“I would as well. I hope you like it. I saw you in my mind’s eye when the captain held it out for me to look at.”
It was a gold necklace, three intertwined gold chains, beautifully formed, weaving in and out of each other. There were three black pearls set deep in the gold, dark, mysterious, incredibly beautiful. It felt wonderful to spill the gold over her hands, feeling the warmth of the pearls against her flesh. Still she didn’t say anything.
“Do you like it?”
She looked at him then. “It is beautiful. I have nothing like it. I have never seen anything so lovely as this.” And to his astonished pleasure, she leaned into him and threw her arms around him, squeezing his neck until he wondered if he’d choke.
She kissed his cheek,
her breath warm and sweet, and he could taste her excitement and her pleasure. If he hadn’t already been sitting, it would have dropped him to his knees. Then she was laughing and pulled her braid off her neck. “Put it on me, please. Oh, it is so lovely. Thank you, Jerval.”
And he fastened the lovely necklace around her neck, then let her turn to face him. She was waiting to hear what he would say, and for a moment, he simply couldn’t find the right words, couldn’t find any words really. He just wanted to kiss her mouth—no longer chapped, he saw—kiss every bit of her and know all the way to his soul that she was his. He cleared his throat. “I chose well. With a gown, you will look like a mysterious princess, hiding her thoughts, keeping secrets close. Though to be honest, I think you would look beautiful wearing nothing at all. Show me again how much you like it. Kiss me, Chandra.”
She was still laughing, so pleased with him, with the necklace, with the feel of it around her neck, the weight against her chest, that she kissed him once, twice, even yet again, this time very close to his mouth.
Then she jumped to her feet. “Oh, my, I must show my father. He will believe you more thoughtful than Father Tolbert, who always takes great care to praise father’s generosity and care of all his lands and people in his sermons.”
Generous? Care of all his people? Lord Richard? Now that was a thought. Jerval had seen one of the maids slipping out of Lord Richard’s bedchamber early that morning when he had risen to relieve himself. She had looked tousled, and when she saw him, she’d grinned widely before lowering her eyes and hastily smoothing her gown. In matters of sexual appetite, he thought, Lord Richard was very generous indeed, very caring, endlessly so. To be fair, though, Lord Richard was a fine liege lord, his lands well tended, his people well protected.
“No, I have changed my mind. I will show the necklace later to my father. Now I will reward your kindness. It is so warm, I will take you swimming. Come, Jerval. There’s a small lake in the middle of the forest. You will like it.”
He felt a leap of pleasure, but it was swiftly gone. “Wait! Swim? As in get wet? But what will you wear to swim?”
“A shift, of course. Why?”
A linen piece of cloth that might come to the middle of her thighs, a piece of cloth that would, once wet, leave nothing left unseen. Oh, God. That damned rock lying beside his right hand wasn’t as hard as he was now. “And what about me?”
“I have seen naked men, Jerval,” she said patiently, “from the time I was five years old and finally realized there was a difference. You can strip to your skin if you wish.”
He knew of course that he couldn’t—he simply couldn’t. He would scare her witless. He wouldn’t be able to control himself—he just knew it. It would be too painful. He said, shaking his head, “No, I don’t wish to swim today. I wish to sit right here, with the nice wind off the sea blowing around us, and speak of the future.”
“Very well, if that is what you wish. What future?” She sat down again, still fingering her necklace, caressing the smooth pearls, and he wished her fingers were on him, stroking him.
Now was the time. No reason to put it off. She’d kissed him. She believed him honest and kind. She believed him as fine as her father. Damn. No matter. Forget her father. Surely there was no finer opportunity than right now. He picked up her hand. Calluses, he saw, lightly touching his fingertips over her palm. Dirty nails, but not all that bad. Slowly, he raised his eyes to her face.
He felt the words rumble deep inside him, so many words, spilling over each other. He said finally, “I want you to come back to Camberley with me.”
She merely smiled at him. “Now that I know you as my friend, why naturally I should like to visit Camberley. Perhaps we could go Scots-hunting.”
She was as obtuse as one of the black Welsh boulders strewn across the landscape, though he might be insulting the boulders.
“I don’t want you simply to visit,” he said patiently. “I want much more.”
At last, he thought, she was coming to understand what he was talking about. Her head was cocked to one side and she was looking him straight in the eye.
Spit it out. Just spit it out the way your father spits bones into the rushes. “I want you to be my wife, Chandra. I want you to come to Camberley with me, to live with me, to love me, to have my children, to smile at me until I am finally forced to leave you, hopefully so far into the future that neither of us can grasp it.”
Naturally she hadn’t heard or understood his wit, perhaps just that bit of it right there at the end. It was wit, he knew it was, and he was nearly smiling at himself. But no, she was still looking straight at him, but now her mouth was hanging open, her eyes suddenly unseeing, all of her frozen, and he knew, quite simply, that she didn’t want to believe this, that she wanted nothing to change between them.
She wanted him as her playmate. By all the saints’ toenails, it was enough to make a man curl up on the ground and groan with frustration.
“Chandra?”
Very slowly, she pulled away from him and stood. She was still fingering the necklace. “No,” she said finally, and turned away.
Instant rage turned his blood hot, made him see red. “Just no? That is all you can say to me? Just a niggardly no?”
“That’s right. No.” She had the gall to walk away from him, her stride long, looking like a damned boy.