by Sue Wilson
He stopped and swallowed hard. "I told her to run, knowing they would react like all criminals, with gut instead of head. So I told her to run...God forgive me. I told her-"
Defeated, he bent his head to his chest, darkness obscuring his face. "-And they put four arrows in her back."
"I thought it seemed-merciful-" his voice broke, "but to see the arrows cut her down like a frightened rabbit, to see her blood seeping into the snow where she lay, to know that I had caused that, that I had taken her life as surely as if I'd slain her myself-Alyce, who would not harm anyone, who never had an evil thought. And I as much as killed her. My own wife."
He turned his head toward her, his face grown white and cold in the night, the pale glimmer of tears caught in the web of creases at the corners of his eyes. "Yes," he said, voice hardening. "Now you know."
Shock emptied her mind of response. Thea saw only the pain he had locked away for years, raw and undisguised on his grief-ravaged face. "You did not kill her," she said quietly. "If anything, you spared her."
"So I have told myself every night for the past four years. It does not help. I tell myself there should have been another way. If I had not struggled with the outlaws, if I had not taken on their leader so foolishly, perhaps they would only have taken my silver and fled. If I had not come through Sherwood, so sure of my position and myself. If I had been quicker, stronger-"
"You did all you could-"
"I should have saved her!"
His grief ripped through her, tearing into places she had thought healed when she had returned to Nottingham with him. She saw Brand, tossing feverishly for three days, every skill she had acquired in a lifetime of study rendered useless. She remembered the cold knot of powerlessness that had taken root in her soul when she could do nothing to save him.
And Nottingham, to whom power meant so much more, whose very life seemed defined by the breadth and strength of his authority? She could only imagine the sense of failure he felt, the awesome, overwhelming burden of the guilt he had assumed.
It would be futile to tell him the fault was not his, so she reached up, touched his lips with her fingers, silencing him. His hand closed around hers and held it tightly against his mouth as if he could drink sustenance from it.
"You must have loved her very much," she whispered.
His expression was indecipherable, as if she presented him with an idea he had never allowed himself to consider. He drew her hand away, staring at their locked fingers, then back at her. "I could have, perhaps. Had we time. I knew her so briefly."
"Tell me."
She watched him struggle, lips forming words, then pressing together to prevent their escape. Somehow trust won out. "She was the youngest daughter of a merchant who quartered officers in my regiment, and the very sight of her was respite to my battle-weary eyes. She had a noble way about her, a delicate refinement, innocence that was balm to my jaded spirit. I cannot say we knew each other well-a few polite words exchanged over dinner, an occasional smile-but she dressed in fine linen and smelled of something other than sweat and blood and the odors of war, and perhaps because of her, I spent many an eve pondering that I was meant for something other than another skirmish on the border of Wales."
His eyes narrowed and took on a faraway look, and for a moment he paused, lost in the past. With effort, it seemed, he forced himself to speak again. "When I achieved this sheriffdom, I contacted her father and arranged our marriage. It all fit so perfectly, or so it seemed. We were wed, spent a single night together under her father's roof, and left for Nottingham the next morn. I was in such a hurry to be here-" he glanced around, palms held out as if to encompass the castle, the whole of the shire, "-to be Sheriff. It suited my pride, my self-importance.
"But love, you ask?" He shook his head. "I think perhaps I loved what she meant to me-some fine nobility I lacked." His laugh was broken, rueful. "Ironic, is it not, that I robbed myself of all that, of every possibility of a gentle life? Alyce, dear Alyce, who would have been safer in a convent, safer than in Sherwood, safer than with me-the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, hanging impotently from a tree-"
"You did what you could-"
"If you knew-if you only knew-how much I craved the sweet taste of oblivion. I never even screamed out when they took to lashing me again. Soon they tired of their game. Left me there. Alyce was gone, and I waited while numbness crawled through my body. I prayed for death."
He shook his head as if, even now, years later, he could not believe the twisted turn of events. "But Guy came skulking back, bent on rescue. Somehow he convinced me of the merit of living. Reminded me of who I was and the promise of power I had waiting for me in Nottingham.
"In time, it was not oblivion I craved, but something infinitely sweeter. I wanted revenge. I demanded it. And how better to accomplish that than to survive and take up a whip of my own? I vowed I would have the cutthroats who hid in my forest, if I had to hunt them down myself, that all of Nottingham would watch as rope chafed their necks and their bellies were laid open for the ravens. I promised when I rode into Nottingham that night that the people would know my strength and authority, that they would never guess at the pitiful thing I had been in Sherwood."
"And Alyce?"
His face softened; his eyes filled with wistful sorrow. "Her body was borne here, privately, and I entrusted her burial to an old peasant, a man named Warrin, whose wife saw to my wounds."
"Mildthryth," she said.
He nodded. "I made certain no one else knew, that no one saw what I had suffered or lost. I could not let them know what Alyce's death had wrought in me."
"Because to grieve would have been weak?"
He did not answer, but there was no need. Thea saw for the first time how it had happened-how fear and hatred spread through his veins, crowding out warmth with rancor, replacing hope with distrust, tenderness with ill humor.
She imagined him as he must have been-stunned and in silent shock, coming to Nottingham with a horrible vision, a single, brutal aim. She realized now that in the years that followed, whenever his control proved anything less than absolute, whenever failure dogged him and the bandits of Sherwood laughed in his face, he redoubled the violence of his efforts.
He had made quite a legend of himself. No one knew how diligently he cultivated the temper and demonic aspect that kept people cowering in his presence, and kept his shame hidden. And while Thea had come to know the mask he wore, she could hardly have guessed at the truth behind it.
"To keep the sadness locked away will only make things worse," she said softly. "I know. I held tightly enough to my own pain for far too long."
"But I cannot forget her! Christ, Thea, can't you see?"
He dropped to his knees, pulling her with him, and clawed his fingers through the icy splinters of grass. Clods of soaked earth came away in his hands, and he clenched them in his fists, squeezing the mud through his fingers.
"Do you see this? This was my hope-this land, this shire, the whole of Sherwood. I seeded it with my own blood, yet that I could forget. The pain, the piddling creases that have scarred my back-that I could forget, as well. I could forget the men I lost, the silver I had robbed from me-my God, the very pride they took! But Alyce? Lying here in this frozen sod?"
He flung the dirt away, hissing breath through gritted teeth as wind sawed across his tear-streaked face. "Forget her? By Christ, I cannot!"
Thea caught his muddied hands in hers, feeling the pent-up rage and grief that shuddered through his fingers. "No, my lord. Nor should you."
Gently, she eased him into her arms, and her gaze fell on the tiny, unmarked grave. She winced inwardly at the past they shared in common-the loss, the emptiness, the overpowering need to make things right again at any cost. If she could only share with him something of the healing, as well.
"She was your wife and a fine lady," she whispered soothingly into his hair. "Perhaps it is time you remembered her."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
&
nbsp; Odd, the jumbled assortment of remembrances that came to mind when he thought of his wife. Her talent with tapestries. The ease with which they conversed in Norman French; how lonely he had been in this strange land where he was but another foreign invader. Her silver-blonde hair and the fragrance of tuberoses that stirred when she walked.
Yet in a much shorter time than seemed possible, the Sheriff had told Thea all he knew. Although he searched his mind for some other memories Alyce had left behind, he had few recollections beyond the horror of her death. He could not even recall on which finger she wore the ring he had given her or the inscription that circled the inside of the band.
Nottingham glanced at Thea and found her eyes full of regret, as if she ached with him, shared his emptiness, and longed to restore to him everything death had so brutally ripped away. She had said little, letting him sift through memories in his own time, but now his words stumbled to a sad, helpless stop.
He had forgotten so many of the little details. Sherwood, and time, had left him only a hazy image of his wife, a faint impression of youthful sweetness, of mildness and a gentle nature, taken swiftly and cruelly away. Alyce seemed but a pinpoint of light against a gray backdrop of the bleak years that followed. Something wraith-like and insubstantial.
He shivered, unsure if it were the cold or reminder of his loss that left him weak and hollow.
Thea's arms tightened around him, drawing him out of his lonesome silence. "I know," she said quietly. "There are times when I cannot remember Brand's face. I can tell you that his eyes were brown, that there was a scar on his chin that made his beard grow oddly askew, but I cannot see him. I cannot remember the sound of his voice exactly or whether it was ragwort or buckthorn that made him sneeze. It seems some of the memories have vanished, along with the pain of losing him."
Nottingham shuddered again, numbness giving way to the wetness of the ground that seeped through his mantle. The wind had become a whiplash of ice crystals stinging his cheeks.
"You're freezing," she said, burrowing into him, warming herself, warming him. "Let me take you in."
He hesitated, drawing ragged, uncertain breaths. He had compromised the shield of estrangement that kept him alone and unknowable, made his very soul naked to her-something he had done with no other woman. He wondered that she could sit there, limbs knit together with his against the cold, offering comfort, when Aelwynn or any other woman would have celebrated having wrung the truth from him.
But this was Thea, he reminded himself. No smugness tainted her features, and he needed only the touch of her hand against his brow to know no treachery would grow from the secrets he had shared tonight. His confession had earned neither pity nor contempt, but bound her to him in a way orders and threats and smooth seduction had never accomplished.
He gazed into her eyes, marveling that Fate's strange twists had given him someone who knew his pain, who had lived it herself in her own way, and sought only healing for them both. Tentatively, his lips grazed hers, awkward from the cold and surfeit of feelings crowding his heart.
"Do not leave me tonight," he begged, his throat grown raw and tight with unaccustomed emotion. "Stay with me-lie beside me-"
For a moment, he felt the sweet, surrendering sag of her body against his and the fleeting taste of heat as her lips parted beneath his. Then she sat back, apart from him.
"Your very blood is ice," she said, putting her hands in his. "Come."
She helped him stand, and for once he had no will to protest the solicitous gestures she lavished upon him. Her hands felt warm to his chilled flesh, the small strength of her body strangely sufficient to support him as he walked with bone-aching stiffness across the cobbled bailey courtyard to the keep.
Thea was no hazy memory, no indistinct form whose face he half-remembered. He had only to turn to see how torchlight illumined the exotic cant of cheekbones, eyes, and brow. The full, lush lips rosied by the cold. The sienna curls struggling free of braids. He anchored his hand at her side to steady his steps; beneath his fingers, her ribs rose and fell with breath. With life. His own lungs kept pace, quickening with each thought of her.
Climbing the spiral stairway, he braced himself against her, drinking in her closeness and the reality of her presence. Surely it was madness that swept over him, madness to cry out for his long-dead wife in one hour and crave the solace of another woman the next. Yet he had had enough of ghosts and grief, of a life ruled by death and the lust for revenge. He wanted more-so much more-and he wanted it from this woman.
Suddenly he stopped and pulled her beneath the shadowy archway that led from the corridor to his chamber. Darkness swallowed them. He could hear only her startled gasp and the racing thrum of his own heart, pounding blood and life to his body.
He fisted one hand in her mantle, soft wool and satin ribbon twisting around his fingers. The other he thrust into her hair, cradling the back of her head. In the pitch-blackness, he reached for her, his mouth brushing her neck, her jaw, settling on her lips.
He had found what he wanted in this woman, some magic that soothed his pain and calmed his soul, some witchery that made him forget the past, forget himself-and find himself again. He kissed her with all the bold impulse of discovery, driven and starkly needful of her, unashamed that she knew.
He broke from her only long enough to murmur against her mouth. "Will you stay? Thea, sweet-stay with me, be with me, lie with me-"
Her answer was simple. She stopped his words with her lips, with her tongue, with her hands tugging boldly at the ties of his tunic, unlacing each one until the garment lay open to his waist. She fumbled with his knotted belt, loosened it.
"You would have my surrender in the hallway, then?" He laughed, a deep, rich sound that spilled from his belly where her lips touched.
Her hands sought and found him, full and hardened with desire. Her breath was close, hot, threading through the fabric of his trews. "It is not your surrender I want."
~*~
His sorrow ran deep, as deep as any wounds Thea had ever seen. She had broken through the wall, finally, and found his pain, layered between years of mistrust: the hidden need he kept so well-disguised; the ache of loveless days and nights he'd tried fruitlessly to drive away; the white-hot flame of anger that burned within him, blotting out the grief, enabling him to survive.
Yet confronted with it all, she knew no surgeon's cure. All she possessed was a woman's fragile love with which to soothe him, and a yearning for him stronger than any she had ever known.
She searched his face, the features held like chiseled stone against the onslaught of emotions that tore through him. Desire was there, so prominent, as if her very presence were necessary to him, like air to tortured lungs or water to parched lips. She tucked her hand inside his and tugged him toward his room.
"No interruptions," Nottingham said in a low voice to the soldier guarding his chamber.
Within the cavernous room, the fire leaped up, striping the walls and vaulted ceiling with sinuous, elongated shadows. Candlelight poured its buttery hue into puddles among the rushes, illuminating an area near the hearth where large, silk-tasseled pillows lay among the furs and sheepskin throws.
He met her eyes briefly, intently, then caught her up in his arms and carried her there, knelt down, and laid her among the pelts.
Quickly, he untied her mantle and pulled tunic and kirtle from her, leaving only the pale, translucent silk of her shift. In this light, the garment was not snow, but cream; her bare arms turned to dusky suede. And what the shadows did to him...
He pulled back slightly, and a tangle of shadow and light spilled through his hair and struck glints of gold in his darkened eyes.
She had thought him a demon once, a time long ago when she had been wrong about so many things. But there was nothing cruel or distant about him now, certainly nothing evil. If there were beauty in such maleness, then he was beautiful, the perfect blend of power and vulnerability, of command and need.
She welco
med him into her arms, caressing his back until the chill slipped away from his body, pressing against him until his shivering ceased and only an urgent tension remained, ripening in the heat between them.
His mouth covered hers, and the solar became a dizzying swirl of candlelight. Beneath his heavy silk tunic, she felt the hardened muscles of his chest. Threads of strange, Arabian oil wafted up from his flesh, mingling with the spiced, male scent of him, as enticing as the taste of his lips and the mulled wine flavor of his tongue.
She threaded her fingers through the silken twine of his hair, giving herself up to his kiss, to the smooth, spellbinding magic he wove. A languorous heat coiled in her belly, like embers gently prodded and stirred, sending a warm glow through her limbs. The heat of his body melted into hers as he pressed her into the pit of pillows and skins, wiping all else into dark oblivion.
Thea knew only what she felt: the insistent weight of his body atop hers; the intimate press of his lips; the gently probing thrust of his tongue.
Her movements turned liquid, as she matched the slow, sensual motion of his kiss. She met the tip of his tongue with her own and slid against its warm, velvet roughness, as soft sounds of pleasure escaped his throat.
He held her close, binding her to him with the lazy, drugged enchantment of his mouth. When at last they parted, reluctantly it seemed, Nottingham rubbed his kiss-swollen lips against hers.
"It is the only thing that calms me," he whispered. "The taste of you. I knew-" his tongue played over her lower lip, "-the first time I kissed you. I was certain you had concocted some wicked opiate to wipe all reason from me, that you had planned some devious wood nymph's plot-"
"No-"
"It doesn't matter, didn't matter. Even then." He drew his lips along the slant of her cheekbone, and back again. "I would have given anything, given it all, to have more of you. If it had meant death to come inside you, to feel your tight, wet warmth around me, I would have died."
