The Maiden Bride (4 page)

Chapter 4

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T
he woman laughed merrily. Fearlessly, in fact, leaning against the pantry door, crossing her arms perilously beneath her breasts, uplifting them to him, like a gift of sweetly warm, just-risen bread.

"After all you said to me, Master Nicholas? I'd sooner trust a starving wolf at a lambing than trust you as my steward."

Trust?
Bloody hell, he'd just granted her full reign over his entire estate, from cellar to roof. She could hardly ask for more than that.

Yet here she was in her insolence, standing unabashedly barefooted, with her coppery hair still damply curling from the bath she'd just taken in
his
pantry.

The soft flame of her cresset lamp lit that lovely face and the sultry length of her, sporting all kinds of curves and shadings that he could see through her night shift—a thready linen thing that was too big for her and had seen too many bouts with the laundress.

And
she
couldn't trust
him?

A woman of great wisdom, for this was monumental restraint on his part. 'Twould be the simplest thing he'd ever done to banish his good intentions and let his hands wander where they might, to let his mouth take hers and find her hidden softness.

And why not? He was already damned to the hellfires of eternity; he might as well just confess all and let their doomed marriage begin here.

For he wanted her deeply, wanted to claim her fully, selfishly, and damn the consequences. He'd thought of little else since she'd come.

You are my wife. Whether you like it or not, madam.

His chest ached like fire from not breathing; his too-long-celibate tarse throbbed as it hadn't in years, standing in full and rigid agreement that his wife was the most magnificently provocative woman that God had ever created.

She would be the rarest of heavens to hold, to kiss, to lose himself inside.

But at this moment she was glaring daggers at him in this cramped, lavender-scented kitchen, bristling with her innocent pride, her pointedly accurate opinions of him.

It was on his tongue to tell her everything, to take back what was and had always been his. But she was purity of the flesh—his eternal torment. He would only sully her if he dared touch her. He couldn't. Not ever. He could only hope to save her—from herself and from him.

She needed a steward, a keeper—not a husband. At least not this one.

So he damped his anger and his untoward lust for his wife's soft and sultry places and said,
damned
pleasantly, "Whether you trust me or not, madam, you'll have me as your steward."

"Why?"

"Why?" He'd spat the word, and realized his error when she set her chin firmly and narrowed her eyes at him. He'd never had the patience for negotiation, hated sitting out a siege on his backside while stubborn, otherwise prudent citizens patiently starved to death. But he said evenly, "It should be clear to you, Lady Eleanor, that you need a steward to save you from your own follies."

"My follies?" She snorted through a sumptuously smug grin and went to a plate chest near the pantry door, then lifted the slope-lidded box sitting on top. "And you believe that
your
particular stewardship is just what I need."

His jaw ached from holding in the bellow that thundered around inside his chest. "I am your only chance in the world if you mean to survive the week, let alone prosper here."

She studied him with a good deal of heat. "Not a half dozen hours ago you were threatening to roast and eat me if I didn't leave. Now you're offering your assistance? Hardly the sort of behavior I should trust in a steward. The moment I step out of the castle, you'll shut the gate on me."

He couldn't now if he tried. Though he could lean down a few inches and taste her mouth. "Madam, I didn't realize who you were at the time."

That made her laugh, bringing a pair of dimples to her cheeks. "Well, Master Nicholas, that soothes me tremendously. Because when you finally did realize that I was Lady Eleanor, you dangled me over a cliff and threatened to feed my bones to the crabs. How am I to reconcile your helpful intentions with your deeds?"

"You were nowhere near the cliffs, madam. And never at risk from me. Nor will you ever be." He'd never in his life harmed a woman. Condemn him for greed and vengeance and blasphemy, but never for that sin. "Instead of
doubting my intentions, you'd best heed my warnings."

"And cede my castle to you?"

"I don't want your castle."

"But you want to be my steward?"

"Yes." He was failing miserably here—because she made no bloody sense. It wasn't like talking to a man in the same position. He'd have simply run the bastard through with his sword and sent his head back to his family in a wooden coffer. Faulkhurst was his, by God. As it would remain, until he left it legally behind. But he could hardly wrestle her to the ground to gain his title. He yanked the bench out from beneath the trestle table and stomped his booted foot down on the seat.

Yes. Casual. Pleasant.

"What did this cataclysm of a castle cost you?" He'd been sharper than he'd meant to be, caused her to narrow those light brown eyes and sniff at him.

"Only my pride and my dignity. Beyond that, Faulkhurst cost me nothing at all. It had belonged to my husband before he died."

Her pride? This suddenly stank of Edward Plantagenet.

"Your husband must have had other estates than this—ones in far better shape than Faulkhurst." The woman was indisputably discrim
inating, not in the least stupid or acquiescent, and he had plenty of more profitable manors, other castles, that she could have chosen instead of this one. He'd purposely neglected his estate in the last year, not caring what Edward did with it—not until now.

"Faulkhurst suited me perfectly." She unlatched the lid of the small box. Writing works, all tumbled together from her travels. "King Edward granted it to me quite happily."

"I'll wager he did. It cost him little enough: a broken fortress, an uninhabitable village, the fields grown wild. You haven't even a chicken to lay you an egg, or a cow to milk. Did this generous-hearted king grant you a household staff that hasn't arrived yet?"

She ignored him, though her brow flushed as she dug around in the box.

Nicholas rounded the corner of the table. "You have no livestock, no game. Have you masons to rebuild the bakehouse?" A step closer gained him a distracting view of the lamplight threading its fire through the silky strands of her hair, and the altogether disastrous need to bring an overflowing handful of it to his nose and sniff there while she still rummaged. "Carpenters? A brewer?"

"You know that I haven't. Nor have I a blacksmith, or plow horse, or baker. But I do pray for them, regularly." She stopped and clapped her hands together firmly, then squeezed her eyes shut. "Please God, send me a baker—and if you don't mind, I'd prefer that he be riding a horse for plowing."

Her eyes were bright when they found his again, her cheeks tinted rose. "As simple as that, sir—they will find us. It takes a bit of faith. I'm sorry if you can't see it."

But he could, and felt quite suddenly and fiercely embraced in her imaginings, against his better judgment and all possible logic. He couldn't let that happen, any more than he could allow himself to revel in the scent of her, in the pounding of his heart. She needed to see the danger in her situation, and he needed to practice his distance.

"So, madam, in lieu of a skilled household and suitable allotment of chattels, the king granted you vast sums of money to aid in the rebuilding."

Her jaw tightened before she turned sharply from him, sat down on the bench, and went to work trimming a quill nib.

"King Edward did apologize to me—repeatedly, almost charmingly in fact—but he had nothing to give of his treasury. And my husband's was empty by the time it came to me."

"It bloody well was—"
not,
he'd nearly said. The Bayard holdings included three enviable titles, four rich, black-bottomed estates in
Brittany
and two others in
England
, which by rights ought to have been completely uncontested in his premature death. They should have gone directly to his widow. But Edward and his thieving barons had passed off this wreck of a castle to his wife without a sou, and expected her to survive the winter.

Blackguards. Aye, here was his penance: to instruct and protect her, no matter the cost to his own causes or his pride.

"It bloody well was what, sir?" She was blinking at him, waiting for him to finish his outburst.

"You were cozened, madam." He straddled the bench, rocking it as he sat down beside her, leaned over her shoulder, and came up sharply against her deeply pouting frown, those engulfing eyes, the delicious scent of her recent bath. Lavender, liltingly sweet.

That quickly, he was fully roused again, his pulse thrumming hard enough to be heard by her.

"Cozened of what?"

His mouth went dry, his brain dull-edged. He'd made a grand mistake, sitting so close to her in the way of his old, libertine habits: one thigh aligned against hers, the other across her backside, there to keep her in place. But she wasn't a tavern wench or a coy-eyed milkmaid—and he was a monk-to-be.

And just now he was noticing spriggy curls at her temple, her honey-golden skin, and a light spray of freckles that wandered off between her breasts to some exotically scented land. Of sandalwood and ginger.

He came off the bench like the seat was afire and strode toward the garden door, hoping she couldn't identify a man in rut, for he was fully charged.

And she bloody well shouldn't know of such things—she was a virgin.

His
virgin at the moment. No other man's.

"You were cozened of a fortune, madam," he bellowed, unreasoningly jealous of some future husband who would know her secret places, her sated sighs, as he never would. "Cheated of a decent home, at the least. William Bayard was a wealthy man."

"How do you know this?" She turned fully on the bench to scan the length of him, suddenly very interested, it seemed. Then she cocked her head. "Did you know him? My husband?" The quiet, painfully naked question made her sound suddenly vulnerable.

Christ, what to do now? This was an opportunity for the truth to trip him up. A test.

"I knew him somewhat." Faithless warrior, then a joyously reformed heretic. A father too late. An unredeemable sinner. And now an unsuitable husband.

Husband, still.

"How did you know him? Are you a soldier?" He could see the bedeviling questions in her eyes, and the caution that he'd put there long before he'd met her. "Were you one of his household knights?"

He rolled bitterness around inside his cheek. "No. I was with your husband at Crécy."

"I see." She hesitated, as unsure of herself as he'd ever seen her. "Did you ever hear him speak of—"

Me,
she'd been about to say. He could see it in those doe-soft eyes as they blazed briefly, hot curiosity dissolving into cold contempt. He felt looked through, to the image of the man he had once been, distorted in age-rippled glass and her questing imagination.

Then she shook her head. At herself, it seemed, and the absurdity of their marriage and all that had brought her here to him. His widow. His wife.

She gathered her dignity once more, and her determination. "Then, Master Nicholas, if you knew my husband somewhat, you knew him far better than I ever did. I never met him."

Distance, Nicholas, or you'll compound
your
many wrongs against her.

"Then William Bayard must have been the grandest fool of all."

Surprise lit her eyes, and the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "I believe that with all my heart, Nicholas. That he missed out on many things."

Her candor would surely kill him, if his guilt and shame didn't first, or his craving for her.

"But to answer your question, sir: I knew nothing about my husband's estates when the marriage began." She turned away to unstop a horn of powdered ink. "I didn't care, because my opinion didn't matter. The venture had been made between my father and my husband. I assumed that I would learn of Bayard's holdings after he sent for me to join him in
Normandy
or wherever he might be warring." Though she was intent upon tapping a small measure of the black powder into a bowl, her mouth was set firmly against the memory of him. "But that never happened."