Almost Innocent (24 page)

The two women left their tasks and hastened to answer the summons. “Escort your lady to her chamber and put her to bed,” he directed. “Tend her well. Her condition ill fits her for a night’s vigil.”

“Yes, lord.” The two curtsied. “I will prepare a bowl of white bread and curds,” Erin said. “Come, my lady.”

Even had Magdalen wished to continue the argument, it was inconceivable that she do so in the presence of her women. Magdalen went with them without a backward glance, and Guy stood reflectively, regretting his flash of harshness. He understood why she had wished to discharge her responsibilities, and he gave her credit for it. If she had not been pregnant, he would have encouraged her, but suddenly she had become acutely vulnerable in his eyes, the focus of all his fears, the living reminder of his helplessness in the face of Gwendoline’s agonized wasting. He would not lose Magdalen to the inherent perils of womanhood, not if
extra vigilance and care could ensure her health and safety.

Magdalen said little as Erin and Margery put her to bed, hearing but not responding to their excited chatter and speculation as to the night’s battle and present conditions in the town. The women put her silence down to fatigue, and in truth she was not sorry to sink into the feathered softness of her bed, her belly soothed with the bowl of curds and white bread sweetened with honeycomb. The sun shone through her casement onto her pillow, but when Erin went to draw the hangings around the bed, she told her to leave them open. There was something pleasant and comforting about lying in warmth and softness with the bright security of daylight and the ordinary sounds of castle life reaching her in muted busyness.

It was midafternoon when she awoke with a wonderful sense of well-being, her body warm and lethargic, her limbs heavy with relaxation. The sun still shone, and she could hear the call of the bugle from the garrison court sounding the change of sentries. Sitting up, she reached for the bell that would bring her women to her.

“Ah, you are awake, my lady.” Erin bustled over to the bed bearing a tray. “I have brought you broth and a manchet of bread. You need to keep up your strength. My lord says we are to have the most particular care for you.”

Magdalen remembered for the first time her grievance of the morning. She sighed. It was clearly going to be as bad if not worse than she had feared. “My lord is overly concerned,” she said, taking the tray. “I would have you temper his instructions with common sense.” She sipped appreciatively at the broth, rich with oxtail.

“My lady, I dare not,” Erin said candidly. “He was most precise in his instructions. He bids you attend him in his study when you are risen,” she added, going over to the wardrobe. “Which gown will you wear?”

Magdalen considered. “Are the knight travelers still with us?”

“Aye, my lady, but my lord has given order that he and the guests will sup alone in the great hall this even.”

“Then it matters little what gown I wear,” Magdalen said, a shade tartly. Lord de Gervais clearly intended that she should spend the remainder of the day and evening in restful seclusion.

Dressed in a plain gown of apple-green linen, a simple braided girdle at her waist, she took the public corridor to the lord’s study.

Stefan opened the door at her knock. “I bid you good day, my lady.” He bowed.

“Good day, Stefan.” She smiled at the lad, who was no more than twelve. “You acquitted yourself well in the fighting last night, I understand.”

Stefan blushed. It had been his first engagement, and he was still unsure whether the heart-stopping terror he had felt for one dreadful moment marked him forever as an irredeemable coward.

“You may leave us,” Guy de Gervais said. He was standing by the hearth, one arm resting on the carved mantel, one foot on the andiron. He smiled at Magdalen as she stepped into the room. Stefan closed the door behind him.

“You slept well?” He beckoned her over to him.

“Yes, I thank you, my lord.” She came to stand in front of him.

He took her face between his hands, examining it carefully, running a fingertip beneath her now unshadowed eyes. “You are angry with me, pippin,” he said, still holding her face.

Magdalen found to her surprise that she was, if not angry, definitely annoyed. “I understand you would sup alone with your guests this even.” Her tone was stiff.

He nodded. “I did not receive the impression that
you enjoyed their company last night. I thought to relieve you of it today.”

A tinge of color appeared on her cheekbones. “Was that the only reason?”

“What other should there be?”

“I had thought perhaps you would recommend I spend the evening in my bed,” she said. “You seem to feel it is the best place for me for the next six months.”

“Ah, Magdalen!” He couldn’t help laughing and bent to kiss the aggrieved pout from her mouth. She responded as always without reservation, utterly direct and without artifice, her annoyance slipping from her as if it had never been.

He held her against him, feeling the warm throbbing life of her, so precious and so fragile, even as he felt her power, the paradoxical power of the same womanhood that rendered her vulnerable. He drew back from her.

“You must indulge me, sweetheart. I was peremptory this morning and I will try not to be so again, but I will not permit you to take any risks with your health at this time.”

Magdalen sighed and shook her head in resignation. She loved Guy de Gervais and would not cause him pain. If she must submit to his excessively solicitous protection to secure his peace of mind, then she supposed she would do so.

“I shall expect more of your company, my lord, if I am to be deprived of my usual pursuits. If I must sit sewing fine seams instead of going abroad, then you must find the means to entertain me.”

Her mouth curved in a smile of such invitation and promise it would deprive a man of breath, and Guy de Gervais was aware again of the uneasy sense of bewitchment, of losing himself, his direction, the core of his soul in the magic she conjured. For a minute, he wanted to fight it, but it was only a minute . . . and the surrender was as sweet as he had known it would be.

C
HARLES D
’A
URIAC SAW
the commanding edifice of the Castle de Bresse long before the castle’s inhabitants were aware of the approach of the party. Apart from the cooks, laundresses, chaplains, and general attendants necessary for comfortable travel, the company consisted of the Sieur d’Auriac, three knights banneret of his household, their squires and pages, and a small troop of mounted archers. Enough men to ensure their protection on the journey but not enough to appear threatening—just sufficient for a courtesy visit to a kinswoman.

He drew rein, looking across the plain to his destination. It was early afternoon, but the December sky was lowering, promising an advanced dusk. They could not travel beyond dusk, and he was trying to decide whether to hasten the pace now and knock upon his cousin’s gates in the exigency of travelers about to be benighted, or whether he should seek lodging from the next hostelry and make a ceremonial arrival in the morning.

On the whole, he favored the latter course as having more grace and consequence. But against that he must weigh his overweening desire to see his cousin again. Would she be as he remembered? Would he feel again the murky depths of a serpentine lust when he looked into those gray eyes, superficially like his own but eyes like her mother’s, eyes to draw a man to perdition; that full passionate mouth, the lips that he would crush like
ripe strawberries beneath his own mouth; the supple body, soft yet hinting of a writhing promise . . .

No, he would wait. The decision made itself even as his body hardened under the mental indulgence of lust. Too precipitate an arrival might give the wrong impression, and he was not prepared to put a foot wrong. Too much was at stake.

His troop received with relief the information that they were to stop for the night at the next monastery, convent, or hostelry offering adequate lodging. The journey from Toulouse to Picardy was a long one for winter travel, and they had pressed themselves to make good time along roads growing wetter and muddier as they left the soft southern climes for the gray, drizzle-ridden northern lands. The nights were cold, the days wet, the climate inhospitable for those accustomed to the silvery glimmer of olive groves, the lush green of vineyards, the distant sense of blue seas, the sandy mountain soil of Roussillon.

At dusk, they sought hospitality of the sisters at the convent at Compiegne, ten miles from their destination. Charles d’ Auriac went to his chaste rest in one of the private chambers of the guest hall set aside for visitors of rank, secure in the knowledge that he and his party would arrive at the Castle de Bresse by midmorning and he would sit down to dinner in the company of his cousin, who would not this time run from him, who would not this time offer him discourtesy, who would be obliged by the rules of hospitality and kinship to offer him all due reverence and welcome.

I
T WAS STILL
dark when Magdalen awoke, a fact which gave her great satisfaction. Her bedfellow continued to sleep and did not stir when she slipped from the bed and ran to the casement. There was just a hint of lightening in the square of darkness but no sounds of stirring from castle and garrison as yet. The bell for prime would not ring, she calculated, for at least
another half hour. Which meant that she had won and they would go hawking along the riverbank.

She lit a candle from the ashy embers of the fire and threw more sticks upon the coals, then tiptoed back to the bed and gently shook the sleeper’s shoulder. “My lord? My lord, I am awake betimes and we are to go hawking.”

Guy opened one eye in the light of the candle she held above him. “Come back to bed,” he said.

“No, my lord. You promised that if I awoke before prime, then we should go. And I have awakened.”

Guy opened the other eye and decided reluctantly that Magdalen spoke the truth. “Come back to bed,” he repeated drowsily.

Magdalen, half laughing, half impatient, stamped one bare foot in frustration. “No, for if I do, you know what will happen and then the bell for prime will ring and you will say that I was not up betimes.”

“A kiss,” Guy said.

Magdalen shook her head. “No, for it will lead to other things. Please get up, Guy. I do so want to go out. I have been immured in the castle for a whole week while you have been away, and you promised.”

Her eyes were eloquent with urgency and appeal, her lips slightly parted in her eagerness. With a swift movement, Guy reached up, caught her around the waist, and pulled her down hard upon him.

“Caught you,” he declared with some satisfaction, laughing into the indignant face above him. “Now I will have that kiss, lady. A week’s deprivation works ill for me also.”

“But you promised, and now you will be forsworn,” she protested, trying to move her head away. He cupped her face firmly and held her still. “You will stand as a faithless perjurer, my lord!”

“Not so,” he said, drawing her face down to his. “We will go when I have had my kiss.”

Magdalen sighed and yielded, her body softening
against his, her lips warmly pliant, her tongue lightly probing. She moved seductively beneath the caressing hands that explored, rediscovered as if he had eyes in his fingertips. But when his knee pressed upward, nudging her thighs apart, she wriggled sideways with a protesting chuckle. “I said you would not be satisfied with a kiss.”

“Oh, so you would withhold your favors, would you, lady?” With a threatening growl, he lunged for her as she slid off the bed. “Come back here.”

“No.” She danced away from him. “I would go hawking, sir. And you must come with me if you would not be forsworn.”

Guy regarded her with desirous amusement as she stood well away from the bed, her breasts rising and falling swiftly with her exertions and determination, her hair tumbling, dark and rich, down her back, falling across her shoulders to lie against the creamy whiteness of her skin, her lips rosy and eager, her eyes alight with a resolution that, strong though it was, could not completely mask the spark of arousal engendered by kiss and caress.

Purposefully, he flung aside the quilted coverlet and stood up. “If you will not come to me, then I must come to you.”

“No! Oh, no, Guy! You promised!” Laughing, she backed away, dodging behind a cedar chest. Guy stalked her around the room, enjoying her frantic darting rushes to spurious safety, ruthlessly driving her into the far corner of the chamber, where she found herself backed up to the wall, the tapestry hanging prickling her bare back.

“Now,” he said, standing in front of her, his arms folded across his chest. “What would you like to do?”

Magdalen put her head on one side, seeming to give the matter grave consideration. “I would go hawking, sir,” she said finally, with a mischievous chuckle.

Guy scratched his head thoughtfully. “I seem not to
be making myself clear. Let me ask you again: What would you like to do?”

A speculative gleam appeared in the gray eyes as she continued to regard him with her head on one side. “Go ahawking, sir?” she suggested, impishly tentative.