Prisoner of My Desire (28 page)

He did not come. She was to give birth to his daughter any day, nay, any moment now, but he did not come. And it
would
be a daughter, her child. That was a fine little revenge on her part, not to give Warrick the son he so wanted. She had decreed it so, willed it so, so it would be a girl-child. Luck did finally have to come her way
some
time.

But Warrick did not come. Why had she thought he would, just because he had ridden to Tures once a month, every month, since she had left Fulkhurst?

He still wanted to marry her. She still would not. She was rude to him. Twice she had refused to see him at all. But he kept coming back. He kept trying to convince her that she belonged with him.

So he was contrite. What did she care? ’Twas too late.

But he was ruthless about it. He got her mother on his side, and Anne was very good at badgering. She had been saving it up for three years.

“His wanting to marry you has naught to do with his guilt,” Anne had assured her on one of her many visits. “He was going to marry you before he knew he had aught to be guilty about. He made the decision when he brought you to Ambray Castle. Sheldon told me so.”

Sheldon was another sore subject. As far as Rowena was concerned, he had stolen her mother from her. He had taken advantage of Anne’s vulnerability, seduced her affections, then married her before she could catch her breath. Now he had her convinced that she adored him, when she could not possibly—not a friend of
Warrick’s
.

And then last month, when Rowena’s spirits had been particularly low, Anne showed up with another revelation. “He loves you. He told me so himself when I asked if he did.”

“Mother!” Rowena had complained, horrified. “How could you ask him that?”

“Because I wanted to know.
You
certainly never bothered to ask.”

“Of course I would not,” Rowena replied huffily. “If a man cannot say it on his own, without having it pried out of him—”

“That’s just it, my dear. When I then asked if he had told you, he said he did not know how.”

Her mother would not lie about that—but Warrick would. Tell a mother exactly what she wants
to hear. How underhandedly clever of him.

But it meant naught to her. She was not going to break down and marry the man, even if he
was
proving to her that she was not as dead inside as she had thought, that her heart could still race when he was near her—that she could still crave his body,
even in her condition!
But her awakened desires made no difference. She was not going to play the fool again and open her heart to another rending.

Today she sat in the window embrasure of her room. She might be Lady of Tures now, but she had wanted the familiarity of her old chamber when she arrived here, rather than the much larger solar.

She patted the cushioned seat under her, smiling smugly because it was so much nicer than Warrick’s hard benches in his window alcoves. Of course, he had two windows, while she had only the one, and his had costly glass, whereas hers had been broken during one of the recent sieges. It now had just a thin oilcloth covering that she could barely see through ordinarily, but it had come loose and was flapping in the April wind, giving her clear glimpses of the road that snaked around to the gatehouse. ’Twas still empty, that road, except for a traveling merchant and his baggage wain that could not hold her interest.

’Twas not the first time the window had been broken. She had broken it herself when she was nine, an accident, but it had not been replaced for nearly two years. The window overlooked the forebuilding, which was one story lower than
the tower. Its top floor housed the chapel, and ’twas the roof of this that she looked down on just six feet below her window, though a little to the left of it, for the front wall of the forebuilding was actually directly below it.

Rowena had jumped out that window once before it was repaired, landing right on the footwide battlements, then hopping down the other three feet to the chapel roof. She had done it on a dare to frighten another maid.

She had frightened the other girl, all right, who had run straight to Anne screaming that Rowena was dead, fallen out the window straight down to the forebuilding stairs, which
did
happen to be under the left half of her window, and two stories down. Rowena had wished she
were
dead after the tongue-lashing she had received, as well as confinement in her room for…she could not remember how long now.

She smiled with the memory as she patted the huge girth of her belly. Her own daughter would never do anything so foolish, not with the iron bars Rowena would have installed over her windows. But she could now understand her mother’s frightened rage. She
could
have killed herself. One slight misstep and she would have tumbled…

“Daydreaming, my lady?”

Rowena went deathly still. It could not be. But she turned, and it was Gilbert inside her door, closing her door, walking toward her.

“How did you get through the gates?”

He laughed. “That was the easy part. Today is merchants’ day, when they come up from the
town to tempt your ladies to part with a few coins. So today I am a merchant. ’Tis getting an army inside that is difficult, not one man.”

“Do you still have an army to speak of?”

That got rid of his good-humored boasting. “Nay, but—Mary be praised!” he exclaimed when he was close enough to see her rounded form. “So it worked.”

That calculating look came over him, where she could almost hear the exact bent of his greedy thoughts. “You will
not
claim this is Lyons’ child. I will deny it—and Warrick de Chaville knows better.”

“That is right,” he snarled. “
He
had you!”

“
You
gave me to him!” she shouted back. “Or do you forget that it was your idea,
your
greed—?”

“Be quiet!” he hissed, looking back nervously at the door. “It matters not whom the child belongs to, as long as I can make use of it.”

She stared at him wide-eyed. “You
do
still think to claim Kirkburough? How can you?”

“I have to. I have naught else. Even now that bastard has besieged my last keep. I cannot go there. I have nowhere to go, Rowena.”

She realized he wanted her to understand and mayhap feel sympathy for him. She wondered if Warrick had driven him a little crazy in his relentless hounding of him. Or was this what desperation did to a man?

Her brows narrowed suspiciously. “That cannot be why you came here, for you knew naught about the child. What did you come here for, Gilbert?”

“To marry you.”

“You
are
mad!”

“Nay, you have back all of your properties, all in your control,” he said, explaining his reasoning. “’Tis profitable to wed you now, for as your husband—”

“I swore fealty to Warrick,” she lied. “He will not let you have me.”

“He cannot stop me. Let him try. He will have to retake those castles he gave back to you, as well as your others. He will deplete his own resources this time, and then I will have him at last.”

“Gilbert,
why
can you not give this up? You have lost. Why do you not leave the country while you still can? Go to Louis’s court, or Henry’s. Start anew.”

“I have not lost, now that I have you.”

“But you do not have me,” she told him calmly. “If I would not marry Warrick, whom I love, God knows I would not marry you, whom I detest. I would as soon jump out this window. Shall I prove it?”

“Do not speak foolishness!” he snapped, furious at her threat
and
her revelation of her love for his enemy. But at the moment, he was more concerned with the threat, for she sat too close to that window. “If—if you do not want me to bed you, then I will not, but I have to marry you, Rowena. I have no choice now.”

“Nay, you do have a choice,” Warrick said from the doorway. “Draw your sword and I will show you.”

Rowena was so startled by his appearance, she
did not have a chance to react when Gilbert leaped toward her and placed a dagger at her throat.

“Drop your own sword, Fulkhurst, or she dies,” Gilbert ordered, his voice almost exultant with triumph.

“Warrick, do not!” Rowena cried, assuring him, “He will not kill me.”

But Warrick was not listening to her. He was already throwing his sword down. That easily would he give away his life? Why, unless…?

“Come here now,” Gilbert ordered him.

Rowena’s eyes flared incredulously when Warrick took a step forward without the least hesitation. He was actually going to walk to Gilbert and just let him kill him. Nay, not while she still had her wits about her.

Gilbert stood near her, but closer to the entrance to the alcove than across from her. His dagger was not even touching the skin at her throat, and his eyes were only on Warrick.

Rowena drew her knees up and kicked him toward Warrick, then immediately swung her legs over the window ledge and slipped outside. She heard both men shout her name as her feet touched on the flat square of the battlements with a jarring impact. God’s mercy, it had been so easy when she was younger—and not so encumbered. Jumping the last three feet to the roof of the chapel was out of the question. She was carefully sitting down on the edge of the wall to ease herself the rest of the way down when Gilbert stuck his head out the window and saw her.

“Damn you, Rowena, you frightened me half to death!” he roared at her.

Only half? God’s mercy,
when
was she going to get lucky?

But he did not stay there to berate her further. The sound of swords meeting in deadly combat came clearly through the window to tell her what had distracted him. So the two of them had finally got their wish to kill each other? Never mind that she was out here sitting on the edge of the battlements wall with a hundred-foot drop to the bailey at her back—well, seventy-five feet mayhap, since the forebuilding was not as high as the tower.

The cramp caught her unawares, making her sway, then gasp as she nearly lost her balance. Heart racing, she no longer took her time getting to the roof, but jumped the remaining distance. ’Twas another jarring landing, and another cramp protested it. She bent over this time, holding her breath until it eased, but then a cold chill passed over her. Nay, not now. Her daughter could not want to be born
now
.

She glanced back at her window as she got a firm footing on the two-foot-wide stone wall-walk that surrounded the flat wooden roof of the chapel. Though she was compelled to get back up there to watch what was happening in her room, she doubted she could manage it without help. Getting down off the three-foot-high battlements was one thing, climbing back onto the narrow, crenellated edge of it quite another. She
could
do it, but she was too unwieldy in shape just now to make it a safe undertaking.

There was the large trapdoor in the chapel roof, however, near her feet. It allowed men up here during an attack, to shoot arrows from the cover of the crenellations. It dropped down about twenty feet to the chapel, but required a ladder to be used. ’Twas the only entry to these battlements aside from her window.

No ladder would be there now, she knew, but she threw open the door anyway and leaned over to look down. Father Paul was not likely to be there either this late of the morn, but she called his name anyway. As expected, there was no response, so she merely shouted “Help!” instead.

That got her more response than she wanted. A servant came running into the chapel, but he was no more than a boy, and all he did was stare up at her in amazement. And before she could tell him to fetch a ladder, Gilbert was climbing out on the window ledge with sword in hand.

“Move back!” he shouted at her just before he jumped straight to the wall-walk.

But Rowena did not move, too paralyzed with fear that his appearance meant Warrick was dead. He bumped into her when he landed, not hard, but enough to send her back a few feet. He was already weary from fighting Warrick. One of his legs buckled as he landed on the stone walk, and he fell toward the roof. But his knee came down right into the opening of the trapdoor. That threw him even more off-balance, and he would have fallen right through the hole, but his belly struck hard against the edge of the trap, holding his body there. He had been hurt, the
breath knocked out of him, his sword skidding across the roof, yet he was able to climb out of the hole easily enough.

And Rowena just stood there, numb with the thought that Warrick was dead. She made no move to push Gilbert through the hole while she had the chance, no move to get his sword and toss it over the wall. She just stood there, spellbound with horror…until Warrick landed right in front of her.

She shrieked in startlement, moved back yet again, coming up against the low wall behind her. He just grinned at her in reassurance, then went right after Gilbert, who had already retrieved his sword.

Her relief was cut short by another pain, not as sharp as the others, but deeper, and worse for that. She ignored it, however, watching the two men hacking away at each other.

They moved back and forth across the small area. Rowena moved out of the way when necessary, careful to avoid the trapdoor, which was still open, as well as the swinging swords. More pains came that she continued to ignore. But finally the fight was confined to the area opposite the trapdoor, so she was able to move to it to find out what was keeping help from arriving. Help had come. More servants were below, grouped around the altar cloth they were holding, and one shouted up for her to jump.

Idiots! She was not a lightweight to go bouncing on altar cloths. She would rip that thin cloth in twain, if it did not rip out of their hands with her landing. Either way, she would end up flat
on the stone floor, most likely dead.

But suddenly the choice was taken out of her hands as the fight came back her way. Gilbert backed into her unawares, shoving her right into the hole. She screamed as she felt naught but air beneath her feet. He turned and grabbed her with his free arm, but her extra weight caught him off guard, and he had to drop his sword to use two arms to keep her from disappearing through the hole. He turned his back on Warrick to do this, with no thought other than of saving Rowena.