Linda Needham (18 page)

“Enough, Talia. I’ve seen you at your best, and this isn’t it. Bloody hell, madam, you are late for a royal visit, and now you think to make an entrance dressed like…”—he sputtered, as though he hadn’t words enough—“like something coughed up onto the sand by a storm tide.”

“You can’t possibly believe that I’ve made a mess of myself on purpose. To what end? Just to embarrass you in front of the king?”

“Then why, madam? And this?” He lifted a handful of her hair in his huge fist, and then pulled out a leafy twig. “Is this your unsubtle attempt to convince Conrad that you’re a lunatic?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her heart skidded to a stop when she realized. “Dear God, he’s here, isn’t he? Conrad. And he’s interested in me?”

Which only made Alex growl, wolf-wild and low. “Enough, madam. You’re going to clean up and dress in your bloody best gown, then you will greet the king and Conrad with your bloody best smile.”

“Aye, my lord, that’s exactly what I had planned to do before you came barreling in here.” Heated to her bones by her outrage, Talia pointed toward the very tightly shut door. “If you’ll please take yourself out of here.”

He stood like a wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Not without you, madam. Now, out of those filthy clothes and into this bath.”

All she could do was stare as he stalked to the brazier, pulled the kettle off the hook, then poured the hot water into the bath, raising up a cloud of steam.

“What did you say?”

“Into the bath.”

The man was mad. “With you here? I will not.”

His long, exhaled breath made her skin sing along her arms, made her imagine it playing itself against her ear as he said again, each word a diabolically, deliberate suspension, “Take off your clothes.”

Such indecent rudeness. Oh, then why the devil did she want to demand the same of him? To see him one more time, as she had that first evening.

“I absolutely will not.” She grabbed the front of her sopping kirtle, then stepped back two paces until she bumped into the blanket chest.

“You’ll do just as I say, Talia. And you’ll waste no more of my time at it.” He seemed to grow larger, hotter, more deliberate as he came toward her in his slow, inexorable stride until he was standing over her. “This night means the world to me. I plan to keep you from ruining it.”

“By forcing me out of my clothes like a brute and into that tub?”

“By making you presentable any way I can. Now, undress, else I’ll take your clothes from you myself.”

It was a long, licking gaze he gave her, an unyielding promise that he had every intention of going through with his threat.

A threat that seemed too much like an invitation, that lifted and embraced her in his smoky enchantment, that fanned an already disorienting blaze and burned right through the damp thickness of her kirtle and her chemise and gathered and spread like sunlight, low in her belly.

A falling toward him feeling, a tantalizing tautness, a threading through her, through him, binding them together, as though he could give the slightest tug and she’d do his bidding gladly.

Damn the man, but she wanted to! She also wanted to kick him in the shins. She put her hand in the middle of his chest and gave a shove.

“Then you will at least turn away, my lord.”

Her shove hadn’t moved him in the least, but he did finally, slowly, step backward, then left her to add more wood to the brazier.

“Hurry yourself, madam,” he said, as the sparks sputtered into the air.

Hurrying didn’t help at all as she tried again to untie the leather lashing that crisscrossed its way upward toward an implacable knot between her breasts.

“Have you told him anything?” Talia asked, feeling the unremitting heat of Alex’s gaze sliding along her fingers as she worked. She tried to focus
on the irritating task, only making it worse, and moved nearer to the light of the candle on her dressing table.

“Him?” A grumbling, distant sound.

She gave a tug on one end of the lacing, frustrated to her bones. “Conrad.”

“Damnation!” Suddenly Alex was standing in front of her, encompassing her, his warm fingers dancing with hers and the leather lacing, his rumbling words at her temple. “Did I tell him what, madam?”

He made her breathless and clumsy with his enthralling efforts, his fingers a stunning pressure and release against her bodice, skiffing along the margins of her modesty. “Did you tell him about me? About…things.”

“Hold still,” he said sharply. He brushed her fingers away and leaned closer to the tangle, inspecting it, the lush course of his breath gamboling hot against her chilled skin, steaming down the cleft between her breasts.

She swallowed hard, trying not to sigh into the softness of his hair, not to make too much of her heart banging around beneath his hands.

“Did you tell him, Alex?” Her mouth was so near his temple she could easily kiss him there.

So easily lose herself, and everything that was dear to her.

“Yes, I told him, Talia. Some.” He tugged on the knot, hopefully unable to read her thoughts, or
the invitations lurking there, the regrets that perched upon her tongue.

“You told him
some
, Alex? What exactly, beyond that I was for sale?” She’d meant that as a jest between them, a jab, but it only deepened his features.

“I told him, that my ward was insolent and troublesome and inconvenient. Now hold still.” He bent his head to that tangled place above her heart and his breath exploded across her chest like a searing storm, traveled everywhere, carrying her imagination along with it. His forehead against her collarbone, his hair dancing along her shoulder.

Steamy, close. So intoxicating! Damned forever as a strumpet, grieving for these moments with Alex that would be lost to her after tonight, Talia simply threw back her head to give him leave for more.

“Alex, what are you doing?” And don’t stop, please. Not ever.

He looked up sideways at her, his nostrils flaring. “The knot, dammit!”

“Ah!” She caught her laugh between her lips, aware that she was clinging to him, her palm against his hips. He was using his teeth on the tie, and then his fingers and his growl. She ought to tell him that the dagger at his belt would do just as well. It was only a thong; a quick cut and her kirtle would come right off.

But this was too marvelous, his growling between her breasts, his fingers softly ravishing, his muttered cursing, until he finally broke away.

“There!” he bellowed, backing away in triumph. The knot was gone, the two ends dangling. And he was breathing like a hunt-driven stag. “Now undress and get into the bath, this minute.” He pointed to the steaming tub.

The air crackled between them. This wasn’t wise, not with all that had passed between them.

But when he only stood there, watching, his face a mask, Talia began unlacing her kirtle, her heart aching for all that might have been.

A
lex knew bloody well that if he moved at all, it would be toward Talia and right on to the end of all his carefully constructed plans. So he planted his heels firmly into the planking and watched and burned as her heavy kirtle fell into a heap around her ankles.

He forced himself to focus on the depth of her deceit instead of the clinging, linen-draped silhouette of her calves and thighs and hips, the shadowy, shifting shape of her breasts. He tried not to think of the softness beyond the ties and her wet chemise. Or her cool skin, the clouds of that woodland scent of hers.

Sweet pine and moss and yew.

And the soft light in her eyes.

He could control the rigid heat collected in his
groin, his palpable need for her, as she grabbed the chunk of soap and walked to the bath. Hell, he’d been managing that since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. But his restraint was brought to the brink when she bent and picked up the hem of her gown.

Christ.

He turned away from all that loveliness, paced to the door, then to the window.

“Where were you tonight, Talia?”

A sloshing splash, the stunning sound of her chemise hitting the floor. He closed his eyes. “When do you mean, Alex?”

“When you should have been entertaining the king in the courtyard.”

“I was in the orchard,” she said, too easily.

“Doing what? And keep scrubbing.” He could only hear as she stepped into the tub, didn’t dare look in her direction.

“Because Derwent’s hogs got loose in the afternoon and went straight for the windfall apples. And then Margaret, the baker’s wife, finally had her baby.”

“A son, I know. That was much earlier. Where were you tonight?” When she didn’t answer, his anger turned him, but she was gone. “Damn it, Talia!”

He came around the table, certain that she’d escaped through some hidden trap in the floor, only to discover her in the tub, on her knees, her head
completely under the water, her hair drifting on the surface like seaweed.

He should have turned away from all that golden splendor, her naked back, the curving moons of her bottom. Before he could fully form the thought in his head, she sat up fast, in a shower of water that fanned across his chest, dousing him completely from head to toe, talking overloud.

“Margaret was having trouble afterward, so I took her some feverfew.”

Alex swabbed the water off his face and opened his eyes to a golden selkie, still kneeling in the tub, her hair now swift runnels of red-gold silk coursing over her breasts like a curtain, shielding the joining of her legs.

Her eyes tightly closed, the bewitching woman stood up and stuck out her hand and felt around for the towel that had fallen from the bench.

He took a silent breath of pure strength and put the towel into her hand. “Here.”

“Alex!” She gasped and her eyes flew open, her lashes starred as she gaped at him. “I hardly expected such service, considering.”

Considering that she dizzied him, drenched him in need; she was the course of the seasons, the breath of him. It was all he could do not to cross the short distance between them, lift her into his arms, and take her to the bed, to enter her sweetness and claim her for himself.

To plunge and thrust and possess her, to make
her feel the pounding in his veins, the throbbing in his lungs; to prove to her that he would stay with her if he could.

And God save him from his sins, she just stood there to her knees in the water, buffing her bewitching hair with the towel, uncovered and proud and tempting him, so breathtakingly familiar with him.

So like a wife.

“Talia.” Her name had escaped him too easily, filled in the empty places in his heart.

“I’m hurrying, Alex.”

“You’re beautiful.”

She paused inside her cloud of damp hair, then frowned. “Another point to be sure to make with Conrad tonight.”

“Damn it.”

“I agree. It’s a damnable thing we’re both doing.” She looked determined, as though she’d suddenly joined his side. “It’s like an endless abyss, Alex—filled with nothing and everything. In the beginning, you gave me hope, when I was sure there was none left in the world.”

“Christ, Talia.” She was candlelight and confidence, sleek and curved, dazzle-eyed and fearless. He willed his heart to keep a steady pace, but she was a quickening inside him, and his hands ached to hold her.

To keep her.

And he probably would have been able to walk
away right then, if she hadn’t stepped to the edge of the tub, if she hadn’t put her lips to her fingertips, and then her fingertips to his mouth.

A fleeting, feathery touch that lifted the hair on his arms and drew the air from his lungs.

“I’ll do my best for you, Alex.”

His will tattered beyond use, Alex cupped her hand against his cheek, losing himself in her eyes, his need for her, for more of her, all of her, coursing through him like quicksilver.

“Please don’t, Talia.” But her mouth was moist and rosy full and she was too willing, too bright-eyed.

“Don’t what?”

“Please don’t help me.”

He could find his way to hell on his own. By combing his fingers through her hair, touching his lips against her ear.

By cupping her chin and tilting her mouth to him.

Whispering words she shouldn’t hear, that he shouldn’t ever say.

And finally, dangerously, tasting her mouth, covering it fully as though she belonged to him.

“Alex…”

These were his as well, her naked, soapy-slick, lithely rounded curves that so perfectly fit his hands, and the lightning that ripped through him, blinding white and deeply hot.

His.

Her soft belly and the rock-rigid erection she’d raised and now cradled against herself.

Her heady sighs and her whimpering.

Her damp arms around his neck.

Her dreams.

His.

The sultry way she was climbing into his embrace, her fathomless kiss.

His.
Every inch of her. “Talia!”

She pulled away slightly, breathless, blinking blindly. Her mouth was as darkly rose as the tips of her breasts. Then she shook her head sadly, her curling cascade of hair becoming a curtain against him.

“Oh, what we could have been together, Alex.”

Children and family and this needy old castle, her belly growing large with his sons and his daughters. So much to regret.

He managed to turn away from her, from the burning at the backs of his eyes. He stopped at the door, his hand on the latch.

“You’ll come to the great hall when you’re finished here.”

He heard her step out of the water, but didn’t dare another glance at her.

“I really didn’t mean to disrupt your meeting with the king, Alex. My deepest apologies to him. And to you.”

There was no way she could not have disrupted it. Talia being Talia. “I know.”

He left while he was still able.

Alex stomped away from Talia’s chamber, stumbling over his guilt, this relentless yearning, the inescapable images of the future.

He dressed in his best, then slipped into the great hall through the kitchen and discovered Stephen there, poking at a plate of meat.

“Alex, old man! I’m stealing away your cook for my own!” Stephen tucked a morsel of venison into his mouth and garbled something about “stale oat cakes” and “boot leather” which reddened the cook’s usual damp blush.

He’d missed Stephen’s sense of humor; falling back into the familiar banter was easy, because he truly liked the man. Alex crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the chimney wall. “Sorry, my liege, but my loyalty to you does have its limits.”

Stephen laughed. “See, Conrad, how the man chooses his battles carefully?”

Christ, he hadn’t noticed Conrad, sampling his way along the serving table.

“Aye, Alex, I had just been wondering if your cook comes with the woman and the castle.”

Unable to conjure a response beyond punching the man in the gut, Alex ignored Conrad and nod
ded to the king. “Lady Talia sends her deepest apologies to you, my liege. She’ll join us in the great hall momentarily.”

“Leading the chapel roof, was she?”

“Aye, Your Grace, she was.”

The great hall thrummed with knights and soldiers, a royal court of good-natured mayhem, a sound that quieted when Stephen stepped into his place at the table, and roared back into full voice when he gestured broadly for them to continue.

Stephen dropped into a chair, one long leg hung over the arm. “You’re out here in the wastes, Alex. You did hear about the end of De Mandeville, didn’t you?”

“Aye, Your Grace. A suitably ignoble end to the bastard’s barbaric career,” Alex said, keeping a watch out for Talia, for his heart, because he didn’t trust her with it.

Conrad laughed in that confident way of his and poured himself a cup of wine. “Imagine De Mandeville taking an unlucky arrow in the head because he’d removed his helm in the midst of directing a siege that he was winning.”

Stephen smiled wryly. “Arrogance. I never trusted Geoffrey de Mandeville completely, and he burned me at the last, didn’t he? If ever I arrest another man like him, I bloody well won’t release him. No matter what pledges he makes.”

“Alliances rarely last, my liege,” Alex said, thinking of his dead brother, riding out the grief,
Talia’s compassion, her outrage. “Press a man and he will bend; make him feel betrayed and anything can happen.”

He never learned what Stephen was going to reply, for a pair of squealing, laughing voices and running footsteps came dodging toward them through the hall, around the labyrinth of men and tables.

Dear, familiar voices.

“Lord Alex! Did you hear? The king is here!”

Alex braced himself just as Gemma threw herself around his knees in her usual enthusiasm, nearly knocking him off-balance. He lifted her into his arms. “I know, Gemma, but you’re supposed to be in bed.”

“Did you see him yet, Lord Alex?” Lissa tugged at Alex’s sleeve.

Gemma leaned out from Alex’s arms toward Stephen. “Who are you, sir? Do you know the king?”

“He does, Gemma,” Alex said, oddly proud and protective of this little band of noise. “This
is
King Stephen.”

Gemma peered closer, studying the man. Fortunately His Grace was the doting father of a son and two daughters and seemed genuinely at home with Gemma’s questions. “Are you really a king?”

Lissa gasped and sank into an ungainly curtsy. “Oh, my, Gemma! He is! Your Grace.”

Stephen took Lissa’s hand and lifted her to her feet. “And who are these lovely subjects, Alex?”

“Lissa and Gemma.” Alex glanced at Conrad, watching for coldness, but finding only amusement and the memory that the man had five younger sisters, each of whom had wrapped him around their little fingers.

“Talia, look, the king is here!” Gemma waved toward the end of the dais and everyone turned.

And Alex stopped breathing.

It wasn’t the shimmering, wine-dark silk of her gown, or the gold threads entwined along the sleeves that had staggered him, nor her cascades of unbound hair captured by a simple circlet of garnets at her temple.

Or her elegant grace, or the deep rose her mouth set into an enigmatic smile.

It was her eyes and the challenge there. The hotly arousing effects swirling around in his chest, lighting deep fires in his heart with the softness of her smile.

“Come meet him, Talia! The king is very nice.” Gemma wriggled out of Alex’s arms and flung herself into Talia’s.

“Your Grace, my humblest apologies for causing you to wait for me. Welcome to Carrisford.” She managed a sweeping curtsy even with her arms full of Gemma.

Stephen rushed to her side and raised her, obvi
ously charmed to his ears. “My dear Lady Talia, would that all things were as worthy the wait as you.”

“Your Grace is very kind.” She leaned in to the king and said softly, “Supper is on its way, and I pray that you feel the same after our humble feast in your honor.”

She glanced at Alex, gracious, welcoming, as though they had often stood together here in the hall, welcoming guests.

Domestic.

Pleasing.

Distracting.

As though they were lord and lady of Carrisford.

Christ, his bones ached. And his heart.

Conrad had wedged himself into the mix and stood preening like a barnyard cock. “Fear not, my lady, our king already has plans to steal your cook.”

She flicked a startled, quizzical glance at Alex, then looked back at the smiling Conrad. “And you must be…”

“Conrad Fitz Warren.” The blackguard took her hand, bent over it for far too long, before he raised his cocky smile to her. “Delighted to meet you, my lady.”

Nay, she’s
mine, Alex thought. But she wasn’t his. Not in the way he would like.

The way he needed her to be.

“Welcome to Carrisford, my lord. Alex has spoken very well of you.”

“And not nearly well enough of you, my lady, I’m sorry to say.”

Now the woman was actually blushing!
Beaming
, to put a bloody fine point on it. And Gemma was fiddling with the shiny fox-headed clasp on Conrad’s jerkin.

Bloody hell!

“Aye, Fitz Warren,” Alex said, elbowing past Conrad to stand beside Talia, slipping one hand around the trim of her waist, “because I neglected to tell Her Ladyship the full truth about you.”

“Will you save us some sugared plums, Lord Alex?” Gemma reached out to him, yawning as she crawled from Talia’s arms into his and tucked her head against his shoulder.

He planted his usual good night kiss on the spray of curls on the girl’s forehead, wondering how the smile that Talia gave him over the top of Gemma’s head could reach so damn far into his chest that it had gotten hold of his heart, warmed it, and gave it a good, aching twist.

An instant of time, a tiny measure of his life, but with unimaginable implications.

He cleared his throat and stood Gemma on her feet. “I’ll save two for each of you, Gemma, if you and Lissa go to bed now. And stay there.”

“Hooray!”

“Ooo! Thank you, Lord Alex!” Gemma gave him a wet kiss on his cheek. “And good night, Sir King.” And then jumped from the dais and took off with Lissa.