By the time her senses came back to her, the guard was long gone. Gunnar still held her close, his hand curved possessively between her legs, his fingers moving in tiny, lazy circles that sent the last shocks of completion through her. He kissed her forehead, and she could feel the smile that curved his lips and raised a hand to trace it with her fingertips. A full smile, this time. She wanted to see it.
And she wanted to return the pleasure he’d given her. She stroked his cheek as she moved her other hand, still at the edge of his doublet, to tug at the end of one lace. It came free and she moved to the next. Something bumped her wrist in the dark. She jerked away, then realized it was his member, swelling and bobbing against the loosened cloth. She tentatively reached out, cupped him as he still cupped her, felt his deep sigh against her temple.
He entwined his fingers with hers and pulled her hand away.
She rose up on her toes to kiss him, using her tongue the way he’d taught her to show him how much she wanted to do this for him. The wind rattled at the shutters, now carrying with it, thin and high, the rooster’s first crow, warning of a still-distant dawn. There was time. She reached for his laces.
This time, Gunnar’s fingers bit into her wrist. “Stop,” he whispered against her ear. “I must go.”
“But—”
“I must. I’m sorry.” He pushed the draperies open a crack and listened, and he was gone, like that, across the retiring room, out into the solar and down the stairs before she could even protest.
She stood there, mouth agape, stung that he could leave her like that, not understanding at all. She started after him, but he was already below, so she stood at the screen, angry and disappointed, and watched him gather his things. He looked up at her, just as he had earlier, and for a moment she thought he was coming back to her.
Then abruptly he whirled away and strode toward the door. As he pushed it open, another cock’s crow blew in on the wind. Gunnar stood there a moment, tension radiating from his body as he battled something within himself.
She understood, then. He was protecting both of them by going off to do his odd business, whatever it was. If he didn’t, the guard on the gate would note the change, talk might spread. Lucy might realize she’d left the bed.
If he turned back, they would both be lost.
So before he could lose his will, she snatched the candle stub from the table where she’d left it and ran, plunging into the dark hallway, only slowing when the faraway thud of the closing door told her he had gone.
Her heart pounded like a drum in her ears as she groped her way back to her room. Lucy still snored, thank the saints. Eleanor dropped the candle back into the basket with the other stubs, shed her robe, and slipped back into bed, grateful that no one would know she’d ever been gone, ever done anything so wonderful, so foolish, so utterly sinful. As the cock crowed again, she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, knowing she’d made a terrible mistake and trying to ignore the soft, wicked voice that whispered that the mistake had been not in going, but in waiting so late to do it.
CHAPTER 7
“WHAT THAPPENED TO
my riband?”
Lucy glanced up from the veil she was pinning into shape. “Is it caught in your gown?”
Holding the end of one braid, Eleanor twisted to look. “I don’t see it, and this side is half undone already. Come and help me.”
Lucy left the veil and went over to shake out Eleanor’s skirts. “It must have fallen off earlier. I will retrace our steps.”
“Later. See if you can fix this.”
Lucy inspected the intricate arrangement of interlaced braids that cradled her cousin’s head. “I’m not certain I can. Miriam did something different today, and I’m not certain where the plaits start and stop.”
“Try, before they come out entirely.”
“Yes, my lady.” Lucy fetched a spare length of riband from the basket and, draping it over her shoulder, started trying to sort out one braid from the next as Eleanor jounced up and down, the way she was wont to do when she was happy. Unfortunately, Lucy suspected why she jounced, and it wasn’t good. “I am going to undo a bit more. ’Twould be easier if you would stand still.”
“I’m sorry. I shall try.” Eleanor settled on her heels.
Lucy separated the various strands between her fingers and started rebraiding them. It seemed to go together correctly, but when she compared the results to the other side, the pattern didn’t match. With Lady Eleanor beginning to jounce again, Lucy undid things and started again, tugging a strand to one side then the other without result. “This makes no sense.”
“Then tie it off and fetch Miriam. The horn is about to blow for supper.”
“And you are about to be married.” Lucy clapped her mouth shut. She hadn’t meant to say that aloud.
The braid flew out of Lucy’s grasp as her cousin whirled on her. “Stop. We will not do this again.”
Foolish, but now it was begun, she may as well finish.
“I think we must, my lady, and that we must do it until you hear me. You and Sir Gunnar cannot . . .” Lucy stopped, hesitant to put a name to what she suspected. She wasn’t sure if the fuzzy recollection of her cousin crawling over her into bed sometime near dawn was real or a dream. “Does he know you are promised elsewhere?”
Eleanor flushed. “The subject has not arisen.”
“Then you must raise it.”
“But he’ll . . . He won’t.” Eleanor took a deep breath and started afresh. “He is an honorable man and he—”
“How do you know?” demanded Lucy.
“What?”
“How do you know he is honorable?”
“He saved us from the fire.”
“And I am as grateful as you for that. But that proves only that he has courage, not honor. How do you know he is honorable?”
“Because I do.” Eleanor touched the pit of her stomach. “Because when I look into his eyes, I feel it here.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “An odd place to feel someone else’s honor. And so to salute his honor, you lie to him?”
“I have not lied.”
“A truth untold is as good as a lie.”
“You sound like a priest.” Eleanor made a sour face.
“I fear you
need
a priest,” said Lucy. “And if I were wise, I would summon one. Why have you not told Sir Gunnar you are betrothed?”
“Because if he knew, he would do the honorable thing and ride away.” Eleanor stared past Lucy’s shoulder, her eyes fixed on some private vision. “I don’t want him to ride away. Not unless it is with me.”
“Surely you don’t still imagine . . .” Lucy’s voice trailed off in disbelief as she sank down onto the bed. “That was a phantasm even four years ago. Now it is dangerous folly. If you ride off with him, your father will hunt you down and have Sir Gunnar drawn and quartered before your eyes.”
“No.” Eleanor pressed her hands to her temples and shook her head, denying the bloody image. “No he won’t. Not if he gives us leave to marry first.”
“God’s toes. You are mad! The earl will never let you wed him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s poor.”
“He has land in Lesbury. My father has picked men as low for his other daughters.”
“Not those from your lady mother. He wants you married well. To Lord Burghersh.”
“Well, Lesbury is here and Burghersh isn’t. Richard could have come for me three years ago when he was made lord, yet here I sit, still unwed. He wants me as little as I want him, and my father grows impatient with both of us. When Sir Gunnar asks for my hand, he will say yes, just to be rid of me at last.”
“
If
Sir Gunnar asks for you.”
“He will.”
“How do you know?” Lucy cut off the answer with a wave of her hand. “Never mind. I know, you ‘feel’ it. Well, whatever Sir Gunnar wants, you
must
tell him about Lord Burghersh. Else I will.”
“You cannot. Please, Lucy.” Agitated, Eleanor paced back and forth across the room, chewing on her lip. “I will tell him in time, but I want him to grow fond of me first, so he is ready to ask for me.”
“And what if he doesn’t? What if you are mistaken and all he wants is to bed you?”
“He doesn’t.” Eleanor blushed deep red. “But if he did, then I would change his mind.”
“Every maid who ever spread her legs to a passing knight has thought the same thing.”
Eleanor went redder yet. Lucy’s stomach twisted. Perhaps it hadn’t been a dream. She was going to have to try to sleep more lightly.
“You cannot tell me this is wrong, Lucy. I knew even at Richmond that I preferred Sir Gunnar over Richard, and as soon as I saw him take that bow after he was knocked over in the mêlée, I knew I still do. He has such a good humor to him. Can you imagine Richard able to mock his own loss of dignity so easily? Or that in mocking dignity lost, he could ever regain it?”
Staring up at a cobweb that waved lazily from a beam, Lucy debated what answer to give. She hadn’t intended the conversation to go this way at all.
“Well, can you?” Eleanor prodded.
Lucy sighed. “If I am going to insist you tell the truth, I suppose I am obliged to do the same.”
“You are.”
“The truth then. I cannot envisage Richard le Despenser with any dignity at all. And if by chance he found some, surely it would be in such short supply he would dare neither lose it nor mock it.”
Eleanor sagged down next to her, nearly sobbing with relief. “Then you understand.”
“I do. I should not admit it to you, but I do.”
Eleanor laid her head on Lucy’s shoulder. “I need your help, Lucy, please.”
“God’s toes. I am not some simpleton you can bend to your will with those doe’s eyes.” Lucy squinted crookedly down at her cousin. “I won’t help him to bed you. Nor you to bed him. And I won’t lie to the earl, nor to your lady mother.”
“I would not ask you to. Besides, my lady mother will be lying in for another month, and the lord, my father barely takes note of me, except when he wants something of me or is angry with me.”
“He will take note of
this
,” predicted Lucy.
“We will be discreet.”
“There is an entire castle full of people, some of whom will be quite pleased to carry tales to the earl.”
“Anne, you mean.”
Lucy nodded. “And anyone else who wants to curry favor.”
“We will misdirect them.”
Lucy sighed. “In other words, we will lie.”
“Then you
will
help.” Eleanor threw her arms around Lucy. “I vow, you are a better sister to me than any of those who own the title.”
“A true sister would stop you, as I should.” Lucy pried herself free and started toward the door, muttering to herself, “I am the worst kind of fool.”
“Lucy?”
“What?”
“I will tell him of Richard, I promise. As soon as I am certain of his heart.”
Lucy stopped with her hand on the door and slowly shook her head. “That thing you feel in your belly, my lady? That is not his honor but your own guilt. I know, because now I suffer of it, too. I will fetch Miriam to fix your hair.”
She did her courtesy without looking at Eleanor and headed off to the retiring room, where she’d last seen Miriam. But the maid had vanished, and none of the other attendants knew where she was. Lucy dispatched a page to hunt her down and started back, and as she passed back through the solar, she thought she might as well check to see whether Sir Gunnar had come yet. Eleanor was going to ask anyway.
He hadn’t. She leaned her aching head against the screen and closed her eyes.
When she opened them a few moments later, it was to find Henry Percy leaning against the same screen, barely a yard away, watching her with a bemused expression. “Who is it that you pine for, fair Lucy?”
“No one,
monsire
. I was resting, not pining. I did not hear you come in.”
“Because I was already here.” He tipped his head toward Lord Ralph’s high-backed chair, sitting by the fire. “I thought I might try it for size, having lost my own for the time being. You won’t tell Westmorland, will you?”
He sounded much like he had when he had visited York as a boy and tried to get away with filching a sweet. “No,
monsire
, I will not tell. You are hardly Geoffrey the Bastard, trying on King Henry’s crown.”
“You remember that story?”
She nodded.
“Well, I feel like him.” He shifted to peer through the screen as she had been doing. “I saw you on guard here last evening, too. Surely you search for someone. Or does Lady Eleanor send you to watch on her behalf?”
So, it began. At least she could handle Sir Henry without a lie. “She doesn’t even know I am here.”
“’Struth?”