By Possession (10 page)

He reached down a hand and she looked up the length of his arm. She suddenly saw them as others would, a half-naked bondwoman lying at the feet of her lord. In fact, that was undoubtedly how
he
saw them. The assumptions implicit in his last words echoed. A devastating knowledge that she had just made a horrible mistake closed in on her.

She reached through the echoes of yearning and found her common sense. Not now? Not ever. She pulled her gown up and struggled to her feet. She turned away from him with embarrassment.

“Do you have other garments?” he asked.

“On the bank … near where I was standing …”

He left and fetched them and brought them to her. He strode off into the water and she nipped into the trees to change, listening to the splashes of his washing. She
slipped on the blue gown thinking that in the future she would also wear a shift despite the heat. She set a veil low over her hair and pinned the wimple around her neck even though the headdress would be uncomfortable while they traveled.

Encased from head to toe in cloth, she ambled around the edge of the lake until she joined him near the cart. Water sparkled off his hair and tanned chest and soaked his lower garment against his hard legs. His dark eyes carried the intensity that had unsettled her from the start. Their message seemed very obvious now, and she wondered how she could have been so ignorant.

He hadn't played fair. Why couldn't he have leered and groped like other men so it
would
have been clear? Why couldn't he have been a total stranger and not someone who old memories insisted was incapable of seeing her this way? She would have insisted on returning with that wagon that passed instead of staying with him. Now they were traveling to London together, and this other thing would stand between them the whole time creating saints knew what problems. He had probably intended for her to serve as his lehman while there and now he assumed that she had agreed to it. It was going to be very awkward, very difficult, and maybe very dangerous.

She began climbing the hill. The sounds of the cart followed her. The danger, she admitted with chagrin, came from herself as well as him. The offer of childish dreams fulfilled pulled the reins behind her. The promise of passion and warmth walked nearby, beautiful in form, slicked by water, glistening in the sun. The suggestion that maybe it would be worth the shame and ruination stuck one finger into her mind, horrifying her.

Dear saints, what had she done? She knew the answer with groaning certainty. She had jeopardized everything,
her chance for a decent future, her plans for a marriage and family, her right to respect, even her own resolve, for an intemperate flurry of kisses and caresses.

“I will walk a while,” she said over her shoulder when they reached the road. The cart followed. She glanced back and saw that he rode in it. She looked again some time later and noticed he had put on the tunic, which helped some, but that the sun lit beautifully on his face, which didn't help at all. In this light his tanned visage was all sculpted planes and ridges and angles, and the deepest shadows held eyes that studied her.

Nothing but trouble. She sighed. She had been carrying a bowl very full of emotional oil the last few days and now some had spilled out and she didn't know how to mop it up.

She must have walked an hour before the cart pulled closer and the donkey's breath warmed her shoulder. “Get in now,” Addis said. “You are slowing us down too much.”

She just plodded forward. The cart stopped. A few moments later arms lifted her up. He carried her past the animal and dumped her on the seat, then climbed up and took the reins. “Do not be a child. I am not going to devour you.”

She perched as far from him as possible and settled her draping gown in billowing, abstract mounds. Addis watched the preparations with both annoyance and amusement. Did she really think that shrouding herself would make a difference? He had only to look at her and his memory replaced her wary expression with the sparkling passion he had seen a short while ago. His mind easily stripped away the blue garment and examined again the strong body and full, begging breasts. Her strict, unmoving posture now could hardly obliterate the feel of her languid stretches and trembles of pleasure.

Her serious mouth only reminded him of her warm, bonding kisses.

Wonderful kisses. He had forgotten how long it had been since he had just enjoyed kissing a woman. Years. Since his youth, now that he wondered about it. There had been little kissing with Eufemia and none with the whores before her. Kissing was something he had done as a squire, little milestones on the way to goals often unattained with those servants and village girls who substituted for the virtuous Claire. If they hadn't been in full view of the road he might have lain there for hours just kissing Moira's lips and body.

She regretted it. She would have walked all the way to London if he hadn't let her know that she had made her point. His annoyance said he should have given her more to feel so guilty about. Just claimed her there in the dirt by the lake, instead of worrying that she would feel degraded by a quick coupling in full view of the road. She was a bondwoman,
his bondwoman
, and he had retreated as if she were some lady virgin needing feather mattresses and velvet bed-hangings. From the look of things, getting her willing again would not be easy.

He glanced at the water-blue eyes fixed resolutely on the road ahead. Not easy, but compelling. He would have to seduce her though. Something else he hadn't attempted since he had been a squire. Could he even remember how it was done?

He would wait until after Barrowburgh. His restraint should reassure her, and success would be unlikely with her skittish like this. It would also be very unchivalrous to seduce her and then immediately get himself killed.

She caught him contemplating her. Her look darted away and she flushed as if she had read his calculations. He smiled a smile that she didn't see.

You fear that you have made a strategic mistake, little Shadow, and you are right. I would have assumed that you did not want me and settled for the comfort of your presence, but desire thus encouraged can never really be denied again. Now this ends only one way. Sooner or later, you are completely mine.

CHAPTER 5

C
UT IT
. ”

Addis held out the well-honed knife. Moira regretfully examined the raven locks cascading thickly over his naked shoulders and back, waving slightly, more beautiful than most women's. They were the first words he had spoken all morning while they broke their fast and prepared to decamp. He had barely acknowledged her, as if all his sight had turned inward. Darkness tinged his mood.

“Do you really need to?”

“No knights in England wear it thus.”

“Raymond does.”

“Raymond was always more vain than even Claire about his hair. Do it. I will not ride into Barrowburgh looking like a barbarian.”

Her hand snatched away from the blade. “Ride into … you cannot intend …”

“Do you think I came just to gaze fondly upon the walls of my home?”

“You are mad! He will kill you!”

“You should hope so. You will be free then. Brian will hardly insist upon your bondship.” He took her hand and smacked the knife's hilt into it. “Now, cut.”

She lifted a thick section and the blade slid through it as if it were silk. Beautiful hair. Just like God to waste it on a man. The waves grew more pronounced while the heavy strands fell to the ground. When she finished Addis ran his fingers back from his forehead. Without a word he went to his saddle, removed garments from a bag, and disappeared into the trees.

She set about replacing the stools and baskets into the cart from where Addis had removed them so that she could sleep. After what had happened by the lake two days ago she had worried about the nights, but he had acted as if nothing had changed when they finally camped that day. And so she had been spared having to bombard him with the denials that she had practiced all afternoon.

In fact, he had been exceedingly courteous these last two days, talking more than normal, behaving with a rather indifferent politeness and acting, if the truth be told, a bit more like the old Addis. It was clear that he also recognized that their intemperance had merely been an imprudent response to the embrace forced on them by danger. Yesterday she had slowly grown less wary. When they had traded some reminisces about two comical guards from Hawkesford she had finally laughed herself into relaxation and accepted that her transgression hadn't created the problem she had feared.

Their brief talk about Hawkesford had produced a new intimacy, born of the acknowledgment that years ago they had lived lives connected by that household. The ease with which he spoke of it startled her since he had never mentioned such memories before. She had waited within that warm connection for him to ask the questions that
surely he must have about Claire and Brian and all the rest.

Instead he had lapsed into his stony silence, burning the little bridge they had built. He might jest about a bowlegged guard but would not discuss the important things. If he hadn't just mentioned Claire before she cut his hair, one might easily wonder if he had forgotten that she ever existed. Had her name surfaced now because they were a mile from Barrowburgh, and that was where the worst of it had occurred?

She should not judge him. Claire's story had never rung completely true and even if it had been as she said, Claire had not been blameless. What had she expected? Moira knew the answer to that. Claire had expected her own way. She had always gotten it before.

He emerged from the trees. Her heart made a flipping little thud at the transformation. He no longer looked like the displaced barbarian, but very much the son of Patrick de Valence. Hair fell back from his face in thick waves the way it had in his youth. The face itself suddenly looked distressingly familiar, only weathered and seasoned and forever marked by experience. He wore black leather hose and a short blue cotte bound by a knight's belt, and golden spurs flashed at his boot heels. She had seen neither symbol of his status before, and guessed that he had procured them on his trip with Brian. The only other signs of wealth were two gold bands circling his forearms, but every inch of him proclaimed the birth and blood that decreed his right to Barrowburgh.

He began readying his horse. She watched, feeling oddly disconnected from him, as if their small friendship had evaporated with the morning mist while he dressed. She sensed determination in him, but also still that unsettling something else.

“The sword is here in the cart,” she said, starting to lift it out.

“I will not take it.”

“You go without arms?”

“I will not need them.”

“You are a fool.”

He swung up onto the horse, shooting her a warning glance that made her shrink. Much harder to speak boldly to this Addis than to the man who had sat beside her in the cart. “I have no armor, and that sword is not the blade of a knight. Weapons and plate will avail me little if Simon chooses to kill me. Let everyone see that I ride in with no sword then, so my death will be known as murder.” He looked to the treetops. “Come here.”

She moved close to his leg. He bent until his head was near hers and pointed up. “Wait until the sun moves just behind those high branches there. If I have not returned, take the cart and go back up to the Roman road and head east. You should make Waverly by nightfall.”

“For a man so sure that he is not in danger, you certainly cover the eventuality of your death with prudence.”

He straightened. “One never knows.”

“Indeed. Then let us be thorough. If you do not return, I will head west, not east, to fetch Brian. Where is he?”

“He is safe, and no longer your concern.”

“Nay? Then whose concern will he be? Do those who care for him know what to do if you die? Will they understand that Simon must never—”

“If I die no one will ever find him.”

“He will be frightened and think he has been abandoned by everyone. Tell me and I will let Raymond know and we will get him and keep him safe. I will go live at Hawkesford and care for him.”

“Would you go to Raymond's bed for Brian's sake? You
must know that is the only way that you can ever return to Hawkesford.”

Would she? Raymond had never used her love of the boy against her, but if that became a condition of having him back, would she accept it?

“If I am dead again, things are no different than they were a month ago. He would not be safe at Hawkesford, and Simon will search at Darwendon as well now. Better that he grow up where he is.” He turned the horse, and headed toward the path that would connect with the road to his home. At the woods' edge he paused and looked back at her. “Come here,” he ordered again.

She walked over. He looked magnificent on that horse. No banners or retinue would announce his honor, but his presence commanded attention and managed to exude authority anyway.

“Do not think to run away, Moira. I will find you if you do, and will be displeased about the time it takes.”