Lady At Arms, page 13
They stared into one another, and then he smoothed a tear from her jaw. “Is it really so bad?” he asked, a smile lifting a corner of his mouth.
Bad? It was not bad enough, and therein lay her dilemma. “I do not detest you,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”
The other corner of his mouth lifted. “I know. Though I do not understand exactly what you are, Lizanne Balmaine, this I do know—you are not what you try so very hard to be.”
She frowned. “Nor do I understand you. You are not at all as you should be.”
“How should I be?”
She knew she should say no more but could not keep the uncertain words from her lips. “Evil. Without conscience. Bent on taking pleasure no matter the pain of others. That is the kind of man you should be. The kind I—” She pressed her lips, broke free of his penetrating gaze, and stared at her knuckles that had grown white where she gripped the tub.
“The kind you imprisoned to exact revenge upon,” he finished for her, then uncurled her fingers from the rim and encased her hands in his. “Tell me what you believe I did to hurt you.”
She lifted her face and contemplated his eyes, nose, mouth and, lastly, pale hair. So handsome…
Halfheartedly, she chastised herself for her traitorous feelings. Changed or not, he was the same man. If only she could convince her heart of it, but it would not accept what her eyes demanded it recognize.
And since when did your heart become involved in this dangerous web spun by your thirst for revenge, Lizanne?
She shook her head. “I cannot say.”
Anger made a brief appearance in his eyes, then he drew her against him and pressed her head to his shoulder. “One day you will come to me,” he said. “You will trust me.”
She breathed in his scent through the weave of his tunic. “I know,” she murmured. “’Tis what I fear most.”
How long she let him hold her and let herself savor being held, she did not know, but too soon he pulled away. “I am expected in the hall.”
Avoiding his gaze, she sank back on her heels in the water.
He straightened. “I shall send a servant with your meal.”
She nodded. “I thank you.”
Then, once more, he left her alone. But she did not cry again.
The lack of warmth brought Lizanne fully awake. Opening her eyes, she found morning had come after the long dark of the night when Ranulf Wardieu had not returned—at least, not while she lay awake.
Fearful he might have, indeed, joined her, she lifted her head and peered over her shoulder. She was the only occupant of the bed. There had been no other.
Relieved, but also unsettled in a way she did not care to reflect upon, she sat up. And was immediately reminded of her state of undress. Having soaked her garments and found Wardieu’s chest locked on the night past, the only covering available to her had been a sheet from the bed. Around and around she had wound it about herself, and though it had held through the night, it had loosened considerably.
Dragging the makeshift garment higher and clasping it at the base of her throat, she surveyed the chamber. Bathed in the first light of morning, the shadows gradually receded as the sun rose outside the window. Colorful prisms of light, like those that arched against the sky after a long rain, fell across the floors and ever so slowly slid up the walls.
Confirming she was, indeed, alone, she pondered Wardieu’s whereabouts and his reason for not returning to the chamber. Had he spent the night with one of the maids, perhaps Elspeth?
Feeling a constriction about her chest, she chastised herself for the emotion she refused to name jealousy, thrust thoughts of the man aside, and scooted to the edge of the mattress.
Grateful for the thick rushes beneath her feet, the absence of which would have made the chill in the room less tolerable, she straightened from the bed, drew the sheet tighter about her, and securely tucked the end of the cloth into the layers beneath her collarbone. Then she crossed the chamber, passed between two chairs that had been placed in front of the hearth following the removal of the tub on the night past, and halted before the mantel over which she had draped her garments to dry.
Though the bliaut was yet damp, owing to the demise of the fire while she slept, the undergarments and chemise had dried completely.
Recalling the sorry state of her clothing upon her arrival at the castle, she delighted in their renewed crispness and pressed her face to them. As she had applied soap to them as vigorously as her body, they smelled and felt clean again, something she had not realized she missed until that moment.
She shook out her shift and, leaving the bed sheet in place lest Wardieu returned without warning, pulled it over her head. Next came the chemise. She smoothed it down her hips, made quick work of the laces, and eyed the bliaut, the damp of which would surely seep into her dry undergarments. Unseemly though it was to eschew it knowing she might not be alone much longer, she reasoned there was nothing at all seemly about her relationship with Ranulf Wardieu. The bliaut could wait. In the meantime, she had her sheet.
Plucking at it through her chemise and shift, giving herself a good shake, she loosened it. It fell and pooled about her feet, whereby she snatched it up, pulled it around her shoulders, and tied it at her neck—a mantle of sorts. Then she addressed her hair by combing her fingers through it. As she tugged at a particularly vile knot, she wondered if Wardieu had put the comb in his chest and grimaced in remembrance of her struggle on the night past when no amount of effort had budged the lock.
Once she worked the last of the tangles free, she turned from the hearth, swept her hair over her shoulder, and began braiding it. She was halfway down its length when sunlight, having left its timidity behind, shifted and shone upon the nearest chair—and its occupant.
Suppressing a yelp, Lizanne released the braid and moved her gaze along an outstretched leg, over a slowly rising and falling chest, and into penetrating black eyes.
He had not spent the night with another, then? Her grudging relief was short-lived by the realization he had witnessed her morning antics. The only good of it, and it was a great good, was that she had not bared herself as it would have been easy to do believing she was alone.
For some moments, Wardieu remained unmoving, chin propped in the palm of a hand, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair. Then he said in a tone thick with what seemed more than sleep, “As ever, morning wears well upon you, Lizanne Balmaine.”
She struggled to summon anger at him for not alerting her to his presence. Would he have done so had she made to remove the sheet before donning her undergarments?
They continued to stare at each other, the air fairly vibrating with emotions she did not know the name of and that sought to distract her from expressing indignation—and, in the end, succeeded. Instead of her enemy, she saw the one who had come to her yestereve and offered comfort. She saw he who not only made her body warm but had somehow touched her heart.
Still, she fought the treacherous waters that tried to drag her under and backed away.
You desire him, her mind named what she did not wish to name. But look at him! He is the one. Your enemy!
Coming up against the hearth, she splayed her hands against the stones behind.
He is responsible for all the pain. He is the one who tried to ravish you. He is the one who spilled Gilbert’s blood.
And yet her body and heart saw another—a man capable of tenderness, of honor and word, who would never take what was not given freely.
Dear God, how can he look exactly like he who haunts my dreams and yet be another?
She caught her breath when Wardieu dropped his head back and reached a hand to her.
Do not, I tell you!
In the thrumming quiet of the chamber, her breath grew shallow and her heart beat so frenetically she felt sure he could hear it.
Though her mind rejected his invitation, her legs had no such misgivings and carried her toward him.
Eyes never leaving her face, he slid his leg off the chair arm, leaned forward and grasped her hand, urged her down.
Kneeling before him, Lizanne read the emotion in his eyes that she did not doubt was in her own.
Who have you become, Lizanne? This is not who you groomed yourself to be. Think swords and daggers, not kisses and caresses. Think the games of men, not the games of simpering females whose bodies are easily used and discarded. Think!
“I cannot,” she breathed and knew he heard her from the frown that crossed his brow.
“Should not,” he murmured, then drew his hand from hers and raised it toward her face. For a moment, his fingers hovered a hair’s breadth from her flushed skin, and then he touched her.
Lizanne accepted the light caress that moved over her cheek, across the curve of her jaw, down her neck, then back up to trace her mouth.
Nearly overwhelmed by the feeling she was falling from a great height, plunging toward a destination she could not guess at but desperately wanted to reach, she swayed toward him and felt his warm breath against her lips. And then his mouth.
It seemed the most natural thing to close her eyes, to simply feel, and feel she did when he entwined his hand in her hair, drew her nearer, and deepened the kiss.
Lizanne did not realize she had lifted her own hand until she felt the strands run between her fingers and the heat of his scalp beneath them.
When he pulled his mouth from hers, she startled at the loss of intimacy, but next his lips found her jaw, then a breathtakingly sensitive spot beneath her ear.
She dropped her head back and whispered, “Ran.”
Ranulf stilled, certain he could not have heard right, but again she said, “Ran.” Not Wardieu or Ranulf Wardieu as ever she scorned. Indeed, only once had she simply called him Ranulf. And now Ran. Did it mean what it sounded like?
He opened his eyes upon her blackest hair that his fingers had loosened from its unfinished braid and which he longed to bury his face in. And that was not all he longed to do.
Walter would not approve—and rightly so.
Ranulf pulled his hand from her hair and drew back.
After a long moment, she lifted her lids.
“Say it,” he said.
Confusion flit across her features, but then she slid her hand up his lightly whiskered jaw and leaned forward as if to press her mouth to his again.
He drew further back. “Lizanne, say what you feel.”
She shook her head. “I…do not know what it is.” She frowned. “Only that I should not feel it.”
“Why?”
As soon as he asked it, he knew he should not have—at least, not at that moment—for her expression told that she was returning to a place of undisclosed accusations against which he could not defend himself, a place he did not wish to be with her ever again.
Desperate to recapture the soft, yielding Lizanne of minutes earlier, he gripped her waist and lifted her onto his lap. To his relief, she eased her stiffening, sank back against him, and lowered her head to his shoulder.
Looking down at her, he was drawn to the part in the sheet that she had tied around her shoulders and saw the faint, thin line his blade had drawn across her collarbone when she had forced him to swords.
He reached up and, as he traced its path, heard her catch her breath. “It seems,” he said, “we each bear the mark of the other.”
He heard her swallow. “I do not understand why you stopped,” she said and hastily added, “Not that I am ungrateful.”
Dare he tell her he wanted more from her than a moment of passion? That he wanted her to long for him as constantly as he longed for her? That he wanted her thoughts so preoccupied with him she could barely function as, more and more, his thoughts were fixed upon her? That even if he set aside all Walter had taught him and made her his leman, it would not be enough?
She tipped her head back and met his gaze. “Why did you stop?”
Liking too well the feel of her skin, he drew the sheet over her collarbone and lowered his arm. “Do not doubt that I would have more from you than kisses,” he said, “but just as I do not take what is not my due or has not been given to me, neither do I take that which should not be given to me.”
She narrowed her lids. “Then this is not your revenge? To lure me in with kindness and sweet kisses that I might want what I should not want—what I should rather die for?”
He pondered that. He had not regarded what he had allowed to happen between them as a means of retaliating against her for the humiliation of his capture and imprisonment. However, it was, indeed, a better revenge than any he had previously entertained.
“Though ’twas not intentionally set in motion,” he finally said, “forsooth, ’tis a good revenge. But if it comforts you, know this—you do not suffer alone.”
Lizanne searched Ranulf’s face that was framed by the pale, pale hair that told he was the one. Somewhere, written upon it, there must be evidence of some secret pleasure at having unraveled the warrior she had woven into her being, at having her cling to him like the weak, love-sapped girl of ten and five who had ached for the day she would wed her Philip, at seeing the woman who had wielded a sword against him now wield only the keen edge of tears.
She moved out of his unresisting arms, lowered her feet to the floor, and went to stand before the hearth. Keeping her back to him, she said, “I do not know what has become of me, why I cannot hate you anymore, why my body betrays me.” She shook her head. “How can it be?”
She heard the chair sigh as he leveraged out of it.
“Do not fight it,” he said. “You will only fail, as I did, for you are a question never before asked of me.”
As he was a question never before asked of her.
His footsteps retreated across the rushes, and she knew he meant to leave her alone with her misery again. But then a key rattled in a lock and hinges creaked, revealing his destination to be the chest that would yield up clean garments for the day ahead.
As the shush of cloth sounded, Lizanne felt the chill of the room that had been forgotten the moment Ranulf had touched her, fool that she was. Keeping her back to him, she yearned for a dark hole in which to wail out grief over her body’s illicit longings. It was wrong for her to desire Ranulf. But though she dredged up his crimes, she could not help but wonder if his black heart had, indeed, healed, if it was possible to have done the things he had done and now be the man he appeared to be. Was it by faith he had changed? She had heard it said that anything was possible with God.
“Lizanne,” he called, “finish dressing and you may accompany me to the hall for the morning meal.”
There was nothing she wanted to do less. She needed time to sort her thoughts and feelings, to take her body in hand and exorcise its infernal longings and misplaced loyalties—
“Now, Lizanne.”
She turned and saw he was fully clothed, tunic to boots. “I cannot. My bliaut is not yet dry.”
With furrowed brow, he strode forward, pulled her gown from the mantel, and shook it out. “’Tis mostly dry,” he said. “Remove the sheet and lift your arms.”
Wanting to argue but having no energy, she pulled the sheet off over her head, raised her arms, and pushed them into the sleeves when he lowered the bliaut over her. She stood still as he tugged the damp, resistant bodice into place and smoothed the skirt down her hips. Then he pulled the laces tight and tied them off.
“Slippers,” he said, gesturing to where they sat upon the hearth.
She stepped into them.
“You are ready.” He turned toward the door.
“My hair,” she protested and pulled it over her shoulder to start anew that which his hands had undone. Throughout, she felt his impatience, but finally she knotted her hair to end the braid.
“Have you no ribbon?” he asked.
Glancing at him where he leaned against the door with arms folded over his chest, she almost laughed. “I do not, but have not a care, for it will not come undone. ’Tis the nature of my hair.”
“Aye, were it fine like Elspeth’s, it would unravel quickly.”
Lizanne was glad she had not laughed, for she would have noticeably swallowed her mirth at being so unfavorably compared to that woman. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about the color heating her cheeks.
Still, there was good to be had in Ranulf’s words, for they hauled her out of her miserable ponderings and back to a semblance of anger that would serve her far better for what lay ahead. And, when she stepped past Ranulf into the corridor and glimpsed the turning of his lips, she wondered if that had been his intention.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lizanne’s disposition deteriorated further when, upon entering the main hall, Elspeth materialized at Ranulf’s side and placed a familiar hand upon his arm. Her short veil perfect upon smooth hair that could not possibly hold a knot, she looked entreatingly at Ranulf. “You will sit next to me again, will you not, Baron?”
“I would be honored, my lady.” He turned to the dais at the far end of the room.
Lizanne stared after the couple, uncertain as to whether she should follow or retreat.
A touch on her arm brought her around, but the smug smile on Squire Geoff’s face faded when he caught sight of her expression that she should not have allowed to linger.
He cleared his throat. “You may sit with Roland and me.” He indicated the long table behind.
She nodded and followed him.
Though Squire Roland refused to more than glance at her, he moved down along the bench to make room for her.
Seated between the squires, uncomfortably aware of the damp embrace of her bliaut, Lizanne bowed her head as the chaplain said a hasty grace. Immediately following, the hall erupted with the sounds of fifty or more voracious men and women.
Picking at the simple meal that was placed before her, Lizanne found her gaze far too often drawn to where Ranulf was seated between Sir Hamil and the man’s daughter. Each time, she felt her color rise, and each time she regretted the weakness that impelled her to gaze in his direction. The woman fawned over him, touching his sleeve as often as possible and giggling at his every word.
