In the Shadow of Midnight (19 page)

“Ahh. Yes. Your uncle did mention you were a little out of sorts with the entire world these days.”

She stopped so suddenly the hem of her mantle creamed around her ankles, and Eduard carried forward several more steps before noticing he walked alone.

“So. He discussed me, did he?”

FitzRandwulf bought an awkward moment of respite by walking back to her side. “He … mentioned why you were here, in Normandy. That you were not pleased with the king’s writ.”

Ariel planted her hands on her waist. “He discussed my
marriage
with you?”

“Only in passing. And only by way of explaining why you are here, defying the king’s decree.”

“I am not defying him. I am refusing him.”

“You are not pleased with his choice of husbands?”

“Not pleased?
Not pleased?”
She held her temper in check with a visible effort. “Why, I am delirious with joy. Why should I not be? Marriage to a gaoler’s son—a rough-handed, large-nosed, bull-legged churl with the manners and odour of a wild boar—” She smiled sweetly. “How could I be anything but
blissfully
delighted with my sovereign’s keen interest in my future happiness?”

Eduard hid his own smile even though he doubted she could see it. “I gather you have met the happy groom?”

“I certainly have not,” she snapped. “Nor have I any intentions of doing so.”

“Not even if the king commands it?”

“Not even if the king takes me by the heels and drags me to an audience!”

“Are you not worried your refusal might put your uncle in a worrisome position?”

Ariel whirled around and glared over the parapet, her hands small and white where they gripped the stone casement. “My uncle is the Marshal of England. He is accustomed to being in worrisome positions. I cannot believe
for one instant
he would take the king’s defense over mine.”

“He may not have a choice in the matter,” Eduard offered gently.

“My uncle has never lacked for choices. Nor has he ever backed away from John Softsword in fear. Did you know”— she turned and confronted Eduard with a sparkle of pride in her eyes—“the king once dared to question my uncle’s loyalty before the court.
My uncle!
The man who made him king! And when my lord marshal demanded the Plantagenet usurper settle the matter by sword … not one of John’s so-called
champions
dared to pick up the gauntlet. Nay, they all turned their faces and lowered their eyes, and their knees made such a knocking sound in the audience chamber, the king had to shout his recantation to have it heard above the din.”

Ariel lifted her chin and presented her shoulder to Eduard again. “When I marry, it will not be to some bung-nosed, sin-born gaoler’s son. It will be to an earl, at the very least! A landed baron, a palatine of equal or greater rank than my uncle.”

Eduard chose not to remind her of his own sin-born heritage, but he could not resist mentioning, “A Welsh prince, perhaps?”

“Saints sieze me!” she cried, whirling on him once more. “Was there nothing about me that went undiscussed?”

Eduard hesitated, knowing it was neither his place nor his desire to reveal her uncle’s intentions. “I am certain the earl mentioned it only because he thought you found the prince a
more deserving match than the son of a … a common routier.”

Ariel watched his mouth form the words. He was out of the shadows now and she could see his features much more clearly. It was a fascinating mouth, full in shape and rather more sensual sculpted by the stormy half-light. Further tricks of the uncertain sky drew her eye to the vertical cleft that divided the strong chin, and to the absurdly long lashes any woman would have drawn teeth to possess. Indeed, it was a shame about the scar. Without it … or even with it …

She looked abruptly away and swallowed hard. “Anything would be preferable to a gaoler’s son, but yes, I did suggest to my uncle that Lord Rhys ap Iorwerth would be more acceptable. He was”—she curled the fleshy pad of her lip between her teeth and made a hasty correction—“he
is
certainly my first choice amongst the many suitors my aunt and uncle have proposed. He is handsome. Charming. A prince, for mercy’s sake.”

“The husband of every maiden’s dreams,” he concluded wryly.

Ariel’s jaw snapped shut. “The thought amuses you, does it?”

“My lady?”

“The notion of my marrying a prince,” she said tautly, glaring up at him. “You find it laughable?” “I am not laughing.” “But you do have an opinion.”

“My opinion, my lady”—he paused and watched a lick of shiny red hair blow across the lush pout of her lips—“is that I have no opinions whatsoever when it comes to marriage. Only that I would be content unto death to remain well out of it.”

“You have no lady love?”

“No.”

“Never craved one?” “The very notion of craving a wife—” “I did not say wife, I said lady love. Have you never been in love?”

“Craving … and loving … are two entirely different
matters,” he said, wondering how the devil he had become trapped in this conversation. “Neither of which, I am happy to recount, have plagued me to the point of sleeplessness.”

His answer was sharp and perfunctory, meant to discourage any further probings. Naturally, it had the opposite effect on Ariel and she had to stop herself from openly speculating on what kind of woman would earn the affections of this scarred, enigmatic knight. He was a bastard, true enough, but there were many households where five and six daughters needed husbands, where the youngest and least dowered would look only too readily on a union with the D’Amboise name. Had his aim been too high, perhaps? Was it the reverse of her own situation, where she, being of noble blood, would not be expected to marry below the salt, regardless if the groom was selected by the king or by the pope himself?

She sighed, the importance of Eduard’s situation, real or imagined, being supplanted by the desperation of her own.

“I suppose I am partly to blame for what has happened,” she said miserably. “I should have heeded my aunt’s advice and paid more serious attention to the parade of suitors who have called at Pembroke. There have been so many,” she added sardonically, “’tis a certainty more than a few would have passing acquaintance with the king. Perhaps … I should have made myself so horribly unappealing, no man would have taken an interest in me. No man would have touched me, through craving
or
loving.”

As if on cue, a long, silky strand of her hair escaped her hood and slithered past his cheek. It was very shiny and very metallic, also the only thing about her that retained any colour other than blue or black. As he reached up to disentangle it from his shoulder and sleeve, he remembered all too vividly how it had looked that afternoon—a crushing abundance of pure flame, red and gold. Unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Unlike anything he imagined he would see again.

Thus distracted, he was taking so long to offer the expected and chivalrous reassurances that nothing she could do short of boiling her face in oil and studding it with iron spikes
could render a man anything less than speechless with her beauty, she was forced to glare up at him again.

“Unless, of course,” she said in a brittle voice, “I am already so ugly I should
expect
nothing better than a gaoler’s son?”

Eduard met the dark sparkle of her eyes. “I hardly think you need fear that, my lady.”

“Do you not? Was that why you thought to steal a kiss from me earlier today … because you thought me to be so
beautiful?”

Beautiful, Eduard mused. Half-naked. Delectably defiant. A grin pulled at his mouth as he considered all of these reasons. “In truth, I might have thought to steal more than one had you not put me in my proper place.”

Now she
knew
he was mocking her, and Ariel felt the heat rise in her blood. “Just because you have been put in your place … does this mean you no longer find me desirable?”

Eduard’s gaze roved over the shape of her face, lingering on the full, pouting lips before sliding lower. The swirling wind grasped at the opportunity for mischief and swept the hood of her mantle off her head and sent the fluttering wings of wool ballooning out behind her. The blanchet she wore beneath was pale and shapeless, but the wind molded it to her body like water, and the linen glowed almost silver in the glowering light. A second gust filled the air with long, rippling drifts of her hair. It clouded her face and shoulders; sleek, curling ribbons of it were flung across the gap between them, the strands clinging to his shoulders, tangling with his own dark mane.

Despite his opinion of her being a spoiled, sharp-tongued brat who deserved to be bound to a dung collector to learn humility, Eduard could not in all honesty deny the response she aroused in his body. She
was
a beauty, and he was no monk. His blood began to flow slowly and sluggishly, just as it did in the still moments before a battle. There was a heaviness in the pit of his belly, an expanding and swelling that not only took him by surprise, but prompted him to step forward, not back, and to meet the bright challenge in her eyes.

He lifted his hands and caught two slippery fistfuls of her hair, gathering them back out of the wind, trapping them at the nape of her neck.

“Would you
like
me to find you desirable?” he inquired softly.

Ariel’s mouth dropped open. An odd, giddy rush of hot blood flooded her limbs as she found herself staring up into eyes as dark and turbulent as the sky overhead.

“I … want nothing from you, sirrah,” she managed to whisper.

Thunder cracked overhead and Eduard used the brief distraction to rake his hands deeper into the glory of those copper curls, twining them around his fists so that she was forced to arch her neck back and to press her body closer to his.

Ariel was startled by the contact, stunned by the bold intimation of his hands and body. She tried to turn her head, to wrest it out of his grip, but he held firm. He crowded her even closer to the battlements, his torso an immense, overpowering wall of muscle, his mouth a cruel torment that offered no compromise.

“You want nothing at all?” he murmured. “Not even a reason to prove me more of a bastard than I am?”

Ariel gasped but his head was already bending forward. His mouth, surprisingly warm and supple, brushed over hers, taunting her with the promise of further outrages to come. She gasped again, intending to rail him for his audacity, but before a word or breath could be uttered, her lips were no longer being merely brushed, no longer being taunted. They were being devoured, possessed, ravished by a mouth that was suddenly as ruthless and arrogant as the man himself.

There was a moment—a brief moment, she reflected afterwards—when she could, conceivably, have stopped him. It came halfway between a cry and a disbelieving whimper, when he lifted his head and stared down at her, fully expecting some violent display of indignation. In truth, her eyes were stretched wide with that very sentiment and her lips trembled with wordless condemnation … but it was her hands, freed from entrapment against his chest that forfeited any thought of reprieve.
They climbed higher onto his shoulders and instead of raking bloody tracks into his face and throat, laced together at the back of his neck and invited his mouth to descend again, this time to slant with even more ferocity over hers.

Ever gallant, Eduard obliged. His arms tightened around her and his tongue thrust demandingly into the moist, silken recesses of her mouth. He thrust again, deeper and more determinedly, and he could feel her knees buckling with the shock of such lusty intrusions.

Ariel was no stranger to the act of kissing; kisses of peace were exchanged frequently in greeting her uncle’s vassals and liegemen. But they were polite, chaste gestures, rarely given on the lips, and never openmouthed and devouring. Up until now, a kiss had held little more import than the touching of hands. It had never commanded the focus of her entire body. It had never caused her skin to constrict in the most alarming ways and places, never set her breasts tingling and her stomach churning, or spread such a welter of liquid heat
everywhere.

A scalding wave of it coursed through her limbs causing her to clutch at the folds of his mantle. His tongue was lashing hers with slow, evocative strokes. Her hair had scattered in the wind and was wrapping them both in a sleek, slippery cocoon. Another ragged groan greeted the pressure of his hands as he cradled her hips and pulled them suggestively against his own, introducing her to yet another shocking aspect of his boldness. He was all heat and hard, virile muscles, and she wondered if this was what her aunt had meant when she said a man could sometimes do things to a woman that would render her senseless and without a will of her own.

She
was
without will. She
was
without senses and he could have taken shameless advantage of her helplessness and she would not have known how to stop him.

Reluctantly, grudgingly, Eduard stopped himself.

How, by Christ’s blood, he did not know. He had not expected to be left palsied with the tremors of an eager youthling. He had not anticipated she would taste so sweet and hot and needful, or that his flesh would ache with lust for a woman he had scorned only moments before.

He moved her to arm’s length and struggled to see past the thundering rush of blood in his temples. Her lips, swollen and wet from his assault, quivered slightly as she took quick, shallow breaths to steady her own pounding confusion, and he wondered if she was going to be foolish enough to ask him again if he found her desirable.

Drops of rain, fat as pendants, began to splatter the walls and turrets around them. Cold splashes of reality broke the spell and Ariel stumbled back another step … and another.

“If you have no more questions to ask of me, my lady, I would suggest you return to your chambers.”

Ariel blinked away a heavy splash of rain and stared as a jagged fork of lightning sheared across the sky, fleeting and bright, throwing the terrible chiselled beauty of his scarred face into sharp relief. His hair lay dark against his throat, his eyes glittered with an unholy brilliance that seemed to draw the very breath from her body. Towering before her he looked like a demon. He
was
a demon, black to the soul, cunning and sly. Devious to the heart, mocking her with words and deeds.