The Maiden Bride (21 page)

"On the streets—such a young boy."

"I came very late to fatherhood, my lady—and I had much to make up to my son." Brushing this close to the truth made him feel recklessly free. "But the boy didn't know me at all. He was terrified of me when I first came for him. Hid from me, even."

For some reason that made her smile. "And so you made toys for him, didn't you? Carved dancing bears and hedgehogs." Of course she would follow that trail; he'd led her there.

"My feeble campaign to win him. I was
…
resolved to be his father. And he was as reluctant at first."

"Oh, Nicholas, I suspect that your Liam came willingly to you in no time at all."

"It took weeks, madam. Long, wasted weeks. And much cajoling. But in the end, we had only six months together, my boy and I."

"Were they good ones? Good times for you and Liam?"

"They were—" He swallowed back his ragged grief, focused on the horizon, the sea, its margins now barely discernable from the evening sky. He took a breath and then another. "They were heaven to me. And undeserved."

Eleanor had tried not to weep, had tried to let Nicholas have his sorrow in his own way, but an ungovernable sob finally shook her.

No wonder he haunted Faulkhurst: His son had died here. No wonder he prowled the ramparts and protected its heart. He was so wrong in his opinion of himself.

"You were blessed as few men are, Nicholas. To know the true love of a son."

He turned away again and wrapped the boy's headstone in another leather pouch. "Ah, my lady, if you'd only known him…
"

She watched as he laid the pouch on a shelf below the workbench. His hands shaking, lingering overlong in the caress, this restless beast bested by a tiny boy's heart. It was so difficult to let go of unfinished sorrows, impossible to do it all alone.

"Was Liam dark-haired like you, Nicholas?" she whispered. "Dark-eyed?"

When he didn't move, or speak, she feared that she'd pressed too hard. But then he nodded. "Yes."

"And strapping, too. Strong. I mean, for all of his eight years?"

He turned away from the bench and met her eyes. "He was. And I—" But then his manner changed abruptly, her steward once more. "What is it you wanted of me, madam? What brought you out here in the middle of the night?"

It was a start. A place to begin with this man who had such a tight hold around her heart.

"Because, Nicholas, you missed supper with us—much to Pippa's distress. So I thought I'd come let you know that you made the children very happy today with their lessons."

They were shyly delighted eyes that found hers. "Did I?"

"You
know very well that you did."

The blackguard tried to shrug off his benevolence, but it was the essence of him. "Habit."

"One to nurture, Nicholas." For the children that he loved now and who loved him back—as she did. "I hope you're prepared with your deep sack of pennies from our treasury. Pippa has a bucket of feathers for you."

She felt ruffled again, focused upon as he straightened his shoulders. "What sort of name is Pippa? What does it mean?"

"I don't know. It's what she called herself when I found her in a peach orchard."

"That little thing?" Then the great man was frowning, outraged for the child who now lived in his circle of care. "By Christ, was she alone?"

"Aye, and she seemed an angel to me, too weary just then to climb to heaven. And so I kept her. I want to believe that she was left there lovingly when no one was able to take care of her. She was bundled up in a long, finely embroidered linen shift."

"And suffering the plague; I've seen the marks." That seemed to anger him, yet he sat on the edge of the workbench, caught her hand and drew her to stand between his knees. "What of Dickon? Was he infected?"

"He and Lisabet both. I found them among the dead in a Bristol jail."

"What were you doing in a Bristol jail?"

"Breaking into it."

"Into a
jail?"

"Aye, I had to. The jailers had died and left the gates closed. Ah, Nicholas, I saw that everywhere. Just as I had to do at the hospital at St. Albans, and the asylum at Bath."

"You broke into all these places?"

"Brazenly. I wonder what Edward would think if he knew? I stopped where I was needed, where I thought I could do some good. And look what I found." She spread her hands wide, hoping that he would see that she meant him, as much as she meant anyone in the world.

"And you were spared completely."

"Aye."

"I know the signs too well myself." He threaded his fingers through her hair, lifting it off her nape. She drew in a staggering breath as he brushed his fingertips along her neck, sending sparks of fire sizzling across her breasts to the very tips.

"I don't expect ever to know why," she managed, wantonly tipping her head to give him better access.

"Because they needed you, madam." This was said so near to her mouth, she thought he would kiss her—hoped that he would, because he hadn't in so long.

"And you, Nicholas." His hair was softly clean and clinging when it brushed her hand.

"Please, madam." He gripped her hips in his wide hands and gritted his teeth as though she'd injured him.

"Someone must have needed you as well, Nicholas." Another whim of daring made her kiss him on the temple, where his hair curled slightly off his forehead. "I know that I do."

"You'd best stop that, my lady, else I'll be taking you up on your offer."

But she couldn't stop, didn't want to, because his brow tasted of the sea and his mouth of sweet fire when she brushed it with hers.

"Eleanor!" Then she was inside his embrace, held there by the fullness of his kiss, this wonderful man who loved his son with such sorrowful tribute, who would love her fiercely if he allowed himself.

Marry me, Nicholas.
It was on her lips again, filling her heart with elation, more powerful than ever. But his face was buried in her hair, then trailing heat down her throat as he cupped her breasts through her kirtle and groaned in his marvelous way.

"Oh, yes—there, Nicholas." She sighed, clinging to him, to his hardness, to his mouth and its questing.

Aye, and to the first sparks of a wild, near-impossible idea: that he was the son of a titled lord, and he must have ties to the king—favors to be granted.

Not impossible at all.

Her proposal sang in her heart, made her ruck up her skirts like a wife, and straddle his lap and wiggled closer.

He reared up, his eyes flaming like the devil's, like a startled schoolboy's. "Eleanor, where are you going?"

"Right here, Nicholas. Can't you feel that?"

"Christ, woman!" He inhaled through his teeth as though she'd wounded him in her squirming, though he was making sounds of pleasure in his throat, holding her hips, pressing her down and his own hips against her. "I feel nothing but you, Eleanor. And you feel so good to me."

"So right, Nicholas—that's how you feel to me. Like I belong here." In his arms and in his lap and in his heart, beside him in his sorrow, and in the wildness of his joy when he could finally celebrate his son.

And theirs.

He was wonderful and hot, his lovely tarse as hard as one of the stone blocks that held up the arches of Faulkhurst. It pressed thickly against the center of her, the place that ached for him, for his touch.

Aye and for his kiss, because she could imagine that, too. Could imagine getting to know all of him.

She reached for him, sliding her hand down his warm chest, pulling at his belt, his tunic.

"Eleanor!" Her name shot out of him as he stood with her, his eyes wide in wonder, his hands clasped round her bare backside, keeping her legs wrapped around his waist.

"Yes?"

He was breathing like a warhorse, his nostrils flaring. "I can't do this to you."

"Then—"
marry me,
she was going to say.

But he shifted his weight and stood her up on her very weak legs. He caught her hand and brushed his mouth against her palm, then tugged her away from the shed.

"Come, madam. I'll show you the safe route back to the keep."

He led her through the sanctuary, and its simple beauty stopped her: the unglazed windows, the rafters open to the sky and the stars.

"I think I won't like it as well when the roof is finally repaired, Nicholas."

He was standing behind her, a part of the sky as she craned her neck to see it all. "Why, madam?"

"Look at all we'll miss of the heavens."

Chapter 18

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"
T
oddy, what do you mean that Pippa's lost?" Trying not to panic the boy or herself, Eleanor lifted him onto the table with its ribbon streamers and smiled at him, then fluffed his hair.

"I haven't seen her for hours. Not since the music started for the faire."

Nicholas looked pale as he knelt in front of Toddy, his voice steady, but his eyes intense. "Think, boy, where did you see her last?"

Toddy squirmed and scratched at his ear. "Well, we were in the kitchen with Hannah, making cakes, and then Pippa 'membered a surprise she'd found."

"A surprise? Where?" Eleanor sat down beside him and laid her hand on Nicholas's, because she needed his comfort, needed the assuring squeeze he'd given her.

"Pippa wouldn't say. She wouldn't let me come."

"All right, boy," Nicholas said, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he scanned the ramparts for those golden curls. "We'll find her."

"I'll take the west towers, Nicholas." He kissed her quickly, caressed her cheek with his hand, and then took off for the undercrofts.

Long minutes later, Eleanor entered the cliff tower calling Pippa's name, and nearly cried with relief when she recognized the little form all hunched up against the wall.

"Pippa! What have you gotten yourself into?"

"A very dark place, Nellamore." Half-in and half-out of a small opening between two slats in a stone niche, with her shoulders caught.

Eleanor dropped to her knees and ran her hands over the little limbs. "Where does it hurt, sweet?"

Pippa moaned a little. "My tummy."

Dear God, a stomach injury. "Did you fall on your tummy, Pippa?"

"No, I've got a terrible hunger, though."

"You're hungry? Just hungry?" Laughter bubbled up inside Eleanor's chest.

"Have you any sugar plums, Nellamore?"

"Oh, sweet—"

Nicholas came bursting through the door, his hair strewn every which way. "My God, Eleanor, is she—"

"No, Nicholas. She's just stuck."

The poor man was linen white, his eyes wild as he sank to his knees, felt the same limbs that Eleanor had, then stuck his head against the opening in the wall. "What in God's name are you doing, Pippa?"

"Finding a bag of treasure."

Without preamble, he threaded his fingers through Eleanor's hair and planted a kiss on her mouth, then went back to his gentle, relieved scolding.

"You'll
ask me or Nellamore next time you go looking for treasure—or anything else. Do you promise me?"

"I do, Nicholas."

"Now hold still, Pippa. Duck your head." He struggled and strained against the slats, his hands so huge and careful as he tried not to hurt her. But Pippa's shoulders still wouldn't come.

"Keep her talking, Eleanor."

Eleanor rubbed the small back and watched Nicholas with her whole heart. "What kind of treasure were you looking for, Pippa?"

"I found it. A bag."

"Of what?"

"I don't know. But it jangles."

And it did. Nicholas turned a wry smile on Eleanor that made her want to have all his children.

"Are you by chance holding the bag in your hand, Pippa?" he asked calmly.

"Oh, yes. I won't let go."

"Well, I need you to." He was patience itself.

"But I found it."

"And I'll get it for you as soon as you come out." Cajoling and fierce.

"All right, Nicholas."

He freed her an instant later, caught her up with a whoop and held her tightly. "You
scared us to death."

"I didn't mean to." Pippa fell into Eleanor's arms next and hugged her tightly.

"Here's your treasure bag." Nicholas held it out for the child.

Pippa reached inside the dusty bag and pulled out a carving of a rabbit. One of Nicholas's carvings.

What was it doing in a dusty old bag, let alone tucked away in a dangerous chink that was just the size to trap a little girl?

She hadn't the heart to warn him just now. Not when he was busy blowing raspberries against Pippa's neck, raising squeals from her.

"Was that your stomach I hear, Mistress Pippa? It's growling like a bear."

"I think it's time we feed it before it tries to escape."

Nicholas sailed with her down the stairs, waiting for Eleanor when she reached the bottom.

"She's a ferret, my lady."

"Aye, she is, Nicholas. I ought to send Pippa looking for my husband's records."

She expected a smile from him, but dark sorrow rolled across his brow, stunting her breathing. He took her hand firmly. "Come, my lady. There's a bakehouse that needs blessing."

* * *

"From the dust of your fields, Almighty God, to the mill, to the baker's hand, we—"

"He's not a priest, madam." Nicholas had only meant to lean down and whisper his suspicions about the stocky-limbed cleric into his wife's ear, but he was met with her distracting, heady scent of bay and mint, and then the glancing edge of her blushing cheek when she turned her head to level a frown at him.

"Father Edmund is a fully tonsured friar, Nicholas," she whispered back to him.

"A tonsure requires only a sharp razor, madam. He is a mountebank."

"Please, Nicholas." She touched her fingertip to her lips and then to his, apparently to quiet him. But she'd left her own dampness there, a taste of cinnamon and the spark of surprise that did nothing for his composure. "He is a simple mendicant who knows his scriptures."

He leaned closer to all that heady danger and whispered, "More like a jongleur, madam, who has only recently learned the worth of a priest's indulgences and now peddles them as he used to peddle headache potions."

Father Edmund's rounded pate glowed pink with a sunburn—clear signs of a recent shaving. His heavy black robes flapped in the wind as he stood with all due solemness on the steps of the bakehouse, waving an untidy sign of the cross on the door.

Whether false or real, when he turned with the first loaf to come out of the new bakehouse, he was met by cheers and jostling.

Two dozen cottages had been completed in a month's time. A few months from now the harvest would begin, and his penance would be complete.

The thought was as satisfying as it was desolating, because every one of her successes brought him closer to leaving her.

The feasting moved from the market square to the bailey, and his heart ached already for the loss that he would feel.

Eleanor and her miracles. She was the miracle, to him and to the others who danced and sang.

"Dance with me, Nicholas."

He turned to decline her invitation, but she tugged him into the carol ring, where he was lost entirely.

"Madam, I know nothing of dancing."

"Take Cora's hand and mine and then just follow along."

"But I—" Then he was circling with them, the whole village and his wife, changing directions twice before he realized there was indeed a pattern to the lunacy.

And then just the two of them were dancing, in an intimately suggestive circle. Her palm against his, rousing him to grab her out of the crowd and kiss her.

She turned away, and then back again to him. Great God, the flirting she was doing with him, as intentional as hell. It was dazzling, expanding his senses, trapping his gaze and his brain as they brushed and turned and brushed again.

"Now away, Nicholas." He did so reluctantly, saving a whiff of her to savor in case she didn't return.

"And now back to me."

Oh, yes. And back again, my lady wife.
Others were dancing, but none of them mattered. Nothing mattered but the moment.

"Are you sure you've never danced before, Nicholas?" A gallant woman and kind, to ask that question of a man who was treading on her feet in perfect rhythm with the gittern and the tambour.

"Never." But he'd watched plenty, always dismissing the fools, always believing that the pleasure of a woman was in the bedding. Lifting the lightest skirts of the local beauties had been his game and his goal. Hell, he couldn't recall even kissing a woman longer than it took to get to the good stuff. Straight for that crest, the release of the battle that had always raged within him.

What a fool he'd been, not to have realized. He'd never been so roundly aroused, so drunk on a woman, so like a liquid that flowed and eddied, that sought her peaks and her valleys, the center of her heart. He'd heard erotic tales of coupling for hours, titillating to be sure, but clearly fantastical and a seeming waste of time.

Making slow, dancing love with his wife in a crowded, torchlit bailey was the headiest of intoxications, barely touching, skimming glances, and storing up the scent of her so that he'd never forget her.

The lovely woman was cupping his chin now as she passed him in her sinuous measures, brushing her cheek against his on the next pass, now toying with the hair at his nape.

And when she brushed past his mouth with hers, it was the simplest thing to catch her up into his arms, and then but a single step behind the arching pillar to stand with her in the near dark as the music played.

"Oh, Nicholas, come."

Christ, yes.
She was waiting with her kiss, waiting for him to close his mouth over hers, her hips tilted to meet his erection as though she'd expected it to be there. And why the hell wouldn't she? Just to breathe her air was to harden him to steel.

"I could dance with you forever, Nicholas." She was dancing still, her eyes closed, humming low in her throat, her hips having learned too much of him.

"For now, Eleanor. Just for now will have to do."