Tangston, I expect my duties will include ordering the food, wine, and spices." Before she embarrassed herself further, she bit off a gigantic mouthful of pie.
Fane tore off a chunk of bread. "Your duties may well include such things. Yet, your words raise an interesting point. I would like to know what pleases my wife."
She swallowed. "Oh." Traitorous warmth, licking through her like greedy flames, thawed the icy pool in her belly.
Your kisses please me,
her mind cooed.
Your touch pleases me. Your wet tongue upon my fingers —
She looked at the horses and schooled her bawdy thoughts.
"Horse rides," she said, "They please me."
"Ah." He chewed the bread. "And?"
Her frantic gaze darted about the meadow. She would not betray her lustful thoughts or yield to the reckless impulses taunting her. Not when she must remain virgin. "Flowers," she said brightly. "All kinds. Especially roses."
"You have a romantic heart. Good."
"Also swimming." Rexana stared down at the stream's blue-green pool. "'
Tis
wondrous to splash in cool water on a scorching summer's day."
"You can swim?"
She smiled at the incredulity in Fane's voice. "I learned when I was a child. My parents did not know until years later." With a soft laugh, she added, "My mother would have screeched in horror to see me frolicking in the water wearing only my shift. I always made sure my hair was dry and braided again before I returned to the keep."
His jaw tautened mid-chew. His gaze flicked over her once, as though he imagined her clad in the wet slip of linen. "If your parents did not teach you to swim, who did?"
"Rudd."
Fane's lips curled. "I should have guessed."
His gritty tone pricked her unease. She remembered the brooch pinned to her bliaut and resisted the urge to touch it. "Rudd taught me many things, including how to ride a horse without a saddle, and to hold a dagger."
"A dagger?" Fane threw up his hands. "Why? You wished to do battle like a man?"
"We cut up sticks, then made boats to float on the water. I was glad to do more with my hands than straighten my skirts or push a needle through silk."
His eyes narrowing, Fane leaned toward her. "Your brother has been a disruptive influence for years, it seems."
Air shot from her lungs. The last bite of pie fell from her hand and landed on the blanket. "My brother is an intelligent young lord who —"
"He is a hellion."
She fought to restrain her temper. "Rudd is headstrong and . . . outspoken, aye, but he was not always so. He was very close to my father. He grieved terribly when my parents died."
"You did not?"
The healing wound deep inside her hurt. She fought tears, while forcing calmness she did not feel into her tone. "He is still my brother. I have no other family left." Her chin tipped up a notch. " '
Twould
please me above all else, milord, to see him."
Fane looked across the meadow. His gaze darkened to the murky brown of a fathomless pool. She sensed his fierce resistance to the idea, and the anger simmering within him.
"Please," she whispered.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Nay."
"I must know Rudd is all right. That he is not hurt. That he has enough to eat. That he has a blanket at night to ward off the dungeon's chill."
"He is not harmed. He is being treated well enough."
She choked back a scathing retort. She would gain naught by shrieking, crying, and insisting upon Rudd's innocence. She must approach this disagreement with care. With civility.
As she swept crumbs from her skirts, she said, "Were you not a prisoner once? I have heard the tales. I have seen your scars."
A growl rumbled between his teeth. His steel-hard gaze flicked back to her. "Beware, love. You tread a forbidden path."
"Do I?" Her body quivered like a frightened hare's, but still she plunged ahead. "Would you not have been grateful to see your family? For a visitor to soothe your fears, and reassure you when you thought your cause was lost?"
His expression clouded with warning. "Enough."
"Would you not —"
"I said
enough
, wife."
His voice's desperate edge silenced her. Touched her, with a raw potency she did not expect.
The set of his jaw held grief and self-condemnation. She had wounded him. What had she said to affect him so? What memories, buried within his soul, had she awakened? Somehow, she had roused the demons lurking inside him.
She touched his arm. "Fane?"
He shook off her hand, tossed aside the bread, then picked up the wine flask. "I will not discuss my imprisonment. Do not compare my experiences with your brother's. I did not conspire against my king."
"Neither did Rudd."
Fane shook his head and exhaled a hissed breath, as though he struggled to leash a curt reply.
Tension hummed in the air between them.
Tension, aye, but also a seething undercurrent of desire.
Even in this fragile moment, desire drew her to him. Yearning tugged at her conscience. Challenged her quest to stay pure. Challenged who she really was, and what she had vowed.
Her stomach did a sickening turn. How could she want Fane, when he refused to let her see Rudd? How could she even think of lying with Fane, in hopes of changing his mind?
Huffing a breath, she shoved to her feet.
"You have eaten your fill, love?"
"I am no longer hungry." Ignoring his offer of wine, she shook the last crumbs from her gown and stomped into the sea of grass.
"Rexana."
She paused in a swath of daisies, her back to him. "Aye?"
"I will. . . consider . . . your request."
Her pulse kicked against her ribs. Joy and anticipation rushed through her. Her hands fisted into her wrinkled skirts as she blinked away the first sting of tears. "I thank you, husband. Your consideration pleases me."
Your consideration pleases me.
Rexana's words circled in Fane's mind like hunting hawks. He scowled, tipped his head back, and downed a mouthful of wine. The tart liquid rushed down his throat and burned all the way down to his gut. A distinctly uncomfortable experience. Yet thankfully, it robbed his attention from his throbbing loins.
The battle of words had not driven an anvil between them, as Rexana may have expected or even intended. It had only whittled away the restraints he had managed to impose upon his sensual hunger. Ah, God. Such a fine line lay between the past and the present. Between restraint and mindless intent. Between anger and desire.
A laugh rumbled in his chest. What irony. He sat among a tantalizing orgy of food, yet he starved. Craved. Wanted.
He stared at Rexana, strolling through the grass toward the stream. Her hair gleamed in the sunlight, a luxurious fall of golden honey-brown. His fingers itched to plunge into her silky tresses and haul her back against him. To turn her around and cup her head. To hold her firm, while his lips and tongue showed her exactly what in hellfire pleased him.
Swatting aside a gnat, he drank again. He could not take his gaze off her. Her body swayed with each stride, a natural movement, as though she intuitively sensed the rhythm of the breeze through the grass. She had moved with such grace when she had danced for him in veils, bells and smoky shadow.
A shiver ran through him. If he closed his eyes, revived that titillating memory, he could still see her lithe body arching, spinning and swaying, a look of pure abandon on her face.
Leaning forward, he watched her step down onto the stony bank. She hesitated, then headed toward the large stones half submerged in the water. Caution flickered at the back of his mind. He dismissed it. Foolish to worry about her, when she seemed capable of taking care of herself.
He set down the flask, then began to rewrap the fare. None of it would go to waste. Memories of old women and children begging for scraps in the squalid eastern markets still haunted his dreams. The leftover food would feed Tangston's beggars.
Or even the traitors in the dungeon.
His fingers tightened on the linen enfolding the chicken. He had been right to deny Rexana a visit. Of course he had. She would not appreciate his reasons, even if he explained that he was required, as High Sheriff, to deal harshly with suspected criminals.
Would she call him barbaric, for using the prospect of a visit from her as leverage to make her stubborn brother confess? Nay, she would call him heartless, manipulative and cruel. Yet, she knew naught of real cruelty, of stinging whips, gouging metal instruments, and taunts that would strain even a holy saint's sanity. Indeed, he would have lost his mind, if not for Leila's visits and her healing touch.
A shudder crawled down Fane's spine. He would never apply brutal torture to prisoners in his dungeon.