Rose Bride (14 page)

His friend looked askance. ‘Who is this skilled courtesan that Munro takes to mistress?’

‘Margerie Croft, no less. And even the king is displeased now, for she scorned to take His Majesty as a lover, yet accepts this boy into her bed. There will be trouble over this, mark my words.’

Virgil stilled, carefully wiping his hands after handling the leeches.
Margerie Croft, no less
.
A shaft of pain lanced through him, and it was all he could do to stay silent, slipping his physician’s instruments back into his bag. So he had been right. That was why she had rejected him. Because Margerie Croft preferred a nobleman in her bed.

Jealousy buffeted him, violent and unthinking, and he felt a sudden furious urge to find the man who was keeping her bed warm and throttle him. But Virgil kept his face composed, only betraying by the slightest flicker that he had any interest in their conversation.

‘Unless there is something else you need, sir,’ Virgil remarked, ‘I will leave you.’

Sir Christopher waved him away without interest. Then his friend muttered something in his ear, and the knight seemed to change his mind.

‘Wait, Master Elton,’ he called after him. ‘You will not repeat what you have heard here today. It is a doctor’s place to heal the sick, not spread gossip . . . Even when it concerns a known whore.’ Sir Christopher nodded to his friend, who fished a few coins out of his pouch and tossed them onto the bed covers. ‘Your fee, Master Elton.’

Virgil looked at both men coldly, then collected up the scattered coins. ‘You are sure you have no other complaint that needs my treatment, Sir Christopher?’ he asked softly.

A flush came into the knight’s face and he said nothing. Virgil bowed, unsmiling, and took himself out of the knight’s candlelit chamber. He was bound, under the Hippocratic Oath he had sworn on entering into his profession, not to reveal any secrets he knew about any man, whether told to him as a physician or otherwise. But sometimes he was sorely tempted.

He had treated Sir Christopher in the past for certain embarrassing ailments of the groin, for he was known at court as a doctor who understood the treatment of such disorders better than most. To hear a knight speak about Margerie Croft in those terms had left him furious.

A known whore . . .

His steps slowing, he deliberately chose to return to his chamber a different way. This route would take him past the women’s chambers where he knew Margerie slept. Unless she was in Lord Munro’s bed tonight.

Again, the whip of jealousy descended across his shoulders and he ground his teeth. He knew Munro. A wealthy and handsome youth who had come into his title early, while the boy was still a student at Oxford.

‘She likes her lords,’ he muttered to himself.

First Lord Wolf, now Lord Munro. A mere commoner, he should have realised his kisses would compare unfavourably to those of noblemen, however high he might stand in the king’s estimation as a physician.

He stopped, listening. Someone was coming along the shadowy corridor ahead. He could hear light footsteps, almost shuffling. Then a dim figure passed beneath the nearest torch and he saw her face, pale, her eyes open but devoid of expression, her lips parted in a string of barely coherent whispers.

He stared. It was Margerie Croft herself, wandering barefoot in her sleep, her unbound hair tumbling in a cloudy red cascade to her waist, clad in nothing but a thin white shift.

Fortuna audaces iuvat
, he thought fiercely. Fortune favours the bold. And he would have to be bold if he wished to be favoured by this beautiful, elusive creature.

‘He will not touch me again . . . No, I will not allow it.’ Her voice dwindled to nothing, descending into vague murmurings. Then suddenly, more succinctly, ‘You must let me go, sir. You cannot keep me here forever . . .’

So her night wanderings were
not
at an end, as she had tried to pretend. And here was the proof.

Putting down his bag, Virgil stepped into her path and caught her by the shoulders. ‘Margerie,’ he said quietly, looking into her face.

But her clear green gaze looked past him, empty and seemingly unaware of her surroundings.

She was asleep.

Virgil stood a moment, thinking, still holding her lightly. He had read of somnambulists in ancient texts, troubled souls who walked in their sleep, and had even prescribed a sleeping draught to keep her nightmares at bay. But he had not truly believed it to be possible until he had seen the phenomenon with his own eyes, thinking she and Kate Langley must have exaggerated her condition.

What was it that stirred her soul so deeply, she must wander the palace at night?

‘Are you awake, Margerie? Can you hear me?’ His whisper echoed in the narrow corridor. ‘Do you know where you are?’

She did not respond but stood passive and blank-faced, breathing more deeply now, as though fast asleep. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and a powerful surge of desire moved through his body, surprising him.

She was at once vulnerable and strong, her swaying curves generous, her height imposing, suggesting she was the equal of a man. In any other woman such fiery independence of spirit would have left him cool. Yet something about Margerie threw out a challenge to every male she passed – an instinctive lure as old as time, a dare that he found nigh impossible to resist – to tame and subdue her if he was up to the task. And Virgil knew he was.

His cock hardened, his lust so visceral it was hard to think of anything but burying himself in her body. But not like this. He wanted Margerie to be awake when he took her.

‘Margerie, I am going to kiss you,’ he warned her, but there was no flicker of response in that pale face.

Was she in truth asleep, or just feigning?

There was one way to find out. Grasping her shoulders, Virgil leant forward and set his lips to hers. The violent shock that ran through him as their mouths touched stole his ability to breathe, to think, to retain control over himself. She was still asleep. He should not be doing this, it was not right. Still he could not draw away.

His kiss deepened, and as her lips parted softly under that pressure, Virgil pushed his tongue inside and tasted her. That was his undoing. His heart sped up at once, heat entering his cheeks, and as his tongue slid against hers he became aware of his cock stiffening with an almost animal instinct to mate.

She tasted like honey, and God’s blood, he was drowning in her. Drowning . . .

Then suddenly Margerie was struggling in his arms, jerking away from him, gasping and shaking. Virgil let her go, not wanting to hurt her by insisting. He was not interested in forcing Margerie into an embrace she did not welcome.

Besides, her eyes held awareness now. She was awake.

CHAPTER TEN

In her dream, Virgil Elton had been kissing her. His mouth had played against hers, gentle at first, then more demanding. Starved for his touch, she had leant against him in her dream, not ever wishing to wake up if it would mean the end of this kiss. Her whole body had responded to his scent, his hard body against hers, the thrust of his tongue into her mouth.

Then abruptly she was no longer asleep, and upon waking found it was no dream.

She was standing up in her nightgown, her bare feet chilly, a draught making the torchlight flicker on her closed eyelids. Her eyes flew open. Virgil Elton was there in front of her, real and hard and undeniable. And he was kissing her.

‘Master Elton!’

Margerie pushed him away and took a few hurried steps backwards. Her head was buzzing with shock as she stared wildly about herself, disorientated at waking to find herself not in bed as she had anticipated, but in an unfamiliar place – and with a man kissing her. Her memory flashed back to that night when she had woken to hear her own screams, finding a ring of horrified women about her, and the doctor summoned to help her.

At least there were no leering guards here to witness her shame, nor had she apparently disturbed the ladies this time when she left their palace quarters. But it would still be hard to imagine a more embarrassing awakening. For she was standing in her nightgown in this shadowy corridor, alone with a man she found irresistible.

Slowly, once her countenance was under control, Margerie looked back at him. ‘Where am I?’

‘Not far from the women’s chambers.’

She shook herself like a dog coming out of water, the tattered remnants of her dream still clinging to her. ‘Was . . . Was I walking in my sleep again?’ His curt, ‘Yes,’ made her eyes focus more carefully on his face.

His jaw was set hard, his dark gaze restless as it slipped down her body, and she read frustration in his face. Almost certainly the same frustration she was experiencing too. It was sexual in nature, she could not deny it. She wanted this man. Even in her sleep she had responded unthinkingly to his kiss.

‘You kissed me while I was sleeping.’

‘Forgive me.’

He was looking at her, a question in his eyes. She felt as though she could share anything with him, speak the truth straight to him, as she had never spoken to any other man. But instinct warned her to be cautious.

‘What is it?’ she asked huskily.

His cap had tumbled off when she pushed him away. He bent to pick it up, then shoved a hand through his long dark hair as though to force his tumbled locks into some semblance of order. She looked at the dark curls brushing his shoulder and imagined tangling her fingers in them while they kissed, lying naked together.

‘I would ask you something privately, Mistress Croft.’

‘Are we not private enough here?’

‘This is the king’s palace,’ he pointed out drily, glancing about at the flickering darkness before returning his gaze to her. ‘Walls have ears, as do deserted corridors.’

Her mouth was dry. Margerie knew what was coming, and realised she had no intention of trying to stop it. This thing between them felt as inevitable as spring following winter; all she could do was try not to let her need show too badly, for this man could hurt her deeply if he wished.

‘Where then?’

Master Elton had been examining her thin and unadorned nightgown, and she was warned by the way his lips had parted, his breathing quickening, that he must be able to see the outline of her naked body through it. The thought both alarmed and aroused her.

His gaze lifted to hers. ‘My chamber.’

‘Your
bed
chamber, you mean?’

His slow smile nearly stopped her heart. ‘The same. You have some objection?’

She ought to have. But she did not. Ever since that night when Virgil Elton had kissed and touched her so intimately in the rose gardens, Margerie had been imagining how it would feel to lie with this man. Now his invitation was clear. Her head said she should refuse him and return to the women’s chamber. But her body clamoured to lie naked next to his and to discover what pleasure he could bring her.

Yet still she hesitated.

She had only ever lain with one man, Lord Wolf, who had taken her virginity, leaving her hurt and in despair. Margerie knew now that Wolf was a good man, that he had made a mistake as an inexperienced youth and had never intended her harm. But the events of that night still lingered in her mind.

Virgil bent to pick up his bag, then looked at her. ‘Well?’

His eyebrows rose steeply when Margerie did not reply, and his next words made her blush, wondering if he could read her thoughts.

‘I merely wish to speak with you on a matter of some delicacy, Mistress Croft,’ he said coolly. ‘I am a physician. There is nothing improper in my suggestion. Many ladies come to visit me at court.’

‘But not unaccompanied, and not to your
bedchamber
,’ she replied a little sharply, though in truth she was barely able to raise her eyes to his, half-afraid that this man could tell her fevered imaginings just by studying her face. ‘You may be a doctor, sir, but if we are discovered alone together in your chamber in the middle of the night, no one will think it an innocent meeting.’

‘Then let us hope no one either hears or sees us.’

He bowed, indicating that she should accompany him, and to her own surprise Margerie found herself walking beside him without argument, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for a man she barely knew to be taking her to his bedchamber.

They walked silently through the darkened palace, passed a few times by patrolling guards with leering expressions, though none of the men dared comment with Master Elton by her side. But she could guess what they were thinking.

‘They are jealous, that is all,’ he said in her ear. ‘They wish themselves in my shoes.’

‘They think me a whore.’

He looked at her sideways. ‘Are you a whore?’

‘No,’ she insisted.

‘Then what does it matter what such men think?’ His smile was dry. ‘Lift up your head, Mistress Croft, and hold it high. You have done nothing wrong.’

Yet
, she thought, raising her chin to meet his gaze, but kept the treacherous word to herself.

His bedchamber was warm, a fire still glowing in the hearth. Master Elton locked the door, then set his bag carefully aside. He swung the cloak from his shoulders, and she saw that he was wearing a plain doublet and hose beneath, the clothes of a hard-working man. Even his codpiece was starkly functional, a black leather bulge at the head of long muscular thighs.