Kissing the Bride (Medieval 4)

“Father, do you not think Lady Jenova’

s son has grown? You may not know, Lady Jenova, that my brother Alfric is very fond of children, and they of him.”

Lady Rhona’s pleasant voice was as out of place at such a tense moment as children’s laughter at a hanging. Henry took a long drink from his goblet and watched as Lord Baldessare shot his daughter a withering look. She pretended not to notice, smiling and nodding as Jenova made the appropriate response. Agetha, her eyes flicking back and forth, reassured Lady Rhona that Raf was a very obedient boy and would cause Alfric no problems, earning herself a sharp glance from Jenova.

Raf, close by his mother’s side, peeped out at Henry beneath her arm like a prisoner through his cell bars. The boy grinned, rolling his eyes, and as Henry grinned back, he knew just how Raf felt. He, too, would do anything to escape the feast and find solitude. Somewhere to settle his thoughts, to shove the dark phantoms from his past, which Baldessare had inadvertently set loose, back into the depths they usually inhabited.

Jenova was watching him, a puzzled expression in her eyes. “Henry?” she said, making it a question. “Is aught the matter?”

She had obviously seen something in his face, read something. He had told her about the land Baldessare had coveted and the king had given to Henry instead, but now he wondered if their new intimacy had made her more aware of his inner emotions, or whether he had lost the knack of cloaking his true feelings.

“My lady, you must forgive Lord Baldessare and I. We grew too…involved in reminiscences of London.”

Baldessare made a noise like a snort.

Jenova shot him a glance but did not comment. Instead she frowned at Henry. “London is far away, Lord Henry. Mayhap you would do better to concentrate on the here and now.”

Henry bowed his head, lips twitching at her rebuke. She would not be so stern if she knew it only made him want to kiss her lips to smiles again.

But perhaps she did know, for as Jenova turned to Alfric, her cheeks were slightly flushed.

Henry winked at Raf, making the boy giggle and incurring Agetha’s displeasure. The young woman did not like him, the only one of Jenova’s ladies who did not. Did she know that he and her mistress were lovers? Mayhap she did not approve, or mayhap she preferred Alfric, if the doting looks she was casting upon him were anything to go by. Henry put Agetha out of his mind and turned back to the table at large. That was when he realized that Lady Rhona was watching him.

More than that. She was flirting with him. Making promises with her eyes.

Henry took another sip from his goblet and wondered exactly what it meant, and whether he should do anything about it. If he was at home, at court, he would have made an assignation with her. Possibly. Probably. In an hour or so he would have had her naked, in his bed, that pretty golden hair spread about them. But that was at court, not here, not at Gunlinghorn. Here at Gunlinghorn she was just another complication.

Henry eyed her moodily through his lashes.

Rhona closely resembled her brother, Alfric, and they were both of them far prettier than their father. Perhaps they took after their mother, poor woman—Henry had heard she’d died as a result of Baldessare’s brutal temper. But of the two, the son and the daughter, Henry believed the daughter to be the one who had inherited her father’s shrewd intelligence. Alfric preferred to get his way through melancholic glances and pouting lips. At any other time Henry would have been amused by Alfric’s sulking whenever Jenova smiled at Henry. Tonight he was not in the mood to be amused.

Rhona’s dark eyes were still fixed upon him. Slyly, over the rim of her goblet. They tilted up at the corners, more so when she smiled, and she was smiling now. Smiling into her wine. Aye, she had a look with which Henry was all too familiar. The experienced I’m-yours-if-you-want-me look Henry had seen many times before in the faces of court ladies.

Lady Rhona was not wed, it was true, and it was more usually the wives who sought his services, perhaps bored with their husbands or simply looking to see whether Henry was as good a lover as everyone said he was. But mayhap Baldessare was not as protective of his daughter’s honor as he should be. She was pretty enough, with her dark eyes and pale skin, and the body under her richly embroidered clothing was firm and rounded. If Henry had met her in London, then who knows? But they were not in London, they were at Gunlinghorn, and the simple fact was, he didn’t want her.

Henry didn’t want her.

It was a strange admission from a famous seducer. And yet it was true. He felt no need of her, no need to experience the conquest—not that it would be much of a conquest, when she was clearly so willing. Was he getting old? No, he had proved to his and Jenova’s satisfaction that he was as virile as ever. Did his dislike of the father interfere with his interest in the daughter? But surely his enmity with Lord Baldessare would make the taking of the daughter all the sweeter?

No, the reason Henry did not want to pursue Lady Rhona, although she was giving him plenty of evidence that she was willing to be pursued, was Jenova. Now that he had had Jenova, other women paled into insignificance. Jenova filled his mind and his senses to overflowing, and there was simply no room for anyone else.

And that acknowledgement was disturbing indeed.

Rhona shot her brother a look of disgust. Instead of doing as she had instructed him—flattering the proud Lady of Gunlinghorn and making himself indispensable to her—he was sitting silent and sullen. In short, sulking. How could he be so foolish? She wished she could shake some sense into him: If they had been alone, she would have had no qualms about doing so.

Lady Jenova was a mature and experienced woman. She was not a woman who would be interested in indulging Alfric’s childishness, at least not for long. Oh, she seemed fond of him, but she was not by any means deeply in love with him. This was not, Rhona told herself, a lady whose heart would ever rule her head. Alfric needed to show some maturity of his own if he was not to lose her.

“’Tis that worm, Henry of Montevoy,” Alfric had grumbled on their journey to Gunlinghorn. “He’s the problem, sister. You wait and see.”

Well—she let her eyes linger on Lord Henry—she could see what Alfric was nervous about. Henry was far more worldly than her brother, far older in experience, if not in years. And he was very handsome, with a certain air about him that could not help but intrigue and attract every female eye in the hall. Was he really the best lover in England? Rhona had heard it said so, and glancing between Jenova and Henry she could not help but wonder if they were more than friends, despite their exemplary correctness toward each other. Rumor had it that Jenova’s husband, Mortred, had been Henry’s good friend, and when Mortred had died Henry had continued to care for and protect his widow.

But there was something…. Mayhap it was the way their eyes lingered overlong when they happened to meet, coupled with the fact that Lord Henry had not given Rhona more than a cursory glance since she arrived. It had been Rhona’s plan to divert his interest, leaving the way free for her brother to ensnare Jenova, but it was now quite clear that Lord Henry had no interest in her.

Rhona knew she was pretty, and most men would be flattered by her blatant invitation. Rhona was not a wanton—she did not entice men to her for the pleasure they could give her. She had never felt that pleasure other women spoke of. She used men to get her own way, she used the looks and intelligence God had given her for her own and her brother’s advantage. She knew of nothing else a powerless woman could do in a situation such as theirs. And she had hoped to use Lord Henry of Montevoy tonight. Mayhap, she thought now, with a little frown, she was too countrified for Lord Henry. Mayhap he preferred the sophisticated women of the court. Why, oh why had her father never exerted himself to send her and Alfric to London?

But she knew why. Because Lord Baldessare did not enjoy the court himself, he did not wish to expose his children to it. All he wanted was land, lots of it, and then he could sit upon it like a giant, fat spider and weave his plots. And his children were his counters in the games he played, to be put forward as bait, to dra

w richer prizes into his web. Aye, he ruled them with hatred and fear, and he’d done so for as long as Rhona could remember.