Ivo was crossing the room before he knew it. He hadn’t realized until he started walking how light-headed he was—it must be the ale. His boots seemed barely to touch the rush-strewn floor. The dais was before him and he vaguely noted that the girl with the harp had gone.
But the angel was there, waiting.
“You sing wondrously well, demoiselle.” He heard his own voice, deep and quiet, as if it were that of a stranger. “I am bewitched.”
She laughed, and cast him a flirtatious glance.
Her eyes were not brown as he had thought, but hazel. Watchful and secretive, and framed with thick dark lashes, they were set wide apart and slanted upward like a cat’s eyes. There was something familiar in those eyes, something distant and yet part remembered. I know her, but from where… Even as his mind was turning, his gaze moved on. Her mouth was small and lush, her chin a point for her heart-shaped face, and her skin was smooth and unmarked apart from a small scar on her right cheekbone. That long chestnut-colored hair fell about her, curling at the ends, rippling over her shoulders like a smooth waterfall.
There is something about her eyes, and the scar on her right cheekbone. Something about the scar…
Why had he drunk so much? His mind must be fogged with ale fumes.
“You like my songs, sir?” Her French was flawless—this was no English peasant.
Ivo blinked, brought his thoughts back to the here and now. “Aye, demoiselle, I like them very much.”
Her eyes smiled up at him, like the brown and green shadows in a forest, tempting him onward into places he had never been before. She reached out a slender hand and rested it upon his arm. Her hand looked pale and fragile against his dark sleeve, and he hesitated to cover it with his own.
“Mayhap you would like a private audience?”
Were the words truly spoken? Or had he dreamed them because they were so much what he wanted to hear?
Ivo knew he was sobering up fast.
He gazed down intently into her face, and saw her lick her lips nervously with the tip of her pink tongue. There was a flicker of doubt in her eyes, as though she feared he would say her nay. He wanted to laugh—nay was the last thing he would say her right now! She was beautiful, and her song still held him in its spell. And if he wasn’t either mad, or badly mistaken, she was offering herself to him.
All of herself.
Lust soared through him, tightening every muscle. To his surprise, his manhood began to thicken—he had thought he had better control than that. Ivo was no brutish soldier, willing to forgo all niceties for a hasty roll in the hay. He had been taught courtesy and respect, and although he may not always have abided by them, he knew the right from the wrong. To suddenly feel so totally out of control, like a lusty stallion in a paddock of mares, confused him.
But there was more than lust here. Ivo felt a poignancy that was in one part the suppressed emotions she had stirred up with her song, and in the other part a memory of his past. It was as if this angel really would in some way heal him, repair the broken man.
Make him whole again.
He clenched the fist he had kept hidden in the wolfpelt cloak at his side, his maimed flesh warm inside the leather-and-steel glove he always wore in the company of others. He had learned to use his damaged hand as well as any man whose hand was whole—he had had no choice. Still he was proud of the accomplishment. Miles had thought to cripple him and render him useless, but he had failed.
“You are a stranger here.”
The woman interrupted his introspection. Her voice was as low and husky as it had been when she sang, and again he felt the shiver of its touch on his skin. Like the brush of velvet, soft and sensual.
“I am come from the south.”
No need to tell her more, thought Ivo. Indeed, he was wary to open his mouth in case all that he was, and hoped and dreamed, gushed out. His mind felt wide open and echoey, his body hummed with desire. And atop that he had the sensation of familiarity—as if he had known her before.
Ivo held out his hand to her, the good one—no need to frighten her with his deformity just yet. The touch of her soft skin made him even more crazy to have her—images of her naked body in his arms sliced his brain like a red-hot blade—and his voice came out sharper than he had intended.
“To answer your question, demoiselle, I would very much like a private audience. Do you have a room?”
He could have bitten off his tongue. Do you have a room? What sort of enticing lovetalk was that for a man who was once a knight? He needed his friend Gunnar Olafson here, with his smooth ways and magic smile. Why could Ivo not be more like Gunnar, wooing her delicately into his arms, instead of his usual blunt and impatient self?
She was gazing up at him—she barely came to his shoulder. She smiled a little smile, mayhap reading the anguish in his eyes, but she was not angry and not insulted. If anything, she looked pleased. Before Ivo could consider what might be the reasons for this, she spoke again.
“Aye, I have a room.”
She was not even pretending to misunderstand him. Then, just as he was again doubting the whole business, she gave a soft, reckless laugh, and held out her hand. “Come and we will sing together, my lord.”
He wanted to tell her he was not anyone’s lord, that he did not know her at all, that this was not wise. But when had Ivo ever cared about wise? Tonight his body had a will of its own. He lifted his hand and she caught his fingers tightly in her own cold ones, then she led him through an arras-covered doorway. Into the shadows.