Chapter
XXI

Hurtling downstairs, hand still pressed to his wound, Christian almost collided with Blade and his escort of guards. He sidestepped the three and plunged into the bowels of the house as the guards fell back. In the kitchen he scowled at Cook, who fled along with her staff. Christian grabbed a cloth and dipped it in a bucket of water.

“Hell,” he said. “Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell.”

Evil humors must have invaded his brain for him to have behaved so to Nora.

“Hell, hell, hell.”

A nasty-sweet voice interrupted him. “I hope it isn’t my presence that has upset you, since my coming was your idea.”

He turned to find Blade smiling at him. The younger man’s guards hovered near the kitchen door, well aware of their master’s mood. Christian waved them away, and they bumped into each other trying to get out of the room.

Pointing to a cauldron hanging in the fireplace, Christian matched Blade’s treaclelike voice. “How would you like to join the vegetables in that stock?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Blade said. “For then I couldn’t watch you suffer. You can’t know how much pleasure I’ve gotten from seeing you writhe. You don’t eat, you hardly sleep, and now your true pain is about to begin. You don’t have to keep guards on me. I’ll stay gladly.”

Christian wrung his cloth and laid it on the table, then ripped his doublet and shirt to the waist to expose his cut. “How obliging of you.”

“Your hand is shaking.”

Tightly gripping the cloth, Christian began wiping the blood from the cut. “Get out.”

“I can see your fear.” Blade came closer and pulled the cloth from Christian’s hand. He dabbed at the wound, refusing to relinquish the cloth when Christian reached for it. “It has taken me a long time, but I finally understand. You tried to convince yourself that what you felt for Nora was lust and pity. But now that she hates you, you have to face the truth.” Blade held the cloth over the wound and grinned. “It wasn’t pity that made you marry her, and you know it. You love her, so much that it frightens you.”

“You really are a little bitch.”

Blade chuckled. He took Christian’s hand and placed it over the cloth on the wound while he tore another cloth into strips and folded a third into a pad. “Whoreson, mayhap.”

“No, bitch is the right word.”

“You’re just angry because for once someone is dangling you over the fire instead of the other way around.” Blade shoved Christian’s hand from the wound and pressed the bandage to it. “Shall I tell you what happened? You found her, begged forgiveness, and she spurned you. And you, who are so accustomed to ladies worshipping at the altar of your beauty, who cannot abide having your will thwarted, you tried to subdue her.”

“Have you remembered who you are yet?”

Wrapping a strip of cloth around Christian’s shoulder, Blade continued. “Poor Nora, you’ll drive her to madness. While I will enjoy your anguish when you lose her, I grieve for the lady.”

“Ha! Don’t drag out your mourning rags so soon.” Christian pushed Blade away and hopped off the table where he’d been sitting. “She’s changed. Transformed herself into a dueler and harpy all at once. Nearly cut my arm off.”

Blade’s mouth dropped open as he looked at the bandage. “She did that?”

“Another ill happening that should make you rejoice. Now get out before I decide you’d benefit from a few nights in the cellar.”

Christian placed his hands on the rim of the bucket of water, gripping it tightly as Blade began to chuckle again.

“You’re even more frightened than I thought. What ails you, my lord? Don’t tell me you thought seduction would work. Why do you think she ran away?”

Blade had taken no more than a step away before Christian was after him. Sliding around the youth, he blocked his path.

“What are you talking about?”

Frowning, Blade stuck his thumbs in his belt. “You haven’t guessed, I see.”

“Explain.”

“You really don’t look well.” Blade pulled a stool toward Christian, who ignored it. “It’s the ride and not eating. You’re going to drop at my feet.”

“I want an explanation.”

“Before she disappeared, Nora told me that she couldn’t bear for you to touch her, you know, as a man does when he wants to arouse a woman. Since the wedding night, she said. Christian!”

Lightness in his head kept Christian from protesting when Blade caught hold of him and lowered him to the stool. He pressed his lips together and gripped Blade’s arm as he closed his eyes against dizziness.

“Am I entertaining you?” he asked.

“I’ll call for help,” Blade said.

“No, it will pass.” Christian tried to open his eyes, but the room was still whirling, and he shut them again. “Does it give you good cheer to know that I’ve lost her?”

“What you did, was it so terrible?”

“Unforgivable.”

“Are you sure?”

Christian almost smiled. “It was far worse than anything I’ve done to you, my comfit.”

There was a long silence.

“I wish you would eat,” Blade said at last. “There’s no challenge in fencing with you if you can’t even stand.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Forcing his eyes open, Christian noted that the table in front of him stayed in one place. Grateful, he pushed Blade from him and stood. The table wavered, and he reached out. His hands hit the edge, and he clutched it for support.

“Go now,” he said. “I promise to fight with you later.”

Blade hesitated before walking way. “I’ll leave a man outside the door.”

Inclining his head, Christian listened to the young man’s footsteps fade. The little beast was right, he thought. He was afraid, afraid of meek Nora Becket. What Blade couldn’t know, but had made Christian see, was that his fear angered him. The greater the fear, the greater the anger. Anger had been his comfort and his disguise for so long.

When he was small and a slave to Jack Midnight, he survived by turning fear into anger. Only now, the anger worked against him instead of helping. It made him lash out at Nora and drive her farther and farther away.

What could he do? She said she didn’t care, and that frightened him. He could hardly bear to think of her indifference. He’d rather have her hate.

What he really wanted was forgiveness and love. God, he hadn’t known what he possessed when he had her love. She used to look at him with such wonder, as if he were a treasure and feast all in one. And her mind, it was so unique. He could share the most complex philosophies with her, then arouse in her a lust that drove them both wild with the itch to sate it.

Christian sucked in his breath as his thoughts turned carnal. He held his hand up before his face. It trembled with the maelstrom of conflicting emotions within him. He’d made a mistake in giving in to lust, fear, and anger. He would correct the mistake. But how?

Curling the shaking hand into a fist, he grasped it with his other hand. “Please, God, help me.”

Sitting on that stool in the kitchen, he spoke with God and set his wits to work. The hour of the evening meal approached by the time he’d settled on a plan. Meanwhile he had sent a maid to unlock Nora’s door and give her a note promising good behavior in return for her word not to flee during the night. Nora sent back her agreement, and a truce prevailed.

Not with Arthur, however. Christian watched the boy ram a hunk of venison into his mouth and chew as if he wished it were his captor’s flesh instead of a deer’s.

“We hay yoo.”

“Swallow your food,” Christian said.

Arthur gulped. “We hate you. You’re a monster.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“We don’t believe you and we don’t care if you are sorry. We hate you.”

Knowing it was useless to argue with the boy, Christian left the kitchen. Outside Nora’s chambers, he met Tideman. The steward’s features were set in formality, and he held the same puppy Christian had picked for his wife all those days ago.

Holding out the grunting and wriggling bundle, Tideman murmured, “My lord, your pet.”

“It’s not mine.” Christian tried to contain the creature in its blanket as it decided to climb his chest. “You’re still angry.”

“Young viscounts who discard chivalry and their sacred obligations of marriage—”

“I know, I know, I know.”

“Causing a lady such distress.”

“I’m trying to do penance, if you’ll step aside.”

Tideman shut his mouth and stalked away. His heavy tread on the stairs gave evidence of how unappeased he was. Slipping inside the master’s chambers, Christian came upon Nora as she was holding a wardrobe door open for a maid. Inside he could see the gowns he’d kept from her, all hung or laid out, and he almost sighed. Another source of guilt. He’d ordered those gowns made a few days before their wedding. They’d been ready soon after she’d arrived at Falaise, and he’d kept them from her.

The puppy yipped, and Nora looked up. She saw the puppy, gasped, and started toward him, but when Christian smiled and held it out, she stopped. Christian lowered his arms, calming his burden, and dismissed the maid. Nora sat down in the window seat and gazed outside. He could see the outline of her breasts as she turned to the side, and pain snaked through his groin. Setting his jaw, he willed himself to ignore his swelling flesh. He approached and laid the puppy in her lap.

Nora instantly cuddled the animal, and she brought its nose level with her own. As she nuzzled the puppy, Christian curled his hands into fists to keep from shoving his way between the two and taking the animal’s place. He was so caught in his lust that her voice startled him.

“You see, I knew in my heart that it was a foolish thing to hope you loved me.” She held up her hand to silence him when he would have spoken. “Think you I don’t know how unremarkable my person is? I have the fascination of a shoe buckle, and the ordinariness. So when you actually married me, I thought, how good he is, how kind and wise, to see my heart and accept what I have to give.”

“Nora …”

“No, you must listen, for I won’t say this again.” She stood up, holding the puppy to her breast. “Before the wedding I promised God that I would be the most perfect and obedient wife in the kingdom in return for His gift. I believed He gave you to me as a gift, a wondrous, beautiful gift, a reward for all the years I tried so hard to make myself worthy of someone’s love.”

She stroked the puppy’s head with her cheek, and Christian could see that her eyes were dry, as dry as her tone. A poisonous fog of dread seeped into his bones.

“But you cast me aside,” she said. “Condemned me in your own Star Chamber without inquiry, and showed at last your true feelings for me.”

“Can’t you see that it was a mistake?”

“Of a certainty. I know it was all based on a misunderstanding, but you will never convince me that the misunderstanding didn’t bring out your true feelings for me.”

“All it brought out was my own weakness and stupidity,” he said. “I want you to let me make amends.”

“Unnecessary. If you want to do something for me, allow me to go to my country house.”

“No.”

Again Christian beheld Nora’s anger. It flared in her eyes and seared his gut, this wrath his cruelty had set loose. A few week ago, she wouldn’t have dared show it to him. It was quickly gone, however. She thrust the puppy at him and resumed her seat at the window. Turning her face from him, she stared out into the growing darkness.

“I gave this damnable creature to you,” he said, holding out the dog.

“I’m waiting.”

“For what.”

“For you to leave.”

He set the puppy on the floor and crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving.”

“I don’t think you perceive my meaning.” She fixed cold eyes on him. “It will happen whenever you come near. Whatever you say, whatever you do, I will simply wait for you to go away. Rail at me, implore, threaten, scream. It matters not, for deep inside all I am doing is waiting for you to leave. And when you do, I will go about my own life—as if you’d never come into it.”

Remorse vanished. Stalking to the window seat, Christian growled out his words. “You can’t do that.”

“I have been doing it since you entered this chamber.”

“I won’t allow it.” He heard his voice rise and stopped. Swallowing the urge to roar at her, he said, “Beshrew you, woman, I am your husband, and you owe me obedience before God.”

“I’ve been thinking about that for a while. God’s word was written down by fallible men. I’m sure He meant for women to be equal, but men perverted His truth.”

“Blasphemy!”

She turned to face him again, a distant smile of amusement on her lips. Christian longed to fling himself on her and show her how impossible it would be for her to remain cold to him with his body on hers. He couldn’t. Not now. He would destroy even her tolerance of his presence.

“As I said, I’m waiting for you to leave.”

“God’s blood.” He took a step toward her, but managed to keep himself from taking another. She made no sign that she cared that she’d roused his ire. The little dragon’s heart was encased in ice.

A sly thought popped into his head, and he sighed dramatically. Nora gave him a suspicious glance, but he was too busy dropping his pretense of confidence and letting his sadness show to notice. He sighed again, louder, then recited.

Nora gave a little snort, and he frowned at her. He walked up and down before her, then halted.

“You don’t believe me.” Even to himself he sounded like an outraged child.

“A quick tongue and beguiling looks I have come to expect of you.”

“I was telling the truth.”

“Marry, sirrah, I trow you wouldn’t recognize it if it sat on your lap.”

Christian’s control shattered as Nora glared at him. He slid over to her and touched her neck with his fingertips. She started and burrowed deeper into the window seat.

“Sit on my lap,” he whispered, “and let us test the matter.”

A sharp elbow jabbed into his chest, and he stumbled backward, falling on his rump. He sat up, cursing, but stopped when he saw the crimson flush that spread over Nora’s face and neck and down to her breasts. He’d shattered the ice, by God’s teeth.

Not wanting to do anything that would bring back that ice, he rose and made himself leave. As he quit the chamber, he caught a glimpse of Nora’s face, still red, and couldn’t help chuckling.

Nora heard and shouted at him, “Go cozen one of your bawds, my lord. Surely Mag is about somewhere ready to give you what I will not.”

Christian’s amusement vanished. He had forgotten how great was his sin, how cruel were the deeds for which he must atone. No fuzzy, fat puppy was going to make up for his transgressions. No, it would take a long time, this atonement. A long time indeed.

Several weeks later Christian was well settled into Failaise but was not a feather’s length closer to earning the forgiveness he desired more than he ever imagined. Pacing in his study late one afternoon while his clerk deciphered a message from Inigo, he, crossed the path of a golden ray of sunlight. The haze of light struck the silver clasps of his coat, and he stopped, studying the flashing sparkle of his signet ring. It reminded him of the disaster of Nora’s jewels.

Those jewels. Three days ago they’d arrived from the city in a silver-embossed casket. Pendants, rings, pearls in great ropes, and golden chains. Rubies and diamonds, yellow and red gold, more diamonds. He’d been glad of their arrival, for that morning he’d transgressed yet again by telling her she could not walk in the forest with Arthur.

She hadn’t wanted his company and had said so. Her refusal had stung his already wounded pride, and he’d forbidden her the walk. Why should she enjoy herself, he’d told himself, when he longed for her so much, he would have followed in her wake like that puppy he’d given her, trotting at her heels, yearning for a pat on the head?

Thinking the jewels would soothe her ire, he’d brought them to her soon after she’d stomped into her chamber and slammed the door. At first, when he’d handed her the casket, she’d merely stared at it. He’d opened the lid for her, and his heart had thumped painfully as he watched her eyes widen in shock.

“What means this?” she asked.

“They are yours,” he said. “You don’t seem to want my words of apology, so I thought mayhap you would desire—”

“To be bought?”

He shook his head. He had been about to say that the jewels were as bright as her mind and soul, but she’d fixed her thoughts on bribery. She muttered something he couldn’t hear and ran to the window, throwing it open. Digging a hand into the casket, she threw its contents out into the air. Unable to believe what he saw, Christian was slow to react. He watched a necklace with pearls as big as the tip of his thumb sail out the window before he cursed and hurled himself at his wife.

Snatching the casket back, he shoved her aside and peered out the window. The gravel path and lawn were sprinkled with jewels. A stableboy and gardener were standing on the path, gawking up at him. The rope of pearls hung like a white garland from the ivy on the wall below the window.

“Damnation,” Christian said. “Don’t leer at me,” he shouted at the bewildered servants. “Pick them up.” The stableboy blinked up at him and pointed to a chain of rubies and diamonds hanging from a tree branch. “Oh, God’s blood, I’ll be down anon.”

Drawing inside, he turned on Nora. “Ungrateful scold, I was trying to please you.” He snapped the lid of the casket closed.

“You dare tell me when I may and may not walk and then expect me to welcome gifts?” Nora curled her lip. “I suppose you think that because I am a woman, I have the moral character of a child, and that mere trinkets can appease me when I’ve been treated like possession.”

Confused, Christian tried to decipher her reasoning. “You make no sense.”

“You’re expecting me to behave like a child. Only a babe can be spanked and then comforted with a fruit sucket.”

“I wouldn’t spank you,” he said, trying not to show his bewilderment. She’d refused to speak to him further, though, and he’d had no choice but to leave her.

Shaking his head in disgust, Christian brought himself back to the present and resumed his trek across the study. He still didn’t understand why she’d thrown that embroidery box at him as he’d stepped out of her chamber.

“My lord, the cipher. My lord?”

Christian held out his hand for the paper. The clerk stood by as he read the message, constantly wiping his hands on his black robe. Christian finished reading, then rolled the paper into a cylinder and touched it to a candle flame.

“Leave me, Thomas.”

“My lord, it’s too dangerous.”

“At once.”

Thomas left, and Christian walked to a book stand and placed both hands flat on a translation of Plato. The cool leather of the binding failed to soothe him. He closed his eyes, searching for the will to command his rage. With Inigo’s help, his father had taken over the search for their attackers. Not two days ago, Inigo had discovered that one of the murderers belonged to the household guard of Bishop Bonner. The Earl remained wary, Inigo had written, for if Nora had not betrayed them, someone else had.

Christian agreed. Bonner had been at the masque when the heretics had snuck out of the cellar against his orders. So had de Ateca. Jack Midnight had appeared out of nowhere to save them when they were attacked at the docks, and Christian had no faith that it was good fortune or Midnight’s perversity alone that made for such a coincidence. His thoughts churned as he fondled the pages of the book. He would go to the city tomorrow. It shouldn’t have been a heavy task to spy out the face of one of his attackers at Bonner’s palace, yet he hadn’t. However, the man could have been in hiding.

Someone pounded on the door, jarring Christian from thoughts of revenge upon Bonner. “Enter.”

The door opened. Blade hovered at the threshold, but Nora appeared behind him and shoved him into the study. Surprised, Christian smiled at her. She returned his greeting with a scowl.

“The only reason I’m here is to protect Blade,” she said, then punched the young man on the arm. “Out with it.”

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Blade snapped at her, “or I wouldn’t have confided in you.”

“I don’t like de Ateca,” she said, “and it is beyond my imagining to think that Lord Montfort could set you to cozening him. The man eats boys for dinner.”

Christian rounded the library table and approached the youth. “What have you done?”

“Naught,” Blade said.

Laying a hand on Blade’s arm, Christian said, “Come now, marchpane, tell me a tale.”

Blade stared at Christian, silent.

“You know what happens when he speaks like a lovestruck gallant,” Nora said. “Better confess.”

Edging away from Christian, Blade slipped behind Nora before the older man could stop him. “As your dear cousin, I invited de Ateca to Falaise.”

“Why?” Christian lifted Nora out of the way and headed for Blade. “Why, sweeting? Tell your loving cousin.” He reached for the youth.

Blade danced out of Christian’s way. “To provide you with a more cunning adversary than Nora.”

“You’re still angry for your own grievances, not Nora’s.”

“Both.” Blade scuttled behind Nora again.

Christian stopped tracking him and put his hands on his hips. “You’re mad. This day I’ve found nothing but vicious magpies in my house.” At their pleased looks, he cursed. “When will the conde arrive?”

Blade wandered to a window and glanced out. “Oh, now, I think.”

“God rot your hide.” Christian sprang to Blade’s side in time to see grooms leading several horses toward the stables. Sliding a look at Blade, Christian said, “You’ll pay for this mischief. De Ateca may have the appetites of a Greek, but he has the twisted complexity of a Medici, and you’ve brought him near my wife.”

As he finished, he noticed the quiet of the chamber. He and Blade looked up to find Nora gone.

“God’s toes, she’s gone to meet him.”

Christian hurled himself out of the room with Blade close on his heels. One wrong word from Nora, and de Ateca would have the means to send all of them to their deaths. Nora was clever but innocent, and no match for the Spaniard. Praying that he reached them in time, Christian hurtled downstairs after his enemy and his love.