setting his arm against the bedpost.

“If I say to thee”—Melanthe’s voice was unsteady—“that I cherish and love
thee, but that I am frightened at the weight of it—wouldst thou understand
me?”

He leaned his forehead against the post. “Frightened!” he said with a
muffled laugh. “I am so seized with love that I haf me a mortal dread e’en
to looken at you.”

She took a soft step toward him. “Dread of a mere wench ... and thy
wife?”

He turned. Without lifting his head, he reached out and pulled her close
to his chest. He held her tight. Melanthe leaned her head on his shoulder.

“I know nought what we are to do,” he muttered. “I know nought what can
come of this.”

“Let us be gone from here in haste,” she said.

He released her. “Yea, my lady. I haf packed us food from the larder
here—we will make away and come to your hold at Bowland.”

Melanthe did not say that she would rather have dwelt alone with him in
the forest for the rest of her life. He would not understand her; he would
think her reluctant because of him. She watched him as he donned his armor,
helping him with the buckles and straps that he could not reach.

When he had his plate and mail upon him, she held up his surcoat. He
stepped back, sliding his arms into the sleeve holes. Melanthe buttoned him
down the front and then brushed the wrinkles out. It seemed a wifely thing
to do.