Love Everlasting (38 page)

“Keep?” She drew a long breath. “If you
decide to punish me severely, I will understand.”

“Will you?” He touched her cheek, sliding his
fingers along her soft skin until he cupped the nape of her neck to
pull her forward. He heard Julianna catch her breath. “What do you
suggest I do to you?” he asked.

“I wish - but my wishes are never
fulfilled.”

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It’s
unbecoming in so brave a woman.”

“I am not brave.”

“Indeed, you are. Dauntless, formidable,
courageous in the face of enemy might. So far as the people of
Wortham are concerned, my lady, you outshine even ancient Queen
Boadicea.”

“Don’t mock me, not when I love you so much.
Oh!” She covered her mouth with one hand.

“What did you say?” He kept his voice soft,
yet he inserted a note of command into his words because he wanted
to hear her repeat her confession.

“I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. No,”
she corrected herself, pulling away from him to meet his gaze. She
continued in a firm tone that struck directly at Royce’s heart. “I
am not sorry, nor am I ashamed. I love you, Royce. I don’t
understand how it happened, but I do. I will love you until I die,
even though I know you will never care for me, nor for any other
woman, in the way you loved Lady Avisa.”

“There you are correct,” he said, knowing the
time had come for him to offer his revelations, his truths, as she
had offered hers. “Never again will I love anyone in exactly the
same way that I loved Avisa.

“My marriage to Avisa was arranged for the
same reasons that your marriages were contracted,” he told her.
“Our parents made the agreement and we had no choice. Avisa and I
did not meet until our wedding day. We were the same age, both very
young, and though I had bedded several women and was more
experienced than she, we were both remarkably innocent. I was
fortunate, for Avisa possessed a gentle wisdom that saw through my
youthful bluster to the uncertainty beneath. Because of her
kindness and patience, we found our way beyond the calculating
plans of our parents to a happiness that brought joy to both of us.
She was always gentle and tender and sweet, and I cherished her. I
cherish her memory to this day.”

“I think I understand,” Julianna said.

“You do not begin to understand.” His voice
was rough with remembered pain. “When she died my heart was torn in
two. I soon learned that my work as King Henry’s secret agent had
led directly to her death, and guilt only added to my grief.
Another hand fed Avisa the poison that killed her, but in the end,
I was responsible.”

“Oh, Royce, how terrible. I didn’t know she
was poisoned.”

“Few people do,” he said. “It’s not the sort
of thing a man discusses in public.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I haven’t finished. In the years since Avisa
died I have known a few women, all of them as unencumbered by
sacred oaths as I then was. Through those assignations I began to
appreciate what hot, demanding passion is, and how deadly it can be
when true affection is absent.

“Then, King Henry ordered me to marry you,
and on our first night together I found myself caught up in the
most dangerous passion I have ever experienced.”

“Royce, what are you saying?”

“From the reports of my own agents, I knew
most of what you had been doing for Deane and Kenric. But, as
Braedon has so wisely remarked, there are many reasons why a woman
may be induced to become a spy. I needed to know your reasons. The
explanation you offered early in our marriage wasn’t complete.”

“Are you telling me that you have been
testing me all of this time?” she whispered.

“Say rather, I have been learning to know
you. And you haven’t failed me once.”

“You separated from me,” she cried. “You sent
me here.”

“To keep you safe from Kenric. Much good that
did,” he said angrily. “The night when Marie died, I feared that
Kenric would kill you, too. He certainly tried hard enough. I have
never been so afraid in my life as during that night. The thought
of losing you was intolerable.”

“I thought you were angry with me,” she
said.

“I was angry, yes, but with myself, not you.
I saw my intense feelings for you as an insult to Avisa. You were
mine, you belonged to me, but I didn’t want to love you. I fought
so hard against loving you. It has taken me months to accept the
truth. Cadwallon saw it before I did.”

“What truth would that be?” she demanded,
giving him a cool look that sent a brief chill to his heart.

“I love you. Not,” he quickly added, wanting
her to understand completely, “not at all as I once loved Avisa,
with a young man’s warm and tender longing. That love was a good
and honest emotion at the time, but it lies in the distant past,
and I am a different man now, with a mature man’s heart. The man I
am today loves you, and only you. Will you accept my love and not
cast it back in my face?”

“Oh, Royce.” Her eyes shone bright as stars.
“I never guessed what love was, until I first lay in your arms. Now
I love you with my whole heart and soul. And there’s more.”

“Years more,” he murmured, his lips at her
ear while his fingers unfastened the golden net that bound her
hair. “If you take good care of me, perhaps we will have decades
more.”

He heard her soft laughter, saw the tears on
her cheeks, felt the warmth of her arms around his neck, and he
knew he had come home.

Despite his raging desire, he didn’t rush
her. He took his time removing her clothes and he laughed and
offered naughty suggestions as she struggled to unfasten his belt
and his hose. Then he was naked and she wore only her linen shift,
and at last he picked her up and set her upon the bed.

He kissed her mouth, delving deep into her
sweetness, and she welcomed and encouraged him. Her hands caressed
his shoulders and back, then grasped his hair to hold him where he
was as he drew the tip of one breast into his mouth. Her breasts
were fuller than he remembered, which was odd, considering that
everyone at Wortham had gone hungry during the siege. A long-ago
memory pricked at his mind, but Royce was by then so consumed with
the desire he had denied for too many months that all he could see,
all he wanted, was Julianna.

She drew him closer, opening to him, and
Royce buried himself deep inside his wife, his love, his heart. She
whispered her love to him, then murmured his name over and over,
until she dissolved around him and Royce’s own fulfillment burst
upon him in a blaze of light, and he knew that his love for her,
and hers for him, was both true, and everlasting.

Much, much later, he caressed her breasts
again, recalling that earlier tug of memory. Julianna winced a
little at the firm pressure of his hand on her yielding flesh.

“Julianna, have I hurt you?” He lifted his
head to look into her luminous eyes.

“Not at all,” she said, smiling as if she hid
a secret.

Royce let his hand stray downward, below her
waist, to discover an unmistakable roundness where once she had
been flat. He’d been so eager to assert his love for her that he
hadn’t paused to consider what that roundness meant.

“I am with child,” she said. When he simply
stared at her without speaking her smile turned tremulous. “Are you
angry?”

“Never,” he declared with firm certainty, and
broke into a wide grin. “I am stunned. Amazed. Exalted. Delighted.
I want to run down to the great hall and announce the glad tidings
to everyone.”

“Unless you plan to shock everyone there, you
will have to dress first,” she said. “I’d rather you didn’t dress
just yet. We don’t have to stop what we were doing, you know, not
for some months yet. Alice says that she and William frequently -
ah, well, perhaps I shouldn’t reveal the confidences that women
share when they are alone together, with no men to hear.”

“Alice knows? And you never told me?”

“Alice guessed almost before I was sure.
Etta, too. I swore both of them to secrecy until I could tell you.
I intended to enclose a letter with William’s monthly report to
you, but then Kenric came and I couldn’t be certain what would
happen. But I think it’s going to be all right. Alice insisted
that, for the baby’s sake, I must not give up my portion of food to
others, so I did eat, at least until the very end, when the
children were weeping for hunger and I shared my food with
them.”

“Bless Alice,” he murmured. “I never before
this moment gave her credit for common sense, but it’s clear that
she does possess some.”

“Royce?”

“Yes, my dearest?” His lips brushed hers.

“Now that you have discovered my last
secret,” she began.

“I will never discover your last secret,” he
interrupted, laughing for pure joy. “You are a woman of deep
secrets, of continual and everlasting mystery. That’s why I love
you so. I never could resist the challenge of a mystery.”

“How very odd,” she murmured. “I always
thought I was the most transparent of women.”

His reply was a soft laugh. And then neither
of them could speak at all, for passion overtook them once again
and held them fast for a long, long time.

Royce did not think about Kenric again until
the next morning when the prisoners were brought from the dungeon
and, with several of Cadwallon’s men-at-arms to guard each of them,
were mounted for their long ride to Northampton and the king’s
justice.

The glare in Kenric’s eyes when he faced
Royce was so filled with hatred that Royce decided then and there
to make a quick trip to Northampton, himself. He hated the thought
of leaving Julianna, but he was determined to protect her honor and
her life. If necessary, he’d tell King Henry everything he had
learned from her. He’d even offer to give up his post as the king’s
spymaster if Henry felt he could no longer depend upon his old
friend. Royce hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but Julianna was more
important to him than his position at court or the work that had
for so many years occupied all of his thoughts and his heart.

He decided he’d linger for a tender day or
two with his wife. Then, confident that she would see to the
welfare of Wortham in his absence, he’d take his squire, Timothy,
and two or three men-at-arms and he’d travel as fast as he could.
He might even catch up with Cadwallon’s troop before they reached
Northampton.

When his mission at court was accomplished,
he would come home as quickly as possible - home to Julianna and
their child.

“Now that besiegers and guests have left us
in peace,” Royce said to Julianna, “I am going to ride out to look
at the fields and what is left of Wortham village. A bit of
planning is in order before we begin rebuilding.”

“May I ride with you?” Julianna asked. With a
saucy smile she added, “I may have a suggestion or two to add to
your plans.”

“I’m sure you will offer more than one or two
suggestions,” he responded. “But, my dear, are you well
enough?”

“I am completely recovered from the siege and
from my minor wound. Do not cosset me, my lord. If you do, I will
almost certainly become spoiled and difficult and extremely
demanding.”

“Will you? That should prove interesting,
especially the demanding part.” Royce could not refuse her, not
when he wanted her beside him every hour of the day. The thought of
leaving her, even for two weeks or so, saddened him. He’d soon have
to tell Julianna of his plan to be at Northampton when Kenric and
his fellow conspirators were judged and sentenced, but he decided
to face that unpleasant task later. He’d not spoil what promised to
be a lovely day.

He took along only Timothy, and Baldwin and
Linnet, who had expressed an interest in seeing what was left of
Blenda’s cottage.

The morning was pleasant, with a hint of near
summer warmth to come in afternoon. In the farmlands around the
castle men and women were already at work removing the debris left
by the besieging army. Three of the fields were being plowed, and
the animals brought with the supply wagons grazed in a meadow.

“I sent a man to Craydon,” Royce said in
response to Julianna’s questioning look. “By the time the fields
are ready, we will have new seed to scatter. More cattle to replace
the lost animals will come later, after we have enough fodder for
them.”

In the village, Linnet wept at the ruin of
her childhood home.

“You will have a new cottage,” Royce promised
her, “a larger house with an extra room to serve as the school you
want.”

“Oh, my lord, thank you.” Linnet’s sobs
increased.

“Stay here,” Royce told Baldwin. “Discuss
together whether you want your new home built on this site or
elsewhere in the village. Can either of you draw? If so, ask Sir
Michael for a slate and make a drawing of the house you want. Or
ask him to make the drawing for you. Later today I intend to meet
with the villagers to consider how to go about the rebuilding. I
expect both of you to be there and to offer your ideas.”

Royce, Julianna, and Timothy rode on, the
thanks of Linnet and Baldwin following them.

“Before you woke this morning,” Royce told
Julianna, “a messenger arrived from King Henry at Northampton. My
agents there have captured three of Kenric’s men, who have
confessed that they were sent to kill Cadwallon and me. So there’s
another danger eliminated.”

“Thank heaven,” Julianna said. “Now, I have
only one problem left.”

“And what is that, my dearest lady?” Royce
asked with a teasing smile.

“The problem of Kenric’s tongue. It’s
entirely possible that he will tell all he knows in hope of
convincing King Henry to spare his life, or at least to grant him a
quicker and more merciful death than hanging, drawing, and
quartering.”