shadow and lace (19 page)

"No right?
No right?"
Gareth climbed off the bed knee over knee. Rowena scrambled backward, but his hands caught in the wool of her bliaut. Her feet left the floor as he picked her up and slammed her to the feather tick. "I had no right? Let me inform you of a few facts about my rights, sweet Lady Rowena Fordyce."

His eyes were very close to hers. Only his elbows resting on either side of her head kept his weight from crushing her.

"I won you in an honorable game of chance. Your bastard of a father wagered you as any decent man would a cow or a parcel of land. You belong to me. I have the right to do whatever I please with you, and I've had that right from the first day I laid eyes on you. If I care to drag you down those stairs and spread your legs at your precious papa's feet, 'tis my right. Not a man in the hall would dare condemn me for it."

Her aching pride made Rowena careless. "They condemn you for other things, do they not?"

Gareth's eyes narrowed into the eyes of a stranger. Rowena tried to turn her face away, but he caught her chin in one hand. "Watch your tongue, girl. I've quaffed enough ale tonight to ravish five maidens before dawn without a qualm of conscience."

"If you've quaffed that much ale, you're probably not able," she retorted.

"Try me."

He lowered his lean warrior's body with a deliberate motion, and Rowena felt an unfamiliar hardness graze her abdomen. Her eyes widened. It was a cruel thing to do, but Gareth never went into battle without showing his weapons. Her skin shrank from the crude caress. The wool and linen between them was suddenly like so much parchment.

Rowena bit her lip and blinked back tears. "Do you seek to make me what you would have Papa believe I am?"

Her tears were as sobering as a dash of cold water. Gareth buried his face in her hair to hide their effect on him. "I know what you are. I've known your kind before. All soft and sweet and as deadly as poisoned honey. If your father only knew what restraint I've used…" His heated lips brushed her temple.

"Do not mock me," she choked out. "The only thing you've used is me. You invited my papa here so you could humiliate the both of us in your little game. You dragged my family here in the dead of winter, half-starved and freezing, knowing they could be trapped by a snowstorm at any time."

"Why do you defend your papa?" he murmured against her hair.

"Why do you despise him?"

Gareth made no reply. His mouth glided over the tiny hairs at her temple and down to the corner of her mouth.

"Have you lodged my family in the next chamber?" She was desperate to stop him before she tasted the ale on his tongue. "The better to hear my pleas and screams? Nay, Gareth, if you will make a whore out of me, you shall do it in silence, for I swear not one whimper will escape my lips."

He caught her hands in his and held them captive on each side of her head. "If you think I could not make you cry out, you are wrong." His eyes warned her that it was not pain he threatened.

Rowena caught half a breath before his lips descended on hers. She steeled herself against his kiss, preparing herself to be punished and hurt. But she had not prepared herself for the tenderness of his assault. As his mouth met hers, the violence left his body with a wracking shudder, to be replaced by a gentleness as disarming as it was potent. His tongue tasted her lips, then dipped inward in a leisurely exploration of the sweetness within. When his fingers laced around hers, Rowena held on, clinging to the one thing of substance that kept her from drowning in a luxuriant sea of fur and sensation.

He lowered his body against hers, thigh to thigh, belly to belly, balancing his weight perfectly to keep from crushing her. His dark head glided downward, pushing her bliaut away until his mouth tenderly grazed the peak of her breast in a caress that bore no relation to his crass pawing in the great hall. Her nipple shivered and contracted beneath his tongue. She moaned softly as pleasure and shame quickened within her.

The low sound brought Gareth's head up. Rowena's eyes were clenched shut. He freed her hands and cupped her chin, coaxing her to open them. Not even a cloud of tears could dim their brilliance. The trust with which she had welcomed his kiss in the great hall still shone within, battered and bruised, but unsurrendered. He had seen that look once before in blue eyes welling with tears. Her trust was a formidable enemy. It had conquered poverty and betrayal with a dignity he could barely understand. Now it would conquer him. If he had been a man who begged, he might have pleaded with Rowena then and there to open herself and let him slake his bitterness in her healing warmth.

She snuffled softly.

He rolled off of her without a word and sat on the edge of the bed.

A terrible coldness pricked Rowena where his body had been. She hugged her bliaut to her neck and sat up, biting a lip that felt tender and swollen.

Her fingertips touched one of the rigid scars on his back. "Gareth, please…"

He flinched as if her touch had scorched him. For her to beg now was more than he could bear. "Go away, won't you? Leave me be."

If Gareth could have guessed what Rowena's plea was going to be, his response might have been very different. She had opened her mouth to beg for any kindness, for a hint of his smile, for the courteous attention he had waved before her like sugar before a starving child. She was willing to pay any price to stop him from turning his back on her. At his words her hand fell away from him like a dying flower.

Silence followed, then the soft pad of her feet against the stone. The door creaked open.

Gareth did not have to turn to sense the straightness of her spine, the hurt pride in her voice. "I may not be able to spell my own name, but I am not so foolish as to be blind to the truth. There is only one man in all England you would hate so well. The knight you caught with your precious Elayne."

Gareth wanted to turn and shout the truth at her. To cross the chamber and shake her until she opened her eyes and saw her father for what he was. Instead, he stared at the back of his hands.

"Despite your feelings for Papa, you've treated me with nothing but kindness since bringing me to Caerleon. Why you would have him believe otherwise, I do not know. I cannot fathom what I've done to make you hate me so." The door closed with a final thump.

"I don't hate you," Gareth said to the empty cham
ber
. The words that followed were only a whisper in his mind as he buried his aching head in his palms.

Rowena wandered the endless corridors, deaf to all but the sputter of the ebbing torches. The snores and moans that drifted out from behind the closed doors held the cadence of unreality in the darkest morning hours, like echoes from a time long past. The shadowy corridors grew longer and longer.

"Holy Mother of God," she swore as Marlys erupted from a darkened doorway. The oath coming from Rowena's lips stopped Marlys in her tracks. "Spare me your offended glare, Marlys. Did it never occur to you that I am sick to death of you stalking me like the grim reaper? I weary of it."

Marlys stepped in front of her, but Rowena shoved past her easily. "Leave me be." She echoed Gareth's words without realizing it.

"Wait." Marlys caught her arm. "There is someone you must see."

Rowena glanced over Marlys's shoulder where a heavy door stood ajar. She shrugged Marlys's grip away. "Another of your twisted jests? Have you Blaine lurking inside to ravish me? Or mayhaps the ghost of Lady Elayne cowering on the bed with a sword through her breast?"

Beneath her dark strands of hair, Marlys paled. "Rowena, please."

Begging did not suit Marlys. Rowena slid her hand under Marlys's hair and flipped it back. Marlys flinched. Rowena could find no trace of laughter or mockery in her face. Surprised by her own cruelty, she freed the hair, then gave a curt nod. Marlys gripped her arm and drew her forward.

Rowena's nose twitched at the odor of stale rosemary. The blue pall of daylight was gone from Elayne's chamber. In its place were the flickering shadows cast from a tallow candle shuttered by translucent slices of horn. Rowena strained her eyes to see. The door slammed. The cupboard door creaked open, and hot,wet lips sucked at her cheek. For an instant, she believed once again that Marlys had betrayed her. But even Blaine at his crudest could not compare to the lack of finesse in this kiss.

Her hand curled into a fist and crashed into the head attached to her cheek.

"Aaaargh!" Irwin reeled backward, clutching his ear. "Gads, Rowena, no need to deafen me, you know. I had hoped you had abandoned your violent ways for a gentler demeanor."

"That scene in the great hall should have warned you differently," came a boy's voice rippling with laughter. "If she'd toss ale in de Crecy's face, I shudder to think what she'd do to you."

Rowena glanced wildly around the chamber. The pale sheen she had been searching for glided into view. Little Freddie found his way into her arms.

"There now," he said, patting her back awkwardly. "No need for tears. We've come to make it all better."

Rowena's tears soaked his shoulder. She knew the time when things could have been cured by optimism had long passed. Irwin stole a pat but jerked his hand away when she turned her watery glare on him. Big Freddie shuffled forward, cobwebs draping his ducked head.

Rowena sat on the edge of the musty counterpane, smothering the last of her sniffles in a rag torn from Big Freddie's sleeve. Marlys stood leaning against the door with arms crossed.

"This familial display of devotion is touching," she drawled, "but I must remind you that haste is of the essence. Gareth's stupors are short and his temper fierce when he awakens."

Rowena was hard pressed to imagine his temper being any more fierce than it had been moments ago. Irwin knelt on one knee at her feet. He
had
grown taller since she had seen him last. The beginnings of a moustache fuzzed his lip.

He beamed up at her. "We have come to rescue you."

"You mean Papa regrets his wager? He has come to carry me home?"

Irwin cleared his throat. Big Freddie glared at his feet as if he found them offensive.

Little Freddie stepped forward, loving her too much to lie. "Papa is tucked under a table in the great hall, snoring soundly. He wants no part of our plan."

"But surely if you told him—" Rowena started.

"We did," Little Freddie said flatly.

"I see." Rowena tried to withdraw her hand, but Irwin held it fast with a strength that surprised her.

His eyes devoured her face. "I'm not sure that you do. I am still your betrothed, Rowena. We have been betrothed since we were but children. I hold fast to that oath. I care not what that beastly wretch has done to you. I am willing to overlook any defilement, any breach of innocence you bring to our marriage bed."

Marlys's cough sounded more like a shout of laughter. In that moment Rowena almost hated her. She resisted the urge to plant her foot in Irwin's chest. Her gaze dropped. He was kneeling in the center of the dark stain that spread from the bed to the stones—the last trace of the life that had dripped away on that night so long ago.

"How kind," she said faintly.

She rose, slipping out of his grasp like a wraith, and brushed past Big Freddie. More by instinct than sight, her hands found the heavy velvet folds draped over the windows. She drew them back and slipped into their shelter. Her hands fumbled with the shutters. Fresh, cold wind poured past her and into the chamber, sending the drapes into a lashing dance. Before the voice could sound low and pervasive in her ear, she knew who it would belong to.

"Did he whisper sweet endearments to you? Murmur of marriage? Plight his troth?"

That picture was so far from the truth of their encounter that Rowena had to close her eyes.

The voice went on. "He will use you if you stay. The winter nights are long and cold. Even a monk would be sorely pressed to resist a chit as convenient as you. He might even be kind to you. When he tired of you, he would send you on your way with a few trinkets, a family brooch, a brotherly kiss."

Marlys's diatribe died on a hiss. Her voice softened. "I shield my face because I have no desire to be a man's chattel. Every time my father looked at me, he saw nothing more than a future alliance with Blaine's father. Be it whore or wife in merry old England, a woman is still a man's property—his toy. Is that what you wish for your life, Lady Precious?"

Rowena opened her eyes. Every line of the courtyard below was drawn with painful clarity. Beneath the empty boughs of an oak, four horses milled on their tethers. All she wished for was yesterday when the tenuous thread between she and Gareth had not been laced with revenge.

Marlys's gaze dropped to Rowena's stomach. "What if he should get you with babe? Gareth does not fancy children. He despised Elayne's brat."

The courtyard blurred. Rowena brought a strand of hair to her lips. She kept her tone light, refusing to betray the cost of a question that had been niggling at the back of her mind for weeks. "What became of the child when Elayne died?"

Marlys gently pulled the hairs from.Rowena's lips. "No one knows. The child disappeared on the night Elayne was murdered. Some say Gareth strangled her and buried her in the orchard."