The Pleasures of Sin (29 page)

James seethed as he paced around the small bare room waiting endlessly for the royal summons. Manacles linked by chains surrounded his wrists and ankles. They made angry clanks as he walked back and forth. Back and forth.

He had been called from his prison cell, bathed, and clothed hours ago. But here he was, still waiting, wondering what this conference would bring—he must make Edward, that royal coxcomb, understand his innocence.

The church bells rang, marking another section of the day gone. Wasted. Waiting. Still waiting. Not even a chair to sit on. The room felt as though its very walls closed in on him. The bonds chafed his limbs. He fought the urge to pound a hole into the nearby wall to release his frustration at the unfairness of his treatment. He was innocent, by God!

With a deep breath, he ran a hand over the back of his neck and massaged his tight shoulder. His bloody betraying wife had gotten to him. He wanted to kick himself for not watching the horizon more carefully for approaching ships. She’d smuggled her brother on board! The little wench.

A startling pain pierced his heart at the thought—love, he realized. How could he both love and hate a woman so much? She was very, very bad for him. As bad as the wine had been all those years ago.

Counting his steps, he paced across the room again. The chains weighted down his legs, hobbling his stride and he felt defenseless and frustrated and a little scared about what his fate would be. Is that how Brenna had felt for all those weeks when he’d left her bound? Regret surged inside him. Her running away had been his own fault—there were other ways he could have assured she would not leave besides keeping her chained night and day. He should have built a relationship with her, tried to get to know her. Perhaps then, she would not have betrayed him and left.

Had she had their baby yet? It had been months since he last saw her on the ship.

A door opened, interrupting his thoughts.

A plump woman wearing a starched muffin cap and a wrinkled apron stepped inside. She carried a wad of silks. “Your son, my lord,” she said, handing him the bundle.

“My…son?” Confused, he took the package, its weight nearly nothing in his arms. The chains clanked.

The most beautiful being he had ever seen stared up at him with crisscrossed eyes. The baby had a red, wrinkly face with a scattering of dusky curls on its scalp.

His heart lurched. They had brought him from the prison to give him a child? Was this another of Edward’s mind tricks to break him? Did they mean to take him back to his cell with a babe and no way to feed it? Horror shuddered through him as he imagined having to watch the infant cry and starve as he tried witlessly to comfort it. The chains felt more oppressive than even before, and he arranged the silks so that the babe’s skin would be protected from the iron.

“What means this?” he demanded.

“’Tis your babe. Follow me.” Motioning him, the woman turned and walked down the hall. She did not even give a cursory glance at his bonds. Was it a common occurrence to nobles to be bound thus in the palace?

Clutching the child to his chest, he frowned after her. Was this really his? Carefully, he began unwrapping the swaddling, wanting to see its body, to determine if by some birthmark or mole that it was indeed his son.

The woman turned and walked back to him. “Stop that, my lord. This way,” she demanded, indicating for him to follow.

A fierce wave of protection swam through him along with the urge to run. He would take the babe and sail to the ends of the earth to protect it. One child of his had died already. This one would live.

He eyed the maid suspiciously. “What trickery is this?”

Placing a hand on her ample hip, she tilted her head to one side. “No trickery, my lord. Your wife awaits.”

“My wife?”

“Aye, she just birthed the lad.” The maid looked at him like he’d lost his mind. He was not uncertain that he had not.

“Why is she in London?”

The maid muttered something under her breath that sounded like a curse against the nobility. “Come along now,” she demanded.

Shoulders hunched with uncertainty, James followed her. He carefully scanned the ornate hallways for exits and escape routes as they walked. The chains hobbled his process.

A short while later, they entered a bright bedchamber with rich tapestries on the walls and a mountain of sopping wet linens in the midst of an Oriental carpet: a palace bedroom turned birthing chamber. Steam roiled from a large pot in the hearth.

Brenna lay on the bed, seemingly asleep. Her ringlets clouded around her head in a mist of out-of-control frizz.

Out-of-control.

Exactly the way he felt whenever he was around her. Why was she here in London? To betray him again?

He clutched the babe tightly, looking around at the windows to determine if he could make it from the king’s palace before being caught by the guards. Not bloody likely considering the bonds.

One of the servants shook Brenna. “My lady, your husband has arrived.”

She stirred, opening one eye slowly. “James. Oh, merciful heavens. Thank God Almighty.”

She looked small and weak amongst the bedcovers, and he was reminded of how she had been that day he had returned from hunting her father. Would she rise and rail at him as she had then?

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, holding fiercely to his newborn son as he tried to put together all the pieces and understand what was going on.

“We can explain that, Lord Montgomery.” King Edward flurried into the room, his enormous royal robe fluttering around him.

Fury coursed through James at the sight of the man who had thrown him into a dungeon without so much as a hearing, but he sank to one knee. Mayhap if he did not have the babe, he could afford to clutch his anger, but his position here was too precarious and he had a life asides his own to think of.

Godric and Meiriona followed the king into the chamber. On her hip, his sister-in-law carried a small child with large blue eyes and fluffy red hair. What a sight she made—while other noblewomen left their children with nannies all the daylong whilst at court, Meiriona would have none of that. She looked a little frazzled, but happy.

Edward extended his hand for James to kiss his royal ring.

“My liege,” James said, warily. Was Brenna now in cohorts with the king to see him humiliated? Shifting the babe into one arm, he kissed the king’s ring.

“Let me see my nephew!” Godric boomed, heedless as always of social convention. His wild presence seemed out of place in the palace.

James spared a glance at Edward, who gave him a little nod to indicate he had leave to rise. He stood.

Pride swelled in his heart as he pulled back a corner of the swaddling cloth to show off his son to his brother. A lump formed in his throat as Godric reached his scarred hand to gently graze the babe’s cheek. The boy opened his eyes and looked cross-eyedly up at them.

“Be ye gentle,” the maid admonished, eyeing the two large men suspiciously. Her gaze lingered over Godric’s whitened scars and James’s new red one.

“Aye, be gentle with my nephew,” Godric mocked James. “I don’t want him all scarred up and ugly like you.”

James glanced from his brother to his wife. All three of them sported scars on their faces now, proof of the perilous events they had lived through. Sunlight shimmered through the windows, showing dust motes dancing through the air.

“Well, I just think ye should be careful,” the maid interjected, hovering nearby. “We didn’t borne the babe to have a clumsy oaf drop him.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake”—Meiriona paced forward, bouncing the red-haired fairy child on her hip—“we’ve got three at home. I think my husband and brother-in-law know how to hold a baby.”

The maid backed away from the men, muttering as she gathered the pile of rags and went out the door.

The king cleared his throat. “Your lady wife has explained much.”

“My…wife?” Baffled, James gazed from the king to Brenna and back again.

“She turned herself in to rescue your sorry hide,” Godric interjected. “Not that you deserve it after leaving her locked in chains for weeks on end.”

“We believe in your honor and will have your pledge for fealty and see you restored to your lands,” proclaimed Edward. “And you may have your wife back also, provided there are some amends made.”

Humph. Edward was shrewd as always. James could practically feel his coffers being lightened. He forced himself to smile tightly instead of raging about the poor treatment he’d been given. Raging at the king was
not
the way to regain his lands or his honor. “I thank you for your generosity, my liege.”

“That is, of course, if you choose to redeem her,” the king continued.

James let out a breath. At last the flow of power turn back in his direction. At last he would be able to see her get her comeuppance!

“But she did just birth you a son and come to London to proclaim your innocence, so mayhap you might feel inclined to be lenient to her as we have been,” the king continued.

Suddenly James understood why he’d been given the babe before being called into the same room with Brenna. Edward, that wily devil, was protecting the guilty. The king knew James was not guilty and was giving him a choice on what to do with Brenna—to take her back or to let her rot in debtor’s prison.

Edward waved his hand in a magnanimous gesture. “There is also the matter of your bonds.” He reached inside his royal robe and withdrew a key. “Lady Brenna, we entrust you with this.” He handed her the key. “Now come, Lord Godric, Lady Meiriona, let us leave these two to work out their own bargains.”

Godric clapped James on the shoulder. “You need to speak with your wife. Let me take the babe for a bit. You’ll have years and years with him.”

James glanced at Brenna who was sitting up in bed and transferred his son to Godric’s arms. He was not at all sure what he should do with her, if he should pay her fine or no. If he did not leave her in debtor’s prison, mayhap he should send her back to a nunnery.

His brother smiled, crinkles forming around his blue eyes. “Aye, boy,” Godric crooned, gently stroking the baby across its tiny hand, “come with me and I’ll tell you all about how hideously silly your father is.”

Meiriona shifted the child she carried to punch him on the arm. “Cease.”

Godric gave her a lopsided grin as they crossed the Oriental carpet. He shifted the babe to one arm and ducked beneath the doorframe, following the king and his wife into the hall.

When everyone had left, James and Brenna stared at each other for a moment, an awkward silence filling the chamber. How odd to be standing here in chains before her while her fate lay in his hands. Another of Edward’s mind games.

Her gaze was bright and clear as she looked at him, and he felt himself being sucked into her emerald eyes. Treacherous territory. “I love you,” she whispered.

Foolishly, he wanted to believe her, but there was too much bad blood between them for him to fall for silly love words. “I would like to believe you—”

“Then believe me, James! You must!” Brenna took a breath, plucked a metal object sitting on the table beside the bed and proffered it to him flat in her palm.

L’occhio del diavolo
.

“I brought this for you,” she said softly.

He stared at the blade, at the memories of passion it possessed—the stabbing, the shaving, the ripping off of her clothing and holding it to her throat when he’d recaptured her. So many things had happened between them.

His fingers grazed hers when he took the blade, sending a fission of heat running through his veins. “Why are you giving this to me?”

“I know as presents go, it is not much of one, but—” Swallowing, she slid her chemise down her shoulders and leaned her head back exposing her throat. It was a simple act of complete surrender. She had stabbed him; he had been tortured and thrown into the king’s dungeon because of her artwork. But they had also shared times of consuming passion and laughter and a deep connection. Clear and simple, she was offering herself to him, no holds barred. He could keep her or kill her, his choice. Kill her and take the key to his manacles or keep her and take the key to her heart.

Mistrust and suspicion ran high, but the symbolic act touched a cord deep inside his heart, meaning more to him than all her apologies had. It blasted through his defenses the same way that she had done when she’d fallen asleep in his arms while she was captive and gagged. He had an answer for her anger, but none for her trust.

Sweeping back the bed curtains, he sank down beside her on the mattress.

With a slow, deliberate motion, he traced the flat edge of
l’occhio del diavolo
down the curve of her neck. He could demand that she give him the key to the manacles.

Clearly trusting him, she did not flinch or even blink as the dagger approached the tender skin of her throat. He tucked it into her bodice, nestling the blade betwixt her breasts as it had been on that fateful day when they had married.

He would not force the key from her hand. If she wanted him as husband, she must unlock him willingly.

She smiled at him, telling him without words that she understood the gesture—that despite the unresolved matters, he trusted her too. Their relationship had come full circle. Her green gaze reminded him of wet emeralds. He hugged her, wanting to hold her forever and never let go.

The bed curtains swung around them. “Brenna, I do not understand how you were able to convince the king to remove me from prison.”

Blinking, she traced her hand across the edge of the sheet. “I appealed to his vanity and repainted his portrait.”

“You brought a portrait to Edward?”

“Yea. To replace the others.”

A streak of jealousy went through him at the thought. “Was the king naked in these pictures?”

She laughed. “Well. Somewhat naked. He was wearing the royal robe. But I corrected the proportions of his manhood to make him the envy of the court rather than the laughingstock.”

James frowned, not liking the direction of this conversation at all. He stared at the hilt of
l’occhio del diavolo
, lusciously nestled between her breasts, and vowed silently to kill any man who was alone and naked with his wife. Even the king. “You will not be painting other men’s members.”