The YIELDING (33 page)

Though her cheeks warmed, she did not retreat but watched him sleep in the gray before dawn. The hard angles of his face had softened, causing him to look more approachable than she had seen him. Once again ignoring her inner voice, though it spoke louder than ever she had heard it, she scooted across the mattress and leaned over him.

Dark hair fell across his brow, his straight nose flared with breath, and his usually grim mouth relaxed amid a stiffly whiskered jaw. Remembering his lips on hers, she closed her eyes.

“What is it you want?” he rumbled.

She opened her eyes and found him watching her.

“What, Beatrix?”

She drew back. “I should not have…”

He turned a hand around her arm.

The injury done her two nights past protesting the pressure of his fingers, she startled.

“I am sorry.” Michael released her.

Across the slow light of coming morn, Beatrix met his gaze and knew there was concern there. “My arm is fine.”

“I should examine it.”

“I must needs go.”

“Why?” His question was so softly spoken she wondered if it was merely the breeze come through the windows.

“It is wrong for me to be here.”

“I do not think so. But tell me why you made it clear on the day past that you want naught to do with me, and now you are in my bed.”

“I did not intend to lie down. I…” She shook her head and blurted, “You did not send word.”

He frowned.

“Of my capture. You did not send word to Lavonne.”

“Canute,” he muttered, then said, “In my anger, I let you believe ’twas me who sent word. I thought you had deceived me, that I had deceived myself into believing you were different from…”

“Edithe.”

“Aye, Edithe.”

The name came off his lips so raw and bitter Beatrix felt his pain. She lowered to her side to face him. “Though Sir Canute…confessed to sending word to Lavonne, he would not tell what Edithe did to you. Will you tell me?”

With a scornful sound, he curved a hand around her jaw. “Speak of a woman like that when I have a woman like you in my bed?”

She laid a hand over his. “A woman who should not be here. But I shall stay if you will tell me of her.”

He glowered.

“For her, you believed ill of me. Am I not to know whose sins I have borne?”

“It was a long time past.”

“But not so long that you have forgotten it.”

That
he could not argue, and Beatrix deserved to know why he had retaliated against her. Too, perhaps the tale would help her to forgive him for his treatment of her.

“I have forgotten none of it,” he said, “for it would have been the end of me had Canute not released me from my chains.”

“Chains?”

Even now Michael could hear their rattle, feel their weight about his ankles and wrists, the manacles abrading his flesh as he strained against them with an anger so profound he felt as if it was another he watched from across the dark, dank cell.

“Her name was Edithe Warbole, and she was the daughter of the baron with whom I fostered during my knighthood training. She was fair of face and beginning to curve where a woman ought to curve, but I had little interest in one promised to another. Still, she sought my side, and more frequently once I was knighted.”

The image of the cunning woman he conjured made him tense further. “Though I scoffed at Canute when he warned me that she sought a way out of her betrothal to a man three times her years and would use me to that end, I listened to him—well I did, even when she attempted to rouse my jealousy by trysting with household knights too fool and too tight in the loins to leave her be.”

“One eve, after I had partaken of too much drink, I did not turn her away when she caught me upon the stairs.” He remembered her pretty face and pouting lips, tasted the deception of her mouth. “She led me to her chamber, and we…” A bit more light crept through the windows to reveal Beatrix’s drawn face. “I took what she gave, Beatrix, and I have ever lived to regret it.”

“What happened?”

“Her father came upon us and she accused me of ravishment.”

The disbelief of Beatrix’s expression told that she grasped what had made him believe Simon’s attempt to ravish her was a lie.

“She beat at me, bit and kicked as her father dragged me off the bed—and did not cease with her lies even when the men-at-arms battered me bloody. I was thrown into a cell and remained there for days.”

The dank scent struck his senses, and he closed his eyes to invoke the cell again. “The door opened, and there was the baron. I thought it was death come for me, but he offered something he was certain I would accept—marriage to Edithe, and with it, lands of my own.”

“You did not…?”

“Accept?” he spoke for her, only to regret his impatience. “I did not. No man would wish his daughter to wed a man who ravishes. I knew he had discovered the truth of her—had he not already known of her many trysts. In my anger, I named Edithe a whore and vowed I would never fetter myself to one so deceitful. Not even for land.”

Michael saw again the baron’s florid face and felt the man’s spit on his brow, then his fists. “I was beaten again and left to die.” Hatred washed over him as it had done that day.

Beatrix slid a hand over his bearded jaw. “I am sorry.”

He knew she was—that she was as far from Edithe as the earth was the sun. Suppressing the need to pull her to him, he laid tense fingers to her lips. “I thought you were the same, that you falsely accused Simon of ravishment as she had accused me.”

“I know. And now I understand.”

But could she forgive him?

She pressed a kiss to his fingers. “How did you escape?”

Gripped with the memory of the cell door swinging open, peering at the light past swollen lids, Michael pulled his hand from Beatrix. “Canute sacrificed his fealty to the baron to free me. During my years of training, he had been as a father to me. As if I were a son to him, he came for me. ’Twas then I demanded his vow to never again allow me to fall prey to a woman. And his vow he kept in sending word of your capture.”

“Did Edithe’s father give chase?”

“Token only, though he made it known across the land that I was a ravisher of maidens. As I was welcome nowhere, I was forced to become a knight errant to make my way.”

“What of your family?”

“Had I asked, my brother would have aided me as best he could, but I did not. It was enough that I paused from time to time to be with them—and young Simon.” Remembrance of the boy aroused Michael’s grief. “I thought I knew him, but there are things we do not always see in those with whom we are nearest.”

“You could not have known.”

“Perhaps.”

“Did Edithe wed her be—”

Michael clamped his teeth to keep from supplying the word she sought.

“Betrothed?” she finally said.

He almost smiled. “Another knight was convinced to take her to wife. Six months following our tryst, she birthed a large, healthy boy child. ‘Twas told the babe had hair of darkest red, unlike mine or his mother’s.”

Beatrix pushed up on an elbow. “Then you were absolved.”

“It is not so easy, that. It was evidence enough that I had not stolen her virtue, but not enough to wipe the lies from the minds of those who feared for their daughters.”

Beginning to seethe again, Michael forced himself to focus on the woman before him rather than the one far behind. With each passing moment, Beatrix became clearer, pushing Edithe into the shadows—deeper and deeper until he had hope she would remain there.

He brushed the hair back from Beatrix’s eyes. “I ask for your forgiveness. Will you grant it?”

Her mouth curved, stinging him with the need to fit his lips to hers. “I shall.”

As much as Michael longed to lose himself in her, he wanted—nay, needed—to hear what she had yet to voice.

“Why did you come, Beatrix?”

Her smile wavered and she lowered back to the pillow beside him. “When we arrived at Soaring, I…was certain that, though I asked it of you, you would not send word of my capture to Baron Lavonne. So sure was I that your heart knew I could not have done what was said of me. Then you told otherwise and I realized I could not tr—”

“Trust?” Michael picked the word for her and nearly groaned.
Lord, to be a patient man!

“Aye. I thought I could not trust myself to know you or anyone. Then Sir Canute told ‘twas he who sent word, and I realized I do know you, Michael—
have
known you. That I can trust myself.”

“What is it you know of me, Beatrix?”

She looked down. “That you care for me.”

He did, and more. Did she know that as well? “For this you came? To tell me this?”

“Aye.”

“Why?”

“Because of what is in here.” She slid a hand to her chest.

Michael felt as if he held his breath. “What is that?”

“Something without end. Something that both pains and…pleasures.”

He would describe it so himself. How ironic that Beatrix, with her difficulty in speaking, could voice what he could not.

She met his gaze. “Methinks it is love.”

The word sank into him, and he wondered how long he had waited to hear it.

“And yet,” she continued, “is it possible to love one who does not return that love?”

Now she asked of him what he had asked of her. And he knew the answer, but to speak it… “It surprises that you could feel such for me,” he said, only to castigate himself for denying her. Though the solar was yet too dim to see the color of her eyes, he imagined something flickered in their depths.

“You could not have known about your brother,” she defended him despite her disappointment over his lack of words. “And after what Edithe did…”

Michael slid his fingers up her jaw and across her smooth cheek. “She shall touch my life no longer, nor yours.” If only he could say the same of Aldous Lavonne.

Pulling her nearer, Michael savored her warm breath that fanned his face. “If you would allow it”—he angled his head and brushed his mouth across hers—“I would make love to you, Beatrix.”

Her silence weighted the spaces between them, but then she pressed nearer and touched her lips to his. “As it may be all we ever have of each other, I yield.”

Need rolled through Michael. The stored impatience of all these weeks spilling from him, he pushed up, turned her onto her back, and claimed her mouth. But as he tasted her, her words returned to him—words he had chosen to let pass in order to meet the needs of his flesh.

As it may be all we ever have of each other, I yield.

Though not so long ago, she had entreated him to yield to God, here he was as far from yielding as he had ever been, allowing base desires to corrupt and tempt her to do something she knew was wrong. All because she did not trust that they would be together after her trial. Though she claimed she did not fear the outcome—was certain God would be with her—she did not go so far as to trust in her deliverance.

“Michael?”

He met her questioning gaze and realized he had pulled back.

“What is it?”

He fell to the mattress beside her. In the utter still, he knew she believed he had rejected her. Then he heard her breath release and felt the mattress give as she turned from him. He looked to where she curled on her side.

Was he destined to hurt her at every turn? He leaned over her. “Beatrix, look at me.”

She turned her head and her sorrowful gaze met this.

“Not like this,” he said and brushed his lips across hers.
Patience,
he counseled as the brief contact made him ache deeper. If there was to be anything beyond this day for them, he must become what he was not—a patient man. Or as near to one as he could come. “I do not want to regret our joining, and I especially do not want you to regret it.”

Beatrix rolled onto her back. “I do not understand.”

In the dawning of day, he rose from the bed. “Aye, you do. You understand better than I.”

She stared at him, then all of her seemed to recede into the mattress. Averting her gaze, she said, “Too well I know.”

Michael started to turn away, but her pain pried at him, and he knew that what she needed he could finally give her. “When you come to me, it shall be as a chaste bride—as God wills.”

Her lids sprang back, revealing eyes that sang with disbelief.

“’Tis so. I love you, Beatrix.”

Her gaze wavered amid tears. “But I am not…may never be…” She swallowed. “You are sure you do not mistake d-desire for something it is not?”

“I am well acquainted with desire, and though I desire you, this is far more.”

His sincerity gripped Beatrix’s heart, but still it was hard to believe he felt so much for her.

“I shall have you to wife, Beatrix, this I vow.”

To wife when tomorrow she would be given into the hands of the sheriff? When her path lay crooked, narrow, and abounding with uncertainty? When it meant Michael would lose all?