He smiled down at her, the setting sun making her skin golden, her hair spread about her like a fiery sunset. “Who are you, my wife?” he whispered, devouring her with his eyes. “You curse me one moment, enchant me the next. You defy me until I could take the life from you; then you smile at me, and I am dazed at your loveliness. You are like no other woman I have ever known. I have yet to see you put needle to thread, but I have seen you up to your knees in the muck of the fishpond. You ride a horse as well as a man, yet I find you in a tree shivering like a child in a mortal fear. Are you ever the same from one moment to the next? Do two days ever find you the same?”
“I am Judith. I am no one else, nor do I know how to be anyone else.”
His hand caressed her temple; then he bent and touched his lips to hers. They were sunwarmed and sweet. He had barely tasted of her when the heavens suddenly opened with an enormous blast of thunder and began to empty a heavy torrent of rain on them.
Gavin uttered a very foul word Judith had never heard before. “To the overhang!” he said, then remembered her ankle. He picked her up and raced with her to the deep shelter, where the fire sputtered and crackled, the meat fat dripping into it. Gavin’s temper was not helped by the abrupt shower. Angrily, he went to the fire. One side of the meat was burned black, the other raw. Neither of them had thought to turn it.
“You’re a poor cook,” he said. He was annoyed at having a perfect moment destroyed.
She gave him a blank look. “I sew better than I cook.”
He stared at her, then began to laugh. “Well met.” He looked out at the rain. “I must see to my stallion. He won’t like standing in this with his saddle on.”
Always concerned for the welfare of animals, Judith turned on him. “You’ve left your poor horse unattended all this time?”
He did not like her tone of command. “And where, pray tell, is your mare? Do you care so lightly for her that you don’t care what has become of her?”
“I—” she began. She had been so enthralled with Gavin that she had given her horse no thought at all.
“Then set yourself to rights before you order me about.”
“I wasn’t ordering you.”
“And pray, what else then?”
Judith turned away from him. “Go then. Your horse waits in the rain.”
Gavin started to speak then changed his mind as he went into the rain.
Judith sat rubbing her ankle, scolding herself. She seemed to make him angry at every turn. Then she stopped. What did it matter if she made him angry? She hated him, didn’t she? He was a vile, dishonorable man and one day of kindness wouldn’t change her feelings of hatred for him. Or could it?
“My lord.”
She heard the voice as if from far away.
“My Lord Gavin. Lady Judith.” The voices came closer.
Gavin swore under his breath as he tightened the cinch he had just loosened. He’d forgotten all about his men. What spell had that little witch cast on him that he forgot his horse and even worse, forgot his men who diligently searched for them? Now they rode about in the rain, wet, cold and no doubt hungry. For all he would have liked to go back to Judith, perhaps spend the night with her, his men must come first.
He walked his horse across the stream and up the hill. They would have seen the fire by now.
“You are unharmed, my lord?” John Bassett asked when they met, water dripping off his nose.
“Yes,” Gavin said flatly, not looking at his wife who leaned against the rock ledge. “We were caught in the storm and Judith hurt her ankle,” he began, then st
opped when John looked pointedly at the sky. A spring cloudburst was hardly a storm, and both Gavin and his wife could have ridden the one horse.
John was an older man, a knight of Gavin’s father, and he was experienced in dealing with young men. “I see, my lord. We have brought the lady’s mare.”
“Damn, damn, damn!” Gavin muttered. Now she’d made him lie to his men. He went to her mare and savagely tightened the cinch.
For all the pain in her injured ankle, Judith hobbled quickly toward him. “Don’t be so rough with my horse,” she said possessively.
He turned on her. “Don’t be so rough with me, Judith!”
Judith silently stared through the half-open shutter at the starlit night. She wore a bedrobe of indigo blue damask lined with light blue silk, trimmed around the neck, down the front and around the hem with white ermine. The rain had cleared and the night air was fresh. Reluctantly, she turned away from the window to her empty bed. Judith knew what was wrong with her, though she hated to admit it. What sort of woman was she that she pined for the caresses of a man she despised? She closed her eyes and could almost feel his hands and his lips on her body. Had she no pride that her body betrayed her mind? She slipped off the robe and slid, nude, into the chilly bed.
Her heart nearly stopped when she heard heavy footsteps pause outside the room. She waited, breathlessly, for a long while before the steps receded down the hall. She banged her fist into the feather pillow and it was a long, long time before she slept.