Kissing the Bride (Medieval 4)

He sounded as if he meant it. His mouth was still curved in that irresistible, teasing smile, but his eyes were serious and his gaze unswerving. She might almost have thought it a vow.

Jenova honestly didn’t know what to say, how to fight him. She only knew that her head was pounding and she longed to be alone.

“Please, Henry,” she began again, trying to make her voice firm. She could order her garrison, why not a single man? “Please, leave Gunlinghorn. It is no use you staying. I will never marry you. I will never marry anyone. I have made my decision.”

“Never is a long time,” he replied, lifting his eyebrows. “Marry me now, and if we don’t like it, we don’t have to see each other very often. Once a year, on the stair landing—”

With a cry of angry frustration, Jenova turned and left him. She half thought he would follow and continue to pester her, but he did not. He must have known he had said enough. What was she going to do with him? She could order her garrison to throw him outside the gates, or arrest him and lock him up in her dungeon. Mayhap just tie a gag about his mouth so that he could not speak.

It was a ridiculous situation.

Jenova had thought Henry had had more pride than to linger where he was not wanted, especially when she had refused him so often and so finally. Mayhap that was the reason he was staying; his pride. She had dented it badly by turning him down—Lord Henry, the handsomest man in England—and now he meant to repair the damage by making her beg. Please marry me, Henry, please….

“I cannot bear it,” she murmured. “I cannot bear to have him here. I do not want him for my husband when it is all for duty and consideration! When there is something very wrong and he will not tell me what it is.”

I love him, and I want him to love me.

The words were on the very tip of her tongue. Jenova was afraid that, if she was not careful, she would say them aloud. Somewhere Henry could hear her. How he would smirk then, how he would laugh! His pride would be restored to its previous hard shine.

But Jenova’s would be in tatters.

She straightened her back. No, she would not let him hurt her like this. There was something amiss. She knew it; deep inside, she sensed it. Henry was hiding something from her, and it was making him miserable.

With new determination and energy, she vowed she would make him tell her what was wrong. Aye, somehow she would wheedle his secret out of him…or else it would truly be the end between them.

Chapter 18

The Black Dog was a single-story building, with a warehouse on one side and a bakery on the other. A board painted with a rather ferocious-looking dog sat outside, otherwise Rhona doubted she would have known where to go without asking. As she dismounted her mare, her legs were shaking, and it was only with great effort that she walked toward the low doorway.

The last two days had been fraught with fears that her father would somehow prevent her from coming. Alfric had kept to his room much of the time, sullen and hollow-eyed. Rhona herself might have felt as depressed as her brother, but she’d had her plan to buoy her up. The chance to be free.

And then, this morning, when she had overheard Jean-Paul and her father…mayhap she was losing her courage, but she had been afraid then. Something in that husky voice had frightened her, so that all she had wanted to do was turn and run.

Now, in hindsight, Rhona considered that it might not have been a lack of bravado that had caused her to want to escape at that particular moment. Maybe she had simply been living this uncertain life for too long, and she had reached a point where she could not go on. Surely everyone came to such a moment in their lives, when it was too difficult to take another step forward? Then again, not everyone had to live the life Rhona did.

She felt sickened, by herself as much as by her father and Jean-Paul. Even Alfric’s whining sickened her, though she pitied him. Aye, she loved him even as she wished she were not the one responsible for him. They must get away! If they did not get to Normandy this time, Rhona had a real fear that they never would.

Inside the door there were voices and smoke. The smells of ale and food and other, less savory, odors. Rhona stood, blinking, trying to get her bearings. She jumped when a voice piped up at her side.

“Will I stable your horse, me lady?”

A boy, peering up at her through a thatch of red hair, his eyes as blue as summer.

“Yes, thank you. Tell me, is Reynard here?”

The blue eyes narrowed, grew sly. “Aye, me lady. He’s over there, by the fire.” And then he was gone, and she was left to try and see through the gloom to where the boy had pointed.

Something big moved, shifted in the shadows, and came toward her. Rhona did not retreat, although she felt like it. Reynard’s face and form took shape from the murk, his eyes gleaming down at her.

“My lady,” he said, and she felt like his. His lady.

“Reynard,” she replied, her voice deliberately cold and mannered.

He reached out and took her arm, his fingers stroking the yellow wool of her sleeve and the warm flesh beneath it. “You are like a beam of sunlight,” he said, and when he said it, it did not sound trite. “There is a private place at the back,” he added quietly, ignoring the interested looks they were getting. “Come with me.”

She would have gone with him anywhere, she acknowledged to herself as she followed him down the narrow alley beside the building and into the yard at the back. He had twisted her around his big little finger, taken her cold, wounded heart and made it beat again. And Rhona did not know whether to be grateful to him or fear him the more because of it.

At the back of the inn, there was a wooden ladder leading up into a loft set in the roof above the smoky room she had just seen. She negotiated the ladder without any mishap, and Rhona was already sitting up above, upon a pile of straw, when Reynard’s head rose through the doorway. He sat down beside her—th