Lady Of Fire (41 page)

“Dead.”

For the best, she acceded, then began to sob as she was swept with all the fear, anger, and sorrow of these past days.

Lucien helped her to her feet and pulled her into his arms. “I am sorry for your friend, Alessandra. I wish he could have been saved.”

“After all the deception he worked upon me, he helped me escape Rashid.”

Lucien raised his head. “Rashid was part of this?”

She nodded.

His brow grew more lined, and she was certain he sought to make sense of the connection between Rashid and Gavin. “Was he in the room as well?”

“Nay, he is on the ship. Jacques bound him in his cabin and was returning to deliver me to Corburry when Sir Gavin found me on the docks.” She frowned. “How did you know where to find me?”

“A long tale better told later,” he said.

“But how did you know I was at the inn?”

He rubbed a smudge of ash from her face. “We were passing by on our way to the docks when we saw the smoke. Something told me it was here I would find you.”

“My prayers,” she whispered. “I prayed you would come.”

“Do you still want me, Alessandra?”

He seemed so uncertain, it tugged at her heart. Always he had been confident and in control, but now she saw some of the boy Lucien must have been before the war between the Brevilles and De Gautiers had consumed him.

She cupped his face in her hands. “I have never stopped wanting you.”

“Even when I became an animal in the lists?”

“Even then.”

He reached into the neck of his tunic and pulled out her anklet of miniature bells. “I wore these that day. To keep you close.”

She touched them. “I thought them lost.”

“What does it tell you, Alessandra?”

“That you love me,” she ventured. “Do you?”

He lowered his head, kissed her. “I do.”

He did not say the words, but it was enough. For now.

“This is hardly the place to ask,” he said, “but I need to know. Will you marry me, Alessandra Breville?”

She caught her breath. “But you said—”

“I could not have you believe I wed you only for the land.”

So it had been more than foolish pride. “Is that why you sent me the message?”

“It is. When you did not come…” He momentarily closed his eyes. “You are the one for me, Alessandra. Will you marry me and tame the beast?”

“Yes,” she said. “I will marry you, Lucien de Gautier.”

Rashid could not have chosen a better day.

The missive that had first been delivered to Corburry had followed the Brevilles to Falstaff where they had journeyed for the celebration that would culminate in vows spoken before the chapel.

It was Lucien who had brought the travel-weary letter to Alessandra in the chamber where she was being prepared to pledge her life to his. It was he with whom she had shared the three lines of Arabic after sending Melissant and the others away.

Now, hours later, she reflected on Rashid’s words. As Jabbar had made his son a satisfactory match with the daughter of a wine merchant, Rashid had released Alessandra from their betrothal, forgiven her as he hoped she would forgive him, and wished her well as she started life anew in England. Terse, perhaps, but it had settled her unsettled places, and the day had passed as beautifully as hoped.

Now, on this autumn eve, with a storm raging outside Falstaff’s keep, Lucien and she would finally become one. And not too soon, for he had insisted on courting her these past months to prove himself worthy and further put James at ease over the man who would become his son-in-law.

“If you make me wait much longer,” he called, “Vincent will have his wedding night ere I have my own.”

She laughed and, pulling fingers through her braids, unraveling them so her crimped tresses draped her shoulders, moved her thoughts to dear Vincent, who aspired to recapture Melissant’s hand in marriage—and to get around the obstacle of Agnes.

Though Alessandra knew it was wrong, she was tempted to give aid in doing away with that impediment, as she had done away with her own.

No longer need she fear Agnes would conspire with the bishop to name her a heretic. There was peace between them, owing to the older woman’s gratitude that Alessandra would not disclose to James her knowledge of Catherine’s abduction. True, Agnes had not believed her brother’s claim, but both women understood the revelation would be detrimental to her marriage.

As for Vincent…

Firmly, Alessandra set aside the idea of speaking on his behalf. It was a battle he must win on his own, and she was fairly certain he would want it that way.

Deciding she had made Lucien wait long enough, she peeked around the screen and saw he was seated before the hearth. Back to her, he leaned forward with his forearms propped on his thighs, reminding her of when she had come to his tent during the tournament. This time, his back was not bare, the scars he did not wish her to see hidden from her eyes.

Stepping out from behind the screen, she smoothed her embroidered chemise and wondered how long before it fell at her feet. And shivered, but not with cold.

She crossed to Lucien, laid her hands on his shoulders, and bent forward. “Are you ready for me, my lord?”

He chuckled. “Should I not be the one asking that of you?”

She slid her hands down his chest to the hem of his tunic and lifted it. As her fingers brushed his abdomen, he caught her wrists.

“Come stand before me,” he said and started to pull her around.

She resisted. “First, I would look nearer upon your back. It is part of you, and as we are now wed, I would know all of you.”

“Not that,” he said, the humor gone from his voice.

“I have seen it before."

“Not tonight, Alessandra.”

“Surely you are not ashamed of it?”

He looked over his shoulder, and it was displeasure, not passion, in his eyes. “It was not by cowardice I earned those stripes, but by mettle.”

“This I know, but I would have you trust me.”

He looked ready to refuse, but his eyes softened and he released her and started to raise his tunic.

Alessandra stayed his hands, gripped the hem, and drew the garment off over his head.

With her gaze, she traced the scars, with her fingers, touched them, with her mouth kissed them. And when the tension went out of Lucien, she slid her arms around his neck and put her lips to his ear. “You know not how long I have wanted to be like this with you.”

“Then why do you waste time at my back?” He swiveled and captured her between his legs.

“Why?” She peered into his upturned face. “Because I once heard a concubine say that to love a man is to love all of him, from the soles of his feet to the ends of his hair. And I do love all of you, Lucien—the boy who defied my father, the warrior whose scars delivered him into my mother’s hands, the man who brought me out of Algiers, the husband who shall ever be my home.” She slid her hands into his hair, stepped nearer, and pressed her abdomen to his chest.

He groaned. “This is not progressing how I planned.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How did you plan?”

“Words first. Ones that have waited too long to be spoken.”

“Then speak them, my lord husband.”

He urged her to her knees. Pupils wide and dark, only a narrow ring of amethyst to attest to the color of his eyes, he lowered his head. “I love you, Alessandra Breville de Gautier.”

There was something so sweet in the birth of those words that she did not want to let go of them, and so she closed her eyes and savored them until he began to kiss around her mouth. “Tell me again,” she beseeched.

He did—over and over until she said, “Words first. What comes second?”

He began unfastening the buttons of her chemise. “I will show you.” When the garment dropped to her feet, he stood and swept her into his arms. “Now, Alessandra mine,” he said, “we make love.” And he carried her to bed.

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed Alessandra and Lucien’s love story. If you would consider posting a review of
Lady Of Fire
at Amazon, even if only a sentence or two, I would appreciate it. Thank you for joining me in the middle ages. I wish you hours and hours of inspiring, happily-ever-after reading.

EXCERPT

BARON OF GODSMERE: Book #1 (The Feud)

Available Winter 2015

CHAPTER TWO

Castle Adderstone upon the Barony of Godsmere, Northern England

Autumn’s End, 1333

Were she to stop the wedding, she would have to kill the groom. Or so Agatha sought to convince her.

Peering up from beneath the ragged edge of the peasant’s shawl she had drawn over her head, El considered the man who approached astride a destrier that was blacker than the dregs of her ink pot. Though Bayard Boursier was fairly complected, he seemed no less dark than his mount. From his perspiration dampened hair that flipped up at the nape of his neck to his unshaven jaw to the merciless heart that beat beneath an ebony tunic, he was kin to the night.

She ground her teeth over the king’s plan to ally the bitterest of enemies. Had Edward learned nothing from the mistake of five years past when her aunt had been made to wed into the Boursiers? A mistake that had turned the families’ hatred yet more fetid.

“A pox on you, Edward,” El muttered as she glared at his agent of misery, a man whose appearance hardly improved the nearer he drew, one made all the worse by the patch covering his left eye.

A fearsome groom he would make for Thomasin de Arell whom, it was told, he had chosen to take to wife and would do so within the next six days to avoid forfeiture of his lands. But providing all went as planned, “The Boursier,” as he was better known—as if the whole of him could not be contained within his given name—would not have the De Arell woman. Nor would he have El, though until three days past, she had feared he would choose her. Thus, she had laid plans to avoid a sacrifice possibly greater than that offered up with her first marriage.

Despite the shawl’s heat that was too much for a relatively warm day, El shivered as memories of her husband crawled over the barriers she had erected against them.

She shook her head. Murdoch Farrow, to whom she had been wed five years ago at the age of sixteen, was dead. And, God forgive her, she had nearly danced to be free of him. Just as Thomasin de Arell would revel to be spared marriage to Bayard Boursier.

As he moved nearer, El lowered her gaze. One peasant among the many who thronged the market come to Castle Adderstone, she feigned interest in the foodstuffs offered by a merchant—a very old man whose bones and joints were prominent beneath a thin layer of skin. A moment later, his hands shot up from his sides and, in concert with his voice, expressed annoyance over his dealings with a stout woman whose heavily loaded cart told she was from the castle kitchens.

El slid her gaze past unplucked chickens suspended by tangled feet, to the riders who skirted the gathering and hazarded another look at Boursier. She groaned. Though she had been almost as near him when last he had brought his men against her uncle’s, he was larger yet. Beneath a broad jaw, his neck sloped to expansive shoulders, chest tapered to sword-girded hips, bulky thighs gripped his destrier, hosed calves stretched long to stirrups.

Feeling her resolve weaken, she curled her toes in her slippers and told herself she could do this. Though Thomasin de Arell had been chosen, still the Penzers must ally with that loathsome family, meaning it fell to her uncle to wed Boursier’s sister. However, if El’s plan succeeded, the Boursiers would be expelled from these lands, as might the De Arells.

Pricked by guilt that the De Arells might feel Boursier’s wrath for that which would soon be worked upon the latter, El reminded herself of the raid upon Tyne five months past. When the smoke cleared, a dozen villagers’ homes had been burned and half their crops, and all evidence suggested the De Arells were responsible for the atrocity visited upon the Penzers’ people.

The flick of Boursier’s reins drew El’s gaze to tanned hands that appeared twice the size of her own. Familiar with the cruelty of which a man’s hands were capable, she assured herself this one would not get near enough to hurt her as her departed husband had done. Still, her heart pounded and eyes burned with emotions she had mostly suppressed since her wedding night, when she had realized Murdoch found her tears pleasing.

Boursier was less than twenty feet distant when the sun came out from behind the clouds, and she was surprised to see his looks lighten. She would have said his hair was deepest brown, but it had only appeared so, darkened as it was by perspiration. Now, with sunlight running over it, she saw it was a shade of auburn. And the one visible eye was pale, though she could not tell if the gaze he swept over the village folk was blue, green, or grey.

Not that it mattered. Regardless of his coloring, his soul—had he one—was black.

Doubt prying at her purpose, she silently beseeched,
Lord, can I do it?
Not that she believed God would condone her actions, but neither was she certain he would condemn her.

She shifted her gaze to the diagonal scar above and below Boursier’s eyepatch. Though deserved, how he must loathe the Penzers and De Arells for an affliction that was without end.

She drew a breath deep and held it as he approached the stall behind which she stood. When his gaze settled upon her, she forced herself not to react in any way that would attract more attention—all the while praying the shawl provided enough shadow to obscure her face. Not that he had ever seen Elianor of Emberly.

Though questioning disturbed his brow, he urged his destrier past.

El eased the air from her lungs, swung around, and hastened to the hooded one who awaited her near a stall piled high with cloth.

Despite broad shoulders that fifty years of life had begun to bend, the woman who looked down upon El had something of a regal bearing. It was also present in defined cheekbones and the dark, sharply arched eyebrows Agatha raised to ask what need not be spoken.

El glanced beyond her at the great fortress that flew the red and gold colors of the House of Boursier, inclined her head. In the guise of a kitchen wench, she was ready to steal into Castle Adderstone. Or so she prayed—or should have.