Lynn Wood - Norman Brides 03 (11 page)

Michel was willing to bet his grandmother would have done exactly that but didn’t think such an admission would gain him the promise he sought.  “You are no longer faced with the prospect of being forced to flee on your own.  Baron Timothy’s family will see to your care until…” Michel swore softly and let his voice trail off at the stunned expression that came over her face. He hadn’t meant to deliver the news of the arrangements he’d made for her protection while he was occupied fighting for a kingship quite so casually. When Elena tried to pull away from his restraining embrace, he shifted his grip to her arms as much to shake some sense into her, as to prevent her flight. 

“Elena, listen to me.”  She was frantically fighting his restraint and staring up at him as if he’d just pronounced her death sentence. When she kicked him in the shins in an attempt to free herself, he drew her close against him and wrapped one leg around both of hers and held her slapping hands in one of his own larger ones. She continued to struggle against his constraint but without effect until finally accepting she had no hope of prevailing against his greater strength she resorted to a woman’s weapon.  Tears filled her eyes and streamed down her white face, even as she continued to shake her head in denial and mewling sounds escaped between her clenched lips.

“Elena,” She shook her head against his gentle call.  He thought if she had the use of her hands they would be covering her ears to block out the sound of his voice. “Elena, I have not forgotten my promise to your uncle to see to your protection and stand as your guardian, but I cannot allow you to accompany me into a battle for control of the city.”

At his reasonable explanation she stopped struggling and lifted her crushed eyes to his face. “I don’t understand.  Why would there be a battle for control of the city?  You are the rightful heir to the kingship.”

His lips curved at her naïve presumption his right to ascend the throne would be enough to convince Raulf and the other contenders to simply relinquish their plans, likely years in the making, to follow in her uncle’s stead.  “Not everyone will be swayed by my right of ascension.”

“You speak of Raulf,” she concluded bitterly.

“Not only Raulf, but yes, he is likely to be the most obvious threat.”

“Why can’t I stay here?”

Michel smiled at her whispered cajolery. “What kind of guardian would I be if I did not make proper provision for your safety?  Do you have a particular objection to Baron Timothy?  Do you fear for your safety while under the care of his family?”

For a moment, he could see she considered lying and telling him she did fear being placed under Baron Timothy’s care, but then she quickly reasoned out that even if he believed her lie, he would only find another family to take her in. Eventually she sighed defeated and leaned her head against his chest.  “No.”

Michel realized what the admission cost her, and was surprised when she surrendered their contest so easily.  If he had been attempting to convince his twin of the justness of his position, Melissa would still be threatening him with her dagger and claiming she was as skilled as any soldier in the ways of combat so there was no reason she shouldn’t accompany him into battle.  In fact, she would be highly insulted by his plan to leave her behind.  He did not intend to risk sharing any of his twin’s outrageous opinions with his young ward, however.  He certainly did not wish to plant the idea in her head that she could learn to wield a weapon and ride by his side into armed conflict.  The picture of the gentle maid he held doing exactly that was enough to coax a grin to his lips.

“Why are you smiling?  Are you so happy then at the thought of being rid of me?” Elena asked in a desolate voice, catching sight of his amusement when she lifted her head from his chest at his extended silence.

Michel’s grin widened and he bent to brush his lips across hers.  “No.”

Seemingly resigned to her fate, she asked, “How long do I have to stay with Baron Timothy’s family?”

“Until the throne is secure,” he promised her.

“And then I can come back to live in the castle?”

“Yes.”

“Will you live there too?”

Michel kept his inward sigh at her question to himself.  The living arrangements had obvious pitfalls, not the least of which, he could hardly continue to allow a young, unmarried, and un-related maid to live under his roof indefinitely, but he thought now was not the time to bring up any additional complications.  One hurdle at a time.  “Yes, I will live there.”

“All right.”

His eyes lit with amusement at her reluctant agreement, as if the maid believed she actually had a say in the matter.

“Michel?”

“Yes?” he lowered his voice to match her hesitant whisper.

“May I call you Michel?”

Hadn’t she just done so? His grin widened. “Yes.”

“Will you promise me you won’t die and leave me alone again?”

Michel wasn’t certain how to respond to her ridiculous request, but understanding the fear prompting it, he didn’t think this was the time to mention he’d made provisions for her future in the event of just such a contingency. Instead, he reached up to brush a stray silken strand away from her face, watched her face flood with telling color at his gentle touch, and seeing it, understanding what prompted its cause, dropped his gaze to her parted lips. He suddenly realized that this was likely the only opportunity they would have to exchange a private farewell.  If things did not proceed as planned on the morrow, it was likely he would never see her again.  Though he was reasonably confident of the success of his plans, he imagined Raulf and the others were equally confident of their own strategies they had in place in anticipation of the coming confrontation.

“Elena,” he began in a serious tone, but she immediately stopped the flow of half-formed words from his lips when she raised her fingertips to them.

“Don’t,” she pleaded in a suddenly agonized whisper.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say goodbye.  I cannot bear it.  Are you certain I cannot accompany you?  I am a very good rider.  I will promise to stay out of your way.”

Michel kissed the fingers pressed against his lips and shook his head in a gesture of gentle denial.  “You know that is impossible.”

“It’s not fair,” she complained softly, burrowing closer against his chest.

He tightened his arms around her softness curious, asked, “What’s not fair?”

“That you get to determine your own fate and I must remain safely tucked behind and wait for someone to come to me and deliver the news of my future.”

His lips curved and he nodded, acknowledging her point.  “I suppose you are right, it is not fair, but I would not be able to concentrate on winning this battle for our futures if I had to concern myself with your safety while I was in the midst of it.”

He’d said, ‘our futures’, Elena realized breathlessly.  As if they were one and the same. “You didn’t promise me,” she reminded him, suddenly realizing his earlier oversight.

“What did I fail to promise you?”

“You didn’t promise me you wouldn’t die and leave me alone.”

She made no effort to disguise her desperate longing in the glance she raised to his and when Michel’s strong arms tightened around her, drawing her closer, she gloried in the feel of his masculine strength and leaned against him as he lowered his mouth to claim hers.  He didn’t coax her lips apart to allow him access, his tongue demanded and she gave, moaning softly in the back of her throat as the now familiar feelings swamped her.  Familiar, yet not familiar.  There was a new urgency in his kiss that had not been present before.

When his hand cupped the fullness of her breast, she whimpered against his lips and her head fell back to grant his lips uninhibited freedom to trail along her chin, down her throat, impatiently pushing aside the offending barrier of her gown and then dampening her chemise as his mouth closed over her breast through the thin material.

Elena never wanted the glorious feelings coursing through her to stop.  She thought to tell him so, to demand he never let her go, never stop touching her in this intimate way, but she couldn’t catch her breath long enough for the words to form on her lips.

“Elena, love, we must stop.”  Michel’s mouth blazed a trail across her heated flesh to whisper in her ear.

“No.”  The single word of denial was all her scattered thoughts could summon in argument against his intent, and she felt his lips curve upward in a smile against the sensitive lobe of her ear. As if conceding the justness of her position, for a moment he allowed his lips to tease her flesh as he drew a deep breath against the side of her throat, then, with obvious reluctance, moved both hands to rest on her shoulders and set her away from him.

Michel stared down into the passion-glazed eyes she raised to his and wondered at his own recklessness. She was his ward. King Barnabas had placed his young niece in his care, and though it had been his predecessor’s wish he marry Elena, Michel had made no such commitment in his heart or in his mind to the maid.  He had no right to awaken the passion for him he read in her innocent gaze if he did not intend to satisfy it.  Since the only way he could rightfully do so was to marry her, he wondered at his insistence in seeking her out.  For he did not fool himself into believing it was only Elena’s determination not to be parted from him that accounted for the attraction between them.  She affected him as no woman ever had.  Whether it was her youth or innocence, or her desperate need for a champion that tugged at his will, he did not know, he only knew he was beginning to regard her with a possessiveness that went beyond that of a guardian for his ward.  It should have worried him.  She was disrupting all of his carefully prepared plans for the future, none of which included marriage to a maid barely old enough to enter into such a sacred covenant, and one who regarded him with all the love in her pure heart shining from the depths of her eyes as they beheld him.

He realized he could barely recall all of his carefully prepared designs from his previous life and he was once again reminded of his predecessor’s warning, “Once you enter the city your heart will find its true home and you will never be free again.”  Michel had dismissed Barnabas’ prediction as a fanciful longing on the dying king’s part for his successor to love his kingdom as he did, but no longer could he pretend there was no truth in it.  Less and less did his thoughts dwell on a future beyond the rich and fertile lands of Calei. The restlessness that had haunted his spirit and led him to pursue a wanderer’s life, the only one of his brother’s so afflicted, no longer drove him as relentlessly as it once did. 

His visions of the woman who would one day capture and hold sway over his heart the way his mother had bewitched his very rational, very straight-laced Saxon father were no longer fuzzy images of a lady who was at once a combination of his twin’s stunning beauty and bold spirit, and that of his younger sister’s deep and gentle femininity, but now, inexplicably, all of those half-formed dreams seemed more and more to be coalescing into the lovely features of the young maid who was regarding him now with fresh anxiety in her serious glance.

He should be furious at the inevitability of it all, the way fate seemed intent on leading him along on a path of its own choosing.  He’d always been fiercely independent, disregarding the shackles of expectation and conformity with the same ferocity a determined bachelor avoided the bonds of matrimony.  Yet here he stood with the claws of his destiny closing in around him, and the proverbial sword of Damocles hovering over his head and he felt no driving urge to evade the bonds of expectation he sensed from every angle binding his future to that of his grandfather’s kingdom.

He nodded in silent acknowledgment of Barnabas’ cunning, remembering his own careless dismissal of the king’s request that he at least commit to no other until he had met his niece.  Now his memories of every other woman of his admittedly wide experience were slowly fading from his thoughts to be replaced by the pure virtue of the young innocent he was so reluctant to loose from his arms.

“Michel?” Elena whispered hesitantly at his long silence.

“Yes?”  It amused him to hear the anxiety in her voice whenever she addressed him, as if she was afraid he was about to disappear into thin air.

“Have I displeased you?”

He could also admit Elena’s innocent eagerness to please him stroked his masculine ego in a way no other woman’s bold compliments had ever done.  “No, Elena, you have not displeased me, but I have no right to take advantage of your innocence and my position as your guardian to force such intimacies upon you.”

She appeared both stunned and offended by his choice of words, but it was the very real anger he read in her glance that both surprised and intrigued him at the same time.  She pushed away from his embrace and boldly faced him, “I am not the child you insist on seeing me as, nor am I some spineless twit without a mind of her own.  I was willing to face my own death rather than allow Raulf to force his attentions on me and you insult me most grievously by implying that I would accede to yours by the simple virtue of my uncle having appointed you my guardian.”

He was so pleased by her show of spirit, Michel grinned into the furious gaze she was blistering him with.  Elena stamped one foot in frustration at his obvious amusement and Michel only just managed to dodge the clenched fist she aimed at his grinning face.  He laughed outright at her show of temper and clamped his hands over her arms.  Entertained by her efforts to squirm away from his embrace, he drew her closer, showing her without words his superior strength and his intent to have his way.