The Wife Test (27 page)

Then she came back to the table and, with a beaming smile as she settled beside him, gave him more.

“I’ll wait.”

Between the poached fish with the garlic sauce and the civet of venison, she leaned closer and murmured for his ears alone: “In our bed.”

Rattled by both the proposition and its public nature—made in front of his libidinous old father and his father’s unruly and morally suspect offspring—he responded in kind.

“No,” he whispered back … too loudly.

She smiled and ladled out more of the venison onto his bread trencher.

“Oh, but you must have a second helping. There’s plenty to go around.”

He glanced around and saw several faces turned their way, including his father’s. Reddening in spite of himself, he buried his attention in his food. When he looked up, she sent him a secretive little smile. He rolled his shoulders and told himself that she could wait all she wanted … he wouldn’t be there.

When the meal ended and the tables were cleared, he tried to escape, but she blocked his way and insisted he stay to hear Lizabeth play the lute … music being such a high-minded and improving experience for the maids, according to her. One instrument led to several being brought out, the music they produced led to singing, the singing led to dry throats, and the dry throats led to more wine. Then the earl’s daughters pulled the earl out onto the cleared floor and made him dance with them. He pretended to know not one step of a dance, and they laughed and insisted he submit to their instruction. It was an altogether different side of the worldly earl … jesting … playing the fool for his daughters’ amusement.

Hugh, however, was not amused. In fact, he was appalled at having to witness such a spectacle. The earl had little enough dignity, and to watch him gamboling and playing the fool with his daughters … Then in the midst of his judging and distancing himself from his father’s ignominy, Chloe seized his hand and pulled him out onto the floor to dance, and he found himself suffering an all too similar fate, though with a good bit less enjoyment.

His mouth felt like it was coated with goose down as he followed her through turns, steps, and supposedly innocent touches of various body parts. She managed to make even the most casual of contact seem provocative and indecent; her hands roved further and lingered longer than was strictly required by any set of dance movements.

“I won’t be there,” he said under his breath as they came together and turned, clasping each other’s waists.

She behaved as if she hadn’t heard, until they were required to repeat that motion on the other side.

“Yes, you will.”

Another series of steps, a hop, and a turn and they were back together.

“You want to.” She caught his gaze in hers. “I can see it in your tights.”

He stumbled and missed two steps while fighting an overwhelming urge to look down at himself.

Horror descended on him.

Suddenly the entire wretched cosmos was centered in that one notoriously unreliable part of his anatomy. He felt it riding full and snug against his damnable tights, chafing and heating against the wool and—
oh, God
—growing! It was a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more he worried about it the more prominent it became. It was like having a demon planted between his legs … one that was susceptible to women’s wiliest craft … one they could raise at will.

And Chloe of Guibray knew just how to raise that decadent spirit in him.

He gritted his teeth and tried to pretend his body wasn’t in a full-scale revolt against his higher nature. But by the time the song finished and he ushered Chloe straight to the steps that led up to their chamber, everyone in the hall had witnessed his battle—if not its primary manifestation—and guessed that it had to do with his fetching and attentive wife.

He dragged her into their darkened chamber, slammed the door, and turned on her.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Do what to you?” she said, backing up a step.

“You know very well what. Don’t talk to me like that in public again.”

“You would rather I say such things in private?”

“I’d rather you didn’t say such things at all,” he snarled. “It’s indecent.”

“But they’re true. And I only say them to you. How can that be indecent?”

“Dammit, Chloe!” He stalked forward to tower over her. “Stop this.”

She looked up at him without the slightest quailing.

“Stop what? Telling you the truth as I see it? Will not saying it make the skin of your belly quit warming when you’re near me? Will not speaking help you to finally sleep when you finally come to our bed at night? Will it help me to look at you without this fierce longing to feel your body against mine?”

“Chloe …”

“Perhaps you want me to stop reminding you of what it was like when you bedded me on our first night … of how you kissed me all over and suckled my earlobes and nibbled my fingers …”

“I never suckled your … I
know
I never nibbled your fingers!” His voice was choked with horror.

“You did, too. And you whispered my name again and again, you kissed my breasts, and you tickled me with your tongue and made me squirm.” With one step she closed the distance between them, pressing her body against his, adding a potent physical dimension to this tantalizing verbal seduction. Her voice lowered to a sultry rasp.

“Make me squirm again.”

Her heart stopped as she waited for his response. She could feel his decision working its way up through him and prayed it came from something more pliant and susceptible than his spine.

Suddenly his arms clamped around her and his lips descended on hers. With a whimper of joy, she stretched onto her toes to meet his kiss and threw her arms around his neck. She met his kisses hungrily … exploring his mouth in every way she had imagined in these last six days. He groaned approval and began to walk her backward to the bed while being careful not to break that ravishing contact. They pulled garments from each other and sank onto the bed together.

Trembling with both joy and eagerness, she welcomed him in the cradle of her body and gave herself over to the driving heat that engulfed them. He soon joined their bodies and with fierce concentration rode the brink of his own completion to take her to new heights of sensation and pleasure. When he took his release, she felt a curious surge of “almost” that left her nerves tingling and, for all the pleasure she felt, strangely unsatisfied.

When she called his name softly and ran her fingers through his hair, all she got was a heavy, nasal sigh that sounded like a snore. She realized he’d fallen asleep, and warmth bloomed in her chest. He was exhausted. She smiled and gently stroked his hair. There was always next time.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, “next time” became “now.”

She had fallen asleep beside him, with his head on her shoulder, and awakened in the moonlit chamber to the feel of him nuzzling her shoulder and running his hand over her naked hip.

“You see? Marriage does have its compensations,” she said, stretching languidly.

“You won’t be content until you’ve reformed all of my opinions, will you?” he said, dragging his palm in circular motions over the tip of her breast.

“Oh, I think I could be content with less. Especially if it was more of that. Or this.” She reached up to give him a long, succulent kiss. “Or more of this.” She feathered a hand down his front where it splayed across his pelvis and then curled around his hardening flesh.

“More. Oh, yesss,” he groaned.

In a heartbeat he caught her hands in his and was stretching her arms above her head as he slid his body over hers. His kisses provoked a response more quickly this time, as if her desires had not entirely cooled from their previous loving. Arching above her, he teased her body with the purposeful movement of his own against it. Soon she writhed beneath him, both groaning and laughing at her own impatience, insisting that he end this wicked torture.

As he entered her, she almost heard the steam shooting through her veins, then quickly starting to build again. He concentrated his weight between her thighs and soon found the center of her pleasure. Quivering, she met his thrusts and began to direct them, reveling in the now-familiar tension they built in her loins. As the intensity of their loving deepened, she felt herself beginning to rise on a narrowing spiral of pleasure.

Each breath, each kiss, each stroke propelled her higher, further … and finally sent her hurtling through a bright, brittle barrier that shattered in each of her five senses. It was as if she had broken through the limits of her own body, expanded it, transcended it. And suddenly he was there with her, floating free, suffused with pleasure, and intermingled in both body and soul.

For a few moments she wondered if her head or heart had burst … if she were still alive. Slowly her senses cleared, and she was aware of him all around her and of a delicious heaviness in her body. It was like floating in a sea of rich wine. Just as she was succumbing to that marvelous exhaustion, he shifted to the bed beside her and she looked up at him. He was smiling. His eyes were dark-centered rings of golden bronze, glowing with satisfaction, his mouth was curved into a soft smile, and his handsome features were relaxed. It was the most beautiful face she had ever seen.

“Promise me,” she said, snuggling against his chest, “that you’ll let me see that smile someday outside our bed.”

“If you could try to make me this happy
outside
our bed, you would most certainly see it. Now, it’s your turn to promise … that you’ll never tease me like that in public again.”

She gave a laugh that he felt like a hum through the wall of his chest.

“If you continue to make me this happy
inside
our bed, I’ll have no need to resort to such measures.”

His mesmerizing smile broadened.

“Then I promise I shall devote my whole life to it.”

As Chloe drifted into a deep, restorative sleep, Hugh watched her, feeling oddly wakeful despite the fact that his body was replete and utterly at peace. He wanted to absorb her, to savor the wonder of every moment he spent with her. In all his life he couldn’t remember having anything that meant as much to him as she did. She was his wife, his woman, his love … his life. She seemed to understand him better than he understood himself, and—God knew—she was more forgiving of his flaws than he was himself. He thought of the way she arrived at Sennet and didn’t murmur when she was burdened with responsibilities that would have given even the sternest of chatelaines pause. His wretched father had accorded her a respect that was probably unique in his dealings with females. And if loutish Randall of Sennet so honored her, it could only be because the depths of her intellect, character, and spirit were too obvious to miss.

He combed his fingers through her hair and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, thinking how blind he had been at first, how unwilling to see. In his heart he renewed in earnest that casual vow to devote his life to her happiness. His whole life, all of his earthly days … it was a small price to pay for all she was bringing to his life, to their life together.

His whole life, all of his earthly days.

A cooling draft of remembrance washed over him with that phrase, and behind it came a gripping chill of reality. He had just promised her his heart, his devotion, his life. That rash and ill-considered vow suddenly pierced him to the soul. His heart was already promised. His faithfulness, his constancy, and his love had been dedicated long ago … to a very different kind of life … to a life of piety and scholarship and contemplation …

Daybreak found Hugh standing over Chloe’s sleeping form, trembling as he pulled on his garments. His eyes burned for the comfort of tears and his heart pounded as if he were in a race for his life. And according to the things he had been taught for most of his life, he was.

The whole canon of his long-held beliefs had been turned upside down and inside out in just over a fortnight. A lifetime of study and prayer and certainty had been eclipsed by a few short weeks in the company of one tempting and beguiling female.

How could such a thing have happened? How could he have proved to be so weak and vulnerable against the onslaught of doubt and temptation? In his arrogance and pride he had once declared that greatest of biblical patriarchs, Adam, a fool for placing momentary pleasures and passing desires above his duty to God. Now he saw with frightening clarity how such a thing might have happened. He, himself, had just taken a bite from that same apple.

He backed away from the bed, his hands shaking badly and his blood draining from his head to leave him feeling a little sick. He had to get away … had to find a way to make it right … had to recant his abandonment of his sacred obligations. And there was only one place where he could find refuge from the demands of the world and chart a course that would lead him back to the arms of true faith and duty.

That same night, Bromley entered the king’s lamp-lit privy chamber with the captain of the king’s castle guard. His grave expression befitted the news he brought to the king and his closest advisors.

“Our spies, Highness … they found a Frenchman in London … a man with information to sell.”

“What sort of information?” Edward braced as he watched his loyal treasurer grapple with what could only be bad news.

“The sort that says the Duke of Avalon’s daughters … are not his daughters.”

The words caused a pall of silence to fall over the chamber. Edward leaned forward in his chair. “Is there proof of this?”

“Our informer has with him a man who claims to be one of the maids’ uncles.” Bromley scowled. “He charges that the maids are impostors … orphans and excess females sent to the convent out of penury. Some may have been bastards … but they were certainly not the good duke’s.”

There was a long, anxious moment before the king responded.

“I want to see this man with my own two eyes,” Edward declared.

Bromley nodded. “I thought you might.”

Moments later the king and his councillors were shown down the stairs of the round tower and through a heavily guarded doorway, to a sizable underground chamber lined with shelves, crates, and barrels. The two men waiting inside were forced by guardsmen down onto their knees before the king. In the flickering lamplight Edward approached and stood evaluating the pair. One was an aging knight with battle scars on both his outdated armor and his pain-lined face. The other was a younger, more vigorous man with an erect bearing and a solid, muscular build. Bromley indicated that he was Henri Valoir, the informer. Though he wore no armor, Valoir’s hands bore calluses that spoke of a familiarity with blade weapons.

Their story, as told by Valoir, was just as Bromley had related it: the Duke of Avalon had concocted a plan to hold back much of his fortune from the ransom and strike a blow at the English king in one fell swoop. He ordered the abbess of the renowned convent to provide him with maids to adopt and send to Edward in place of coin and goods. He planned to return to France, secure his hidden fortune, and then rally what was left of the local barons to resist Edward’s occupation of his province.

“He will say that the fool king of the English … has wedded his favorites to French
putaines.”
He scowled, searching for an English equivalent. “How you say … draggle-tails … trollops.” He averted his eyes from Edward’s fury. “He wants the English to be … the cause of laughter through all of France.”

Pounding his fist into his hand, Edward paced away and struggled visibly with the betrayal of a man he had just spent the better part of a week entertaining as his guest. Had the canny duke been congratulating himself all the while on the success of a scheme to humiliate his one-time captor throughout France? He strode back to the pair and grabbed Valoir by the tunic.

“Who are you? Why should I believe a word of this?” he demanded.

“I was once a knight in the duke’s garrison. I helped guard his castle and defend his borders. Quiz me on his household and I will prove truthful.” Valoir crossed himself and kissed a small wooden cross hanging around his neck. “He proved as treacherous a lord to me as he was a hostage to you. I was falsely accused of disloyalty and dismissed from his service. There are those in your French lands who do not wish to suffer more than they already have. Fearing what will be done when the duke’s treachery is uncovered, they send me”—he gestured to his companion—“with Jean de Mornay as proof.”

“Who are you?” Edward demanded of the older man.

“A knight, once in the service of the House of Burgundy,” the old soldier declared through the translation of the Duke of Bedford. “Brother to a landed vassal of that province, Charles de Mornay by name. My brother died and his family fell on hard times. His wife, she sent her youngest daughter, Lisette, to the Convent of the Brides of Virtue, hoping they could find a future for her. She is no longer at the convent. I believe Lisette was one of the maids you married to your nobles.”

Edward studied the man’s careworn face and—grimly recalling that one of the maids was indeed named Lisette—made his decision. Turning to Bromley, he ordered, “Send for a clerk and set down in writing all the details this man can recall about the Mornay family and lineage.” Then he looked back to the Duke of Bedford. “Where is Avalon now?”