The Longing (26 page)

She gave a soft, scornful laugh. “As ashamed as I am to admit Judith was right, I was besotted with you, Everard Wulfrith.”

He did not understand his hands that wanted what good sense told him he did not want—to pull her to him and wipe away her tears. More, he did not understand the longing to kiss her when the only thing he ought to ask of her was forgiveness.

“I thought you might have heard her say that,” he said gruffly.

She turned her face to him. “That and more.” She swept her gaze to his head that denied the wind the frolic her unbound tresses did not. “Only ever her hands,” she whispered. “No other’s.”

Everard had never known himself to be incapable of movement when movement was necessary and, in this moment, it was imperative that he distance himself. He should not be alone with her, in the dark, hands clenched so they would not reach for her. This was about Judith and him. Not Susanna and him. Was it not?

“I am sorry,” she said, and he stiffened to hear her speak words that ought to sound from him. “I am sorry she is not here with you.” Her breath caught, once more on a sob. “I know you loved her well, and it cannot be easy to have me reminding you of all you have lost. But at least now you know—I hope you know—that I also loved Judith and neither family loyalty nor jealousy made me betray her.”

Everard knew, almost wished he did not, for he could not stop himself from doing what he did next. Distantly aware of the cloth falling from his hand, he turned to Susanna, brushed back the hair dancing across her face, and set his palm to her moist cheek. “I know,” he said, “and ’tis I who am sorry for all the years you were made to suffer for my lack of discretion, for what you had to do to abide beneath your brother’s roof, for every wrong I have done you by thought, word, and deed.”

The eyes she lifted to him were bright and searching, then they were spilling tears that wet his fingers and ran down his hand. Behind them came soft sobs that set all of her trembling, harder ones that made her shake.

“Susanna,” he groaned and pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her.

She curled into his chest and cried, not like a woman who has learned to temper such expressions of anguish, but surely how he imagined a girl, pained by the first breaking of her heart, would weep—as, perhaps, Judith had done the day she sent him away, committing the nine months that remained of her life to Alan de Balliol.

“Forgive me,” he said and felt one of Susanna’s hands rake his chest as she fiercely gripped his tunic as if for fear of falling.

Lord, how do I remedy this? How do I make amends for a trespass that laid ruin to her life as it seeks to lay ruin to Judas? Eleven years! How can she stand to be so near me? How can she not hate me? How do I fix what I have torn asunder?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Susanna held tight to Everard where he had drawn her onto his thighs. It was happening again, something breaking inside her just as when Judas had feigned a breathing attack that had made her realize how corrupted his young heart was by the need to survive. And, as then, her sobs were part relief, part grief. Relief that, at last, her truth was told and believed. Grief that, for all the guilt-induced comfort offered her, it would not change the course of her life.

Still, she wanted to remain in this moment, the better to remember in years to come of how it felt to have strong arms around her that were only for the holding, not the taking—no favor for a favor. Merely comfort.

Remember,
she told herself as she pressed her face to the firm, muscular chest and breathed in Everard with each gasp that shook her.
Remember.

He let her cry, and it was not until she was softly hiccoughing against his tear-dampened tunic that she became aware of his hand moving over her shoulder and upper back, occasionally pausing to gently knead her tense muscles. No man had ever touched her this way. Likely, no man ever would again.

Remember, Susanna. It will make the cold nights warmer.

She tilted her face up.

Everard’s own face was raised where he had settled his head back against the battlement, and though she could not see his eyes, she guessed he watched the thickening clouds chase one another across the moon and sky.

As she stared up at him, trying to think of what to say, she realized she did not want to say anything lest it mean the end of his embrace.

But then he lowered his chin, and his eyes found hers. He smiled, though it was a sorrowful turn of the lips. “Better?”

She was—as much as was possible. “Aye.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something further, closed it.

“What is it?” she asked.

A long moment passed, then he said, “I have been thinking of Sir Morris—the things I would like to do to him of which, I am sure, God would not approve.”

In the anger she had spilled all around him, she had said too much, but did he believe more had happened between her and the knight than actually had? “I thank you for wishing to defend me, but you should know that he only tried to ravish me. He did not—”

“Only!” His hand stilled upon her shoulder, gripped it as if he might shake her. “
Only,
Susanna? Truly, have you such little regard for yourself?”

The tension his touch had eased began to return. “I did give my brother’s men cause to think—”

“Mayhap think, but not act. There is no excuse for that knave’s behavior.” Though the intensity of his gaze could not be seen, she felt it. “When a woman says ‘nay,’ it is ‘nay.’ There is no ‘aye’ in it.”

The tears with which she had thought she was done once more threatened her composure. However, she tamped down her alarm with the reminder it would be no great loss considering how little composure she had left. After all, what dignity was there in perching upon his lap and being unable to bring herself to pull back from where she leaned into him? None. But there was contentment.

Oh, pray, remember this, even when you grow old and your mind is not right and death is a breath away. Here is the good of the world you will leave behind. Here. With he who loved Judith.

“I will not have you excuse such behavior,” Everard said. “You will not take the blame for a man’s depravity. Do you understand, Susanna?”

It would be easy to be offended by any man making a demand of her—indeed, she had often suffered such offenses at Cheverel—but not this one who ordered it for her sake, not his own. “I understand.” She lowered her chin. “But still it does not absolve me—”

His hand moved up over her shoulder and neck, curved around her jaw, and lifted her face. “’Tis between God and you. Ask His forgiveness and it will be given, and you need never again feel guilt, just as you shall never again feel you must give any man what is not his to take—regardless of what the queen decides.”

But if Judas was denied, it would be worse for her when, having no place to go, she was forced to return to her family home. Of course, with her nephew safe at Wulfen and only herself to fend for, it would not be necessary to bargain, would it? She could survive whatever was denied her, need only protect herself—

The memory of Sir Morris’s near ravishment flashed through her. Alan would not be there to stop him, nor Sir Elias who could never return.

“If Judas is set aside,” Everard continued, his breath warm amidst the air that continued to stir about them, “he will remain at Wulfen as I have told. And I will secure for you a position with my mother or one of my sisters.”

It took a moment for his words to knock her anxious thoughts off their path, but when they did, she could only breathe, “What?”

“You will not return to Cheverel, Susanna.”

Regardless of the state of her composure, she did not want to cry again. However, the effort required to contain her tears once more made her tremble. “I would that all men were like you, Everard Wulfrith. But you stand alone.”

“I do not. ’Tis just that you have been in the wrong place, and I am sorry I put you there.”

It was what she had accused him of doing, and there was truth in it, but she wanted to be beyond that, for the bad of her past to stay there, for it to have no place in her present or future.

“How many others, Susanna?”

She caught her breath. She knew what he asked, but she did not want to discuss it, not now with his arms around her, hand upon her jaw, thumb against her lower lip—all of which somehow made her feel clean rather than dirty as when she was touched as she did not wish to be.

“I beseech you,” she whispered, “do not ask that of me.”

“I do not mean to shame you. I but wish to know how deeply I have wronged you.”

Were he any other man, she did not think she would believe him, but she did not doubt that the burden of what she did not wish to tell was intended to be borne upon his own shoulders—yet more guilt.

“There is only one thing you need know,” she said. “Though I may never be versed in what goes between a man and a woman on their wedding night, were I, that part of me most treasured by my husband would be his and no other’s.”

He tensed, the opposite reaction she had hoped for.

She reached up and laid a hand over his upon her jaw. “Let that be enough, Everard. Ease your conscience.”

After a long moment, he said, “You are saying you forgive me?”

There was no reason to hesitate, and yet she did, for his words were ones she had never expected to hear, just as she had thought he would never believe her innocent of carrying tale of a forbidden kiss to her brother.

“That is what I am saying. I forgive you.”

When the silence grew uncomfortable, she added, “Please know that I am grateful for all you are doing to make things right for Judas. Regardless of what happens, I can ask no more of you than that.”

Softly, he said, “Can you not?”

What did he mean? Though moonlight knew well her upturned face, it was mostly denied his that was bent toward hers. Thus, there was nothing definite to be read upon his face. “I do not understand,” she said.

He slid his hand from beneath hers and over the backs of her fingers. “Your hand is cold,” he murmured, then drew it upward and touched his lips to her fingertips.

For a moment, Susanna could not breathe. A moment later, air was again denied her as his mouth moved to her palm and warmed it with a kiss.

She gasped. “Everard?”

He raised her hand higher, pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist where he surely felt the pulse fed by a heart that beat so forcefully it hurt.

She shuddered, told herself this was not happening, that only a dream could make it so.

He lowered her hand, but though she was certain he had come to the end of whatever possessed him, he bent his head, angled it, and set his mouth so near hers that there was hardly enough space between them for the wind to pass.

“May I?” His voice was deep, low, and all of her felt as if caressed by it.

She wanted to agree, to grant him an unearned kiss, but should she not first understand why he wished to kiss her, Susanna de Balliol?

“Why?” she said and, in forming the word, her lips brushed his and a sharp, quick sensation moved through her that dropped her onto the edge of something wonderful that required but a single step forward into… What?

“May I?” he said again, leaving her question unanswered.

It matters not. Just remember this.

“Aye.”

His lips touched hers, opened upon hers, and Susanna sighed into him.

It was only a kiss, and when it deepened and his hands pushed through her hair and fingers gripped her scalp, it was still only a kiss. He asked no more of her, left the rest of her untouched, and yet it was like nothing she had felt—sweet, yet more than sweet; safe, yet, perhaps, not safe at all, for she longed to step over that edge into the something wonderful that beckoned.

As when she had laid a hand over his that cradled her jaw, she gave only cursory thought to what she did next—reaching up and pressing her hands to the sides of his face, then curving them up over his scalp. But there was nothing to slide her fingers through, stubble only, and it thrust upon her the memory of the promise made to Judith that her hands alone would know his hair. Only ever hers, the woman he had never stopped loving.

Susanna opened her eyes that she had surely closed out of habit—always seaming them tight so that sight would not strengthen the memory of what she did with those who did for her—and peered at Everard’s deeply shadowed face. His lids were lowered, and she recalled he had denied her an answer as to why he wished to kiss her. But the answer would be easily found were she honest enough to look where it lay.

She drew a breath of Everard, impressed upon herself this memory of how it felt to be held and kissed by him beneath a moonlit sky with the careless wind their only witness, then pulled her head back. “We must stop.”

She sensed his bafflement, but he did not try to hold her to him when she pressed backward and out of his arms.

Settling to her knees alongside him, she lowered her head and tried to talk herself down from the feeling of loss that sought to overwhelm her.

“You are right,” he said.

She raised her head. “As told, forgiveness is yours.” The wind swept hair across her face. “There need be no atonement.”

Where he leaned against the battlement, she saw his lids narrow, and then he sat forward. “Atonement, Susanna? What say you?”

“’Tis not required. I want no part of it.”

“You think that is why I kissed you? To atone?” He closed a hand over her two that she clasped in her lap. “I did it because I wished to, and not for the first time. Surely you know I nearly kissed you the day I brought word of Judas’s attack?”

Then it had not been imagined. He had wanted that intimacy then, even before he knew she was innocent of what he had long believed—

But therein lies the truth. Do not make more of this than it is, for you will only know greater hurt.

The truth was that Wulfen Castle was without women, and though Everard had more honor than any man she had known, he had desires like others of his sex—surely enough to tempt him to seek intimacy with one of whom he believed ill.