6
“Lady Catherine, a moment of your time!”
Cate started as Trilborn stepped from an alcove in the empty antechamber she was passing through, and grimaced privately before she swung to face him. She had evaded his every attempt to speak to her alone since their return from Winchester. It was ill luck that he had caught her now as she came from an hour with the queen.
How he had known where to find her was more than Cate could see, unless he had followed her earlier. She had not known herself that Elizabeth would send for her, desiring to be told the latest on her peculiar betrothal.
“I am in haste, sir,” she said with the briefest of smiles. “My sister awaits, and I must join her in good time for the midday meal.”
“In truth, I am amazed to see her absent from your side.” He strolled closer, sweeping off his plumed hat for his elaborate bow. His attire was in the latest mode and his signature colors, being an extremely short doublet in black velvet with slashed sleeves that revealed a linen shirt embroidered in silver. His manly parts were covered by close-fitting black hose, but were emphasized rather than concealed by the few inches of skirt that extended below the doublet’s belted waist. The low boots he wore were of soft black leather, with toes of such length they curled backward and were attached to the boot tops by silver cords.
“Marguerite was not summoned to the queen’s chamber,” Cate replied with equanimity. She kept her gaze fastened on his face, being wary indeed of showing any interest in what stirred beneath the front of his hose. The scent that came to her from him was not quite as pristine as his clothing, being composed of stale sweat and ale mingled with a strong odor of cloves.
“Allow me to accompany you, if you will,” he said, holding out his arm. “I have missed passing the time of day with you.”
To refuse could lead to the very confrontation she hoped to avoid. Though she well recalled the warning Ross Dunbar had given her, she was no great distance from the queen’s apartments with its guards, and the great hall was not far away.
Greenwich Palace, fast becoming a favored residence of the king and queen, was a great rambling manse with one large square tower and several of lesser size. Located in what had once been a fishing village, it had been enlarged and refurbished by Edward IV as a retreat for his queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Henry had improved it as well, with any number of Flemish tapestries, French cabinets and Saracen carpets. It had a splendid array of glazed windows that filled it with bright light and gave pleasing views of the Thames. It was also composed of numberless, echoing rooms that opened one into the other, with only a handful of corridors leading from one section to the next.
Cate was not at all sure she trusted Trilborn to guide her where she wished to go, but neither did she want him trailing along behind her if she should lose her way.
“As you wish,” she said without enthusiasm, and laid her fingers upon his sleeve with as light a touch as she could manage.
“You found the queen well?” he asked as they began to walk.
“Very well indeed.” He would like to know why she had been in private with Elizabeth of York, but Cate was in no mood to satisfy his curiosity.
“And the new prince, young Arthur?”
“The babe grows plump and fine.”
“You and Henry’s Elizabeth are of an age, I believe. You must have much in common.”
“She takes an interest in all the ladies around her, both those officially in waiting upon her and those who are not.” It was a banal thing to say, but better than being drawn into particulars that might be repeated.
Trilborn closed his free hand into a fist and placed it behind his back as he walked, the only sign of his annoyance with her. “What of your health?” he continued. “You suffered no ill effects from your night in a snowstorm?”
A smile curled one corner of her mouth. “None whatever. It may not appear so, but I have the constitution of an ox.”
“That must gratify your bridegroom, as the Scots place great store upon rude health.”
“He is not displeased.” Cate had no idea if that was true, but thought it sounded well enough.
“And where is Dunbar this day?”
She sent the man a brief glance from under her lashes, noting the careful smoothness of his hair, the pleated frill of his shirt at the neck and sleeves. Even the king did not dress with such particularity. It was clear he had been nowhere near the exercise yard, where Ross had been disporting himself when last she saw him.
“I have no idea,” she answered, “though he will appear in time to eat, I feel sure.”
“His appetite is prodigious, I do agree. But nothing has been heard from Scotland? The betrothal does not progress?”
How everyone knew the details of her private affairs, she could not imagine, but so it seemed. Her deepest suspicion was that the king himself had informed all and sundry as a form of coercion. “It’s early days yet.”
“You can’t be happy in it.”
Her lips twisted for an instant. “Happy or unhappy, I must bow to Henry’s will.”
“So obedient, though you might escape the business with a little resolution.”
“You think so,” she said in droll disbelief.
“It would please me beyond my ability to express to have you as my wife, Lady Catherine. The king favors you and your sisters to an extraordinary degree. I’m sure he would listen, should you declare your preference for me above the Scotsman.”
“You are supposing I would actually prefer you.”
Trilborn swung his head to give her a narrow stare before his features smoothed again. “You are pleased to jest. By my faith, I am quite serious.”
His arm beneath her fingers had grown rigid with his displeasure, in spite of his attempt to pass it off. It would be best if she stepped lightly. “The king has a purpose in this, as in most things. I am not likely to sway him from it.”
“You sound unwilling to try, if I may say so. Something took place between you and the Scotsman in the New Forest, did it not? Was it so satisfactory that you pant to enjoy it again?”
“You are offensive, sir.” She lifted her hand from his arm at once.
“But am I right?”
“Nothing took place, nothing!”
“Dunbar says the same, and has bludgeoned half a dozen men to insensibility with fists, cudgel and the flat of his sword over it. Still, the king moved with amazing swiftness to mend your good name.”
“An affair of state rather than a necessity, I do assure you.” That Ross had been forced to defend her honor with physical prowess was disturbing. She’d had no idea of it until this moment. Certainly, he’d said nothing to her. “How so?”
She remained silent as Trilborn held open the door to a short and windowless corridor that led to another series of chambers. Only when she had passed through ahead of him did she answer over her shoulder. “I believe Henry sees the alliance as a way to decrease border tensions.”
“It seems more likely to fan them. Surely he knows of the bad blood between my family and Dunbar’s?”
“I should be surprised to know Henry gave the feud a single thought.” She hesitated a moment, then went on. “Is it of such moment that he should heed it? Can it not be mended?”
“My lady, you must know better.”
“How did it start? What dread deed made it necessary to continue these many years?”
Confusion rippled across Trilborn’s face before he lifted a shoulder. “I hardly know, if truth be told. I was brought up on bedtime stories of the dread Dunbars, shook with nightmares of being dragged from my sleep and hanged in my little nightshirt, or having my head chopped off like a young cockerel ready for the pot.”
“They did nothing of the kind to children, surely!” She could almost be sorry for him, or at least for the boy who had been steeped in such a frightening legacy.
“Who can say?” he answered, his face grim. “They did enough.”
“As did your family, from what I heard.”
“Yet we are never quite even.”
“What will that take, the death of all Dunbars?”
“Or their defeat and dishonor, so my father and grandfather would say,” Trilborn allowed with a snorting laugh. “That Henry would overlook the business is hard to credit when he is well versed in all else that takes place, keeps his thumb on the country’s pulse through his cadre of agents and paid informants.” The courtier shook his head. “He plays a deeper game. I wish I knew what it was.”
“You are mistaken if you think I can tell you.” That was true only in part, as Cate had gained some small insight during the audience at Winchester. Still, it would be the height of conceit to presume her betrothal played a major role in the matter.
“You don’t have to understand it to become his pawn.”
Pawns were often sacrificed in order to save more valuable pieces. Cate felt hollow inside as that thought struck her.
“So,” Trilborn said, reclaiming her regard, “you will not speak to Henry?”
“He would never listen. How many times must I tell you?”
“Those who venture nothing also gain nothing,” he declared.
“A maxim for the battlefield, as I recall. This is my life we are discussing.”
“Which you will spend in Scotland, if you don’t have a care. I should think an English husband would suit you better. I could give you as much satisfaction as any Scots oaf, I’ll warrant.”
“I am promised. Can we not leave it at that until it proves otherwise?”
“Promised to Dunbar, of all men,” Trilborn said, ignoring her plea. “By all the saints, I believe it’s what you want!”
“All I want, sir, is to be left alone!”
She picked up her skirts, preparing to leave him. It was to be a fine, indignant exit with the trainlike hem of her gown frothing in her wake.
She was snatched up short as he wrapped hard fingers about her upper arm and whirled her against the nearest wall. Her head thudded against the stone, so hard that lightning flashed behind her eyes. Trilborn came up against her before she could move, slamming his body into hers, flattening her so she could barely draw breath, grinding against her from chest to thighs. He caught her wrists, squeezing until they creaked as he jerked them above her head. Holding them on either side of her headdress, he tried to claim her mouth.
She twisted, whipped her head aside, ducking away from his wet, seeking lips. “Let me go,” she cried, shuddering in revulsion.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he demanded with harsh satisfaction in his voice. “Are you?”
She could feel the ridge of hardness he pressed against her, with only fine hose fabric between it and her abdomen. Shifting her weight, she tried to bring her knee up. He turned so she grazed his thigh, then he slid his leg between hers, bending his knee to rub against her. Catching both wrists in one hand, he reached for her breast, squeezing, kneading it in paroxysms, pinching the nipple through the cloth.
Cate heaved with rage and disgust. So wrenching was the experience that she snapped her head forward and sank her teeth into his neck.
He cursed, jerking away. For a single instant, she could breathe, was close to freedom.
Trilborn put a hand to his neck, brought it away again to stare at the blood on his fingers. He curled them into a fist while the disbelief in his face turned to fury. Drawing back his arm, he struck her, putting so much force behind it that she spun away from him, falling in a tangle of skirts. Her elbow and hip struck the floor with such jarring agony it brought tears to her eyes.
Behind her, Trilborn gave a guttural cry. Cate expected him to be upon her in an instant. She heaved up, struggling to her knees.
Through the blue gauze shimmer of her veil, which had fallen over her face, she saw two figures rolling over the carpets that stretched down the very center of the corridor. It was Ross and Trilborn, locked in vicious combat loud with oaths, grunts and the smack of flesh against flesh.
Abruptly, there was a flash of steel. Trilborn broke free then and staggered to his feet with a red-stained blade in his hand. He slewed around, his face wild as he looked at Cate. He’d lost his hat, his straw-colored hair hung in his face, his nose dripped blood and a purple-red splotch marred his neck.
Ross sprang up with his dirk grasped in a hard fist. Trilborn, pale and sweating, backed away. He swung around and plunged into a run. His thumping footsteps faded as he fled through an end door.
Cate flung her veil behind her shoulders as Ross came toward her. He was white around the mouth and none too steady on his feet, she saw, and his hand was clamped to his side. Still, he reached his free hand down to her, pulling her up when she took it.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his gaze on her cheekbone, which throbbed with every beat of her heart.
“Never mind me. What of you?”
He didn’t bother to lower his gaze to where blood seeped between his fingers, made no answer at all to what she’d asked. Releasing her hand, he trailed a gentle fingertip over the curve of her cheek. “I should have killed him while I had the chance.”
“Instead, he nearly killed you.”
“My fault. Like the greenest chucklehead, I was nay thinking. I expected the devil’s spawn to send footpads after me in some dark alley, but didn’t credit him with the nerve to draw knife himself, and inside the palace walls.”
Dunbar’s Scots burr, always present to some degree, had thickened under duress. He must be more injured than he wanted her to know. “I am grateful you were near, all the same. But something must be done for your side. Can your manservant bind it? Shall I send for him?”
“Servant have I none,” he said with a quirk of humor at one corner of his mouth. “I’m nay such a strutting cock as yon Trilborn, needing aid with my dressing like a babe in swaddling, nay, nor with anything else. I can strap it up my own self.”
“So you might, if you don’t drip so much gore on Henry’s silk carpets that you pass out between here and your chamber.”
“Henry’s carpets are no worry of mine,” he drawled. “As you have such a care for them, you’d best see to it.”
He thought her reluctance to see a stag brought down meant she’d no stomach for dealing with a bloody wound. He was sure she would refuse and send him on his way; she could see it in his face. How little he knew her.
“So I shall, but not here.” She touched his sleeve, indicated the corridor that stretched ahead of them. “There will be cloths for cleaning and binding in my chamber. It’s not far.”
He drew back. “That I can’t do, and well you know it.”
“Because I’m a maiden? No one believes that except you, as Trilborn made abundantly clear.”
“The man’s a fool. If others are not ready to accept it, it’s for their own ends.”
“Or else they think the worst because it’s so often true,” she said in dry correction. “But what is the point of enduring ill beliefs if I am not to have the advantage of it? Come, this way.”
He took a step, then stopped. He raked back his hair with an impatient gesture, exposing a black scowl. “You would not prove them right out of anger?”
“What, wallow in sin because I’ve lost my shiny halo? My pride is greater than that. Besides, Gwynne, my serving woman, will be there.”
“Well enough, but if I am seen going into your chamber, all the holy angels may not bring back that halo’s polish.”
“No, but the wound from Trilborn’s knife may turn putrid, so prove the curse of the Three Graces yet again. I would see that doesn’t happen.”
Rueful humor gleamed in his eyes. “You think the feud will do me in because of this curse? Belike it’s Trilborn who will die of blood poisoning after you set upon him with your sharp, white teeth.”
“It was all I could do.” Her voice was curt and she did her best to disregard the heat in her face as she urged him toward her chamber.
“And a fine thing it was, for all it drove him fair mad. Belike, he’ll be the victim of this dread prophecy, as he tried to claim you.”
“Pray God. Yet you are the more injured.”
“I’ve also sworn not to wed you, so how am I to fall victim?”
“Don’t mock it!”
“Nay, but you must see it makes little sense.”
She shook her head, a movement heavy with concern. “We are as good as betrothed, like it or not. Come with me now, before you bleed to death from it.”
He should refuse; Ross knew that well. It would be far better if he made whatever bow he could manage, and walked away while Lady Catherine was still talking. The slash halfway across his belly was irksome, but not deep. Certainly, it was nothing he had not dealt with before. A few strips torn from an old shirt, a stitch or two with good Highland wool, and none would be the wiser.
He didn’t do it. Meek as a newly dropped shoat, he followed where Lady Catherine led. He walked into her chamber behind the intriguing sway of her hips, sidestepped the sweep of her trailing hem as she came to a sudden halt, then waited to see what she would do next.
The chamber was simple, containing only a curtained bed with a chest at its foot, a table with bowl and ewer, a low stool, and a carpet instead of rushes on the floor. It was warmer than the outside corridor by grace of coals that glowed in the brazier on a three-legged stand. Yet what struck him like a clout to the head was its scents of perfume, spice and warm, indefinably feminine linen.
His reaction was immediate and all too predictable. There were times when the front-and-center placement of his sporran—called a cache-sexe by Scotland’s French allies for obvious reasons—was most useful. It was Ross’s personal belief other men at Henry’s court would do better with one instead of the useless codpieces they sported now and again.
“Oh, I forgot,” Lady Catherine said with an air of confusion. “Gwynne is washing linens this morning. If you will be seated on the stool, I’ll send to the laundry yard—”
“Nay, ’tis not worth the trouble or the time, as you’ll be needing to arrange yourself before you leave here again.”
She reached up at once to feel for the placement of her veil. Which was more than a little off-kilter. “Am I that bad? I didn’t think—”
“Don’t fuss, that wasn’t my thought at all. I’ll just take myself off to my own chamber.”
“Indeed, not. I can see to your wound as well as Gwynne, if you won’t mind my ministrations.”
The serving woman who had been with her and her sister on the progression was an older woman with a no-nonsense manner and skill in divers things. The only advantage Ross saw in having her tend him was that he would have no difficulty whatever in keeping his hands off her.
“You should not be called upon for such,” he said, in a last attempt at reason.
The look Lady Catherine gave him held two parts regret and one part impatience as she indicated the room’s squat stool. “You should not need it, but that can’t be remedied. If you sit, this will be easier for both of us.”
He failed to see the logic. The difficulty that lay ahead was obvious, but he moved deeper into that feminine fastness and dropped down onto the stool.
She bustled around, stirring the coals in the brazier and tipping in a few more from a scuttle that sat beneath it. As smoke rose in a thin column toward the low haze that lingered near the high ceiling, she moved to take up a small basin. “I must fetch water. Mayhap you’ll remove your shirt while I’m gone.”
“My lady…”
“Now what? I refuse to believe you are shy.”
His laugh was low and rather breathless. “Nay, but to strip off the shirt, I’ll have to remove my belt and sporran.”
“Do so then.”
“If I remove my belt, there will be nothing to hold my plaid. And I should point out that we Scots have no great liking for yon braises Englishmen wear to cover their private parts.”
She opened her mouth to speak, standing there halfway to the door with the basin in her hand. Then she closed it with a snap as rich color moved from her neck to her hairline. “Well, then, wrap your great coverlet of a plaid about you. It appears you’ll be no more naked under it then than you are now.”
It hurt to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. He’d thought to see her rattled. Aye, and so he had, though not for long. She was no milk-and-water English milady. For all her cool blond coloring, she had fire inside her. She might keep it tamped down, as doubtless she’d been taught, but it flared up now and then, burning so bright Ross longed to warm himself in its glow. And he would, naked and shameless withal, in this brief time heaven had provided.
Reaching up with his free hand, he began to unfasten the lacing that closed his shirt’s slit of a neck opening. Lady Catherine’s gaze rested for long moments on the movements of his fingers. As he exposed the dark and curling hair that pelted his chest, however, she drew a sharp breath and whirled, whisking from the room.
By the time she returned, Ross sat naked to the waist, but with the rest of him decently wrapped in yards of woven wool. She stopped just inside the door, sloshing a little water from her basin so it streaked down the skirt of her gown. Sensing her gaze on his shoulders like the brush of butterfly wings, he felt a rash of goose bumps spread across them. In sheer reflex, he pressed the wadded shirt he held against his wound so hard he feared he had caused more damage.
Averting her gaze, she came on almost at once. Like the busiest of serving maids, she drew the small table near and placed the basin on it, then went to pull a ragged linen shift from the box at the foot of the bed. She tore it into strips with a few quick jerks. Face set, she returned to his side.
Ross eyed the bruise on her cheek. It was bluer now than moments before. Murderous rage surged in his chest. The need to smash Trilborn’s face instead of just his nose, to pound it with his fists, was so strong Ross ached with it. The fingers of his left hand curled into a fist.
Lady Catherine seemed unaware of her disfigurement. Her gaze rested on his chest and shoulders. The absorption that lay in the blue depths of her eyes pleased him so mightily that he felt the flat, dark rounds of his nipples bead with it. It was a moment before he realized her interest was not caught by his manly physique but by the white streaks of old scars, a four-day-old sword cut on his upper arm and sundry bruises picked up in recent fights.
Her gaze lifted to his face. “You are cold. Shall I drape my cloak around you?”
“I’m not cold.” The words came out as a growl.
“No?” She looked away without arguing. “I’ll bind the wound as quickly as I can, anyway. Here, let me see the damage.”
She took hold of the shirt he held wadded against the slash, peeling it away with slow care. The cut gaped, oozing, but was not the freshet it had been before. Ross watched her face, waiting for the sick disgust that would have been expressed by many. All he saw was calm appraisal.
“The edges need to be pulled together,” she said quietly, “else it will take forever to heal.”
“Do it then.”
“Gwynne would be better at it.”
“Don’t tell me you are no hand with a needle. I see your work there.” He nodded toward a basket that sat on the seat beneath the room’s single window, and the piece of embroidered silk that spilled from it, showing flowers in jewel colors.
“It isn’t the same.” The words were laconic.
“Nay, it should be easier, as I have no need for daisies stitched round my navel.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. She turned away then, speaking over her shoulder as she moved back to the boxlike trunk at the bed’s foot. “On your head be it.”
He was busy dabbing at the ooze from the cut and did not see what she took from the box. It was brought to his notice as she cast a handful of white powder into the water she had fetched, and stirred a piece of linen cloth in it, which she then pressed to his side.
“God’s blood!” he swore, coming up off the stool as the sting of a thousand ants bit into him. His plaid began to slip and he caught it in haste, holding it in front of him. “What is that stuff?”
“Salt. It’s only a salt-water wash. Gwynne swears by it.”
“So might I, if I were a piece of boar meat needing preserving,” he declared, subsiding back onto the stool.
“What prevents flesh from putrefying in the cask does the same for it on the body. Can you not be still?”
Thus abjured, he sat like stone. He required distraction from the pull and throb of his side, however. It was found, somewhat, in his close view of her curves under the deep rose silk of her outer tunic. At the center bodice, and again on either side at the level of her knees, this tunic had sizable slits with bound edges that spread open to reveal the vinelike tracery of embroidery on the pale pink gown it covered. The small cap that held her veil had the same color and embroidered design.
Strands of her hair had become enmeshed with the gold threads during her struggle with Trilborn, Ross saw. His fingers tingled at the tips with the need to set them free, to smooth them back into the heavy braid that shifted between her shoulder blades, under the semi-concealment of her veil. The fine fabric of her bodice molded to her shape with utmost fidelity, outlining the gentle globe of her breast. He could see where the areola made a flower shape around the tiny peak that was, most likely, a close match in color to the silk that covered it.
Trilborn had laid hands on her there. Ross knew a sudden ferocious need to wipe away that touch by cradling both her breasts in his hands, brushing the crests into sweet berries that he might taste, tease, gently suckle. He yearned to help her forget.
It was a part of the blood feud, it must be, this deep need to obliterate the very memory of his enemy from her mind. There was nothing more in it. No, not even if his yearning extended to greater liberties, to testing her soft heat and womanly fragrance while she lay naked in his arms.
He needed to think of something else, anything else.
“You have had difficulty with Trilborn before? He makes a habit of accosting you in quiet corners?”
“Not at all. I’ve managed to avoid him since our return,” she replied, explaining in a few words how she had been accosted. While she spoke, she finished cleaning around his wound, and then moved to where her sewing basket sat, bringing back a needle threaded with black silk.
“Deliberate, then, of a certainty.”
She appeared to consider that while she patted his wound dry with a soft cloth. Dropping it on the table, she knelt at his side, then reached to take up the needle. “I suppose it must have been.”
“He meant to force himself on you if you failed to see reason. It seems to me he could have chosen a better place for it, though he may have only…seized the moment.” Ross’s breath hissed between his teeth as she caught the edge of the slash and pierced his flesh without warning.
“It was fortunate he did not choose differently, else you might not have come upon us.”
Though her words were prosaic enough, a small shudder ran over her. “Nothing of chance was in it,” he said deliberately. “I saw Marguerite, who let fall that you’d been summoned to the queen. I was on my way to meet you, and make certain all was well, when I saw Trilborn intercept you. I thought to discover his intention before I joined you. I almost left it too late.” He sucked in a breath as she pushed her needle through his skin again, but was too intent on how she would answer to give the stinging pain his full attention.
“Not quite,” she said.
“He hurt you.” He reached to brush a knuckle over her cheek as he had before, unable to resist the urge. Her skin was as soft as apple blossom petals. To see it damaged pained him in some way he could not explain.
“Not as much as he hurt you,” she answered, with her attention on what she was doing. “Nor as you are likely to be hurt if you continue to fight every man who speaks an incautious word concerning our time in the New Forest.”
Her features were grave, her voice severe. That she spoke of preventing pain for him while thrusting a needle into him was a wonderment, though he said nothing of it. “Would you have me ignore them?” he asked instead.
“To make much of what they say lends credence to our odd betrothal. It will be more difficult to renounce it at some future date.”
“To let it pass would have it appear I have no care for your good name, or mine.”
“Courting death merely because my mare ran away with me seems beyond foolish.”
“’Twas not my plan.” He held up his hand as she opened her lips to speak again. “It’s a conundrum, agreed, but what would you? I must act the part of a man about to be married, or else appear the coward. After the seven or eight I’ve made eat their words, mayhap fewer will hunger to face me.”
Her eyes widened, turning a darker blue as they met his. “Trilborn said a half dozen.”
“He is behind time,” Ross said shortly. Dropping poison wherever he went was both habit and pleasure for his old enemy.
She pressed her lips together before she spoke. “It’s too much.”
“Even if ’tis said I took advantage of you? I’ll not stand for that.”
“I’m to believe you fought for that reason, am I?”
Many women would have, if only because it absolved them of blame. He should have known Lady Catherine would be different. “I am pleased to be your champion,” he said, his voice resounding deep in his chest, “as I can be nothing else.”
Her eyes held his, twin wells of dark blue, for endless moments before she spoke. “You feel I require one then.”
“Aye,” he said, inclining his head, “that I do.”
She gave a small shake of her own head, turning her attention to her stitching as she released a sigh. “You may be right.”
She finished the task in short order, and tied off the last stitch with a small, flat knot. So surprised was he that she was done, he barely felt the tug as she leaned to bite the thread just above it, freeing the needle. Or mayhap it was the sight of her veiled head so near his lap, the brush of her lips against the skin of his abdomen, the press of her breast against his bare thigh. Aye, and the knowledge that he was near naked made no difference, that all he need do to take her was throw off his plaid and pull her down to the floor with him.
His body hardened with a drawing agony so strong he felt his eyes water. It took his breath, destroyed reason, so he was left with nothing but impulse and desperate need. Unable to move without reaching out for her, he sat as still as death while she got to her feet and, oblivious to his state, began to dress his wound.
She compressed her lips so tightly they almost disappeared while she concentrated. He had noticed it before, but now he wanted to follow that tucked line, to coax them free, tease and stroke until they were soft, full and moist as she opened to him. He wanted to cup her face in his hands while he trailed a thousand healing kisses over her bruised skin. He longed to remove her veil and free her hair, to comb his fingers through it until it spread over her back and shoulders in a shining cape. He yearned to remove the yards of stifling fabric she wore, unfastening hooks and ties, saluting the flesh he uncovered until she was naked and pliant in his arms.
Unaware, she made a pad of linen and pressed it to his side, held it down with another strip while she passed her arms around him to the back, crossed the ends and drew them forward again. She was close, so close that he caught the lavender-and-rose scent she wore, the warm fragrance of her hair. He held his breath while she wrapped his waist with the all too brief embrace of her arms, wrapped it again and then began to tie a small square knot.
Something in his stillness must have communicated itself to her. She glanced up, met the heat of his eyes, searched the set expression on his face.
For long seconds, she did not move. In the sudden quiet, the sound of ash falling away from the coals in the brazier was a slithering whisper. By slow degrees, her eyes turned as dark as the sky before a summer storm. A small tremor passed through her hands, which rested upon him.
Her lips parted at last, at last, and he was lost. He was lost, and feared it might be forever.