Linda Barlow (14 page)

"Alix," he breathed against her lips. "Your skin is like silk." His fingertips sketched molten circles around her areola, deliberately avoiding the hardened tip. Her torment grew as he abandoned that breast and attacked the other, weighing it gently in his hand, stroking it, flirting once again with the nipple, promising relief, but never quite delivering.

"Harder." She wasn't certain what she was asking him for, knowing only that everything he had done so far had heightened the fires inside her. Some way, somehow, she had to quench them.

He touched the peak of her breast, squeezing it carefully between his forefinger and his thumb. She moaned. "You like that?"

"Oh, yes!"

Was it her imagination, or did his touch roughen again? The hand at her waist held her still while he ground his hips against her. She could feel his cock, steely hard with his arousal. "How about that, little virgin, you like that, too?"

Lost in him, she gave the only answer that was true. "Yes. I love the way you feel, I love the way you touch me; I love everything about you."

To her dismay, he tore his hands from her breasts and thrust her away. "Blast you!" He shook her. "What's the matter with you? Why don't you fight me? Why don't you slap me, kick me, scream? Shall I throw you to the ground, and end your innocence forever? Or is this a lesson my brother taught you long ago?"

"Whoreson!" His injustice infuriated her, and she felt so thwarted by his sudden withdrawal that she went for him, raising her nails to his face.

He captured her wrists before she could scratch him, his lean fingers manacling her hands to her sides. "Be still, little cat."

"You started this. You kissed me!" She brought her knee up sharply, aiming for his vitals. "I'll not endure your insults."

Her blow was close to being on-target, and he groaned and let her go. "God's blood, you needn't castrate me!"

She turned as if to flee, but he managed to grab one of her arms just above the elbow. For an instant they stared at one another. He ran his other hand through his dark hair in the despairing, agitated manner she was beginning to recognize. His breath was coming hard; as hard as hers. And his mouth had twisted with the glancing pain of her attack.

"I'm sorry." She was fumbling with her bodice, shivering now, with frustration and distress. She checked to make sure her pendant was still safe. It was. "But how could you do that to me? If you were just amusing yourself, it was a cruel charade."

"Oh, Christ." He touched her again, one finger lightly stroking her cheek. "I’m a lustful wretch, so you’d best stay away from me. And stop interfering in my affairs. Be warned, and keep clear, for I can give you nothing but angry words and an empty heart." She could read the anguish in his eyes as he added, "I don't want to hurt you, Alix. Truly I don’t. I’m fond of you, but I have an evil temper at times, and the people who come close to me tend to suffer in ways that I would never want to see visited upon you."

What he said disturbed her, but what he left unsaid disturbed her even more. Why did he have so great a potential to hurt her? There was something between them, something heady, something powerful. She felt it; so did he. "Sometimes I wish you had never returned," she whispered.

"You could not possibly wish it so much as I." Without further words he turned and stalked off through the heather, leaving her standing there staring stupidly after him. Out of the corner of her blurry eyes, she saw Alan approaching—coming to defend her, no doubt—and she knew she could not bear to talk to him with her body still throbbing and her brain as soft as cornmush. Waving him away, she ran in a direction that took her away from both brothers, down through the long grass, toward the comforting shadows of Westmor Forest.

* * *

Alexandra stopped at the edge of the forest, weary from running and conscious of an achy feeling in her limbs.

Swallowing hard, she noticed a slight sore throat. She must be coming down with a head cold.

She had reached the point where the Whitcombe track twisted up behind the rocky hill and collided with the woods. It was the place where Will's horse had thrown him. Depressed and confused by her own unruly emotions, she flopped down on the edge of the ditch, dangling her legs into it. Two months ago Will Trevor had been alive and Roger no more than a memory. Now Will lay in his grave, and for the week since Roger had been home, she had scarcely given her dead betrothed a thought. She had not been to the chapel again to pray, nor had she given any further consideration to the odd circumstances of Will's accident. She seemed to hear Roger's words of a few minutes ago: "His death is in doubt."

Oh, Roger. The warmth of his kisses still lingered on her lips. He was fond of her, but afraid he would hurt her. No doubt he would if he kept toying with her in this wanton manner! He was lustful, which was obviously true of her as well. But he had told his father that he preferred to consort with women who could match him in vice. He had an "evil temper" and an "empty heart." And the good Lord only knew what treachery he was mixed up in with Francis Lacklin.

Damn him! In comparison, Will had been the soul of courtesy and good humor. I've hardly even mourned him, she thought guiltily. Staring down into the ditch where Will had fallen, she tried to revive his image, so recently dead, so soon forgotten. But all she could see was Roger's comely, sardonic face.

Next you'll be saying that I murdered Will. I'm astonished you haven't accused me already.

If I had a scrap of evidence, I wouldn't hesitate to accuse you.

Uninvited, the thought crept into her mind that Will's death and Roger's homecoming might somehow be linked, after all. Cain’s crime. Roger had insisted that he had been out of the country when his brother had died, but his assertion had sounded like a lie.

Why had Will Trevor ridden breakneck down the Whitcombe road at midnight on that dark night in June? Why had he, a nondrinker, been crazy-full of wine? And why had his horse thrown him here, at the only place on the lane where the encroaching forest offered shelter to malefactors?

A perfect place for an ambush, she had said on the day he had returned. Roger hadn’t disputed it. Neither had he shown any emotion while standing before his brother's tomb. His voice had been light and careless as he’d said, I trust nobody had a grudge against Will?

Solid, even-tempered, cheerful Will. Everyone who had known the man had liked him: servants, tenants, his friends. Nobody had borne him a grudge. Nobody had had a reason for wanting him dead. Nobody, except one man, had benefited from his death, although as Roger had said, it was difficult to kill a man in the north of England from the quarterdeck of a trading vessel in the Middle Sea.

But what if Roger hadn't been at sea on the day of his brother's death? How did anyone know exactly when he'd re-entered his homeland? He could have returned secretly to England months ago. He was in league with Francis Lacklin, entangled in a web of treason and intrigue. No doubt he had sufficient reason for keeping his movements in and about the country confidential.

Suppose he had come home secretly and sent a message to Whitcombe Castle, claiming to be in some sort of trouble and begging Will's assistance. When Will had rushed to his aid, Roger could have stretched a rope across the road... or flung rocks to scare the horse... or...

Sickened, she tried to stop the breakneck flow of her thoughts. Roger might be a liar and a traitor, but surely it was impossible that he could have had anything to do with his brother's death? Surely it could not have been he who had lured his brother into a deadly ambush? Surely a man with ships and riches of his own in the exotic East could have no ambition to succeed to a barony in the northern wilds of England?

But it was a prosperous estate, she reminded herself. And Richard, Roger’s father, was no longer a healthy man. What if Roger were not as affluent as he appeared to be? What if he needed the wealth and resources of the barony for whatever skullduggery he was engaged in with Lacklin? Treason, no doubt, was costly.

No. It could not be. However much he might have changed, however hard and unprincipled he had become, Roger wasn't capable of such evil.

Resolutely she rose to return to Westmor, determined to think no more disloyal, suspicious thoughts about her oldest, dearest friend. But as she stood, her feet slipped in the damp, rain-sodden earth, and she found herself sliding down into the ditch, landing clumsily on her hands and knees. As she pushed herself, cursing, out of the mud, one of her fingers was scraped by something hard. She reached down for the thing that had cut her.

It was a small piece of metal, about five inches long, jagged at one end and curving in a shallow crescent to a point at the tip. A blade. As she stared at it, her heart seemed to contract. With stiff, uncooperative fingers, she yanked Ned's knife hilt out of her girdle and compared the jagged end of the blade to the broken end of the strangely-carved hilt. They fit together perfectly. She had found the other half of Ned’s broken dagger.

Alexandra dragged herself out of the ditch and collapsed on the side of the road. The afternoon sun soaked into her hair and scalp. Looking back into the ditch, she remembered the way Roger had jumped down there on his first day back.

It was here that they had encountered Ned, here that Roger had attacked him, here that she had seen the first signs of the terror that had apparently been plaguing the boy ever since. "Aye, he's been actin' real scared," the head cook had confirmed when she'd asked about Ned at noontime. "When he gave the mistress that broken old dagger, he was shakin' all over. He probably stole it like, and now he's afeared he'll be hanged for a thief."

Anxiety gripped Alexandra, sending cramps ripping through her belly. Something was forcing itself up from deep within her. She was on the verge, she felt, of discovering something terrible, something she could not bear to face. A thrush flew over her head, calling to its mate. The wind raked the trees behind her, and from the distance came the tinkle of cow bells. All her senses were sharp and clear, and her brain was working fast, furiously spinning out a wild, incredible chain of events. If she was right, if the ideas flooding her mind were in any way related to the truth, she knew the connection between a broken dagger, a mute boy's fear, and her old friend Roger Trevor. Jesu! She knew.

The knife had been in the ditch. Ned had found it there, where Will's murderer had dropped it. And the poor half-witted boy had run from the place in terror on the day of Roger's homecoming because he had recognized Roger as the stranger who had been lurking about the spot on the night of Will's fall.

It seemed impossible, yet it could be true, couldn’t it? The carved hilt and curved blade were not typical of English weapons, but the dagger bore an undeniable resemblance to the much larger curved Turkish scimitar that Roger had drawn on Ned that day in the ditch.

The broken dagger wasn’t proof. But she had remembered something even more unsettling. Roger
had
lied about being on his ship in the Middle Sea at the time of Will’s death. His own words condemned him; words she hadn’t reflected upon until now because he had spoken them at the same moment as he had indicted her own dear father for adultery:

I saw him in a tavern in London on May Day with a wench on each arm
, Roger had told Francis Lacklin in the great hall at Whitcombe. May Day was the first of May. Will had suffered his fatal accident on the 12th of June.

Roger Trevor had indeed been back in England at the time of his brother's death.

Chapter 7

Alexandra lay propped up in her bed at Westmor Abbey, sneezing and feeling sorry for herself. For five days she'd been laid up with a feverish cold, which none of Merwynna's remedies had been able to cure. Alan sat on a stool on the far side of her bedchamber, taking frequent sniffs through a scented handkerchief. "You don't mind if I sit over here, do you?" he had asked upon entering her room. "I don't want to take sick."

"I'm surprised you came at all," she'd responded with unusual testiness. Alan's efforts to cheer her up were unsuccessful. The possibility that Roger Trevor had murdered his brother had darkened her soul.

During her fever she'd had nightmares about curved daggers and bolting horses, and hands that closed around her throat. Once she woke sobbing so hard that her mother had had to comfort her. Until the fever broke on the second day, everyone in the household had been worried about her. It was unlike Alexandra to be so dispiritedly ill.