Conqueror (28 page)

She stared with a dropped jaw. Warrior, aye, she knew that. Seductor, fine, she could struggle against that. But well-read nobleman with a library to rival that of an affluent monastery? What defence had she there? She sat back down on the bed, its plump mattress giving under her weight.

“What do you think of the others, Guinevere?” he prompted.

“I can’t read.” Her words poked out from her mouth like they were lashed on sticks: stiff, clipped.

“A situation we’ll see remedied, if you wish.”

“Papa did not think much of reading, as it were,” she informed him, eyeing her fingernails.

“But you did.”

“I still do.”

Griffyn watched her examine her fingertips so carefully, her slim shoulders rounded. It reminded him of that night a year ago, riding through the forest, when they’d shared a raging kiss, and after, she’d braced herself against a tree like an abandoned marionette, in all her brave, delicate beauty. Totally unexpected.

He set down the poker and crossed the room. Taking up her hand, he inspected the ragged nubs of her nails, the work-hardened edges of her slender fingers. “You’ve been working hard.”

“As have we all.” She tried to pull her hand away but he held tight. “’Tis nothing. Some of the chores I like.”

He shifted just his eyes up. “You like cleaning privies?”

That made her smile. It was brief, though, and he wanted more of it. “I don’t clean privies, actually,” she said. “You find it hard to believe, that I would enjoy the work?”

“For certes. Most high-born women wish to do as little of it as possible.”

The smile faded. “I am not most women,” she murmured.

He watched the strange quiet descend on her, and had a sudden image of the weight of her burden over the past year. Alone, in the middle of a war, governing a vast estate with too little money and too much need. In their interviews of the household, everyone had a praiseful word to say of the lady, words given more force by the affection clinging to them.

“Have you ever seen my flowers?”

He looked up. A smile nudged at the faint dimple beside her mouth. Her
flowers
? He shook his head.

She smiled wider and it felt like the room expanded, like the breeze blew fresher through the shutters. “As I said, I like some of the chores I do.”

Comprehension dawned. “Your
flowers
.”

She nodded happily. Her black curls bobbed over her shoulders.

“Well then,” he mused, looking at the small fingers held in his grasp. He stroked each between two of his own, feeling the slender, fragile bone within, delicately arching into his. “You must keep on doing the things you like. The rest, we’ll find others to manage.”

Her expansive face suddenly closed up again. When she pulled on her hand this time, he released her. She walked to the window and pushed the shutters open. The night was inky black and windy. A scent of rain was in the air.

“We so desperately need rain,” she murmured, as if they were in idle chat about the weather. “I can’t stop doing any of them,” she went on, in the same neutral tone. “The fields still need to be ploughed, even when the men have staged a war. When my Welsh stewards run off or die, I must find someone to take their place, even when there is no one.”

“Powys,” he murmured, the sudden recollection shocking in its clarity. He could almost smell the leather of their damp saddles as they rode over the wild Welsh hills, almost hear his father complaining of the problem of keeping stewards alive in the Welsh marcher lands. Such a swift, clear memory.

She seemed to not have heard him. She was running her hand over the silken tapestry hanging beside the window. “When men and boys die in battle, their women are left to tend those fields, which leaves the castle short-staffed, and weeds know nothing of wars, laundry nothing of defeat.” Her voice had grown hard and swift and bitter, and she turned her back to him. “They just need to be taken care of.”

By me. Alone
.

The words fairly thrust themselves into the suddenly quiet between them, but she did not speak them, and he did not ask. The silence grew longer.

A feeling of kinship swept through him. He felt his heart shift, which he definitely did not want. Dominance, lordship, lust: these things were known and acceptable. Affection and understanding: they were distinctly unwelcome.

So why was he walking across the room to stand at her curving back? And bending his head by her ear to speak in a gentle murmur?

“You need not take care of it all alone anymore, my lady.” He began unlacing the silk wrap that coiled her hair in a thick rope down her back. He combed his fingers through the unbound tresses, his callouses catching. Her breathing quickened ever so slightly, so he bent nearer her ear and murmured, “You’ve a husband now, who can help with whatever needs to be taken care of.”

“The laundry?”

He heard the catch in her voice, and decided this was why he’d crossed the room. To make her resistance crumble, to weaken her will. To get her into his bed, a willing, wanton partner as she’d been an autumn ago. She turned her head the slightest bit. Her words were incredulous. “You’ll help with the laundry?”

“I will, if ’tis needed in some way.” He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck. Her breath trembled out in a rush. “Although I cannot believe there isn’t someone other than my self to plunge linens into that foul-smelling concoction that bubbles and burps in vast cauldrons.”

Her body leaned backwards into him, just the slightest bit. “’Tis indeed a most wretched reek, my lord,” she admitted, a smile in her voice. “And they
are
ever-large tubs.”

“Did I ever tell you?” he mused, inhaling the faint scent of rose clinging to her hair. “I once was in Scotland when a small pony found its unfortunate way into such a vat.” He could feel her listening; her cheek was almost pressed against his jaw, her hair tickled his nose as she inched her head towards his voice ever so slightly.

“And?”

“Gone. Never to be seen again.” His ran his hands down the outside of her arms. “He was a fat little pony too. Utterly vanished.” He clucked his tongue.

She chuckled, faint and girlish. Her head notched up another inch. “And what about the weeds?”

“Well, now,” he murmured. “Let’s not lose our heads, Guinevere. I thought you said you
liked
doing that.”

She laughed freely this time, a very fine sound. “And so, what now?” She turned around to face him, so his hands now rested in the curve of her spine. “I’ve lost my head, Griffyn, and you’re scared of the laundry.”

He smiled. “We’ll have to find a way through. You can tend your roses and mix the cauldrons.”

She laughed again. “And you can rescue the ponies and help me find a seneschal for the Everoot town of Ipsile-upon-Tyne. I’ll have to tell you about it.”

His hands fell away from her waist. Something sharp-edged clicked its teeth together inside his heart. A little gnashing. “I know about Ipsile-upon-Tyne,” he said tightly. “On the Welsh Marches.”

“How do you know about Ipsile?” she asked, smiling faintly. “Or that it borders Wales? Did William mention it?”

And like that, full-blown and dangerous, anger snapped back into the forefront, thick and undeniable. How could it ride up on him so swiftly, without warning or wishing it to be?

How did he know
? How did he know about Ipsile or Wales, an entire borderland along the frontiers of his birthright?

He bent close to her ear, his breath a caress, his words a threat.

“Now, Guinevere, listen close, for this is the last time I will say it.” He pitched his voice low, and he could feel her body edge closer to listen. “I rode o’er this turf before you were born. I know these lands from York to the Welsh Marches, their every hummock and hillside. I have dreamt of them for eighteen years, a dream which has grown in my soul like a bracken weed, which was once a fair bloom. I could walk them in the dark, map them in my sleep, and I swear by God I know them better than I know how to breathe.

“Do not ever ask me again how I know something
about my home
.”

Their eyes locked, green on grey. One breath, two, and her pretty face was a study in shifting emotions, confusion and fear and sadness and…hate, for all he knew.

She drew herself up, straight as she could. “Then, my lord, I hope you think I have done well by them.”

Griffyn’s fingers tightened into the fisted rage that had been his only expression of thwarted desire for eighteen years. Done well?
Done well?
She had lived on his lands, ridden her horses o’er his hills, sniffed the breezes of his moors, while he’d been cast adrift in the world of politics and bloodshed, aching for home, and she had this placid, polite nothing to offer in return?

Rage poured through him so hot and rabid he suddenly couldn’t see in front of his eyes.

Done well by them?

Gwyn stared in horrified fascination. From forehead to jaw, Griffyn’s face was taut, whiplashed with pain. All colour was washed away save for that in his hooded eyes, where a fever burned and blackened the smokey grey to opaque soot. A muscle thudded by his jaw, strained by teeth set so solidly against themselves Gwen thought she could hear enamel chip.

And they were to make a marriage work?

St. Jude, what had she said? That she hoped she had done well by his lands? She’d spoken in the hope of placating him, but all she’d done was send him tripping into a fit of rage. She could do nothing right in his eyes. They were doomed.

Like a petrified rabbit, she held her ground, too scared to flee, too terrified to stay.

He lifted his head—God in Heaven, why make such a comely thing so tortured?—and passed a frigid glance over her face, freezing her blood to ice.

“How old were you when you came to the Nest, Gwyn?” he asked in a low voice. He ran the tip of his finger across the bare skin of her collarbone.

He could have swung a battle-axe at her head and Gwyn would have been less terrified. The dangerous, controlled pitch of his words was blood-chilling. There was nothing more unnerving than this denied restraint. That he could rein in such a fury and bring it to heel bespoke a will so disciplined it sent another shiver down her spine. But most of her focus was on the thick forefinger he was now sliding up the back of her neck.

“I was two, Griffyn,” she said in a choked voice.

His hand finished its journey and cupped the back of her head, holding her in a gentle, inescapable capture. “I was eight when I left, Guinevere. And I have ne’er forgotten a thing about it. Or you.” His fingers slipped away. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Go. Go to your room.”

“I have no roo—”

“The solar.
Go
.”

“What in perdi—”

“Don’t say it,” he warned, his eyes glittering danger. He pointed to the door. “Go. Now. While it’s safe.”

She backed up in tripping steps. Her hands felt behind her for the cool iron of the door handle and wrenched it open. The door swung out so swiftly she tumbled a few steps before righting herself. What had happened? What
was
happening, to him, to her, to both of them together?

Before she turned and ran, she caught one last glimpse of Griffyn. He was standing with his head down, dark hair plastered to his neck, staring at the ground while his hands curled into fists that opened and closed in silent, unknowable depths of anguish.

The storm didn’t come, but the winds did. They lashed against the castle and bent huge trees into submission. Small woodland creatures scurried for safety. The night had a curious luminescence, a greenish-black hue, with stark white clouds scuttling against the hectic colouring as if racing for a safe haven. But there was none. The storm looked to stretch for miles, across into Scotland, and they all, clouds and creatures and men, would do best to hunker down and weather it.

Despite the gusting wind, Gwyn didn’t close the shutters. A low fire burned in the brazier. She ought go walk on the ramparts. That’s what she always did when restless and awake, when she should be well far into sleep.

Having decided, she stood curiously still, breathing in slow, measured breaths. She stared out at the storm, her view restricted by the narrow window frame and the tears threatening under her eyelids.

“Come.”

The word rode like low thunder across the room. The sting of tears grew hot. How could his voice hold so much heat, when she was assured what awaited her if she turned around? Cold, frigid recriminations, benumbed rage.

She turned, sending her skirts into a billowing flute around her ankles before settling back to docility. His eyes burned a path through the darkened room.

“My lord?”

“Come back.”

She crossed to him without argument, stepping slowly and deliberately, and stopped when she reached his shadowy figure.

“We are nothing but trouble together.” Her prediction was soft and tremulous.

His dark head bent into a nod. “Nothing but.”

“And yet you would have me with you?”

“I would.”

She stepped in front of him and felt his heat at her back all the way down the curving staircase, past the guttering torchlamps, through the cold stone corridors, and into the lord’s chambers, silent all the way.

He closed the door behind them, its solid thud forbidding. But Griffyn didn’t spare her a look. He turned away and began undressing, not speaking to her at all.

Gwyn wandered to the window and swung open the shutters in time to see a jagged spear of lightning cut across the stormy sky before leaving it to darkness again. A strangely cold wind sneaked through the window. The world smelled close to hand. The odour of the bailey and barns rode up to her nose, and the sweeter, subtle smell of dying grass on the meadows came calm beneath it.

She turned. He was naked, his body a solid swipe of muscle and skin. Only one candle burned. Its flame leapt wildly in the wind.

“Come to bed.” When she didn’t move, he spoke again, his words heavy. “I will not touch you.” He lay down without another word. The only sound was the moaning of the wind.