He greeted them both with courtesy not even the cardinal could have faulted, but then he took them by surprise by throwing down a direct challenge. “I have become quite fond of you, Lady Mariam, and I think your Welsh knight is a very lucky man. But what I have to say is not for your ears. I’d be eternally grateful if you were to take a tour of the gardens. Any chance of that happening?”
Mariam looked to Joanna for guidance, saw her hesitation, and leaned over to whisper, “If you want to talk with him, the dogs and I can stand guard to make sure no one else will see the two of you together. If you do not, nothing will pry me from your side.”
Joanna would have sworn that she’d have walked barefoot in sackcloth and ashes before she’d have met privately with Raimond in these seductive surroundings. So she was startled to hear herself say softly, “Take the dogs for a walk. But do not go far.”
Mariam nodded, squeezed her hand encouragingly, and then gave Raimond a warning look that conveyed her message without need of words. He acknowledged it with a nod of his own and for several moments, there was no sound but the splashing of the fountain and the crunch of Mariam’s receding footsteps on the pebbled path.
“Shall we find a place to sit?” He glanced toward a trellised arbor, raising his hands when Joanna frowned, a gesture she took as a promise that he’d not take advantage of the semiseclusion. She was not sure if she could trust him to keep that promise, for how well did she really know him? But then, could she trust herself? Deciding that she preferred this conversation to be conducted by the light of a full moon, she shook her head, pointing toward the edge of the fountain. He did not argue and showed his good manners by making sure the marble was clean and dry before allowing her to sit. Once they were settled, she realized that the moonlight was a double-edged sword; it enabled her to read his face, but he could read hers, too, and her own emotions were in such turmoil that she did not welcome his scrutiny.
“I am not sure if Lady Mariam did me a favor,” he said, “for I am probably about to make an utter fool of myself.” As he turned toward her, she caught the glimmer of a smile. “I asked myself what I’d come to regret more—saying nothing or playing the fool? I have a lot of practice doing the latter, so I decided that was a regret I could more easily live with.”
Joanna had always been charmed by self-deprecating humor and Raimond’s smile was so bewitching by moonlight that she realized there were two fools in this garden. She ought never to have agreed to this. Mariam’s offer to arrange a tryst had forced her to admit how drawn she was to this man, and she’d realized how fortunate she was that he was married. If not for his wife, she might have yielded to temptation, and she did not believe that a queen had that freedom. What if their liaison had become known? Such a scandal would damage her prospects for remarriage and hurt Richard’s chances of making a needed alliance with a foreign prince. And what if she’d gotten with child? She could not have raised the child as her own, yet how could she have borne to give her baby up? No, Beatrice Trencavel was a blessing in disguise. Reminding herself of that now, she tensed, preparing to make an embarrassing retreat from the gardens, seeing that as the lesser of evils.
Raimond did not give her the chance. “I think that we ought at least to acknowledge it,” he said, “for it is rather rare—like being struck by lightning and living to tell the tale. I’m not sure when the bolt hit you. For me, it was in the great hall at Narbonne. It was not as if I were blind to your charms until then. But you’d made it clear I was to keep my distance and so I vowed to be on my good behavior. And then you came to my defense like an avenging angel, telling the cardinal that Sicily was blessed, not accursed, and I knew my heart was yours for the taking—along with any other body parts you might want to claim.”
His tone was light, but with undertones that sent a shiver up Joanna’s spine. Deciding that her best defense was to act as if he were merely flirting, she said coolly, “I believe your heart is already spoken for, my lord count. And I must warn you that I am not susceptible to the ‘My wife does not understand me’ school of seduction.” She could see that her mockery had stung and, perversely, she now found herself regretting her success in rebuffing him. But she dared not let him see how vulnerable she really was to his blandishments.
“Actually, my wife understood me all too well,” he said, with a coolness to match her own. “Women usually read men with insulting ease. You seem to be the exception to that rule, Lady Joanna, for you have misread me, for certes.”
“Have I?” she said, striving for nonchalance. “I see a man who by his own admission likes women, a man of undeniable charm, but a man with a wife. We may be entitled to our own beliefs, my lord count, but not our own facts, and those facts are yours, whether you like it or not.”