Heart's Magic (19 page)

Never had she seen a man as well made as
Gavin—or one so obviously aroused. She did not know where to look.
Wishing there were half a dozen servants in the room with them, she
ran her tongue across her dry lips. Frantic for some action to take
her thoughts away from forbidden desires, she snatched up the jar
of bath herbs and began to sprinkle them into the water.

With lordly indifference Gavin did not appear
to notice either his condition or Mirielle’s quickened breath. He
waited until she had finished with the herbs and stirred the water,
before he stepped into the tub.

“Ah, this is wonderful.” He grinned at her as
if he had no worries at all, no faithless wife, no deceitful
seneschal who had made a cuckold of him, no castle chatelaine
toward whom he had admitted lustful desires—and no lies he ought to
explain to the woman who had trusted him. Gavin sat back in the
tub, basking in the hot water and the fragrance of the herbs. “You
may wash my hair first.”

The man was maddening. He must know what he
was doing to her. Mirielle was sorely tempted to dump the bowl of
gelatinous soap over his head and tell him to wash his own hair.
Then she had a better idea. On several occasions she had watched
Donada scrubbing the wriggling, unwilling, and very dirty Robin
after a boyish escapade. Repressing a mischievous smile, she knelt
beside the tub, rolled up the loose sleeves of her gray woolen
dress, pushed the tighter sleeves of her linen underdress above her
elbows, and went to work on Gavin in the same energetic way in
which Donada washed her son.

“Yeow!” There’s soap in my eyes.” Gavin wiped
at his face with a soapy hand. “Ow!”

“Keep your eyes closed,” she advised. There
was a pitcher of hot water set by the tub, to be used for rinsing.
Mirielle poured part of the water in it over Gavin’s head, causing
a fresh cascade of soapsuds across his face. Enormously satisfied
by his continued grumbling about the soap, which according to him
was in his eyes again, she began to scrub his shoulders, arms, and
chest.

“I’ll have no skin left when you’re done,” he
complained.

“Why, my lord, I thought you would be glad to
be rid of all the dirt and dust of that long journey from the Holy
Land,” she said. “If you will sit forward, I’ll wash your back
next.”

“What, and leave it as raw as if I had been
flogged?” he exclaimed. “Have done, Mirielle. God’s teeth, woman,
if you scrub my belly any lower, I’ll be completely unmanned!”

“‘Twould serve you right if you were.”

Her rage at him partially assuaged by his
discomfort and by her vigorous activity with soap and cloth,
Mirielle sat back on her heels, her fingertips still on the edge of
the tub. Gavin’s eyes—admittedly somewhat reddened by the harsh
soap she had used on him—met hers. His lashes were much too long
for a man, and they were spiky from his dousing with water and
suds. He looked like a chastened young boy, much like Robin after
he had been scrubbed and scolded. A bit more of Mirielle’s anger
drained away.

“Circumstances forced me to lie to you,”
Gavin said. “I did not expect to find a woman like you at Wroxley
when I first came here. I had no wish to put you into danger. I
thought keeping the truth from you would protect you.” He took one
of her hands and began to kiss it, until Mirielle pulled it away.
But still she knelt beside the tub, near enough to him to lean
forward and kiss his lips if she wanted. Her own lips parted softly
at the thought, until she thrust it away with a resurgence of
anger. Gavin’s words were sweet, but he had lied before; therefore,
he could lie again. He might be lying now.

“My dear lady,” he whispered, “will you trust
me once more, just for a while longer?”

“I cannot. It hurts too much to discover that
you have been lying to me. I could not bear it to happen a second
time. If you expect me to believe what you say, you will have to
offer proof.”

With no warning he stood, water sluicing off
his muscular form and splashing onto the floor. Mirielle looked up
at him. His masculinity was so formidable that she began to
tremble. A part of her wanted him to pick her up and carry her to
the huge bed that dominated the room, to lie there with her,
kissing her and slowly undressing her, making her his. Rocked by
her own lascivious thoughts yet still distrustful of his motives,
she turned her eyes away from him. When she looked back he had a
linen towel wrapped around his waist. It covered him to the knees,
but it could not smother the flame of her longing for him. Again
their eyes met, and Mirielle knew that Gavin was fully aware of her
tangled emotions.

“My lord.” Brice was knocking at the door.
“May I speak with you?”

All the lingering boyishness vanished from
Gavin’s face. He was the tough warrior and lord of the castle once
more, a man who hid his true feelings behind a mask of practiced
dissimulaton. With absolute lack of concern for his unclothed
state, Gavin strode in towel and his bare feet to the door and
flung it open.

“Come in, Sir Brice.”

“Thank you, my lord. Oh, there you are,
Mirielle. One of the maidservants was looking for you.” Brice
accepted his ward’s unchaperoned presence in the baron’s bedchamber
with perfect calmness.

“Lady Mirielle has been extending the
castle’s hospitality to me,” said Gavin. “For which I do thank you,
my lady. Seldom have I been so well-scrubbed, not even in a
bathhouse I once patronized in Constantinople.”

“I shall take that as a great compliment, my
lord.” Mirielle waved a hand toward the center of the room. “I will
send servants to remove the water and tub.”

She did not ask his permission to leave. She
simply went.

“My lord,” said Brice, “I hope that now you
are at home again, you will retain me as your seneschal.”

“Do you, indeed?” Gavin folded his arms
across his bare chest and tilted his head to one side as if he were
observing a newly discovered insect. “Why should I do that, Sir
Brice?”

“As you will find when you examine your
ledgers, I have been an honest steward of your interests. The lands
around Wroxley are greatly improved since I came here.” Brice went
on to describe all the changes for the better which he had
effected. Gavin was silent, listening, giving no indication of what
he was thinking.

“I will consider the matter,” he said when
Brice finally ran out of words. “For the present, you may continue
to act as seneschal while I make myself familiar with my barony. If
I am pleased with what you have done, and if you and I get along
well together, then perhaps I will keep you here permanently.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Gavin saw the flare of hope in Brice’s eyes.
Was the man an utter fool, to think someone would not tell the lord
of the castle about Brice’s affair with Alda? Or that Gavin would
not then feel compelled to take some action against him? Brice must
know it would happen soon. Gavin gave him a portion of grudging
respect for his courage in staying on at Wroxley, when staying
might mean his death. Or was there some other reason for Brice’s
self-serving appearance in the lord’s chamber?

“You may leave me now,” Gavin said.

He did not want to kill Brice, but it was
better if Brice did not know that. For Mirielle’s sake, Gavin would
avoid shedding her cousin’s blood. If he could; if Alda and Brice
together did not force him to a confrontation he did not want.

Mirielle. The mere thought of her set his
blood aflame. She was an impediment to his plans, to all he was
pledged to achieve, and his growing desire for her led him to acts
of astonishing stupidity.

What had he been thinking of, to remove his
clothes before her and demand that she bathe him? He had never in
the past shown an inclination toward the kind of self-inflicted
torments of which anchorites and flagellants and other religious
fanatics were so fond. Yet in the last hour he had voluntarily
subjected himself to the most exquisite torture. Wanting Mirielle,
he had insisted that she repeatedly touch his unclothed body. His
lips quirked in genuine humor at the memory of how rough she had
been. But he had seen in her eyes that, though she no longer
trusted him, she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

The need to lift her in his arms, to take her
to his bed and make long, slow love to her until their hearts
merged in a glorious fulfillment that would wipe out all
deception—that need had almost overpowered him. He might have given
in to it if Brice had not come knocking at the door of the lord’s
chamber to promote his own interests.

“And so,” Gavin muttered to himself, “the man
who has cuckolded me has prevented me from making his cousin my
mistress. There’s irony for you.

“Now I, who am half mad with desire for one
woman, must plant myself between the thighs of another woman, whom
I do not want. I must do it! But I am not sure I can do it. Oh,
Mirielle, sweet lady, my task would be so simple if it were not for
you.”

Alda’s bedchamber was entirely too warm. To
keep it that way six braziers glowed with red-hot charcoal. When
Gavin let himself into the room a maidservant was tossing juniper
branches onto the coals to scent the room as they burned.

Alda was still wearing her blue silk gown,
but the maid had unpinned her hair from its tight braids and had
brushed the golden tresses until they fell in a smooth slide over
Alda’s shoulders and down to her waist.

Gavin noted that Alda had nothing at all on
under her dress. Thus, it was easy to appreciate her figure. Which,
Gavin guessed, was the purpose of her habit of wearing only the
scantiest amount of clothing, a habit that would have shocked any
honorable noblewoman.

For a woman who had borne two children and
who was approaching her twenty-eighth birthday, Alda’s figure
remained remarkably youthful. Her breasts were small and high, and
Gavin could see her nipples rubbing against the light silk whenever
she took a breath. Her abdomen was flat beneath the blue folds of
her skirt, and he remembered that her legs were long and graceful.
Once he had taken great pleasure in caressing Alda’s legs. Now, he
saw the petulant line of her mouth and the frown on her brow that
marred her otherwise perfect beauty.

She disgusted him. He wanted to leave her
chamber and never set foot in it again. He wanted to send her far
away from Wroxley. But first, he had to fulfill his commission from
King Henry.

“What do you want?” Alda did not trouble
herself to be polite to him, not even with the maidservant watching
and listening.

“As I have this day reclaimed my castle,” he
said, “so I am here to reclaim my rights as your husband.”

“I told you, no.” Alda’s mouth twisted in a
decidedly unattractive way.

“You have no right to deny me.” Gavin looked
from his wife to her maidservant. “Leave us,” he said.

“Stay here.” Alda countermanded Aidan’s
order. Confused, the maidservant looked from husband to wife.

“Leave,” Gavin said between gritted teeth,
his eyes on Alda. The servant fled before the contest of wills
could continue.

“It is clear to me,” Gavin said when they
were alone, “that you have done much as you please over the last
eleven years.”

“I have not! Your father allowed me no
freedom at all.”

“Then,” said Gavin, considering with great
care the meaning of each word he used, “you have enjoyed the
freedom you want only since my father’s death.”

“I do not know what you mean by freedom. I am
a near prisoner here, in this dreary place. The only pleasure I
have is in my too-brief days at court each year.”

“You will not be going to court this spring,”
Gavin informed her. “I have already paid the days I owe to King
Henry for this year and he has agreed that I need not return until
the spring of next year. Since I am not going to court, you will
not go.”

“You would take every pleasure away from me!”
Alda cried. In sudden fury she shouted, “You despicable man! I hate
you!”

“So you used to tell me when we were
younger,” Gavin said, “though I have never understood why you
should dislike me so violently. I tried to be kind to you.”

“Kind?” Alda snarled. “I do not want a man to
be kind. I want passion. I crave excitement. You never gave me
pleasure.”

“Perhaps because you did not strike a note of
passion in me,” he said. “There is nothing unusual in that. Most
noble marriages are founded on friendship between two families, or
upon their mutual interest in land or a title. Love between the
husband and wife requires time to grow. You were raised to duty, as
I was, and duty claims our days. All the responsibilities of our
noble estate give meaning to our lives. And there are many
compensations. Tell me, Alda, where are the children?”

“What children?”

She was staring at him as if he were a madman
and Gavin knew she had not understood, or had rejected, everything
he had just said to her. In truth, he was not sure he believed his
own stern words. Not after holding and kissing Mirielle.

“Our children,” he said to Alda. “Yours and
mine. Where is Warrick?”

“Your son,” Alda responded in a voice full of
malice, “is a page at Cliffvale Castle, in Lancashire.”

“I know where it is,” Gavin said.

“From the reports I have had of him,” Alda
went on, “Warrick is not well-behaved. In that, he is much like his
father.”

“What of the other child?” Gavin asked,
discounting her last remarks as intended to provoke him. He would
not allow Alda to make him angry. “When we parted eleven years ago,
you were with child for the second time. Or so you claimed when you
refused to lie with me on my final night at home.”

“You mean, on the night before you left me!”
she cried.