“Of course.” He bent and kissed her mouth, the wine still on her lips. The setting sun deepened the applied color on her cheeks. Her dark eyelashes cast a mysterious shadow across her cheeks.
“Swear it!” she said firmly. “You must swear to me that you will love only me—no one else.”
It seemed a small price to pay to keep her from killing herself. “I swear it.”
Alice rose quickly. “I must return now, before I am missed.” She seemed completely recovered. “You won’t forget me? Even tonight?” she whispered against his lips, her hands searching inside his clothes. She didn’t wait for his answer, but slipped from his grasp and through the gate.
The sound of clapping made Gavin turn. Judith stood there, her dress and eyes ablaze in a reflection of the setting sun.
“That was an excellent performance,” she said as she lowered her hands. “I haven’t been so entertained in years. That woman should try the stage in London. I hear there is need for good mummers.”
Gavin advanced toward her, his face mirroring his rage. “You lying little sneak! You have no right to spy on me!”
“Spy!” she snarled. “I left the hall for some air after my husband”—she sneered the word—“left me to do for myself. And here in the garden I am a witness to that same husband groveling at the feet of a pasty-faced woman who twists him about her fingers like a bit of yarn.”
Gavin drew back his arm and slapped her. An hour before he would have sworn that nothing could have made him harm a woman.
Judith slammed against the ground, landing in a mass of swirling hair and gold silk. The sun seemed to set a torch to her.
Gavin was instantly contrite. He was sick at himself and what he had done. He knelt to help her stand.
She retreated from him and her eyes glinted hatred. Her voice was so quiet, so flat, that he could hardly hear her. “You say you did not want to marry me, that you did so only for the wealth I bring you. Neither did I want to marry you. I refused until my father held my mother before me and snapped her arm like a splinter of wood. I have no love for that man—but for you I have even less. He is an honest man. He does not one hour stand before a priest and hundreds of witnesses and swear undying love—then in another hour pledge ********* that same love to someone else. You are no man, Gavin Montgomery. You are lower than the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and always I will curse the day I was joined to you. You made that woman a vow and now I make you one. As God is my witness, you will rue this day. You may get the wealth you hunger for, but I will never give myself to you freely.”
Gavin moved away from Judith as if she’d turned to poison. His experience with women was limited to whores and friendships with a few of the court ladies. They were demure, like Alice. What right did Judith have to make demands of him, to curse him, to make vows before God? A husband was a woman’s god, and the sooner this one learned that the better.
Gavin grabbed a handful of Judith’s hair and jerked her to him. “I will take whatever I want whenever I want, and if I take it from you, you will be grateful.” He released her and pushed her back to the ground. “Now get up and prepare yourself to become my wife.”
“I hate you,” she said under her breath.
“What does that matter to me? I bear you no love either.”
Their eyes locked—steel gray against gold. Neither moved until the women came to prepare Judith for her wedding night.
Chapter Six
A SPECIAL ROOM HAD BEEN READIED FOR THE BRIDE AND groom. A large corner of the solar had been partitioned off around one of the fireplaces. An enormous bed had been set up in the room and sheets of the softest linen were spread across it. A coverlet of gray squirrel, lined with crimson silk fell across the sheets. Rose petals littered the bed.
Judith’s maids and several of the women guests helped undress the bride. When she was nude, they pulled the covers back, and Judith entered the bed. Her mind was not on what was taking place around her. She kept calling herself a fool. In just a few hours, she had forgotten seventeen years of what she had learned was true about men. For a few hours she had believed a man could be kind and good, capable even of love. But Gavin was the same—perhaps even worse than the others.
The women laughed riotously at Judith’s silence. But Helen knew there was more than just nervousness involved with her daughter’s behavior. She whispered a silent prayer, asking God to help her daughter.
“You are a fortunate woman,” an older woman murmured in Judith’s ear. “My first marriage found me wedded with a man five years older than my father. I wonder now that no one helped him perform his duties.”
Maud giggled, “Lord Gavin will need no help—I’ll wager that.”
“Perhaps the Lady Judith will need help, and I would offer my…ah…services,” laughed someone else.
Judith barely heard them. All she remembered hearing was her husband pledging his love to another woman, the way he held Alice and kissed her. The women drew the sheet just over Judith’s breasts. Someone combed her hair so that it cascaded softly over her bare shoulders to rest in thick auburn curls around her hips.
Through the oak door the women heard the noise of the men arriving with Gavin carried aloft on their shoulders. He entered feet first, already half-undressed, the men yelling their offers of assistance, their wagers as to the competence of his performance of the task ahead. They were silent as they stood him on his feet and stared at the bride who waited in the bed. The sheet accented her creamy shoulders and the full swelling of her breasts. The candlelight deepened the shadow above the sheet. Her bare throat pulsed with life. Her face was set in a firm, serious expression that caused her eyes to darken, as if they smoked. Her lips were hard, as if carved of some warm vermilion marble.
“Get it done with!” someone shouted. “Do you torture him or me?”
The silence was broken. Gavin was quickly undressed and pushed to the bed. The men watched avidly as Maud drew the covers aside, giving them a glance of bare hips and thigh.
“Now out!” a tall woman ordered. “Leave them be.”
Helen gave her daughter one last look, but Judith gazed down at her hands in her lap and saw no one.