Seduced by Grace (13 page)

David, nursing a beaker of watered wine, grew more uneasy with every passing minute. The storm troubled him little, but he did not care for the idea of Marguerite and Astrid remaining alone in the chamber in the upper reaches of the castle. Anything could happen in this semidarkness with the storm’s roar to cover the sound.

The king had not gone hunting that morning, and the nobles, courtiers and men-at-arms who traveled with him were at loose ends, not to mention those that had arrived with Halliwell or were attached to the castle. His own men would not ordinarily trespass for fear of reprisal from their leader, but his injury made their conduct less certain. All these bored and randy men were free to roam the place at will, and though most would behave with propriety in the king’s presence, there were others who felt themselves privileged, above the rules that applied to lesser men.

There was also at least one who must feel certain he could escape the consequences of whatever he might do. He had paid to have a man killed, after all, and not been caught. At least, he had not been caught yet.

David was just opening his mouth to ask Oliver to fetch Marguerite and Astrid to the great hall when he saw them. They seemed to glow, to walk in mysterious and ethereal magic, though that was only the blue-white throb of lightning behind them and, just possibly, the gleam in Marguerite’s eyes.

A rash of goose bumps prickled across his shoulders and down his arms. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck while his heart tripped in his chest before surging into a faster beat. The need to sweep her up in his arms and carry her far away from all the men who turned to stare at her was an internal fury more powerful than any storm. He wanted to strip her naked, toss off his own clothing and fall into bed with her while the heavens raged and the rain lashed the roof. And if he did, if he had her in his arms, he wouldn’t care if God’s
own paradise blew inside out and the world drowned around them.

“Ah,
sì,
” Oliver said, his voice a little thick, “she is fair and fine, all right, your lady.”

It was one of heaven’s miracles, David thought with strained detachment, that he didn’t tear out his squire’s tongue. Instead, he turned a stare upon him that was colder than the draft that whipped around their ankles. “Wine,” he said in a voice like the honed edge of a sword. “Find a serving wench and have it brought, and fruit as well if any is to be had. Then see if you can recall how to act in the company of a lady.”

The last was a mistake, of course. Oliver, upon his mettle, became exceedingly deferential as Marguerite and Astrid joined them. He was also charming, encroaching and admiring, saying everything a woman might want to hear. He fetched and carried as if to serve was his life’s most intense pleasure, all while keeping up a stream of small talk that mixed bits of salacious gossip with a running disparagement of the gowns, veils, girdles and jewelry of the ladies, also the hats, doublets and hose of the gentlemen. He called attention to his own ensemble which included a cloth turban that could be rearranged to form a hood, a striped doublet and parti-colored hose, red on one leg and yellow on the other. That it made David’s own gray-blue doublet and darker blue hose seem dull by comparison was his cross to bear.

“Horse’s rear,” Astrid was heard to murmur to herself after a particularly pointed comment about how difficult it was for a man to care for hair, such as his wild black
curls, that must be crushed under a metal coif while on campaign.

David, made all too aware of his own sweat-streaked mane, unwashed since before he was knifed, could only agree.

At least the two females were distracted from the storm.

“Milady,
cara mia,
” the Italian was saying while taking Marguerite’s hand that lay on the table where they sat, playing with her fingers, “tell us again why you are unwed, if you would be so kind. No, no, not of this Graces curse, for that is of a great stupidity. We would know if you scorn to be a wife, mother of a man’s sons.
Sì,
and if it comes from some fear in your heart of a man’s desires, or if it’s only that the men you have met are all imbeciles who cannot see your worth.”

The query was too personal by half, this David knew well. He should stop it, could stop it with a single word. Yet he remained silent that he might hear an answer worth knowing.

“You are impertinent, sir,” Marguerite told Oliver in cool accents.

“True, but what would you? He who asks nothing receives the same.”

“I have no fear.”

That much, David could have told his friend. Marguerite feared nothing, nor had she ever.

“You have no trust, either, or so it appears,” the Italian returned in idle comment.

Her eyes narrowed. “I trust where it is earned.”

“As with our good David.” Oliver looked thoughtful.
“But who else? Your brothers-in-law, mayhap, Braesford and this Scotsman?”

“Dunbar, my sister Cate’s husband. Yes, those two.”

“And our good king Henry?”

“Naturally.”

Her hesitation before she spoke was so slight only he might have noticed, or so David hoped as he felt tightness invade his chest.

“Naturally,” Oliver agreed with great smoothness and a shallow dip of his head. “Such a small number. You will note I don’t count myself among them.”

He paused to allow her to refute it, but Marguerite did not avail herself of the opportunity. “Why is that, pray?” she asked instead.

“I feel it here.” He clutched his doublet over his heart. “Your judgment has been tainted by the small termagant who serves you, I suspect, though what I’ve done to earn her dislike is more than I can see.”

Astrid crossed her arms over her chest and twitched a tiny foot that did not reach the floor. “Other than insult me, abuse me and use me for your amusement?”

“But I don’t ignore you,” Oliver answered with great gentleness, “or stare above your head.”

Astrid’s face turned red and she swung around, putting her back to him.

“As I was saying, such a small number,” Oliver went on, turning back to Marguerite. “And none of them available as a husband. If you would be wed, you will have to seek with a wider net.”

“Who says I want a husband?”

“Now there is the question, is it not? But women want children, most of them, and matters have been so
arranged that a lady has scant choice except to wed the man who may give them to her. Now if you were not of the nobility…”

“What? I could have all the children I please, with whomever I please?”

David, watching her face, breathed hard through his nose. Though he honored her right to choose, the idea of it made his hackles rise like those of a rabid dog.

“Well, not that,” Oliver hedged.

“I thought not,” she took him up at once. “What is the difference, then, between being ward of a king and having a yeoman father who would trade one off for a sheep meadow? Not a great deal, when the bed curtains are closed.”

Oliver looked flummoxed by the picture she painted. David was more attuned to the bitterness in her voice. The truth of what she said was obvious enough, but he had not realized she felt it so keenly.

“She has you there,” he said with a twist of humor to his mouth as he watched his squire. He also noted that Marguerite appeared immune to the Italian’s smiles, paid no attention to the way he was fondling her hand. Her lack of response was a source of secret amusement, secret pleasure.

That he was inclined to slice off his friend’s hand at the wrist was another matter altogether.

Reaching out, he took Marguerite’s fingers into his own possession. They were cool and slender, almost fragile as he enclosed them in the warmth of his hands.

“That may be,” Oliver said on a sigh, though he recovered in the same instant. “But all the more reason to look around you for the man you want, milady. It is
to your advantage to choose first, and then beguile him so completely that he has no idea in his head except to become your husband.”

Astrid slewed around on her bench. “And you know exactly how she should go about this beguilement, I suppose.”

“Yes,” the Italian said simply.

“Jackanapes.”

“Ah, my little love,” Oliver crooned, “you repeat yourself with these insults. There is hope for me yet.”

Astrid turned to her mistress. “Would you listen to him? Would you?”

Marguerite lifted a brow. “You think I should? Or do you feel I shouldn’t?”

“Hah! You are curious. I can see it.” The small serving woman turned on David’s squire, waving with great extravagance. “Very well, let us have your wisdom, O Lord of Seduction.”

He leaned toward her, allowing his voice to drop to a whisper as he answered, “For a man, there is no greater lure than a sweetly shaped and unadorned female.”

“A naked female, you mean!” Astrid shrilled. “I knew you would say so! I knew it!”

Oliver spread his hands, his face a study in male truth, though his mustache tilted up on one side. “What else?”

God’s teeth, but he should have stopped him at the start.

It was too late to think of that now. David’s fingers closed around Marguerite’s as the image of her, adorned only by the shimmering, golden-brown veil of her hair, bloomed in his mind. The very personification of temp
tation, she appeared for him alone, stepping delicately through the storm-tinted darkness, lovely beyond comprehension, and gloriously, deliberately naked, smiling with mystery and promise in the darkness of her eyes.

Curse the Italian for being so vividly graphic.

Curse him a thousand times for being right.

N
aked…

If a naked female was what men were least likely to resist, Marguerite thought, then it might be worth trying. Well, and if she could believe David would be so easily swayed by the sight of unclothed female flesh.

Would he push her away and leave her, as he had this morning, if she were in a state of nature? The need to find out was near irresistible.

His control was formidable. Would it survive such a test?

Oliver seemed to think any naked female would do for a man, that yielding flesh and what he might do with it was all that mattered. What of the face, the mind, what a woman was inside? Did these things mean nothing? Was it all about the urge to shove one body part into another until one of them, usually the man from what she could glean, was satisfied? Or was it that coupling roused men to loving affection, as she had also heard? What a strange and cruel arrangement on the Creator’s part, that women needed affection before the ultimate intimacy, while men needed the intimacy before they could feel affection.

“It seems to me this naked female would be in a fine way to having a baby and no husband,” Astrid said, her piping scorn interrupting Marguerite’s thoughts, “for what man will tie himself forever to a female willing to give herself without it?”

“Sì,”
Oliver said with a devil’s gleam in his eyes, “but as it now stands, a man must tie himself to a female without knowing what she looks like naked, or whether he’ll enjoy the bedding.”

“Oh, aye,” the small serving woman agreed at once. “But what you forget is that it’s men who would have it this way, as they make the rules.”

“The clergy,” David said with a trace of laughter in his voice.

“Men who never marry,” Oliver agreed, his voice doleful.

Marguerite joined the round of low laughter mixed with rue, but tucked the thought away in the back of her mind in case it might prove useful.

The thunder and lightning rumbled away toward the north, but the rain continued. Its damp chill permeated everything, making the fire that burned so bright on the great hearth feel like a benediction. Astrid, being closer to the floor where the air currents shifted, complained of being cold. Oliver offered to escort her to the chamber above for her cloak, and the two of them departed on this errand. In their absence, David suggested he and Marguerite stroll around the outer edges of the room to warm their blood. As anything seemed better than sitting in silence, she stood and took the arm he offered.

They were not the only ones who felt the need to promenade. David bowed to first one and then another,
as did Marguerite. A few words were exchanged here and there, snippets of news and gossip and comments on the king’s absence from the hall. It seemed Henry was shut up with dispatches, which had arrived from London. They had been brought by courier. At sometime in the past days, this messenger had arrived in company with an ambassador of some description. His addition along with outriders and a good dozen mercenaries from across Europe, had filled the hall to capacity.

It was only as Marguerite and David circled three-quarters of the way about the hall that the crowd thinned, leaving them private enough for speech between them. Marguerite searched her mind for something to say, but found little she and David had not already discussed during his convalescence. Braesford Hall, her sisters, their husbands, her nieces and nephews had all been accounted for and their more embarrassing or exciting stories told. She was left with nothing except niggling concern for her patient. His wound was healed enough that he had dispensed with bandaging, and his headache and distorted vision had departed, but he was not yet back to full strength.

“Would you prefer to return to the chamber?” she asked with a quick glance at his set features. “You have been away from your bed for some time now.”

“I seem to be less sore while being about. More, I would not have you return too soon to confinement with me.”

He sounded distracted, she thought, as if she was not the only one whose thoughts had been busy elsewhere. “It hardly matters as I have no duties otherwise.”

“Surely there are things you would rather do?”

“What? Needlework? The light is much too dim. Besides, we settled how I feel about the art.”

A smile came and went across his face. “So we did.” He picked up her left hand and spread her fingers, turning them this way and that.

“What are you doing?”

“Searching for needle pricks,” he replied, his lashes shielding his expression. “Ah, there.”

The prick was on the end of her middle finger, one received as she stitched the new shirt he wore, made to replace the one lost in the knife attack. He lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the tiny spot before flicking it with his tongue.

Her arm jerked as if she had been stung by an eel. Immediately, he took the end of her finger into the wet heat of his mouth, drawing upon it with gentle suction.

The tender yet grainy surface of his tongue as it moved upon her sensitive fingertip sent fluttering delight along her arm. It spread through her with the intoxication of strong wine, making her feel light-headed. She walked as if by rote, barely aware of where she moved or who was around her. The hall might have been empty except for her and the man whose warm grasp entrapped her.

That was, until a trilling cry came from a few feet in front of them.

“Sir David! I heard you were in the hall, but had abandoned hope of seeing you this evening!”

The voice, light and rather childish in its breathless delight, belonged to a petite blonde woman. Resplendent in palest aqua-blue to match her eyes, she gleamed with
gems set in heavy gold, especially in girdle-draped hips as slender as one of Henry’s white hounds. She fluttered forward with her veil of finest silk swirling behind her and her arms outstretched as if she might fly away if not caught and held.

David released Marguerite in time to take the lady’s two hands. He spread them wide, though whether to prevent her from clutching at him or to better admire her charms was impossible to say.

“Comtesse,”
he said, “I am all amazed. I thought you fixed at Charles’s court.”

The blonde made a moue of distaste. “My dear husband, the
comte,
was persuaded to act as liaison between our Charles and your king Henry. Naturally, I could not allow him to make this journey alone.”

“Naturally.”

Was that irony in David’s tone? Marguerite could not be sure. Glancing beyond the
comtesse,
she saw a round-faced and rather pompous man with thinning brown hair. His rotund shape strained the seams of a short doublet that was liberally decorated with gold lace in the French style. He bowed in distant acknowledgment, but made no effort to join them.

“We arrived in London only to discover your Henry away upon the chase, this so important hunt. As the
comte
and I adore such exercise,
voilá,
we are here. But you,
cher!
I thought you determined never to set foot on English soil again.” The Frenchwoman pulled David’s hands toward her, pressing them to her breasts that swelled in rosy curves from her tight bodice.

Marguerite, watching the byplay, was struck by sudden aversion to the excitable and bejeweled
com
tesse
. How very odd. She was usually more measured in her likes and dislikes.

“Matters change,” David answered, disentangling himself as he turned to present the lady. “Lady Marguerite, permit me to make known to you an acquaintance of some years standing, Celestine, the Comtesse de Neve. We met in Paris, she, the
comte
and I, at the court of the young Charles VIII.”

Marguerite said everything that was proper, but could not be surprised when the
comtesse
barely acknowledged the introduction. Nor could she prevent herself from wondering if the
comtesse
had been one of the French ladies who had taught David how to make love to a woman in all the diverse ways he had mentioned. The roguish glances she sent him from under her lashes made it appear all too likely. “
La,
what days of joy we passed together,” Celestine said, touching his arm, then wrapping her fingers around it. “My heart smiles at the memories. The dancing and merriment, the fetes, the fury of the tournaments. Do say you recall!”

“Yes, of course.”

David was polite enough, but little more than that. Still Marguerite could not help envisioning this merriment at the bright and rich French court. Had David seen the exquisite
comtesse
naked there? Had he?

“And then,
quelle horreur,
the first thing I hear when the
comte
and I arrive at this wild retreat is news of a grievous wound suffered by the Golden Knight. My eyes assure me this was a gross exaggeration, yet you have not been seen until now. Are you quite well again? Will you ride out on the hunt promised for the morrow?”

There was a challenge in the woman’s heart-shaped face, Marguerite thought. Toward what end she could not imagine, but she longed to answer her quick, amused questions with a resounding negative.

“I am well, as you see,” David answered in grave assurance, “and will naturally join the king in whatever capacity he commands.”

“Excellent. I long for this chase with you at my side, for there is little other entertainment in this great stone pile.” The
comtesse
turned to Marguerite. “And you,
chère?
Will you be joining us?”

It was the last thing Marguerite wanted, especially as the rain continued to pound on the hall’s high roof, sluicing from its eaves into the inner court. If it continued, the hunt would be cold, wet, muddy and miserable.

“Why not?” she inquired with her most genial smile.

“Marguerite, I don’t believe…” David began.

“I am as fit as you, I feel sure.”

How he might have answered that was unknown, for Oliver returned then. His face was grim as he walked up to them, the look in his dark eyes distinctly wary as they rested upon the
comtesse
. The lady, for her part, acknowledged his bow with the brief nod one might bestow on a servant.

“Lady Marguerite,” Oliver said, turning to her, “Astrid asked that I tell you she still feels cold, and means to seek her pallet for the night. She awaits you in Sir David’s chamber, but prays you will not cut short your evening to join her there.”

The brows of the
comtesse
climbed her low forehead almost to her hairline. Speculation appeared in her pale blue eyes as she stared from Marguerite to David, and
then back again. “A thousand pardons if I misunderstood,” she said with a brittle smile. “I had not heard of a marriage.”

“No,” David said before she could go on.

“No,” Marguerite said at the same time. “It is a temporary arrangement at the king’s order.”

“How very intriguing.”

“A matter of caring for his wound,” Oliver put in, his voice smooth yet freighted with such suggestion he might as well have proclaimed Marguerite to be David’s concubine. “You heard of it?”

“We were speaking of it just now,” the
comtesse
said with biting precision.

“A vicious thrust, it was,” the Italian went on. “It’s a thousand wonders he survived. A lesser man would not have done.”

“Oliver,” David said in warning.

“The truth is the truth.” The Italian turned back to the
comtesse
. “How long did you say you have been in residence?”

“Oh, some days now. We arrived not long after this competition began in which you, Sir David, must have been injured. Though I feel sure the contests cannot have been as thrilling as the tournaments of France, I am sorry to have missed the excitement.”

Marguerite had little to say to a female who could speak of the mock battle of tournament as mere entertainment. These brutal affairs took place more often on the continent than in England. The thirty years of the War of the Roses had so decimated the noble families of England that people had lost their taste for unnecessary fighting, unnecessary bloodshed.

“I am astounded that I’ve not seen you about,” Oliver said to the
comtesse
.

“Oh, I picked up a fever on the journey from London, so went straight to bed on our arrival.” Celestine gave a light laugh. “Picture me shivering and quaking in misery, as much the invalid as Sir David, I promise you. The
comte
quite feared for my life. But the chatelaine, Lady Joan, was a tower of strength, quite literally. Is she not a tall one? And now I am quite well again, as you see.”

“You are to be congratulated,” Marguerite said shortly. “Now you must excuse me while I see to my serving woman. I fear Astrid has overtaxed her strength, running up and down during these days just past. Or could be the fever you brought with you is now among us.”

She half expected David to join her, but he did not. In all fairness, it would be less than polite for him to desert the lady when she had just sought him out. Oliver, it seemed, was back in his position as David’s guard, for he stood alert and pugnacious at his side, with not the slightest move to offer himself as escort. Marguerite moved off with only her own thoughts for company.

It was a relief to be away, she told herself. She had no need of either man to walk with her. The way to the chamber was not overly long, just across the hall, up the great stone staircase and along a corridor or two. To be alone and able to let down her guard was a rare luxury. She was also perfectly willing to admit to being bone weary and eager for her own pallet.

She caught a glimpse of Lord Halliwell from the corners of her eyes when she was within striking distance
of the stairs. A few more steps and she could disappear up them before he noticed her. She was not certain of outdistancing him, however, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught in some dim stairwell or corridor lit only by a single smoking torch. She kept her steady pace.

“My dear Lady Marguerite,” the nobleman called out. “What felicity to see you again after this long absence. Where do you fly in such a hurry? Does your Golden Knight await your coming?”