Once He Loves (Medieval 3)

ne night, Ivo. Let it go now. Move on. ’Tis the way of men like us. We do not settle, we do not grow fond of any woman, for we may be dead on the morrow.”

Ivo looked grim. “Do you think I do not know that better than any man, Sweyn?”

“But still you need to speak with her?” Sweyn shook his head, and for once he was not smiling. “Beware, Ivo.”

Ivo knew that Sweyn was right, but being right was not enough to stop him. How could he explain to his friend that the need to see her again was stronger than the clear knowledge that she could hurt him?

Instead of sleeping, he had been remembering the past. Replaying that brief memory over and over again in his mind. And wondering why she had wanted him to be Radulf. Obviously there were reasons for what she had done. And still he could not forget how she had clung to him, given herself to him, after she knew who he really was.

That made all the difference.

Ivo strapped on his sword. The need to see her was twisting inside him, and if he did not give in to it before he left York, he would not have a moment’s peace while he did his work under Radulf’s banner. He had to tell her where he was going and why, he had to make her believe he meant to return. He could not ride away and leave her thinking their moments together were nothing more to him than a soldier’s lust.

And what of the rest? Will you tell her that you know who she is?

That was more difficult.

Ivo was well aware that those tied by blood to Lord Kenton were traitors by association. Bringing her demons into the light might help her. Or she may turn from him. Mayhap ’twas better to wait. He did not want her to push him away—she had seemed so desperate last night, so alone. He didn’t want her to be alone anymore. The chivalrous knight in him—the part of him he had thought dead—would simply not allow it.

I should know better, he thought.

But this new, frightening need to protect, to comfort, to hold Briar outweighed Ivo’s slender stock of caution.

Briar opened her eyes.

Sometimes, even now, she still awoke and thought she was at Castle Kenton. That when she rose she could gaze out at the mist-sodden moors, and the day would stretch comfortably before her. That nothing had changed.

And then she would remember, and grieve all over again.

But this morning was different.

At first Briar didn’t understand why. Where had this sense of lightness come from? This sense of something new, of something anticipated.

Puzzled, she drew the curtain a little, and peered from her shadowy bed, set into the thick wall of the kitchen, out into the room itself. A young maid with tangled hair raked the burning coals from the oven, leaving it hot enough for the baking of the day’s batch of bread. Another girl kneaded the dough for the loaves, while at the same time keeping an uneasy eye on the big man who sat at the far end of the table, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed as if he were asleep.

Odo.

All was as it should be. She was curled up with Mary in the bed that was Jocelyn’s, because last night Jocelyn had insisted she and Mary remain here rather than walk home in the dark and the cold. And for once Briar had been too overcome to argue.

Her mind probed cautiously at memories of the scene in the bedchamber, finding pain and confusion, but acceptance, too. She knew now she would never be able to take the real Radulf to her bed—the idea sickened her, as if it were a betrayal. Mayhap it was. To do such a thing would go against her own strong sense of right and wrong. Was Jocelyn correct, did the end not always justify the means?

Has Ivo de Vessey made me understand this? Has he immersed himself so deeply within me, and in such a short time?

Briar remembered the way he had looked at her, so intense, as if he was seeing everything about her there was to see. Those black eyes of his had made her feel wrung out, invaded, turned upside down. As if he saw her, the real Briar. It was not a comfortable sensation.

Had he also read in her eyes the real reason she had taken him to that chamber?

Briar hoped not. He had been puzzled by her behavior at the end, but before that he had been well pleased. He had held her and called her angel. Aye, there was still a chance she could turn last night to her advantage, turn failure into success. Jocelyn was right. Mistake or not, Ivo de Vessey was Radulf’s man.

Ivo de Vessey could be the key that opened the door into Radulf’s world.

Was vengeance not entirely dead to her, then? Could she resurrect that all-consuming desire to make one man pay for their suffering? Briar had told Jocelyn last night that she had meant to see justice done for all of them, and so she had. Briar had been arrogant and single-minded enough to believe that what she was doing was important. Jocelyn may want to bury her head in the sand, put the past behind her, as she was so fond of saying, but Briar could not forgive. Radulf had wronged them, and so he should pay. Oh, not in the way she had meant him to pay last night. That was unthinkable. But she could use Ivo de Vessey, follow Jocelyn’s advice.

Make him crazy with lust for you? Make him want you?

The voice in her head was sly and knowing; Briar was grateful when Jocelyn noticed she was awake and interrupted it.

“You are feeling better?”