by Nancy Morse
He could not move for fear of breaking the spell of her finally, finally understanding.
She sighed with a shudder of agony and lifted her other shaking hand to her mouth. “I want you to be happy, Rowan. You told me, on the night of Celine’s wedding, that if I cared for you at all, I’d leave you alone forever. If your happiness requires that I be absent, then that is what shall happen.”
“Jesus,” he murmured. His bloodstained fingers curled around hers, held them fast over his thigh to keep her from disappearing as he dared to hope, dared to risk his heart one last time.
“Do you truly want my happiness?” he asked, somewhat surprised that his voice was strong and firm. He was done dancing around in circles at this particular fire with her.
She nodded, eyes fixed on the vision of their hands together.
“Look at me,” he demanded, rasping and harsh. Gazes met and locked, hers afraid, his commanding. “If you want to see me happy, then you must marry me. Nothing else will do. I will accept no less, my only.”
Chapter Nineteen
Rowan would have smiled at Fia’s dazed expression if his future didn’t swing like a pendulum on an unraveling thread. To one side the blaze of love, on the other the frozen wasteland of life without Fia. In which territory would the thread let go?
She finally spoke. “You’ve said it twice now. ‘My only.’ What do you mean?”
“Answer me. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Please, yes, I will marry you.”
The slightest urging of his hand launched her to him. His fingers caught in her hair as he captured her in a demanding kiss. Their mouths clashed without any delicacy, fiery and wet, and she climbed astride his thighs. It was the most astonishing and natural thing in the world to feel her there with her palms pressed against his chest.
He groaned as he cupped her face to break the bond. His thumb traced her lips. “My only. My only love. My only woman. My only hope for happiness,” he explained in a sensual whisper. “You are everything to me.”
“Oh, Rowan, I’m sorry I was so stubborn and cruel.”
She ran a fingertip over his brow, his cheeks, his chin, with so much love in her touch and her eyes that he drew her down for another soul baring kiss.
She moved restlessly on his lap, clearly offering herself.
The backs of his fingers brushed over the shining blackness of her hair. “The next time will be done properly, slowly, and you will see me as your husband, feel me.”
She sighed and traced the cords of his neck with the caress that had always ignited him.
He took her hand to kiss her knuckles.
“I promise to marry you at the first church we find,” he said, nibbling a little. “With the first priest who will speak the vows. Tomorrow, if we are lucky enough to happen upon one.”
She giggled, then sobered almost as fast as he turned her hand to press a kiss on the palm.
“Are you certain, Rowan? About marrying me, I mean.”
His tongue drew a circle of wetness on her palm. He hoped the caress would distract her but she willfully continued. “I’m not a lady and I know nothing of great estates. I’m not pure and I —”
A sharp nip on the meat below her thumb finally silenced her.
“Do you think yourself fit to be a weaponsmith’s wife? Can you cook and sew and make a man happy to be in your bed at night?” he asked.
“I would make an excellent wife for a smith,” she said, confident but breathless.
“That is exactly the sort of woman I need.” He lowered his head for another deep kiss. “My only wife. My only wife, and I will be your only husband. Never another,” he said. “I don’t mind that I know about Victor or that you loved him so well. We can even talk about him. He was, after all, a friend to me and much more to you. But I will be the one who marries you, who claims you for eternity in front of God and man. I will father your children. From tonight forward, we walk our path as two, not three.”
Tears leaked out of her eyes. “Yes,” she said simply.
He settled her next to him again, her blanket around their shoulders, his across their legs. Snuggled against his side, she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep. He studied her face and resisted the urge to caress her, simply holding her until dawn when the insistent cry of the morning birds roused her.
Rowan had always been calm. Steady. And now Fia must add determined to his description.
He’d hurried them out of camp when the birds were still in full chorus. At the first town they encountered, not more than a hamlet, really, he found the most official looking man among the awestruck peasants and told him there was a body laid by the road about two leagues back, leader of some bandits intent on stealing horses and terrifying innocent women in the middle of the night.
He said, “I am Rowan of Alda. The law may find me there if necessary.”
Fia doubted anyone would claim the body or come looking for Rowan for that matter. Instead, they thanked him with profuse babbling for removing a scourge of stolen livestock and senseless vandalism from their lives.
Rowan brushed their compliments aside. When assured there was no priest in residence, he hired an able-bodied boy to run back to Alda with a brief message. “If you wish to see your only son’s wedding, you will come south with all haste,” he dictated to the gawking teen.
And then they were off to Sundgau. Her uncle and his family welcomed their penniless relatives warmly, then stood back as the unexpected nobleman in their midst proceeded to plan a wedding.
The young country priest who served the local manse tried to keep everything proper, insisting they couldn’t marry for weeks. Rowan sunk in his oak roots and told the man in no uncertain terms there would be no weeks passing, but mere days.
“I’ve waited nigh on four years for this woman to accept me,” he declared in front of Fia and her whole family. “You haven’t even got hairs on your chin yet, so you’ll have no idea what such an interminable wait feels like, cleric. I say, there will be no banns or other delays.”
Mam squeezed Fia in a crushing hug, an action she seemed prone to at least hourly. Her mother seemed satisfied with her own return to country life, content to leave the bustle of Metz now that Heric was no longer there to help manage.
While blissfully happy with plans for marriage, Fia still worried and suggested more than once over a few days that Rowan at least wait for a reply from his father or mother before setting the wedding date.
He was not dissuaded.
“Marian’s time draws near. I’m not certain they will come at all,” he said as they walked the narrow, weedy road near her mother’s new hut one evening.
“Then perhaps we should wait, at least until her baby is born,” she said reluctantly.
The familiar displeased expression tightened his face. “Are you having second thoughts?” he asked.
She grasped at his forearm, making him stop to look at her. “No, Rowan. No.” She lifted his hand to kiss the back of it. “It is just…I want them to like me, and they may not if we rush through this without even —”
He laughed. Loudly.
“I don’t know what is funny about that,” she said, glaring up at him.
He chucked her under the chin. “My father was all but tying us together at the wrist. Didn’t you notice?”
“Yes. A little. But not your mother. Or Patrice.”
He slipped his arms around her to pull her against him, wincing slightly at the tug on the stitches under his arm. She already knew better than to comment on his discomfort as he gazed down at her, merely took great care as she embraced him and stood still so he could delicately trace her dark brow.
“The truth is, my only, I cannot wait a month, or a week. I’ve longed for you to be mine since I was a boy first finding his manhood.” He kissed her nose. “Thoughts of you have always been one breath away. In the forge, or in battle, I would finish the task before me and then, t
here you were, the only woman I wanted, the woman I could not win. Do not ask me to wait to have you beside me in truth, every day.” He shrugged helplessly. “I cannot.”
She blinked back tears and tugged his head down, showing him with her kiss the tenderness she had withheld for so long, until he pulled back with a shuddering moan.
With their hands clasped between them, he tried to reassure her. “Mother does not dislike you. I think she half hoped this journey would end as it has. And as for Patrice, she is the most traditional of all of us. She probably expected I would marry a princess. Having failed at that, she will welcome you with open arms,” he said grimly. He turned her so they could walk again before the sun fell below the hill. “You did not mention Marian?”
“I couldn’t tell what Marian thought, if she thought anything about me at all. She seemed preoccupied with her circumstances.” Fia wanted to ask him more about his sister’s situation, but footsteps approached. Julius had been sent to bring them back before dark.
Luckily, David, Rochelle, and Patrice arrived at the meager farm with the next sunset, the night before the wedding. Fia was glad, for Rowan’s sake, but hovered in the doorway of her mother’s thatch cottage as he greeted them, just in case they wanted a moment out of earshot to tell him what they thought.
Rochelle broke away first. She extended a hand to beckon Fia to her.
“My lady,” Fia said. “I’m sorry about the rush. You probably hoped to hold a grander wedding than this for your son.”
Rochelle smiled and tucked a hand around her elbow companionably to guide her a few steps away from the family group. “Some day I will tell you about my wedding. I suppose you could call it rushed.” The smile faded as she turned them both until they had a clear view of Rowan. “Since we are hurrying, you might forgive my directness. He thinks you will make him happy. Will you?”
Fia swallowed hard. “I’m not a fine lady, and I know nothing about life on a grand estate, much less helping to run one.”
“Psshh,” Rochelle said. “I don’t care about any of that. Do you love him?” Her stare was demanding and hard.
Fia raised her chin. If she hoped to be part of this family she must not cower. Especially, she suspected, with Rochelle.
“He is the most generous friend I have ever had. It’s only been since Paris that I’ve come to love him in the way you mean, but yes, I do love him. And I would be a very good wife for a smith which Rowan thinks is a solid place to start.”
“Then I must trust his judgment,” Rochelle replied, sounding unconvinced. “You do realize he cannot live as a smith, in the forge.”
“I will never discourage him from his duty to the estate, or his position. Though I might feel more comfortable living in the forge than in your great house, my place will be with him, wherever he decides is best,” she said tactfully.
Rochelle cocked her head to study her future daughter-in-law. “At least we know you aren’t after his wealth, then.”
“No, my lady. If anything, our difference in station held me back from accepting how I felt about him.”
By now, Rowan was watching them, the corners of his mouth starting to drop as if he suspected the gauntlet through which his mother was running Fia.
As he approached, Fia squeezed Rochelle’s arm. “My lady, can I ask a favor?”
Rochelle stiffened, then gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
“He was wounded almost a week ago, under the arm. I’ve been reminding him to apply your special ointment, but he hasn’t let Mam or I check the cut.”
The woman’s entire posture changed as she drew a deep breath and released it. She patted Fia’s hand, and when she smiled at her, a glaze of moisture brightened her eyes. “Yes, my dear, I will see to it. And that is just the sort of reassurance I was looking for. These men think they are invincible. Sometimes our job is to make them so.”
She let go of Fia’s arm and addressed Rowan briskly. “I hear you have a wound to be tended. Let’s see.”
Fia snorted back a laugh at Rowan’s quelling look.
“It is a scratch.”
“Then we will be done before you know it. Here, sit on this stool, before the light fails completely.” She pointed to a seat in the yard while she dug in her leather saddlebag.
“You’ve just arrived. Can’t we do this later?”
“Later? When it’s festering and the arm has to come off?”
“Come off? Saints preserve me, I’d know if —”
David clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Son, you’re on a path that circles around and lands you right on that stool, so you might as well get it over with.”
Rowan inhaled a sigh of deep suffering and glared at Fia. “I blame you for this.”
“As you wish, my lord,” she said.
“My lord, is it?”
Without breaking eye contact, his hand went to his belt. He dropped it with a thud of the scabbard, unclasped his cloak, and stripped off two layers of garments, all the while challenging her with his stare to look away.
She didn’t.
His lips quirked. “Fia the Defiant,” he said as his plopped down on the stool and lifted his arm.
Fia crept closer to watch Rochelle’s examination. The wound was bruised and ugly, with the dark stitches tight against the slightly swollen skin.
“Oh yes,” David said dryly. “A scratch that took twelve stitches.”
“Good needlework,” Rochelle noted as she bent to her examination. “Did you do that, Fia?”
“No, my lady. Mam did it. I suppose I should learn, except I don’t think I could learn on Rowan.”
Rochelle touched the bruising. “No sign of fever, and there would be angry redness and much more swelling if the wound festered.”
“I told you,” Rowan said.
“Maybe your young lady wanted to see you without your tunic,” Rochelle whispered. “Did you ever think of that?”
Fia blushed profusely while Rowan shook his head at the teasing. Rochelle mixed pinches of herbs with just enough oil to make a pungent green cream she spread over the stitches. Fia forgot her embarrassment as she watched her work.
“What is in that?”
“Garlic, marshmallow root, calendula. A few other odds and ends.” She wiped her hand on a cloth from the bag. “Are you truly interested in healing?”
“I don’t know for certain. When my father was dying, and then when Rowan was hurt, I wished I knew how to help. And I’m not very squeamish, though it is hard when it’s someone you care about.”
Done with his treatment, Rowan reached out to squeeze her hand.
“Those stitches will need to come out in a few days. Perhaps you could start there, and when we get back to Alda, if it is something you want to know more about, I will teach you,” Rochelle said crisply.
“Thank you,” Fia managed, as surprised by the unexpected offer as the interest she had in pursuing it.
Rochelle packed her kit, then turned with a friendly smile to Abril. “I’ve been terribly rude. Show me your new home. Come with us, Patrice.”
Patrice had been standing by the horses as though she wished to mount up and ride away again. She now had no choice but to follow her mother, and the way she pointedly ignored Fia gave warning that Rowan’s ideas about “open arms” were optimistic, to say the least.
The moment they stepped away, such worries evaporated as Rowan pulled Fia onto his lap. She squeaked and one of her arms landed across his shoulders as she caught her balance. His skin felt like warm oiled metal under her hand, smooth and solid.
“If you wanted me to undress, you merely had to ask,” he teased, his voice low enough to only be for her ears.
She stole a glance down at his chest, noticed that his muscles flexed and the flat discs of his nipples tightened under her gaze. “If you will recall, you told me I had to wait until after the wedding.”
“So I did, saucy wench, and so we will. Luckily the wedding is
tomorrow morning because if you look at me like that much longer, I’ll be dragging you off to a secluded spot and to hell with the priest.”
She giggled and felt not the slightest embarrassment when he gave her a quick, close-mouthed kiss before boosting her off his leg.
The chapel was the most horrible hovel of a church any of them had ever seen. The door had been forced open by an errant goat at some point since the priest had last been there. Patrice made a great show of tiptoeing around the droppings as their tiny party made a semi-circle around the couple to witness the wedding.
Fia flushed to think of David and Rochelle seeing Rowan married in such a place, to the daughter of a tradesman, no less. But then she remembered Rochelle’s reassurance yesterday that she only wanted to see Rowan happy, and he was. Pride and satisfaction beamed from him, brighter than the morning light shafting through the roof, as he held her hand and made his vow.
She did her best to return that gift and let the light of her love gleam in her eyes. She smiled for him and him only, and as she abandoned herself to the moment, the mean surroundings disappeared along with all the people, until all that remained was him.
Chapter Twenty
They lunched on extravagances Rochelle had brought from Alda and drank a bit too much of the delicious wine, then Rowan whisked her away to a surprisingly well-appointed cottage he’d rented for the night from the nobleman who owned her uncle’s land.
A bed with neatly laid creamy linens filled nearly half the room. The makings of a fire waited for the touch of a spark near a table burdened with simple foods and yet more wine. He took her cloak, folded it carefully on a rough chair, and did the same with his own.
