Lord of a Thousand Nights (25 page)

Memories of her by the river, her body slicked with water, made his body tighten. Considering the condition she never failed to put him in, it would rain more than enough for a good long while.

Chapter SIXTEEN

R
obert of Kelso managed these lands well.”

Reyna glanced up from the table where she read her Aquinas by candlelight. Ian sat on a stool by the hearth with the estate ledger propped open on his lap.

“Most of the income derives from sheep, and the English dealers are always glad for more wool,” he continued. “There is a second mill far to the west, which makes sense, considering the breadth of the lands.”

“He built that one. He had seen an old man who had traveled two days to bring his grain here, and decided it was uncharitable to expect that of the weak,” Reyna explained.

“Is it also because of his charity that most of the farmers are free tenants and not villeins?”

“If a family asked to buy its freedom, Robert always agreed. He said that any man industrious enough to save the coin would surely make a good tenant.”

Ian nodded and became reabsorbed in the pages. Reyna
returned to her philosophy, but periodically glanced over to watch the way the firelight flickered over his handsome face. His arrival this evening had surprised her. Most of their time together during this first week of marriage had occurred at meals or in bed. At the former they were lord and lady, and in the latter husband and wife. This evening, however, reminded her of similar hours with Robert, and of the comfort of friendship that they had shared.

Was it even possible to have that with a man who was a true husband? The emotions and intimacies that she felt when she and Ian made love were very different from those she had known with Robert. More intense and consuming, and also more dangerous, in ways she could not explain. Although potent during their passion, they seemed fleeting, insubstantial things that struggled to survive the daylight.

She tried to concentrate on her reading. Once again, the book had not been here where she left it last night, but on the shelf. In its place she had found the tattered treatise by Bernard of Clairveaux. She wondered if Ian had been reading that.

She swallowed the impulse to ask him his opinion of Bernard's ideas. More likely he was checking the library against the ledger to see if he could find entries that indicated its value. Besides, he had said he did not care for philosophy.

Her mind drifted to the conversation that day by the river, and his startling revelation that he had been tutored for the priesthood as a youth. It had been a rare reference to his life's history. He never spoke of his family or events from his past.

She had been thinking about him a lot these last few
days, observing him while she came to terms with this marriage. He was a restless man, always pursuing new projects and ideas, already planning improvements to the keep. His long spurts of activity would occasionally break at the least likely moment, however, while he sought silence and reflection, usually in the garden. She wondered what he thought about then.

She had gradually noticed, too, that he didn't have any close friends in his company. He enjoyed a familiar camaraderie with the men, knights and foot soldiers alike, but there was no man who was his special companion. He was usually with a group, or with her, or alone. That struck her as odd for a man with such an easy manner.

The candle flickered as the dead wick grew overlong. She picked up the little knife lying nearby and stretched to cut the burnt end. Ian glanced up at her movement before returning to his ledger.

“Is your father who sought to make you a priest still alive?” she asked.

She hadn't planned the question. It just emerged, a product of her thoughts.

He reacted as if it were an intrusive impertinence. She saw the subtle tensing, the lowered lids, the shift of his eyes that indicated he had ceased to read. But he did not even acknowledge her query.

The question hung in the air between them. She went very still, shocked by his blatant rebuff.

The silence grew thick with unspoken words. She made a show of returning to her book. The pleasant evening had been ruined.

She wished that she could believe that she read too much into what might only be a small claim of privacy, but the brittle mood in the chamber said otherwise.

His silence was a statement regarding the limits of what they would have. It was a pointed rejection by a man choosing to restrict her knowledge of his deeper self. It stunned her how deeply it wounded her. During their lovemaking, she thought she had felt ties forming. This silence revealed that he did not want them.

A sick feeling spread in her heart while she gazed at her page. She sadly admitted that the novelty of passion had obscured the facts about this marriage. Her rational mind had recognized them when she discovered the testament, but her heart, caught up in the false intimacy of the last week, and in the happy day at the river, had urged her to ignore them.

She had thought— she didn't want to name what she had thought. That would only add humiliation to the sad resignation filling her heart.

She heard Ian rise and walk over to her. She felt him behind her. His hands come to rest on her shoulders.

A stranger's hands. And he would forever remain one.

“Come to bed, Reyna.”

In her disappointment, she stiffened slightly and hesitated. His hands slid along her chest and one dropped to caress her breast. With flawless skill he obliterated her brief resistance until she raised her face and arms to him with a yielding that belied her confusion.

But it was not the same. The melancholy that she had known the morning after their first night throbbed poignantly at the center of her desire. Although her body responded as it always had, her spirit resisted the flow of the passion. Her release came as a private journey.

She emerged from the ecstasy to discover Ian had finished too, although she had no memory of it. He fell
asleep, leaving her to reckon with the sad lesson she had learned this night.

E
arly the next morning, scouts tore through the gate to report that an Armstrong force was gathering near the northern border of Black Lyne Keep's lands. Men had been seen trailing out of villages and farms, heading toward it. The scouts judged the army to be three hundred strong and still growing.

“It sounds like Thomas Armstrong is calling up every able-bodied man on the Clivedale estate,” Ian said to the men who gathered to hear the report.

Reyna sat beside him, breaking her fast. Things had been cool between them since they woke. They had been treating each other in the stilted, careful way people do after they have had a cutting argument.

“You'd think he would have them muster far to the west, or at least nearer to the road to Harclow,” one of the knights said.

“I do not think he goes to Harclow. I think he comes here. It is a clever strategy. I did not give Thomas enough credit.”

To Reyna that made no sense. She spoke, even though it was not her place to do so. “Maccus requires relief at Harclow. What can Thomas achieve by engaging with you?”

“Anna de Leon is here. By now, Margery has described Morvan's love for his wife. Perhaps Thomas expects Morvan to break off a section of the siege army and come here when he learns she is in danger. More equal numbers, and probably Morvan will lead them. The plan is risky, but the best chance that Thomas has. If he can
defeat Morvan at Black Lyne Keep, the whole situation at Harclow changes.”

“Sitting tight makes sense, then,” she said. “If Morvan has to come, he will bring men enough to deal with Thomas. Their plan will fail.”

“Probably, but I find that I have no taste for sitting here. Besides, there are spoils waiting on the border, and this company has been patient long enough. After a summer of indolence, we could all use some action.” He turned to his men. “Spread the word that we move in an hour.”

While the soldiers rushed off to prepare, Reyna glared at Ian. “The scouts said that over three hundred wait at the border. It is foolish to face such odds when it is not necessary.”

“Whether Thomas intends to besiege us or continue on and attack Morvan, it is my duty to stop him.”

“It is not logical to meet such a force on the field. Morvan could never have intended you to do so.”

“Do not preach logic to me now.”

“No doubt you think this some grand chivalrous gesture, but it is akin to suicide.”

His expression hardened. “I did not know that your low opinion of me extended to my skills in warfare, Reyna.”

“Do not confuse concern with insult, Ian. The bravest warrior is vulnerable against such odds.”

He gave her a scrutinizing look. “You fear for your pretty neck if I fall on the field? Even if I die, Thomas will never take this keep, and Morvan will never let the Armstrongs have you. Do not worry.”

But she did worry, horribly, and spent the next hours alternating between fury and despair. She realized that this was yet another way in which her second marriage
differed from her first. Robert had last donned his armor ten years ago. She had been a child then, and when she watched him ride through the gate, it had never occurred to her that he might not return.

She was overwhelmed with mental images of Ian struck down, dying painfully, his blood leaking away into the soil of the hills.

She tried to distract her mind with dinner preparations, but she knew instinctively when the moment of departure had arrived. Wiping her hands, she ran up to the hall and out to the stairs.

Ian stood in the center of the yard, his armor looking like gray water in the silver light of the overcast day. Castle folk lingered around to watch the knights and horses being readied.

As Reyna walked down the stairs, a servant girl named Eva approached Ian. They spoke, standing close, with Ian looking down as he smiled his devastating smile. Finally, to Reyna's dismay, he reached out and stroked Eva's jaw and chin in the same affectionate gesture he had used so often with her.

Reyna bore down on the intimate conversation taking place in front of the whole household. Eva saw her coming, said something quickly, and melted away.

“Where have you been?” Ian asked, not at all embarrassed at having his new wife see him charming his slut.

“I did not want to be in the way. I am not well schooled in how a wife behaves at these times. If I was supposed to attend on you, I apologize for my neglect.” Her eye caught Eva by the wall, speaking to a young archer. A pretty young woman, with large breasts that stretched her gown. Not at all puny and scrawny.

“You need never attend on me if you do not choose to,” Ian said. Reyna heard an allusion to more than just
preparations for battle. Nay, obviously she need not. One woman was as useful as another to the Lord of a Thousand Nights.

She forced an expression of indifference onto her face. It had been an evening and morning full of disheartening discoveries, but she was gentle-born and knew how to act with dignity.

Knights mounted and began pacing through the gate with their squires. She stretched up and kissed Ian's cheek. “God go with you.”

He looked down with an especially brooding expression, and then turned away. Halfway to his horse, he pivoted abruptly and strode back. He pulled her into a savage embrace, pressing her to his steel, claiming her mouth with a furious kiss. “Be waiting for my return as a wife should,” he ordered roughly.

I
an led his men toward the border, trying to ignore the strange ill ease that pricked his spirit. He tried to blame Reyna for having unsettled him with her arguments and cold behavior. He knew, however, that the cause did not lie with her. He suspected what this sensation really was, for he had felt something similar long ago, but he refused to name it.

Half of his mind kept busy reexamining the strategy they would execute when they engaged Thomas's army. The other half, however, was full of Reyna, as it had been since he first met her. It annoyed him that possessing her had not resolved the way she intruded in his head. That was something else that he had only felt once before, long ago—with dire consequences.

She had considered denying him last night. He had known her hesitation for what it was, but had not allowed
her to contemplate it long. In the end, however, her withdrawal might as well have been physical, so clearly had an invisible wall appeared between them. Although her body had joined his with a heightened abandon, the essential part of her had remained aloof.

For the first time with Reyna it had been as it had always been for him over the years, two people exploiting passion and relief for their own sakes. The passing of Reyna's innocence, which had permitted joyful sharing without counting the cost, had wounded him more than he expected.

It had been inevitable, he supposed. She was not some silly girl. The day had to come when she would begin examining what lay within the pleasurable haze. And then she would weigh the value of what she had been giving, and judge the worth of the man to whom she offered it.

His final attempt to forestall that reckoning last night had been in vain, and, he suspected, had only hastened the opening of her eyes.