Lover in the Rough (29 page)

The bitterness in Chance’s voice made Reba ache.

“Chance—” she said, her voice breaking.

“You wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t see me,” he continued, his voice husky and relentless. “But I knew you’d be here tonight. Jeremy’s night. So I came.”

Chance’s hand moved but instead of touching Reba, his fingers closed over the piece of paper that lay between their bodies, a pale blur against black silk.

“I didn’t understand why you asked me to give up the China Queen,” he said quietly. “I do now. Once, I might have been satisfied with the Queen’s cold treasure. But now I need your living warmth, your laugh, your hands touching me. You’re the only thing I’ve found that is more beautiful the longer I look, more magic in sunlight than in darkness, precious beyond words or comparison or reason. All my life I’ve been digging through darkness, searching the earth for you, and I didn’t even know it.”

Reba breathed his name as her hands came up to his face. Gently he removed them, putting the piece of paper in her fingers.

“Read it,” said Chance.

She tried, but there were too many tears. “I can’t.”

“It’s a quit-claim to the China Queen. She’s yours, Reba, one hundred percent yours. She has been since the day you left me.”

“I don’t want the Queen,” Reba said despairingly, crumpling the paper and throwing it into the darkness beyond. “Don’t you understand?” she cried.

Then Reba cried out again, but for a different reason. Chance’s hands were moving over her, setting fire to her, bringing her a pleasure so great it was almost pain. She closed her eyes and made an incoherent sound, twisting beneath his touch, her hands seeking him. He moved swiftly, powerfully, covering her with his hard body.

“If you want, I’ll give the China Queen to the first person who walks down the hall,” Chance said, watching her, his voice savage. “I’ll give it all away right now, every last bloody crystal. I’ll give up anything you ask. Except you. Don’t ask me to give you up. I won’t. I
can’t
. I finally know what love is. I’ll never give that up. I love you, Reba.”

Her eyes opened wide and wondering, incandescent with emotion. A shudder went through him, testing his strength as he watched the woman he loved.

“Say something,
chaton
. Don’t make me guess whether I’ve lost your love.”

“Keep the China Queen,” she whispered.

His face changed, pain and vulnerability and despair.

“For our children,” she added quickly, smiling and crying at the same time, realizing he had misunderstood. She buried her face in his hard shoulder, holding him until she ached. “You can’t lose my love, Chance. I’ll always love you.”

His hands went to her hair, fingers seeking out the hidden gold combs. Honey strands tumbled smoothly from his fingers, whispering as sweetly as the words he kept saying over and over, as though having once spoken of love he could not stop, telling her with each breath, each caress, how infinitely precious she was to him. Her words mingled with his, her hands caressing him, telling him in return what he had told her.

Then he became a part of her, his body hot and gleaming, Tiger God in her arms to stay.

Avon Books proudly publishes Elizabeth Lowell’s final installment in her
New York Times
best-selling medieval trilogy.

ENCHANTED tells the story of Simon the loyal and his arranged marriage to Ariane, the beautiful but cold daughter of a powerful Norman baron. It is a love story that surpasses even the expectations of Elizabeth Lowell’s many fans.

The following is a glimpse into the story of Ariane and Simon—and into Elizabeth Lowell’s most stunning romance yet.

“W
hich will it be,” Ariane whispered to herself, “a wedding or a wake?”

She looked at the dagger in her hands, but no answer came to her save that of candlelight running like silver blood over the blade. Again and again the question rang within the silence of her mind.

A wedding or a wake?

The answer that finally came was no comfort to her.

It matters not. They are but different words for the same thing
.

Beyond Stone Ring Keep’s high walls, the wind wailed of coming winter.

Ariane didn’t hear the mournful cry. She heard nothing but the echoes of the past, when her mother had pressed the jeweled dagger into her daughter’s small hands. In her mind, Ariane could still see the dark flash of amethysts and feel the cold weight of silver. Yet her mother’s words had been even more chilling.

Hell has no punishment greater than a cruel marriage bed. Use this rather than lie beneath a man you do not love
.

Unfortunately, Ariane’s mother had not lived long enough to tell her daughter how to use the weapon, or upon whom.

Whose wake should it be, the groom’s or bride’s?

Should I kill myself or should I kill Simon, whose only crime was agreeing to marry me out of loyalty to his brother Dominic, the Glendruid Wolf?

Loyalty
.

A yearning tremor went through Ariane, making the rich cream and russet of her tunic shiver as though alive.

Dear God, to be so blessed as to know that kind of fidelity in my family!

Dark nightmare turned, threatening to break through the wall Ariane had built against it. Quickly she shifted her thoughts from the night she had been betrayed first by Geoffrey the Fair and then by her own father.

The blade of the dagger bit delicately into Ariane’s hand, telling her that she was holding the weapon too tightly. Distantly she wondered what it would feel like when the dagger bit far more deeply into her flesh.

Certainly it could be no worse than her nightmares.

“Ariane, have you seen my—oh, what a lovely dagger,” Amber said. “ ’Tis as finely made as any brooch.”

The voice startled Ariane out of her grim reverie. Taking a slow, hidden breath, she loosened her grip on the jeweled dagger and looked toward the girl whose golden outer tunic highlighted the color of her eyes and hair.

“It was my mother’s,” Ariane said to Amber.

“Such extraordinary amethysts. They are the exact color of your eyes. Were hers violet, too?”

“Yes.”

Ariane said no more.

“And your thoughts,” Amber continued matter-of-factly, “are the exact color of your hair. The darkest part of night.”

Ariane’s breath caught. Warily she eyed the young Learned woman who could discern truth simply by touching someone.

Yet Amber wasn’t touching Ariane now.

“I don’t have to touch you,” Amber said, guessing the other girl’s thoughts. “The darkness is in your eyes. And in your heart.”

“I feel nothing.”

“Ah, but you do. Your emotions are a wound that you have concealed rather than healed.”

“Have I?”

“Aye,” Amber said gently. “I felt that when I touched you. Surely you must feel it too.”

“Only when I sleep.”

Ariane slid the dagger back into its sheath at her waist and reached for the lap harp that once had been her joy. Now it was her consolation. The dark, graceful curves of the wood were inlaid with silver, mother-of-pearl and carnelian in the form of a flowering vine.

But it wasn’t the harp’s elegance that lured Ariane. It was the instrument’s voice. Her long fingers moved, calling from the strings a chord that was in eerie harmony with the storm wind, a wildness that was barely contained.

Concealed, not healed
.

Hearing the harp speak for the harpist, Amber wanted to protest the combination of fear and rage and grief that burned just beneath the Norman girl’s calm surface.

“You have nothing to dread from becoming Simon’s wife,” Amber said urgently. “He is a man of intense passion, but it is always disciplined.”

For an instant Ariane’s fingers paused. Then she nodded slowly. Gradually the sounds she drew from the harp became less wild.

“Aye,” Ariane said in a low voice. “He has been gentle enough with me.”

Much gentler than he will be when he discovers that his wife is no maiden.

Wars have begun over lesser insults. Men have killed. Women have died
.

The last thought had a dark allure for Ariane. It whispered of an escape from the brutal trap of pain and betrayal that life had become.

“Simon is strong of body and fair of face,” Amber added, “with a quickness to put the keep’s cats to shame.”

Ariane’s fingers hesitated.

“His eyes,” she murmured, “are very . . . dark.”

“ ’Tis only that sun-colored hair that makes his eyes seem so black,” Amber said.

Ariane shook her head. “It is more than that.”

Hesitating, sighing, Amber agreed.

“ ’Tis the same with many of the men who came back from the Saracen battles,” Amber admitted. “They returned less light of heart.”

A minor chord quivered in the silence.

“Simon mistrusts me,” Ariane said.

“You?” Amber laughed without humor. “He trusts you enough to show you his back. I am the one he mistrusts. In the silence of his heart, Simon calls me hell-witch.”

Surprise lightened the bleak violet of Ariane’s eyes for a moment.

“If it helps,” Amber said dryly, “your own eyes, for all their fey beauty, are as remote as a Druid moon.”

“Should that comfort me?”

“Can anything comfort you?”

Ariane’s fingers paused in their delicate stroking of the harp as she considered the question. Then her fingers struck like snow falcons, ripping a harsh sound from the strings.

“Why does he call you hell-witch?” Ariane asked, changing the subject.

Before Amber could answer, a deep male voice spoke for her.

“Because,” Simon said, “I thought she had stolen Duncan’s mind.”

Both women turned and saw Simon standing at the entrance to the small corner chamber that had been turned over to Ariane. There was little room left in the doorway, for Simon was unusually tall. Because most people first saw him standing next to Dominic, or to Amber’s husband Duncan, Simon’s height often passed without particular comment, as did the width of his shoulders.

Yet Ariane noticed him. Simon could have been standing in a forest of giants, and he would have towered over them in her sight. There was something about the feline quickness and male elegance of Simon’s strength that overshadowed men more brawny.

Or perhaps it was simply that he had been kind to her in his own laconic way.

“But,” Simon said with an ironic smile, “I was wrong. It seems that it was only Duncan’s heart which had been stolen. A far more trifling matter than a mind, surely.”

The Learned girl refused to rise to the deftly presented bait, but the amber pendant she wore between her breasts shimmered as though with secret laughter. Amusement was also reflected in the curve of Amber’s lips.

Simon’s smile warmed.

“I no longer think of you as as the devil’s tool,” he said to Amber. “Will you ever forgive me for making you faint with fear?”

“Sooner than you will forgive all women for whatever one woman did to you,” Amber said.

The room became so silent that the leap of flame in the brazier sounded loud. When Simon spoke again, there was no warmth in his voice or his smile.

“Poor Duncan,” Simon said coolly. “He will have no secrets from his witch wife.”

“He will need none,” Duncan said from behind Simon.

On hearing Duncan’s voice, Amber turned toward the doorway, glowing as though lit from within.

Ariane stared. In the seven days she had been at Stone Ring Keep, she had yet to become accustomed to the sheer joy Amber took in her new husband. Duncan’s joy was no less, a fact that was simply beyond Ariane’s comprehension.

When Amber rushed across the room, holding out her hands to Duncan, Simon gave Ariane a wry sidelong glance. The moment of silent, shared understanding was both warming and disconcerting to Ariane.

It made her want to trust Simon.

Fool
, Ariane thought coldly.
The smile is but a charming ruse to make you more at ease, so that you won’t fight the brutal coils of marital duty
.

“I thought you were going to take all morning listening to the serfs’ complaints,” Amber said to Duncan.

“So did I.” Duncan gathered Amber’s hands in his much larger ones. “But Erik took pity on me and sent the wolfhounds in to lounge by the fire.”

“Stagkiller, too?” she asked, for her brother was rarely without his canine shadow.

“Mmm,” Duncan agreed. He kissed Amber’s fingertips and tickled her palms with his mustache. “Shortly afterward, everyone left.”

Simon smothered a laugh. The serfs revered Erik, the former lord of Stone Ring Keep, but they were distinctly wary of Erik’s animals. More than one tenant and cotter had been overheard thanking God that the new lord of Stone Ring Keep was a brawny warrior not given to ancient ways and Learned teachings and animals more clever by half than common folks.

“I shall miss your brother when he goes back to Sea Home,” Duncan said.

“My brother or his hounds?” Amber asked, smiling.

“Both. Perhaps Erik could leave us a few.”

“Large ones?”

“Does he have any other kind?” Duncan retorted. “Stagkiller is nearly as tall at the shoulder as my war stallion.”

Laughing, shaking her head at the exaggeration, Amber brushed her cheek against one of Duncan’s battle-scarred hands.

Ariane watched the newly wed couple as a falcon would watch an unexpected movement in the grass. The words the lovers spoke were unimportant; it was the way each looked at the other, the touches they shared, the heightened awareness that flowed between them like an invisible river between opposite shores.

“Baffling, isn’t it?” Simon asked softly.

He had moved so close to Ariane that his breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck.

Too close.

“What?” Ariane asked, startled.

It took all of her courage not to draw away as she looked into Simon’s clear midnight eyes. But retreat would do no good. Nor would pleas to be left alone.

Geoffrey had taught her that, and much else that she had buried behind walls of pain and betrayal.

“ ’Tis baffling,” Simon explained, “how a formidable warrior such as the Scots Hammer becomes as river clay in a girl’s hands.”