Seduced by Grace (10 page)

Oliver had stepped outside to watch the door. She opened her mouth to call to him, but then changed her mind. With a glance toward Astrid, she said, “Your aid for a moment?”

Astrid put down the old linen cloth she was tearing into more strips. As she saw what Marguerite intended, she reached to push and shove mightily, grunting as they turned David toward the wall, exposing his back. Squeezing out her cloth with one hand, Marguerite wiped at the runnels of red that marred his side. She skimmed her cloth over his shoulder where rust-red had smeared upward to darken the bronze of his skin that had doubtless been gained by sword practice under a Mediterranean sun.

A mark of some kind began to appear from beneath the dried blood. Marguerite tipped her head, wiping around it with care. Bit by bit, it emerged, a curious design that looked as though burned into his skin. The whole thing was no more than three inches square. Small but distinct, it was like nothing she could recall seeing before, being a series of small rings set closely around a smaller inner ring, and with a straight bar dropping down from them. The outlines of the rings were silken smooth, barely raised at all, as if they had been there for years.

It looked very like a brand, she thought in tight concentration. If so, it must have been applied long ago,
mayhap when he was a child. Still, she had never seen it before, never in all the years at Braesford Hall. She would have remembered.

She would have, yes, if she had been allowed to see David at such close range and without his shirt. She had never been accorded that indulgence.

No, and neither had she seen him without hose covering the long muscles of his thighs and calves with their glazing of darker gold hair. Not until now. It was true that the knitted pieces worn by most men left little to be imagined, yet it was different when nothing interfered with appreciation for the manifold perfections of the male form. And what a pity it was that the linen braies around his loins had not been left off as well, as they often were by many who wore full hose under short doublets. They offered protection during battle or matches such as the one today, but were still a barrier.

“Milady,” Astrid said on an indrawn breath as she peered at the old scar.

Marguerite glanced up, still frowning. “Yes?”

The small serving woman met her gaze an instant then looked away with a wag of her head. “I almost thought…but I don’t know.”

“What did you think?”

“Foolishness. It has to be. Are…are you done?”

Marguerite nodded, sighing as she dropped her cloth back into the basin. Together, they eased David onto his back again. She wondered briefly if he might be better on his stomach, but the mattress sagged too much on its rope supports to make that comfortable. In any case, she should see about washing away the blood from his head wound that was drying in the hair along his temple.

With one hand, she squeezed water from the piece of linen. She turned back, reaching to brush a fall of blond curls back from the dark bruise that crept into his hairline.

Abruptly, David jerked up an arm. Her wrist was snared in a bone-grinding hold. Her breath caught in her throat as she met his eyes. Her heart jolted at the fury and accusation that shone in their metal-hard blue depths.

The cloth she held dropped from her nerveless grip. It landed on his chest with a wet splat.

“Look what you made me do,” she exclaimed in tight annoyance at the dampness seeping into his bandaging.

His grasp eased a fraction. Puzzlement invaded his expression, smoothing away accusation, routing anger. “Milady?”

Marguerite snatched her wrist free and picked up the cloth again. She halted in place, her every muscle clenching as relief hit her in a solid wave. David was awake and alive in all his senses. She had been so afraid it would never happen. Just how afraid, she had scarcely realized until this moment, when she was released from it.

“My lady,” David said again, the words a mere whisper of sound, “what are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” she asked shortly.

Instead of answering, he glanced around, amazement widening his eyes. “You are in my chamber.”

“I am seeing after you at Henry’s command. You were stabbed, if you will but remember it.” To let him know how despairing she had been, how much she’d feared her task was a death watch, did not seem useful at the moment.

He met her gaze while comprehension welled into his eyes. They darkened, growing bluer, brighter, more alert by the moment.

“You? Alone?” he asked finally.

Her nod was stiff. “And such a change for you it must be, being at someone else’s mercy.”

“Not such a change,” he answered, his gaze probing, “when it’s yours.”

She smiled, she couldn’t help it. “Shall you mind?”

“I can think of worse fates.” He moistened his lips as if they were dry.

“So can I,” she replied, her smile vanishing with the thought that he could have died instead. She held his eyes, noting the silver gleams, like thousands of tiny knife blades, around his pupils, the shadows that drifted through them, the hint of indecision in their depths. “Is…is there anything you need?”

“Ale?” he said with a dry rasp of hope. “I’ve the devil of a thirst, and my head…”

“It hurts, I imagine,” she said as he trailed away. She nodded to Astrid who whisked from the chamber at once to bring the drink. Being an intelligent little creature, she would surely bring water, as well.

“Pounds from the top of my skull to the bottom of my feet.” He closed his eyes while his jaw muscles clenched then relaxed again. “Also, I see two of you. Two Marguerites, both lovely, yet one more than I can handle just now.”

“Two more than you can handle,” she corrected, though as much to keep him talking as anything else.

“Do you think so?” He didn’t open his eyes, but a corner of his mouth curled.

“I do.”

“A fine vow. Remember it when the time comes.”

It seemed an odd, disjointed hop from one thought to another. He couldn’t be delirious, not yet. Could he? “Which will be never as matters stand, if you will but recall.”

“How could I forget?”

She had nothing to say to that, particularly as his words had been flavored with bitterness. What was keeping Astrid? It seemed an age since she had scuttled from the chamber.

“Am I naked?”

The question jerked her attention back to her patient. “Not…not entirely,” she answered with a quiver in her voice. His eyes were closed, but she refused to allow her gaze to travel down his long length again, as it had many times already. Yes, refused.

One eye opened, but slowly, as if with great effort. “Too bad.”

“David!” He didn’t know what he was saying, surely he didn’t.

“Who stripped me?”

She swallowed with an audible sound. “Astrid and I,” she answered, most cowardly putting the name of her serving woman first.

His eye closed again. He was quiet, as if absorbing the knowledge gained. “I’m sorry I missed that.”

Heat rose in a suffocating tide, flooding her body, pooling below her waist. “It was necessary,” she assured him in breathless haste. “I would not have you think…”

“Too late.” A smile twitched his mouth.

“You mean…”

“I’ve thought of it already.”

“David…”

“Well, I’ve thought it a hundred times and more, really,” he said as if dazed, rambling. “I’ve pictured you here with me and both of us naked. You’ve been with me in tents and in palaces, too, and beside a hundred streams and a thousand campfires. I close my eyes and you come to me wearing nothing and with your hair shining, floating….”

She reached out without conscious thought to place her fingertips upon his lips, stopping that flow of disturbing confession. And she shivered as he smiled around them.

“Marguerite?”

“Yes?” Her voice unaccountably husky in her throat. He had not given her the title of lady. She must not be so exalted in the fastnesses of his mind, or mayhap in his dreams.

“Do you have on clothes?”

“Certainly.” She snatched her hand away from his mouth, disturbed beyond bearing by the movement of his lips under her sensitive fingertips, the ticklish seep of his warm breath through them.

“Would you…?”

“No,” she said before he could finish that quiet request.

“I feared not.” He sighed, a long, gusting sound of defeat. He turned his head restlessly, as if maddened by the pain inside it. “Kiss me then.”

“Kiss you.” The words were a mere whisper.

“Kiss and take away the ache. Kiss and make it well. That much is surely allowed.”

“J
ust…kiss you,” Marguerite repeated.

David could hear the intrigued note in her voice that she tried to hide, one which said she was thinking about it. The very idea made his head throb twice as hard, until it felt as if his brain hit the top of his skull with every beat of his heart. And didn’t he deserve the agony?

He was the worst sort of demented fool for teasing her. To resist was impossible, however, as she so obviously thought he was out of his head. Maybe he was, just a little, that he could take the jest so far. He wanted that kiss, by all that was holy, wanted her lips upon his more than he’d wanted anything in years, maybe more than anything in his life.

Still there was more to it. To touch her, to taste her and teach her something of what was between a man and a woman could be a first foray in his campaign to convince her that releasing him from his vow was useful and good. Anything he could do to turn her response into a lover’s instead of a friend’s should aid the cause. Nothing was quite so helpful in a campaign of seduc
tion as engaging a woman’s desires. At least, so he had been told often enough by Oliver and others.

He had never set out to entice where there was no prior inclination, though he had accepted the favors offered when the lady was comely. Truth be told, he was far more apt to succumb to these practiced allures when the woman had some look, however slight, of Lady Marguerite. He was hopeless. Or he had been until this moment when she was so near, so very near.

“My head,” he whispered with a wince that was not entirely feigned, “’twill surely make it better.”

Concern and curiosity shadowed her eyes before she lowered her lashes. “Will it?”

“Aye.” The single word was a croak.

She shifted with the soft slide of silk and linen. He felt her breast settle gently against his arm and nearly groaned with the sweet, mind-spinning pressure of it. He turned his head in her direction, but could not have spoken again if his life depended on it. Every inch of his skin was rigid with anticipation, while his lips tingled, aching with fiery need.

“Well, if you’re sure,” she said softly.

The edge of her veil brushed his bare skin beneath his bandaging. It was so much like a caress that he jerked with it. He could catch the sweet, fresh scent that was uniquely her own as she moved nearer, hovering over him from her kneeling position. She touched his face, her fingertips like gentle fire upon the turn of his jaw, quietly rasping over the beard stubble that had sprung up since he scraped them away early that morning. Her breath whispered across his chin.

Her face was so near, her eyes so dark they verged on
black. His vision was fractured, showing him two foreheads, two noses, two tender yet firm chins, four soft, soft eyes. He let his eyelids fall as dizziness washed over him.

In that instant, her lips touched his. It was the merest brush; that was all. But then she settled her mouth in place, fitting it to his with perfect fidelity, seam to seam, edge to edge, corner to sweet corner.

The world ceased to exist. He stifled a groan for fear she would move, or in dread that she would not. He didn’t breathe, ceased to think, was utterly still as the very tip of her small tongue brushed a hot, wet path over the smooth surface of his lips, tasting him with such innocent hunger that his blood came to a boil in his veins.

He was aware of the tremor that shook her, the sudden clench of her fingers in the hair below the hollow of his neck as he parted his lips so her tongue slipped inside. She started, paused. Still, she did not withdraw as he half expected, lingering instead upon the moist heat of his inner lips as if discovering their texture. He wanted to draw her deeper but forced himself to quiescence.

She touched the glazed edges of his teeth, found the grainy softness of his tongue and played gently along its edge.

Shock moved over him, one more violent than he’d felt at the entry of the dagger into his side. He forgot every kiss he’d ever had from a woman in the delicious flavor of this meeting of mouths and breaths. He wanted to stay as he was for an eternity, allowing her every experiment, giving her access to all that he was or ever intended to be. Mindless with the need of it, he lifted
his hand and pushed it under her veil, spreading his fingers wide over the back of her head to hold her forever in place.

God above, but he wanted her, cared for nothing except having her.

She was his soul’s one weakness, and he knew it full well as his blood surged through his veins in hot, brain-pounding waves. She was far more dangerous than any enemy, and he didn’t care. She belonged to him and always had, if she could only be brought to know it.

“David…”

The sound of his name in that husky plea sent his good intentions reeling. He didn’t mean to take advantage of her lips that parted upon that word, but was inside them before he knew. Her sweetness was like drugged wine upon his tongue, heady beyond dreams. He savored her, drank her, discovered her satin secrets while his chest swelled with his indrawn breath of soul-deep content.

The slick velvet of her tongue, the smooth yet sharp edges of her teeth and her warm, wet softness were endless enticements. She clouded his senses, filling his whirling, unhinged brain with nothing except her and the need she stoked inside him. He should stop before he frightened her, stop before the pounding in his head took him away again into blackness or the thunder in his blood burst through the bandaging over the rent in his side. He couldn’t do it, lacked the will to release her.

He felt her shudder all the way to his bones. The moan she made of his name, ragged, edged with desperation, was so like the need that raged through him that
he finally understood it. With slow, muscle-wrenching reluctance, he forced his hold to loosen, allowed her to lift her mouth from his.

“Thank you,” he said, the words such a low rumble in his throat they were more like a growl.

The breath she drew was sharp, as at a sudden awakening. “It…” she began. Stopped. Tried again. “It was nothing.”

“It was far more than nothing to me.” He searched her face as she drew back enough to look down at him again. How black her eyes were, and endlessly deep. He felt as if she was a part of him, and he of her. Clothing and class and space separated them, yes, but it seemed their minds and bodies were one.

“I didn’t mean…” She glanced down at her hand where her fingers were still entwined in the hair just below the hollow of his throat. Sliding them free in haste, she met his gaze again, her own startled, wary. “It was a small thing, since you asked.”

“And if I asked again?”

What she might have answered went unspoken. The chamber door swept open with a mighty creak of hinges. Astrid bustled into the chamber with a beaker of ale sloshing on her tray and one of water beside it.

Though desperately thirsty before, David could have foregone drink forever for another taste of Marguerite’s lips. The next best thing was to have her raise his shoulders so he could drink. He could have managed without that aid, or so he thought, but it was far more pleasurable to have Lady Marguerite slide her arm behind him while holding the water to his lips. When he had drunk
his fill, she reached for the strong, reviving ale, tipping it down his parched throat, as well.

Afterward, he lay back and watched while she and her little serving woman tidied the room. Idly, he noted the bloodied cloths and metal basin of red-stained water they handed outside to Oliver for disposal. His eyes narrowed as he looked at his lady’s hands and wrists, noting a rimming of blood at the edge of her sleeve.

Somewhere in a distant corner of his mind, it seemed he had enjoyed her touch upon him in a soothing caress that provided distraction from pain. It was that which had brought him floating upward from the darkness into light and warmth and her softness beside him. The effort had been immense but worth it. Indeed, it had. With eyes half-closed, he drifted into a waking dream.

The door swung open. Instantly alert, David stared in that direction.

It was only Oliver who stood there, inquiry in his black eyes. His saturnine features relaxed into a mustache-tipping smile, doubtless for the proof that he lived and was awake. His nod of satisfaction was brief yet definite before he looked to Marguerite.

“Your pardon, milady, but I thought you might need the basin returned.” He flourished the thing so light from the window struck it in a bronze flash. “I tipped the water down the garderobe and tossed the cloth after it, thinking it might be best if none got a look at them.”

“You did well,” she said with a glance for Astrid as she came pattering up to take the basin from the Italian. “It will be best if none guess just how serious the wound proved.”

“So I thought.” Oliver, his face grim, glanced again
toward where David lay. “I’d hate for some fool to decide finishing him would be an easy task.”

Lady Marguerite’s fine brows drew together over her nose. “It’s your place to see it doesn’t happen. Speaking of which?”

“
Bene,
I’ll return to my post. Happen the king will be sending soon to know how fares our Golden Knight. What shall I be telling his seneschal, that no one need disturb you or Sir David in your rest?”

“No one will disturb Lady Marguerite for she will be in her own chamber,” David said, annoyed by Oliver’s familiarity as well as having them speak as if he wasn’t there. “For Henry, you may send word that I am cursed hard to kill. Whoever made this effort will have to try again.”

“Don’t say that!” Marguerite exclaimed.

“You’ll not need me then, I suppose,” Oliver said at the same time. “Just as well, as I could use a soft bed and softer…”

“Don’t,” David said in tight warning.

“…pillow,” Oliver ended, and flashed him a crooked grin.

“Don’t be absurd.” Lady Marguerite darted an exasperated glance between him and the Italian. “You stand guard by the king’s order and dare not desert. And though it may pain Sir David to admit it, I’m sure he is grateful for your swift action that saved him from bleeding to death.”

“You found me?” David asked, interrupting without compunction. “You brought me here?”

Oliver shrugged, his expression guarded. “In good
time, though not before you’d bled like a boar with its throat cut.”

“And how is it you failed to undress me?”

“I was posted as guard while the ladies took that duty, so onerous, so thankless, upon themselves.”

“Devil’s spawn,” Astrid muttered, the look she gave him bright with promises of revenge.

The Italian smiled down upon her as if at a fine compliment before he continued, “Truly, I could not persuade them otherwise.”

“Not thankless,” David said, his mouth lifting at the corner. At least, not for his part. He was thankful indeed.

“Nor could I persuade them to leave your bathing to me.”

“Mule’s backside,” Astrid cried. “As if you ever said a word, being that weak-kneed at the sight of blood.”

David listened to the wrangling with half his attention. It had been Lady Marguerite’s cool, soft hands he’d felt upon him, just as he’d thought. Even without that vague memory, the rich red color that mantled her face and neck would have told him. He was sorry he had missed the full knowledge of it. With luck, however, he might discover his way toward a repeat performance.

“Astrid is right,” Lady Marguerite said to Oliver with some severity. “You, sir, are Satan’s own.”

“But indispensable, yes? At least while a guard is needed who will not turn enemy when least expected. Well, and to discover if any among the king’s men know who attacked Sir David.”

It was a point, David knew. He had not recognized his assailant. The man had been a mercenary, one of the
many who fought for whoever would pay their wage. It was almost certain the man had come from inside the castle, given the difficulty of joining the ranks of soldiery while the king was in residence. That he had been forced to kill him was a shame. Otherwise he might have been persuaded to name the man who’d paid for this particular job.

With luck, they might yet discover if any had been seen in close talk with the mercenary. The importance of that point could not be ignored, for it was likely the attack was connected with the plan concocted by the king.

Or was it?

“You saw nothing? No one was nearby when you found me?”

Oliver turned to close the door behind him. Leaning his back against it, he crossed his arms over his chest. “You are thinking of Halliwell?”

“He would not mind seeing me dead.” If Halliwell’s wrath had not been stirred by the abduction of his betrothed, there was the humbling confrontation in the great hall to stoke it. Men had done worse to soothe offended pride.

Marguerite made a small gesture of protest. When David glanced at her, her expression was distressed, as if she feared herself responsible. Before he could disabuse her of the idea, Oliver spoke again.

“Or his son, as he takes his side with such zeal,” Oliver said. “Unfortunately, they were both in the forefront of the crowd during the competition.”

“Yes,” David said slowly. He recalled seeing the two
there in the beginning, though he had lost track of them later.

“Doesn’t mean they had no hand in it.”

“As you say.” Anyone could have hired the mercenary. Nothing would have been easier.

David was suddenly glad that he had coaxed Marguerite into kissing him. The sooner she was protected from whatever Halliwell might do to force a marriage, the better. Who knew how long it would be before Henry decided to put his ruse of a second pretender into effect. These few days, while he recovered from the knife attack, might be all that was allowed.

He had been wrong, he saw, to suggest that she sleep in her own chamber. The more time they spent together, the more opportunities he might find to tempt her. Any number of small encroachments could be made. Such delicate pleasures would surely stir her senses so that releasing him from his vow became the most natural solution in the world.

The troubling thing about his aim was the fevered anticipation it stirred in him. Was it really for her benefit or only an excuse for his unbridled inclinations? Yes, and would he be able to stop with the small touches and gentle caresses he envisioned? He thought he could trust his control, but how was he to be sure when it had never been tested against her?