Judith’s mouth opened to speak, her eyes wide. “How dare you!” she finally gasped. “I had every right—!”
“Judith,” he interrupted. “A divorce cannot be granted to every wife who is angry
at her husband. Soon there would be no marriages left.”
“But you had no right—”
“I have every right! I’m your husband and I love you. Who else has rights if I don’t? Now come back here and let’s stop talking.”
“Don’t touch me! How can I face the king after what you have said.”
“You have been facing him for days, and you seem to have come to no harm.” Gavin leered at her bare breasts.
She snatched the covers under her arms. “You have laughed at me!”
“Judith!” Gavin said in a low, threatening voice. “I have taken a great deal from you over this. I have been laughed at, ridiculed, all in an attempt to appease you. But all that is at an end. If you don’t behave now, I will turn that pretty bottom of yours over my knee and spank you. Now come here!”
Judith started to defy him, but then she smiled and snuggled against his chest. “What made you so sure I wouldn’t divorce you?”
“I guess I knew I loved you enough to forbid it. I would truly have locked you in a tower before I let another man have you.”
“Yet you bore the laughter about the divorce.”
Gavin gave a derisive snort. “I had no intentions of doing that. I didn’t know your tantrum would leak into public knowledge. But then I had forgotten what gossip there was at court. No one does anything that everyone else doesn’t know of it.”
“How did the news spread?”
Gavin shrugged. “A maid, I guess. How did the knowledge of Alice’s trick spread?”
Judith’s head came up. “Don’t speak that woman’s name to me!”
He pulled Judith back to his chest. “Have you no forgiveness in your heart? The woman loves me, as I once believed I loved her. She has done everything for that love.”
Judith gave a sigh of exasperation. “You still don’t believe any wrong of her, do you?”
“You are still jealous?” he asked, smiling.
She looked up at him, her eyes very serious. “In a way, I am. She will always be a perfect woman to you. What she did, you believe she did out of love for you. She is a pure, perfect woman to you and will always be. While I am…”
“You are what?” he teased.
“I am earthy. I am the woman you have and can have, while Alice represents an ethereal love to you.”
He frowned. “You say I’m wrong, yet why else would she have done what she did?”
Judith shook her head at him. “Greed. She believes you are hers and I have taken you. She loves you no more than she loves me—except that you have the wherewithal to give her body some pleasure…however brief.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Do you insult me?”
“No, but I listen to gossip. The men complain of her penchant for violence.”
Gavin drew his breath in sharply. “Let’s not speak of this again,” he said coldly. “You are my wife and I love you, but even so I’ll not listen to you malign such an unhappy woman. You have won and she has lost. That should be enough for you.”
Judith blinked back tears. “I love you, Gavin. I love you so much, but I fear that all your love will not be mine as long as the disease of Alice Chatworth eats at your heart.”
Gavin frowned, tightening his hold on her. “You have no reason to be jealous of her.”
Judith started to speak but of what use would her words be? She knew she would always share a tiny bit of her husband’s love with an icy blonde beauty. And no words would ever change those feelings.