Remembrance

“Steel,” she said, knowing that at this moment she was happier than she had ever been before.

Talis didn’t take two minutes unlacing the back of her dress, those laces that had caused her great trouble in the dark garderobe. He smoothly slipped the dress from her shoulders, then unlatched the corset from her ribs.

Holding the thing at arm’s length, he started to toss it over the side of the walls to the old, dried-up moat far below, but Callie squealed in protest. “No! Edith will kill me if I lose that.”

Talis only laughed and in the next second it went sailing over the battlements to the ground below. Running to the wall, Callie watched it fall, then over her head, he sent her headdress sailing. “You idiot,” she said. “I will get into trouble for this.”

When he didn’t say anything, she turned to look at him. She would have thought she’d seen every expression Talis could put on his face, but she’d never seen this expression before. His dark eyes were black in the moonlight, glittering in a way she’d never seen any man’s eyes glitter. For a split second she was almost afraid of him. He looked so very old, so very adult standing there. He wasn’t the boy who’d chased her through brambles, but a man who was looking at her as he would look at a woman.

Callie’s fear lasted only a breath, a breath that caught in her throat and stayed there. With a leap, she was on him, her mouth hitting exactly on the target of his, clinging to him. Her dress was about her waist, hanging on to her slender hips, nearly off of her, while above she wore only her thin linen nightdress.

Whether her attack on him knocked him to the ground or it was his own overwhelming emotion, the two of them went tumbling to the floor of the worn stones, their hands and mouths exploring each other. Hungry, eager, excited…ravenous.

Callie had no thoughts of stopping what was starting to happen between them. She had been restless for months now; she had been watching parts of Talis’s body that had held no interest for her in years past. She looked at his thighs as he walked, at the hard muscle of his buttocks as he strained to help Will get a wagon out of the mud. When he stripped to the waist to wash sweat from his back and shoulders, Callie nearly swooned with the beauty of him.

Now she was touching all the parts of him that she had seen. She had no shyness, no inhibitions, no sense that she should not do what she wanted to do. Talis was hers, more than her own body was hers, and now she needed him more than she needed all the food and drink in the world.

When her hand went between his legs and there was a groan from him, Callie felt it in her soul. It wasn’t just that her heart was pounding; her entire body was throbbing. She wanted to feel his skin next to her skin and she began to claw at his clothes.

“No,” he said. “Callie, no.”

Callie paid no attention to him as she pushed her hands under his shirt and ran them up his bare, warm skin, her mouth seeking his.

“No!” he shouted, and in one quick, strong move, he was away from her, standing with his back to the stone battlements, his chest heaving with emotion. Even in the moonlight she could see that he was flushed.

As for Callie, she could not properly breathe, much less think as she sat still on the stones and looked up at him. “Tally,” she whispered, holding out her hands to him.

He would not be able to deny her if she kept looking at him in that way. Turning his back to her, he looked out over the landscape, but his heart and mind were with her. He could feel her wanting him, her willingness. For a long time he stood there looking into the dark night, willing his body to calm down, willing her to stop beseeching him. His honor and what he wanted so very much warred within him.

In the last weeks so many things had changed. Everything had changed. On the farm he had yearned for what he had intuited was his birthright. And now that he had it all, all he seemed to want was Callie. Even to himself he did not want to admit how he had felt in this last week without her. Empty, drained, weak. How could he be a knight if she were not there beside him?

And now that he was a son of this rich house, how could he have her without the sanction of his father? How could he provide for her? Give her a home?

For a moment he was tempted to take her hand and run with her back to Meg and Will. Sometimes he thought that having been found by John Hadley was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. But that was absurd. Now he had a chance to give Callie everything. He could give her a home. He did not want to see her work-weary and worn-out by the time she was thirty. He wanted her to have the best of everything, the best the world had to offer.

Turning back to her, he smiled, but saw that she seemed to be on the verge of tears. Knowing her, she probably thought he did not want to touch her. If only she knew how much he wanted her. Until this week he had not realized that she was everything to him. He wanted to be a knight so she could be proud of him, wanted riches so she could have the best life had to offer. Everything was for her.

But he was not going to take what was not by right his to have. He knew that Callie didn’t care what happened between them. If he warned her that continuing what they had started could lead to disgrace because of her carrying his child, he knew she would not care. He also knew that Callie would look to him to solve the problem. He knew she would live in a hovel with him; money meant nothing to her. But he also knew that he would die rather than see her working as he’d seen village women work, old before she had time to live.

He had to tend to legalities and practical things before he took what he wanted so much. Otherwise, he had no right to what she offered; no right to the reward if he had not done the work. His honor would not allow him to take what he had not earned.

“Do not look at me so,” he said. He meant to sound lighthearted, but his voice was pleading, full of what he felt for her. She had no idea how beautiful she was in the moonlight, her eyes big and filled with longing, the silver of the moon making them liquid.

“You are hurting me,” he gasped out.

Callie heard the pain in his voice and, for the thousandth time in her life, damned his sense of honor. No doubt he thought that what they were doing was wrong. How could anything they did together be wrong?

Extending his hands, he held them out to her, offering to help her up but keeping her at arm’s length.

With a sigh, Callie accepted his offer, then betrayed him by trying to kiss his mouth. Laughing, Talis pulled away from her.

“Look at my hair. Has it turned gray tonight? You are aging me. Have you no sense of decency? Girls are supposed to hold themselves away from men. They shouldn’t jump on men and knock them to the floor.”

Callie laughed as he turned her around and began fastening her dress. It didn’t fit as well without the corset underneath, but it certainly felt better. “Odd that you are strong enough to break down the door but not strong enough to hold me up. Unless you think I am stronger than an oak and iron door.”

He could not keep from kissing her neck as he pulled her back laces together. “You are stronger than all the oak in the world.”

“Oh? Am I?” When she started to turn toward him, he pulled her laces so tight she gasped, her hands to her stomach.