Fairest Of Them All (9 page)
Read Fairest Of Them All Online
Authors: Teresa Medeiros
Resisting the harsh reminder, her eyes drifted shut, provoking the dreamy mists of memory and moonlight to recreate that peculiar moment.
A brutal hand clapped over her mouth. A wiry arm seized her waist.
Holly’s first irrational thought was that Gaven-more had somehow divined her perfidy. That he had summoned his mysterious minions from the forest and they were even now scaling the castle walls to lay Tewksbury to ruin, beginning, as was fitting, with her.
At the hoarse whisper in her ear, both relief and repugnance flooded her. “You’ve done it now, haven’t you, you haughty wench. I’d hazard your clever little scheme didn’t work out quite the way you planned.”
Holly might endure her father acting the voice of her conscience, but she did not have to tolerate such posturing from Eugene de Legget. She slammed her heel sharply into his shin.
He released her, exhaling with such force that she could scent stale blood, coppery and feral, on his breath.
She whirled to face him. He would have never dared lay hands on her before, but now he had naught to lose. His good name was ruined, his honor shredded to tatters by his own villainy. Even with a trickle of blood dried on his chin and his cheekbone swollen, his eyes glittered with such malice that Holly could summon no pity for him, but only scorn.
She dropped him a deep curtsy, inclining her head. With precious little hair to stop them, the chap-let of bluebells slid down over one eye. “Have you come to gaze once more upon my beauty, my lord? Did you bring your minstrel to sing praises to my lustrous hair? My pearly teeth?” She bared her stained teeth at him in a travesty of a smile.
His withering gaze raked her, lingering over her bound breasts and padded hips. “Gavenmore may lack the imagination to divine the treasures that lay beneath that ridiculous costume, but I do not.” His eyes burned with unholy hunger. “I should have taken you the first time I saw you. Had I defiled his precious child, your father would have had no choice but to give you to me. Now it seems I’ve no choice but to bid you a good riddance.”
Genuine curiosity prompted her. “Without revealing me?”
Eugene stroked his chin, his thoughtful smile more threatening than a scowl. “Oh, I entertained the notion of exposing you for the deceitful little bitch you are, but decided being wed to the Welshman would be a far more fitting punishment. Perhaps once you’ve bedded a beast like Gavenmore, you’ll be more than eager to welcome a man between your pretty legs.” He swept her a genteel bow. “Fare thee well, my lady. For now.” He took his leave, his fresh limp granting him more dignity than he deserved.
Once you’ve bedded a beast like Gavenmore. . . . The crude words lingered in the air like a curse.
Holly shuddered. She had never considered the intimacies that marriage entailed. In truth, she wasn’t quite clear on the precise nature of the inexplicable act that bound wife to husband. She owed her veneer of sophistication to nothing more than Brother Nathan-ael’s obsession with poise.
Nathanael!
Her gaze flew to the tower that housed her chamber. In all the excitement, she had nearly forgotten the priest imprisoned in her wardrobe. The priest who would be summoned by her father in a matter of hours to hear her wedding vows. Provided, of course, that he hadn’t run out of air in the tiny cell and was even now gasping his last.
Lifting her skirts, Holly raced for the outer stairs, her spirits buoyed by a stubborn surge of optimism. If she had ever had need of Nathanael’s superior wisdom, it was now.
Holly tapped the priest’s lax cheek while Elspeth flicked drops of water in his face. Upon tumbling from the wardrobe to discover Holly’s transformed visage hovering over him, his reddened face had gone bone white and he had fainted dead away.
They had revived him long enough for Holly to breathlessly explain her scheme, but her sheepish confession of its blundered outcome had sent him into a fresh swoon.
Holly’s gentle taps seemed to be having little effect. She gazed up at Elspeth from her kneeling position, a worried frown creasing her brow. “Perhaps a bit more.”
Elspeth upended the ewer, dumping its chill contents in the priest’s face. A concerned moue puckered the nurse’s mouth, but satisfaction twinkled in her eyes. Elspeth had clashed with the haughty priest more than once over the proper raising of her lady.
At the impromptu baptism, Nathanael shot to a sitting position, coughing and sputtering. Waving away Holly’s offer of assistance, he scrambled to his feet, launching into a gasping tirade as if his brief spell of unconsciousness had only whet the razor-sharp edge of his tongue.
“Oh, woe is me! What terrible sin have I committed to deserve such grief?” His homespun robes swished as he paced the chamber, scattering sheafs of Holly’s fallen hair with each step. Droplets of water flew from the sandy hair ringing his tonsure. “A gem! I sculpted a flawless gem only to lose it to an unworthy savage. I molded a bride fit for a king only to have her cast into the grasping hands of a mercenary.” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Surely even God Himself envied such a magnificent paragon of womanhood and has sought in His infinite wisdom to punish me for daring to usurp His role as Creator. I am chastised, my Lord! I am humbled!” With a wail of despair, he sank down on a chest and buried his face in his hands.
Holly exchanged a dubious look with Elspeth. From the priesf s incessant harping, neither of them would have guessed he was fond of her, much less thought her “a magnificent paragon of womanhood.”
Holly could not help but find his abrupt embrace of humility suspect, especially when he persisted in accusing God of being jealous of him.
“Nathanael?” She approached his penitent form.
“Brother Nathanael to you,” he snapped, his tone recovering its waspish note. This time his sharp eyes did not shy from her, but studied her critically. “So how did you manage to create such a vision of ugliness?”
Holly spread her skirt and pivoted for his perusal, unable to resist a twinge of pride for her efforts. “ Twasn’t difficult We simply rid me of all the virtues my suitors persisted in praising. My raven tresses. My lush lashes. My bounteous breasts.”
“At least your wit is intact And how do you plan to maintain this charade when your husband takes you to his bed?”
Holly dropped her skirt her pride deflated by the reminder. “ Tis why I sought you out” she admitted timidly. “I’ve no mother, you see, and I’ve little idea what’s to be expected of me.”
This time it was Elspeth and Nathanael who exchanged a glance, compatriots in their naivete. Realizing that she was questioning a virgin and an avowed celibate about the carnal intimacies of the marriage bed, Holly felt a pang of doubt
But Nathanael knew everything, she assured herself. Purely by virtue of his calling, he was nearly as omniscient as God. Hadn’t he told her so .a hundred times?
He did not disappoint her. Straightening upon the chest as if it were a throne of judgment, he cleared his throat with a stentorian whinny. ‘Tour sole duty, my child, will be to submit to your husband’s will.”
“Aye, submit,” Elspeth echoed, her chins jiggling in agreement
The priest frowned at the nurse. “God has fashioned man so that he has upon his person a divine instrument, if you will. A mighty and holy lance.”
Holly’s eyes widened as she remembered the thick length of staff the Welsh knight had proffered to her during the tourney.
“Aye, and hell want to poke it in ye, he will,” Elspeth contributed eagerly. “And there’ll be blood. Buckets of it But yell take pleasure in the letting of it”
Holly was beginning to feel quite faint Twas a pity Elspeth had wasted all the water on Nathanael. She feared she might yet have need of it
“Silence, woman,” Nathanael commanded the nurse. Elspeth subsided with a visible pout “Of course she won’t take pleasure in it Tis a woman’s place to suffer submission to atone for her sin in the garden.”
Holly started guiltily. Was the priest truly so omniscient as to have learned of her sin in the garden? Did he know that she had surrendered to the knight’s carnal kiss with nary even a pretense of struggle?
“Had she not partaken of the apple proffered by the serpent,” he intoned, “mankind might still exist in a state of grace.”
Holly sighed in relief to realize Nathanael was talking about Eve’s sin, not her own.
Her nurse winked at her. “Ye must endure it, child, else he can’t put his babe up inside of ye.”
Holly’s horror welled anew. A baby! A baby who would bind her to the Welshman forever. She shuddered, envisioning a litter of furry little cubs with curved claws and upturned snouts. What manner of God would have concocted such a hellish punishment?
Her desperation drove her to pace just as Nathan-ael had. She was more than willing to accept reproof for her own sins, but would be damned indeed before she’d suffer punishment for a distant ancestress with an infernal weakness for the cunning of serpents.
After several moments of violent contemplation, she whirled around to face them both. “
“ Tis not too late to flee,” Carey said as he and Austyn trailed an aged maidservant through the inner bailey of Castle Tewksbury. “We don’t even have to go back to Gavenmore. We can go adventuring, you and I. Why, there are lords aplenty willing to empty their purses to purchase a pair of skilled sword arms such as ours.”
Austyn cocked an eyebrow at him. “Suffering pangs of conscience, are you? Was it not you who compelled me to petition for the woman? You who claimed there was no surer way to break the curse than to wed this Lady Ivy?”
“HeiOy,” Carey corrected absently. “But given time to contemplate the reality of waking up each morning to that . . . that . . . face . . .”
He subsided into doleful silence, heightening Aus-tyn’s impression that he was marching to the gallows instead of the altar. As they followed the crone who had summoned him to meet his bride, the sun dipped behind a black-bellied cloud, mirroring the resigned gloom of his mood. A cooling breeze teased his brow. Twas in just such a moment that he might have once felt Rhiannon’s mocking presence, but on this afternoon the air was empty, devoid of any derision but his own for himself.
Perhaps Carey was right. Perhaps in his union with this woman he could finally lay to rest all of his ghosts. Odd that he felt no peace in their absence, but only a peculiar emptiness.
Austyn’s determined steps did not falter until they neared a stone wall. The crone pushed aside a curtain of ivy to reveal an iron gate, a gate that would have been nearly invisible in the shadows of night A sense of bleak irony assailed him as he ducked beneath a stone portal to enter a wild tangle of a garden that lost little of its enchantment by daylight
“You’d have thought she’d have wanted to be wed at night,” Carey muttered. “In the dark.”
Austyn elbowed him. “Stifle yourself. Tis hardly the girl’s fault she is ill-favored.”
The earl had mercifully banished all revelers from the ceremony, leaving only himself and a tonsured priest standing before the marble bench to witness their vows. Tewksbury looked even smaller than Austyn remembered, as if the prospect of losing his daughter had somehow diminished him. The maidservant did not depart at completing her errand, but stepped back to hover in the shade of a rowan tree, drawing out a kerchief to muffle her bleating sniffles.
Resisting the urge to steal a yearning glance at the abandoned swing, Austyn dutifully took his place at his bride’s side. As the sun peeped out from behind the cloud to illuminate her beaming countenance, his gloom plummeted to dread. Since the tourney he had comforted himself with the secret hope that his perceptions had been flawed. They had been. She was far uglier than he had imagined.
“Lady Ivy,” he choked out in greeting.
“Holly,” she gently corrected.
At the priesf s invitation, she shyly ducked her head to recite her vows; Austyn struggled to hide his relief.
He could not help staring at the top of her head, fascinated by the dull tufts of hair that adorned it He fought the absurd desire to run his palm over her hair, to determine if it felt like the fleece of a shorn lamb it resembled. He would have thought she’d have chosen to shield herself with wimple or veil, but the chaplet of bluebells remained her only crown. The fragile blooms had gone limp, as if she possessed the power to wither everything she came into contact with.
Austyn cast a wry glance downward, fearing that particular attribute might bode ill for his hopes of an heir. The snug fit of his hose assured him that her mere presence didn’t wreak such mischief. Since his encounter with the dark-haired beauty in this very spot, his loins had been afflicted with a most awkward, but perversely pleasurable sensitivity.
His gaze drifted to the swing. He might barter both his name and his pride to wed this woman, but he would have bartered his very soul to make the mysterious beauty his wife. He was not a man given to rape, but had he known he was to enjoy only a handful of fleeting moments in her arms instead of a lifetime, he might have loved her until the dawn, ravishing her with such tender care that she would truly come to believe the surrender her own.
“Are you prepared to recite your vows, sir?” the priest asked, interrupting his dangerous musings.
“I am.” Ignoring a pang of regret more akin to grief, Austyn did so, rendering them without pause or intonation until he reached the final and most solemn promise. “I worship thee ... I worship thee with . . .”
Both the earl and the priest scowled at him. Carey poked him in the back. The maidservant honked into her kerchief and nodded her encouragement, her crossed eyes bleary with tears. Only his bride kept her eyes downcast
He cleared his throat and tried again, reminding himself that he owed this woman his life. When the others would have allowed him to fall to Montforf s treachery, ‘twas she who had warned him. “I worship thee with my . . .”
