shadow and lace (26 page)

She whirled around, clapping her hands together to muffle the yelp of pain and solid "Oomph" that came from below the window. "There now. Where were we?"

Gareth came toward her, his steps slow and measured as if he was afraid she might bolt out the window. "I understand that you are afraid, Rowena. But there is no need for hysterics. I am not a brute. I can be kind."

She flashed him a brilliant smile. "Of course, you can." A timid scratching came on the shutter behind her as if they were being besieged by an obstinate rat. She shot forward and grasped Gareth's forearms with a strength that surprised even her. She propelled him backward into the arms of the Arabian chair. "Are you comfortable, sir?" She peered into his face with tender solicitude.

A flush of color had risen to her cheeks. Tangled curls tumbled over her brow. She could not know what an enchanting sight she made leaning over him in that manner.

"I should be more comfortable in the bed," he growled.

Rowena's tongue darted over her lips. She was at a genuine loss for words. The scratching against the shutter deepened to a persistent rattle.

Gareth peered around her shoulder. "The wind has risen most fiercely since we arrived."

Rowena's heart hammered. Her gaze danced around the chamber, seeking any diversion that might draw his attention away from the window. Her gaze lit on one of the provocative images embroidered in the tapestry.

She smoothed her skirts as if they were the finest satin, then sat gently on Gareth's lap. His legs went rigid like cords of iron. Before Rowena could lose her nerve, she cupped the satiny roughness of his bearded cheeks between her hands and pressed her lips to his.

His lips parted beneath hers as his tongue succumbed to the temptation of a mouth opened like a rosebud to the nourishing rays of the sun. His arm slipped around her waist, crushing her against him with a hunger that put her own to shame.

His roughened knuckles slid beneath the kirtle to graze the fluttering pulse behind one knee. Rowena shifted her weight only to realize she was trapped like a butterfly against his lap. Gareth's hand glided up her thigh until the worn linen of her undergarment was the only thing that separated his greedy fingers from the soft warmth of her. Beneath her palms, his throat vibrated with a deep groan. His hand cupped her, pressing her down until she feared not even the sheath of their garments would stop him from satisfying the appetite she had so heedlessly whet.

Drunk with the taste of Gareth's tongue against her own, mad with the rough caress of his beard against her throat, Rowena forgot her reason for provoking his tender onslaught. She thought the hammering of angry young fists against wood was only the slam of her heart against her rib cage until the shutters gave way in a shower of splintered wood and a silver-haired sprite came spilling into the tower.

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Gareth slammed Rowena to the safety of the floor as an instinct bred deeper in him than bone or blood sent him diving for the hearth and his scabbard. He unsheathed the broadsword with both hands and crossed the tower in three strides. He drew the sword over his head, prepared to plunge it into the heart of the assassin who had burst through the window. The blade quivered, then froze in its downward motion.

Steel gray eyes glared up at him. Little Freddie lay on his back, knees akimbo, his weight propped on his elbows. A scarred hunting knife spun on the floor a few feet away. He regarded Gareth's blade without a hint of a plea in his silvery orbs.

"You," Gareth breathed.

The plea absent from Little Freddie's drawn features came tumbling into view as Rowena tripped over her brother's foot and sprawled across his thin body.

She tossed her head back. Her gaze traveled from Gareth's straddled legs to his poised blade to his features, which hardened as if someone had set them in stone.

Her voice was low and urgent. "Gareth, please. Don't chop his head off. I beg you. Don't hurt him. I shall do anything you ask."

A dull red flush suffused Gareth's face as he realized the reason for her sweet subterfuge of passion. His eyes raked her in a wordless insult, taking in the mop of tangled gold falling over her face, the slender curve of her hip where her skirt had ridden up, her parted lips.

"Anything?" he heard himself reply coldly. A mercenary song strummed to life in his groin.

"Anything," she repeated. Her eyes met his boldly even as she clenched her jaw to stop it from quivering.

"Rowena!" Little Freddie squirmed beneath her with an agonized croak. "Make no bargains with the devil." His foot shoved at the small of her back.

"Be still, boy!" Gareth brought the sword down with a roar. The blade sank nine inches into the wooden floor between Rowena's knees.

"I would have driven it through your hearts," he hissed, "if I thought either of you possessed one."

Two pairs of wide eyes blinked at the vibrating blade. Rowena swallowed audibly.

Gareth strode across the room and splashed wine into a goblet. "Mummers, indeed. If you could have extracted such a winsome performance from your sister at any one of those villages, you would be choking on gold by now."

Pink stained Rowena's cheeks. She and Freddie jumped as Gareth slammed the goblet down and paced back to them. He rocked lightly on the balls of his feet, locking his hands behind him. An unpleasant light glowed in his eyes.

"Let me insure that I understand you, Lady Fordyce. To spare the head of this brash stripling, you offer me anything I desire from you."

Rowena met his eyes over the sword hilt. She nodded, ignoring the vicious pinch Little Freddie gave her.

Gareth crossed his arms. "No remorse. No rebuke. No- mewling tears of recrimination on the morrow."

"None," Rowena said softly.

"You heartless bastard!" Little Freddie flung himself at Gareth, but Rowena caught his neck neatly between her elbow and ribs, squeezing until his string of protests faded to garbled grunts. Her gaze never left Gareth's.

A cold smile flickered across his face. "All I must do is leave your brother's head attached to his shoulders."

She nodded solemnly, then hesitated. A thoughtful look crossed her features.

Gareth started to turn away. "Your offer is accepted."

"Nay," she said suddenly.

Beneath her arm, Little Freddie collapsed in relief. Gareth pivoted on his heel, arching one eyebrow. "Nay?"

"Nay. Little Freddie's life is not enough. I want more. You must promise him your protection. Even after my year is done and you've banished me from your company, you must find him a place in your household or in another. As a squire. When he comes of age, you will help him win his spurs."

Little Freddie's squirming began anew, intensifying with each word. His foot inched toward the hunting knife. Rowena drove a merciless elbow into his stomach, and he doubled over with a grunt.

Gareth's gaping mouth snapped shut. "Rowena Fordyce, as I breathe and speak! I thought your greed only extended to your charming little gut. You are a gem with many facets, indeed, milady."

Rowena refused to flinch at his mocking tone. Gareth's cynicism warred with amusement in the face of her stony reserve. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He turned his face to the fire, trusting the leaping flames to hide his expression.

"Your price grows steeper with each passing second. I should make haste to acquiesce before I am forced to foster your entire family and make your papa my page. What makes you think I wish to be saddled with this stubborn whelp for all eternity? He has proved himself painfully imprudent with a hunger for martyrdom that makes even myself skittish."

"He is bright," Rowena said quickly. Little Freddie's fingers curled toward the knife. She caught his hair and gently rapped his head on the floor until his eyes fluttered shut in groggy surrender. She cradled his head in her lap and stroked his brow. "He is brighter than all the rest of us."

Gareth stroked his beard. "I'll grant you that."

"He would have had his chance to be a knight if Papa hadn't been lamed. Tis his birthright, you know. 'Twas not his doing that robbed him of it."

"That it was not. But 'twould be your doing that restores it. How noble." Gareth's tone implied the opposite. "Mayhaps he is too young to be a squire."

"Mayhaps I am too young to be your leman."

His lips quirked to acknowledge her hit. He ran one finger lovingly over the hilt of the sword embedded in the floor. "Are you worth it, Rowena?"

Rowena tossed her hair back boldly. "You will have to be the judge of that, won't you, sir?"

Gareth felt his groin tighten as his eyes followed the arch of her throat down to the gentle swell of her breasts. "Very well. This devil accepts your bargain."

Rowena stood to face him in one smooth motion. Little Freddie groaned as his head was dumped from the cushion of her lap.

"Swear it."

Gareth stared at her. "My word is not generally suspect."

"Swear it."

"By God, you push me. As you wish. I give you my oath as a knight of—"

"On your knees."

With a growl, Gareth dropped to his knees at her feet, straddling the blade. His eyes burned up at her like live coals. For the first time, Rowena was glad to have the cold steel between them. He gritted out a guttural oath between clenched teeth, promising Little Freddie his protection as long as he should live. The boy moaned, but Rowena nodded, satisfied.

Gareth's hand shot out to encircle her wrist like a band of iron. His words were clipped. "You may make your oath to me in private, milady. On your knees."

"As you wish, milord." Her eyes held a steely light Gareth did not recognize.

He climbed to his feet and plucked Little Freddie off the floor by the scruff of his tunic.

Rowena caught his sleeve. "You swore you would do him no harm."

Gareth shook her away as if she were no more than a bothersome flea. "I am doing him no harm. I am showing him out." He strode purposefully toward the window, stepping over shards of splintered shutter. Little Freddie's eyes popped open. "He can damn well leave the same way he came in."

Rowena flung herself on Gareth's back, wrapping one slender arm around his throat. "You mustn't. You shall kill him. You promised."

Gareth straightened with a sigh. Rowena's feet dangled a foot off the floor. "Woman, you try my patience."

Without bothering to unhook her, he leaned out the window. Two dark shapes milled nervously below.

"Who goes there? Irwin, is that you?" he called.

There was a moment of silence broken by nothing but the murmur of the falling snow, then a faint, "Aye, sir."

"I've something for you. Hold your arms out."

Rowena slid off Gareth's back, covering her eyes with her fingers as he dropped Little Freddie out the window. She waited for an agonized scream, but heard only a muffled grunt, followed by a timid, "Thank you ever so much, sir."

"My pleasure." Gareth leaned farther out the window, glaring down at the pale, worried circle of Irwin's face.

Irwin cleared his throat. "We must be going, sir."

"No farther than the stable, please."

"Of course not, sir."

Gareth dug his fingers into the snow crusted on the windowsill as the two dark shapes shuffled away,bearing their awkward burden between them. Rowena crossed herself, mumbling a prayer of thanks that Little Freddie had not been killed or maimed.

She watched as Gareth pried his sword from the floor and used its hilt to pound a tapestry over the yawning window. A cozy orb of color wreathed them. Rowena's eyes shied away from the sly winks and knowing leers of the faces frozen in the tapestries. Gareth knelt before the hearth and fed the planks of the hapless shutters to the waning fire.

Without turning around, he said, "Tell me, Rowena. How many men have you offered yourself to in order to save your hapless kinfolk?"

"One. Only you."

He gave the flames a vicious poke with the last plank. "If you're lying, I am about to find out."

Rowena picked at her cracked fingernails and studied his broad back beneath lowered lashes. He went to the table and poured himself another goblet of wine, his motions painfully deliberate. When he came for her with his hands so cold, Rowena wondered how she would stop herself from pleading. But she had sworn not to. She had sold herself as basely as any whore, forfeiting any tenderness he might have offered.

He sank into the Arabian chair. The goblet dangled from his fingertips. "Where were we? Shall I set the stage? I was here, and you were sitting in my lap, seducing me very prettily. Pray do continue."

Rowena's heart sank. She crossed the chamber and slid onto his lap. He stared straight ahead, his features as impenetrable and pale as marble.

Drawing in a short, jerky breath, she pressed her lips to his. Her kiss was inexpert, amateur, and she knew it. She drew back. His lips had not parted beneath her caress, but his gaze had shifted to her face. He was studying her through narrowed eyes. This emboldened her to kiss him again. She cupped his neck in her palms. Gareth remained unmoved by her softness, as unrelenting as a statue in her embrace.