Scoundrel's Kiss (30 page)

And come dawn, he would kill Fernan.

Chapter 23

She returned to him just before
sunrise, slowly and cloaked in anguish. The tears began ever before she opened
her eyes, dampening the linen of his tunic and setting fire to every
decision—even the ones he had been certain of. Her tears held that power.
As he lay cradling her limp body, he felt stripped and defenseless when once he
had been powerful, confident, unyielding.

Ada sobbed against his chest "What
have I done?"

"Quiet now,
inglesa,"
he
said. "You made a mistake, nothing more."

Her face crumpled and she rubbed fists
over her red-rimmed eyes. "You must be furious with me. I am with
myself."

"Ada, be calm. We knew this
journey would be a difficult one, filled with obstacles."

Gavriel urged her to sit up and away
from him. Relieved to come away from the wall and shift positions, he shook
feeling back into his right arm. But the room was colder without her body
pressed close. She shivered too, and he fetched her cloak to loop around her
shoulders.

"May I have water?" she
asked.

He handed her a mug filled from the
clean water basin and resumed his place on the cot. Ada drank with greedy
swallows. Even that small task left her winded and slumped against the wall.
Her face shone with unnatural paleness, shrouded by the black wool cloak and streams
of her dark hair. Her chapped lips were puffy, the deep pink of raw meat

But her eyes. The snap of vitality and
intelligence peeked out from behind those tired, tired eyes. Despite the
fatigue, she was herself. She was Ada. And he wanted to keep her locked in that
room until she swore never to leave him again.

He froze. What right did he have to
expect any such promises? He had behaved like a madman. Since arriving in
Ucles, he had done everything possible to distance himself from her, from the
temptation she represented.

"Ada, why did you come to see me
last night? Do you remember?"

Her cloudy blue eyes opened wide and
flicked around the room. "Where's Blanca?"

"She went to the cathedral when I
offered to see you through till dawn." He gently cupped her chin.
"Please, Ada. I am as you see me now, not... not how I was last night. Why
did you come to my chamber?"

She scrutinized him, looking
deep—just as he had looked for her, someone dear hiding deep beneath the
terror. "You frightened me," she said. "Do you know that?"

He closed his eyes but his temper
stayed calm. She deserved his humility, not some false display of arrogance to
conceal shame and injured pride. She had returned from that dark place, as he
had. Simply seeing the life in her expression, not that numb and vacant
pleasure, stripped him of pretense.

"Yes, I frightened you," he
said. "I know, and I apologize. I could have harmed you. Not because I was
angry, but because I didn't want you to see me. Not like that"

She bowed her head. "I didn't want
you to see me either. Did Blanca tell you?"

"She did."

They sat facing each other on the cot.
They were not strong enough for teasing and laughter, not when hurt and
disappointment were easier to expect, easier to deliver. Her expression as lost
as he felt, Gavriel pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Why did you do it?" she
asked.

"Penance."

"Surely, God has decreed nothing
of the sort. He asks for prayer and pleas for forgiveness, good works—not
mutilating your body. Did Pacheco command you to do this?"

"Yes." His voice sounded as
if he spoke from another room, distant and hollowed. "When we returned
from Yepes, he instructed me to make amends for the violence I had done. He
knew of my broken vows, perhaps even of you and I."

"But Gavriel, you're no longer a
slave."

Raising his face to the ceiling, he
released a shuddering breath. "Why did you come to me last night?"

"I brought the poppy pods,"
she said, her words breathy. "I'd hoped you would help me discard
them."

Failure struck him in the chest. She
had set aside her pride, seeking his help. He turned on the cot and knelt,
taking her hands in his. The oil wick had burned low and cast deep shadows over
her grief-stricken face.

"Instead you found a monster, not
an ally.
Inglesa,
forgive me. I don't—" His voice went
hoarse. He shook his head. "I don't know how to make this right, for you
or me."

"Neither do I."

She had asked if he would be gone long.
No,
inglesa.
Not long.

Gavriel strode through the corridors as
sunlight frightened away the dreariness of the previous night. Never had
darkness stretched across so many hours, but now the day fairly glowed with the
vitality of spring.

Ada had come to see him because she
needed his help. The blunt truth of his failure knocked behind his eyes. He
stepped out of the monastery and squinted against the sun. Nothing had changed,
but as he strode around the training grounds to the distant fields, Gavriel
could find no part of himself left untouched by previous weeks' events.
Untouched by Ada. He had breathed her in, there by the riverside, and now she
invaded his thoughts and permeated his pores, intoxicating him like the drug
she craved.

The drug she would always crave.

When she only had herself to harm, she
would never find a reason to stop. He had learned as much about himself last
night, clutching his flogger and standing over Ada's hunched body. He had
nearly struck her, the shame and pain of his ritual taking control of his brain
and his limbs. Only some deeper feeling had stayed his hand, one more
frightening to consider.

He found Fernan at the edge of the
field, chatting with one of the young canonesses, a pretty girl of Blanca's
age. She blushed and ducked her head. Her soft laughter eased across the newly
planted fields like a breeze.

"Fernan, I must speak with
you."

The canoness fled before another word
was spoken. Fernan watched her go, his wistful face in profile and his
shoulders tight. "I know why you're here," he said.

Gavriel admired that much, at least;
Fernan refused to take the coward's way.

"Why did you give her that
poison?"

"I cannot say," Fernan said,
facing him with the poise of a nobleman, one of authority and bearing. Every
hint of his customary humor had disappeared.

Gavriel narrowed his eyes, seeing the
ridiculous buffoon as he never had. "What can you say?"

"You'll never be permitted to join
the Order, and if she remains here, Ada will not be permitted to recover. Her
life is in danger."

"From whom? I must know."

Fernan assessed him with a calm, aloof
gaze. A trace of his ironic smile twitched his lips. "You care for
her."

Gavriel hesitated but could not lie.
"Yes."

"Then get her free of this
place."

"And you? Shouldn't you leave as
well?"

"I have reasons to stay, the same
reasons that prohibit me from revealing all." He looked into the morning
sun and sighed, appearing suddenly older than his twenty years. "You came
here to punish me, yes?"

"Yes."

"The penalty for beating a fellow
Jacobean is harsh, and yet you would do this for her. I wish... well, if I had
been—no matter now." Despite his strange calm, the younger, smaller
man glanced at Gavriel's fists and blanched. "And now?"

Hesitation made lead of his muscles,
numb and heavy. "You deserve all I can mete."

"Yes, I do. And for both of our
sakes, it needs to be done."

Understanding blossomed in his mind.
Whoever had induced Fernan to give Ada the poppies likely expected Gavriel to
retaliate. To do otherwise could offer proof that Fernan had confided.

They expect me to behave like an
animal.

But he had been ready to. For Ada. And
because that animal lurked inside him, awaiting any excuse.

"Whoever does this to
us—they know us well," Gavriel said quietly.

"And why not?" He seemed to
force a shrug. "We're the imbeciles who offer him confession. Might as
well dictate a list of our faults and the means of best manipulating us."

Pacheco.

The taste of copper tainted his tongue.

Fernan nodded only once. His blue gaze,
a pale pretender to Ada's deeper blue, followed Gavriel with unnerving clarity.
"Now, are you the sort of man who can convincingly beat another without
provocation?"

Images of Ada sprawled on the floor of
her chambers jumped to the fore. Looking into her eyes had been like staring
into a thick fog, obscuring all she was. She had cried against his chest, the
defenses they painstakingly rebuilt—destroyed.

"No, Fernan. The question is, are
you the sort of man who can endure such a beating?"

The tapping of Ada's boot heels on the
flagstones matched the spiky anxiety of her heartbeat. She paced along the
corridor in front of Gavriel's room. Evening shadows penetrated the dry quiet
of the western wing. After enduring a sleepless day in her room, body aching,
bruised from the inside out, she fought to regain control of her life, herself,
for just a single moment.

A persistent itch lodged just under her
skin and at the back of her throat. That one taste...

She had slipped. Now, finding another
taste dominated her attention, except for thoughts of Gavriel and what he had
done to Fernan. Blanc a had come to her, furious and confused. Ada's own
confusion had done little to provide them with answers.

Pieces fell into place like rain. His
solitude, his need for discipline and answers, and his uncanny understanding of
her suffering. Gavriel hurt himself as deeply and as terribly as she did with
opium, only his release was physical pain. No wonder he flinched whenever she
touched him and why gentleness set him on edge.

She collapsed against the wall, the tiny,
isolated world of the monastery spinning around her. This was a realm of Hell,
surely, a place in which she was trapped, perhaps forever. If she managed to
leave when Jacob returned, she would never escape the strangling blackness of
her own mind. To cure the nightmares, she had found opium. To cure the opium,
she had relied on Gavriel. But the three tortures converged until every wisp of
herself had gone missing.

Forehead pressed against the cool
stones of the wall, she breathed through her mouth to stem the rising bile.
Excuses that sounded perfectly logical sided with an infant's wailing cry for
satisfaction, working in tandem against her better judgment. This was her life.
This was her future, until her mind collapsed and she succumbed again.

But first she lost the fight against
her nausea. She retched, thankful at least she had not yet taken her evening
meal.

"Ada?"

The door to Gavriel's room was open and
he stood at the threshold. She breathed his name. He came to her and knelt in
the corridor, his arm around her, protective. She remembered their morning by
the river, lying safely in his embrace.

Never again. He had made that clear in
words, yet he insisted on behaving as her champion. No matter his initial
motives, his attention and care held the rich flavor of caring. Genuine caring.
And she was a fool for thinking as much.

"Inglesa,
what
happened?"

She caught the censorious look on his
face and thought better of trying to lie. "I'm unwell. The tincture, I'm
afraid."

"Ada, have you taken anything
more?"

The heat and wood smoke scent of him
could soften the hardest souls, and she had no such strength. Only anger.
"I've taken nothing, which is the difficulty. I—I want more. You
knew I would. I knew."

His eyes, filled as always with the
hunger he would rather deny than indulge, lingered on her mouth. "You
struggle with this," he said. "In your mind, you know what is
right."

She spat against the wall, another wave
of nausea boiling in her stomach. "Do not lecture me, novice."

"But your struggle is a welcome
one. At least you know the right way, even if you don't want to follow
it."

"Is that what you tell
yourself?"

"Come inside " he said,
pulling her none-too-gently to her feet. "You'll upset everyone."

She tried to glare at him, but her
attention caught on the smooth, corded length of his neck. "My first
consideration, of course."

He closed the heavy oaken door behind
them, the air in his room cool and still. All evidence of the scene she had
encountered the night before—the dim candlelight, Gavriel bared and
bleeding—was gone. The sun dipped low beyond the narrow window. Pure,
clean breezes from the spring evening blew in with the shadows.

And the flogger lay cut into pieces at
the foot of his cot.