Rose Bride (2 page)

Nobody replied. His hand reached for hers, and they did not stop him.

‘Madam?’

Dazed by this unexpected change in her fortune, Margerie did not stop to think. She looked up at him gratefully, setting her hand in his. She came to her feet in response to his pull, then tried to draw back her hand.

His fingers tightened on hers, refusing to let go.

Her startled gaze shot to his face. She found herself staring into dark eyes that met hers intently. There was a shadow in his face that called to her, as though this man understood hurt and despair for he had known them himself. His hair was dark too, curled at his temples, thick locks falling almost to his shoulders.

Master Elton spoke as though they were alone together, his voice deep and rich, stirring her in some unfathomable way. ‘I must lock up the storage room,’ he told her, ‘but then I beg you will permit me to escort you back to your chamber. The hour is late and a lady should not be wandering the palace corridors unaccompanied.’

There was a growl of dissent from the watching nobles. Yet to her astonishment none of them challenged the doctor’s right to remove her. Margerie gazed round at them. At any moment she feared to be seized again, and this upstart doctor be dismissed with the threat of a whipping.

Slowly she groped after the truth, though it seemed impossible. These lords were
wary
of him. Yet how was it that a mere physician could have power over men as influential and high-born as these?

Master Elton was still holding her hand, his strong fingers locked intimately with hers. When she did not reply, he raised his eyebrows, watching her with those dark intelligent eyes that seemed to know precisely what she was thinking – and feeling.

She found her courage again, and with it her voice. ‘I . . . I thank you, sir.’

‘My lords, I must beg your pardon for interrupting your sport,’ he said, turning to her attackers. ‘But this lady seems uncomfortable in your company.’

Master Elton drew her out from their silent circle, a look of irony on his face. He bowed to Sir Christopher as the knight shifted to block his way.

‘You look
well
, Sir Christopher. I am glad.’

Sir Christopher’s mouth tightened, as though that soft emphasis had conveyed some special meaning to him. He glared at the doctor sourly. They were about the same height and build, she realised, though the knight was perhaps a shade taller. For a moment the atmosphere was tense in the narrow space, and she feared for her saviour.

Then the knight shrugged and stepped aside, letting them pass.

‘You may go on your way, physician, and take this creature with you,’ Sir Christopher said. His gaze flicked over her with contempt. ‘No man wants soiled goods anyway. Not even for sport.’

Without another word, the physician led her away into the small gloomy chamber from which he had emerged, taking a moment to bar the door behind him in case the king’s men changed their minds.

She looked about the room. There was a high table crowded with bottles and physicians’ instruments, and a small leather-bound volume lying open beside a candle as though he had been reading before he was disturbed. A doctor’s workshop, Margerie thought, glancing at more bottles arranged in a shadowy alcove. She found herself breathing more easily, for she had only narrowly escaped harm.

Glancing at the open page of the book, she saw it was not a doctor’s journal with a list of medicaments, as she had at first assumed.

It was poetry. In Latin.

Master Elton turned from the door and fixed her with a hard look. His casual air had dropped away. ‘Do you have a death wish, madam?’

Margerie flushed angrily. ‘I beg your pardon?’

The physician looked her up and down assessingly, taking in every detail of her flushed cheeks and unbound mass of red hair, then the fine silk gown, her thin-soled leather pumps showing beneath. The bodice sat tight about her breasts, for she had been a girl and narrower in the chest when she last wore it at court, and she saw his gaze linger on the creamy flesh there.

No doubt he was wondering if she was a courtesan. Perhaps even considering if he could afford her services on a physician’s wage. She was used to such unpleasant conversations. But for some reason the thought of this man propositioning her left a bitter taste in her mouth.

‘I do not recall seeing you at court before,’ he commented, ‘so I must assume your foolishness tonight was the result of inexperience rather than a wanton desire to be ravished by those courtiers.’

Her lips tightened at this insult. She wanted to speak her mind, tell him exactly what she thought of his misinterpretation of tonight’s events. But she kept silent. This man had just saved her from what would undeniably have been a rape.

He raised dark eyebrows at her silence. ‘Will you give me your name?’

‘Margerie Croft.’

His eyes narrowed on her face, suddenly fixed and intent. Heat entered her cheeks as she realised her name was known to him. She ought not to be surprised. Everyone at court knew of Margerie Croft, the infamous whore who had taken young Wolf to her bed, then run off to France with another nobleman, an infirm youth who had died without marrying her, leaving Margerie to earn enough for her passage back to England – as a whore, it was whispered by some.

Her eyes met his in sudden anger. Yes, her history was infamous, she thought fiercely. But she was no whore. And never had been one. She had never spoken of those days to anyone, allowing the world to slander her as they wished rather than lower herself to some paltry self-defence. She had her pride.

‘Mistress Croft,’ he said softly, ‘my name is Master Elton. Do you have any idea how dangerous it was to allow yourself to be alone with those men?’

‘You think I
allowed
that to happen, Master Elton? I was summoned by King Henry tonight so he could . . .’ She faltered, seeing the look in his eyes. Caution entered her tone as she finished lamely, ‘So he could speak with me.’

‘I see.’ But his voice had grown cold. She could guess what he was thinking. ‘And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards,’ she repeated, shuddering as she remembered what had followed her abortive interview with His Majesty, ‘they cornered me in one of the royal antechambers. I tried to escape, but they were determined to . . .’

‘Make your better acquaintance?’ he suggested.

‘Punish me.’ Margerie lifted her gaze to his, meeting it unflinchingly. ‘I had displeased the king, you see. So they had little fear of reprisals, whatever they might choose to do to me.’

‘You seem curiously unmoved by that prospect.’

‘Merely resigned to my fate. Men rape women. It is the way of the world.’

Something flickered in that level stare. Contempt? Her temper rose. ‘Sir?’

Turning to a nearby shelf, the doctor began to pack away a row of thin-necked bottles into a cloth bag, checking each stopper and label as he did so, his movements careful and precise.

‘No doubt you find me impertinent, mistress?’

She could not deny it.

‘Forgive me.’ He glanced over his shoulder at her, his smile thin. ‘But your story is, you must admit, a little incredible. What was your crime tonight against His Majesty?’

‘That is my business.’

‘Do you remain silent for your own sake or mine? I assure you that I have no intention of becoming embroiled in this affair. But you must know the king’s ways, as all the world does. Perhaps if you had taken some respectable female companion with you to His Majesty . . .’

She glared at him, nettled by the suggestion that she was to blame, and he shrugged, continuing to pack away his bottles.

‘I gave you my name, sir,’ she pointed out. ‘I am Margerie Croft. Or are you alone at this court in not knowing my reputation?’

‘I know your reputation, mistress.’

Margerie raised her brows in a delicate question as he turned to face her, but the doctor did not elaborate. His stare moved instead from her face to her breasts, small but made more prominent by the tight silk bodice, then her narrow waist and hips, for her height had kept her figure girlishly slender since childhood.

She felt the touch of his gaze on her body as a physical thing, as though he had stroked her with a long cool finger, and her pulse raced, suddenly wild. Her cheeks began to burn. ‘You dare to judge me, sir?’

‘I have said nothing, madam.’

‘Your eyes speak for you.’

Master Elton came close, still gazing on her body as though imagining how she would look naked. That look made her tremble.

‘Do they?’

His voice was curt. She had the impression of tremendous energy held in check, his whole being focused on her in the most disconcerting way. He could not be much older than her, perhaps eight and twenty years of age. Certainly Master Elton was not past thirty. Yet he had the poise and authority of a much older man.

‘You are indeed a beautiful woman,’ Master Elton agreed. ‘Your form stirs a man to lust, and I am a man like any other. But I am not convinced that men must always act upon their desires, especially when restraint would prove the better course. Man’s control over his baser instincts is what separates him from the beasts.’

‘I thought it was our ability to think that makes us superior to the animal kingdom.’

‘Oh, not superior.’ There was a drawl in his voice now, his mouth twisting as the dark gaze lifted to her face. ‘I cannot allow those men who would have raped you to be superior to a beast in any way.’

She was taken aback by his casual insolence towards such powerful men. ‘They were afraid of you, I think,’ she said impulsively. ‘Why?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘I saw no fear in them. I am but a doctor. Why should the king’s men fear me?’

‘I do not know, sir. That is why I asked.’

Her height meant they stood as equals, gazing into each other’s eyes without speaking. She recalled how her body had responded to the touch of his hand, her heart racing as though in fear for her life, and wondered at it.

Since her girlhood she had been left unmoved by the lustful looks and caresses of men who wished to bed her, and had eventually come to consider herself frigid, a creature without passion. Indeed, Lord Wolf – then an untitled youth – had written as much to her after she fled their illicit night together, blaming her for not responding to his love-making.

You must have ice-water in your veins, Margerie Croft, not to have been moved by the heat of my desire.

She had not received that letter for several years, until she had returned from France to her grandfather’s home. Even now though she felt again the shame that had risen in her at Wolf’s insults.

To be passionless, to be cold at heart . . . These were crimes against a woman’s nature, and she knew it. Yet the merest touch of Master Elton’s hand had left her shocked and unsettled. How was this doctor so different from the other men who had tried to seduce her?

She shivered, her gaze dropping.

It was painful to meet those intelligent eyes and guess what Master Elton must be thinking. Her infamous seduction all those years ago meant she was too well known as a wanton for him to hold any other view of her character. And if she continued to look so boldly at this man he would think she wished to warm his bed tonight, instead of the king’s.

‘You asked to escort me back to my chamber,’ she said coolly. ‘Will you hold to that promise, sir?’

‘I have to take these medicaments back to my rooms. I will walk with you to your chamber first.’

‘Are these not your quarters?’

‘No, I lodge in one of the towers. The physicians only use this room when we are summoned to attend His Majesty, as we were earlier tonight.’

That surprised her. ‘You attended the king tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘I cannot discuss it with you, mistress. I am bound by a sacred oath to keep such matters secret.’ Master Elton closed his book of Latin poetry, marking the page with a strip of black silk, and placed it in the cloth bag with his medicaments. Then he took up his bag, and gestured her to the door. ‘It’s late, and the courtiers who attacked you should have gone by now. Shall we go?’

She hesitated, studying her rescuer in a moment of indecision. His features were a shade too strong to be classically attractive, his nose aquiline, his mouth straight and unrelenting, like the hard jut of his chin. His dark hair curled under the physician’s cap, not cut short like most courtiers’ but long enough to brush his broad shoulders. She thought it gave him a very European look, dangerously unconventional. His eyes were impenetrably dark too, deep-set and heavy-lidded, watching her with a hint of the same restless interest she felt for him.

She ought not to find such a man pleasing to look upon. Yet she could not seem to stop staring . . . There was a sensuality about him that made her heart beat faster, her body aware of his in a way she had never been with any man before. Indeed, she could not help wondering what it would feel like to lie beneath that lean body, to have his mouth on hers, to accept him into her body as she had once accepted Wolf.

A night in Master Elton’s bed would be very different from those abortive hours she had spent with Wolf. For she had taken Wolf to her bed on the orders of her mother, whose obsession with her advancement at court had known no limits, and not because she felt any desire for the nobleman.