by Tamara Leigh
With each elimination, relief swept her. They were all either too short, hair too long or straight, or faces too soft.
“Milady.” A tall woman touched her shoulder.
Graeye recognized her as a serving wench from the hall and was embarrassed to discover it was her arm she clutched. She removed her hand. “I am sorry,” she murmured and started to turn her attention back to the riders.
“Nay, milady, I do not mind. I only thought to point out the baron.”
Odd, Graeye thought. She had been too intent on discovering whether or not the man of the night past was among Balmaine’s men to seek out the baron himself. She thanked the woman, took her proffered arm again, and craned her neck to look where the servant pointed.
The moment her gaze settled on the great white destrier that advanced on the inner drawbridge, it was as if ice had poured into her veins. With the horse’s purity of white, it was a rare animal, so rare that she had only ever seen one so untouched with any color other than white.
Having forgotten how to breathe, Graeye forced her eyes over long, darkly clad legs, a vivid red-and-gold tunic, and up a bearded face to eyes that stared back at her.
Time yawned, and for those long, torturous moments, it was as if the world had paused in its toils to take note of the occasion.
Forcing air into her lungs, Graeye tore her eyes free and landed so heavily on her heels she stumbled back. The man behind steadied her and grunted when she trod upon his feet in her haste to push past him. She barely noticed the offense, though she was all too aware of the commotion that followed her slow progress through the crowd.
When she finally broke free, the white destrier was before her. As a murmur of interest rose from the onlookers, she ventured a glance at the rider. The contemptuous look with which he swept her spoke more than words could.
Eager to escape the black-hearted cur responsible for her brother’s death, Graeye lunged to the side, skirted the horse, and ran to the community chapel. In her haste to ascend the steps, she stumbled but managed to keep her legs beneath her. Once inside, she thrust the door closed. Though tempted to press her body back against it, she knew it would be futile. If a man such as Baron Balmaine wanted in, there would be no keeping him out. As she hurried toward the altar, the chaplain appeared.
She halted, lowered her gaze, and tightly clasped her hands before her. “F-father.”
“What is it, my child?”
How she wished his voice did not proclaim his usual lack of interest in the members of his flock, that he was someone in whom she could confide. “I must needs pray,” she muttered and stepped around him.
Hardly had she settled on the kneeler before the altar than the door of the chapel was thrown open and issued in a swell of light that rarely knew the darkened interior.
Graeye bowed her head and tried with all her might to block out the sound of boots upon the floor.
“Out!” the baron commanded.
As the chaplain sputtered and muttered, Graeye fingered the knots of her leather girdle and offered prayer for each one that slid through her fingers.
Then there was silence. Though the exchange behind her was unspoken, she knew something had passed between the two men. A moment later, she heard the shuffle of feet, followed by the groan of hinges as the door was drawn closed.
With the sanctuary returned to its usual gloom, one minute after another dragged by, during which the presence at her back became increasingly tangible. Fervently, she prayed the man away, but he persisted. She prayed this was all a terrible dream, but she was fully awake. She prayed herself to another place and time, but there was only the here and now. Thus, when she was empty of prayers and all hope of convincing the Lord she was worthy of a miracle, there was nothing left to her but to brave the encounter and be done with it.
She crossed herself, rose from the kneeler, and turned to face the one responsible for her brother’s demise—the same to whom she had unknowingly given herself on the night past.
Baron Balmaine stood in the center aisle that divided the benches into left and right. Countenance hard and expressionless, he slowly lowered his gaze down her disheveled habit, more slowly raised it back to her face. Despite feeling thoroughly degraded, she did not look away from the piercing eyes that held no hint of mercy or tenderness for the night past. This was not the man who had loved her yestereve, though his likeness was none other’s. This was a man who looked as if he might knock her senseless before deigning to kiss her again.
“’Tis obvious,” he said at last, his voice deep and clear in the silence of the chapel, “you are unaccustomed to keeping your vows, Sister—sacred or otherwise.”
His words jolted her, though she was not surprised that he saw her in the worst light. She had offered her body to him, then made a vow she’d had no intention of keeping. And today she stood before him clothed as a nun.
As he stepped forward with a slight limp of which she had been uncertain on the night past, she steeled herself for what was to come by stiffening her spine, straightening her shoulders, and instructing herself not to cower.
When he stood a reach away, he halted and looked down his long nose at her.
Graeye braved his stare and was taken aback by the most amazingly blue eyes she had seen. In the darkness of the night, they had been unknowable, and she had been too frightened when she had encountered him in the bailey to take note of their color. But there was no mistaking the summer sky in them now.
“By what name are you called, daughter of Edward Charwyck, faithless bride of Christ?”
Her mouth having gone dry, it was some moments before she could answer. “I am—”
“Ah, so you can speak.”
Yet another mark against her already maligned character. Feeling warmth steal up her neck, she said, “I am Lady Graeye Charwyck.” She winced at how husky her voice sounded, and again when he narrowed his lids. “But I am not—”
“Graeye,” he said and tested the name a second time. “Appropriate. What is your name in religion, Sister?”
She shook her head and took a step back when he moved nearer. As she did so, it occurred to her she was forever running from those who threatened her. And she hated herself for it. Still, when he continued his advance, she once more retreated, and her calves came up against the kneeler. “I am not of the sisterhood,” she declared, throwing a hand up to ward him off.
The words stopped him, and he searched her face. “I spoke literally when I afforded you the title of Sister. I was not speaking of your genuine disposition. We both know what that is.”
She raised her eyebrows into the crisp band at her forehead. “I am not a nun.”
“Not after last eve.” He took another step forward and his leg brushed her skirts.
Straining her neck to peer up at him, she said, “I do not play with words. I speak true when I say I am not of the sisterhood. I have not yet made my profession.”
His hands descended to her shoulders, and she nearly shrieked. Fear threatening to reduce her to something small and pitiful and keening, she bowed her head and stared at the bare space between them as she struggled for composure.
Giving no quarter, he pulled her chin up and forced her to look upon him. “If you have not taken your vows, why do you dress as a nun?”
“I am…” She swallowed hard. “I was a novice and was to have been professed the day my father sent for me. This is my bridal habit.”
His brow furrowed. “You speak true?”
“I do.”
He considered her, then gave a bark of laughter, released her, and swung away. “Quite the burden you have lifted from me,” he said and dropped down upon the nearest bench. “Certes, if there is a God”—he stretched his long legs out before him—“He would not be kindly disposed toward one who claimed the virtue of His son’s bride.”
Graeye gasped, took a step forward. “If there is a God? You speak heresy.”
“Heresy?” The corners of his mouth crimping, he gripp
ed his thigh and began to knead it. “I merely question His existence. Do you believe in Him?”
Indignation displacing fear, she hastened forward and halted before the blasphemous man. “Of course I believe in God!”
His dark eyebrows arched. “And here I thought I had found myself one of kindred spirit. Tell me, is your sexual proclivity typical of all members of the clergy? If ’tis, I shall question God’s existence no longer. I will simply deny it, Daughter of Eve.”
The anger that had granted her strength those few moments ebbed, and she was horrified to feel the heat of tears. It was as her father called her when angered, and though it was better than being named one sired by the devil, it further wounded.
“Do not call me that,” she said low.
He sat forward. “It offends?”
“I am Lady Graeye.”
“Ah, then rather than Daughter of Eve, I should call you Lady of Eve?”
“You should not!”
“You are saying it does not fit? You who tempted a man to sin last night and this day plays the good sister?”
“I—” Her voice cracked. “I would have you know that what I did yestereve was done with the intention of refusing to take the veil.”
“Truly?” He put his head to the side. “Then this day you wear the habit simply for the privilege it affords you?”
Holding his gaze, she said, “My father ordered me to don it. He does not yet know of my sin.”
Something glimmered in Balmaine’s eyes a moment before his hand shot out and caught the skirt of her habit. With a hard yank, he dropped her onto his lap.
“And when will you tell him you are no longer eligible to become a nun?” he demanded as she strained against the arm clamped around her waist. “Or perhaps he does know of your sin—condoned it as a means of entrapping me. Was it he who sent you?”
Graeye stilled. Did he truly believe Edward and she had conspired to entrap him? That she would sell her virtue in hopes of gaining… What? Concessions?
Swiping aside the veil that had fallen across her face, she looked across her shoulder and was struck by how attractive he was despite the wrath he wore so well. And how she hated that she should notice. “Release me, knave!”
His lids narrowed. “What did you hope to achieve by seducing me?”
She twisted toward him and thrust her hands against his chest, but there was no dislodging his hold.
“To force me to marriage?” he persisted. “Is Medland so important you would sell your body for it—perhaps even your soul?”
Suffused with anger of a depth she had not experienced before, she said, “Never would I marry you! Had I known who you were when you came upon my sanctuary, I would not have done what I did.”
He snorted. “I am to believe you?”
She stared into his cold eyes and determined that whether or not he condemned her for a liar, he would hear the truth. “I did not give myself to you to capture a husband. I did it to renounce the possibility of becoming a nun so I might remain at my father’s side and help his people—”
“My people.”
Of course they were. “Their needs are great, their fields—”
“Think you I cannot see to them myself?”
The question was—would he? This man who had shown her brother no mercy?
“Even if you speak true,” he continued, “and I were fool enough to believe you, you would be little better for having used me to attain your goal.”
It hurt that he was right. “I know I did wrong yestereve, but I do not wish to live out my days at the abbey, and it seemed the only way to ensure I would not be made to return there.”
His eyes probed her face, and she became aware of how askew her wimple was. But though tempted to straighten it, she feared drawing attention to what may or may not have come uncovered.
“I do not believe you,” he said, “for I have heard life among the clergy is far preferred over the toil of everyday life—even if one’s days are spent in the comfort of a castle.”
Graeye unclenched her teeth. “Hearing is but a shallow reflection of reality. I was sent to the abbey at the age of seven, and in all the years since, I knew little happiness. Mayhap such a life is desirous for others, but it was not so for me.”
Only when he intercepted the hand with which she reached to smooth the linen about her face did she realize she had succumbed to the nervous habit. He pushed it aside. “How touching your tale,” he murmured, then further trespassed by fingering the wimple’s chin strap.
Thinking he intended to snatch it from her, she drew her head back.
He lowered his hand. “I was told Charwyck’s daughter bears the mark of the devil. Is that what you hid yestereve?”
She steeled herself. “It is.”
“Show me.”
Graeye blinked. Clearly he could uncover it himself. Why did he not? Consideration? Or merely an attempt to further humiliate her?
“I would see it,” he said again.
She bowed her head and removed the veil, freeing her hair that had dried into a mess of intertwined tresses following her visit to the waterfall. Next came the wimple. Gripping the linen pieces tightly in her fist, she raised her chin, but not her eyes.
“I thought it a game you played,” he said as she felt his gaze move over her face. “I should have guessed.”
“It was…necessary.”
“Then you misjudged me,” he said so softly—so strangely—that she looked up.
She thought she glimpsed the man of the night past, but if it was him, he was too soon gone.
“You see,” he said, “I have as much belief in the devil as I do God.” He reached up and lightly touched the stain.
Though Graeye’s heart plummeted further, she did not flinch, nor when his fingers moved to her hair and drew a tress through them.
“I would not have guessed it to be so golden,” he murmured.
He could not have, for on the night past it had been darkened by the damp of her swim.
Coming to the end of the tress, he let it fall against her bodice, then he shrugged almost wearily and once more considered the stain. “Still, considering your deception, I daresay there might well be something to this. That it is, indeed, the mark of—”
“Enough!” she cried. All of her life, she had been looked upon with suspicion, and now, with her world in a shambles, she could bear no more accusations, especially from him. Thus, when his expression turned derisive, she did not check the impulse to wipe it from his face and was amazed at the ease with which she struck his cheek.
“I am but a woman cursed to bear a mark set upon me—not by the devil but by God,” she spat as his face brightened where her slap had landed. “’Tis a mark of birth, naught else. You have nothing to fear from me that you would not fear from another.”
“So the little one has claws.” His spectacular eyes bored into hers. “Had I the time or inclination, I might try to tame that temper of yours. But as I have neither, you will have to content yourself with this.”
Temper? She did not have a—
His hand curved around her neck and drew her face toward his, then his mouth was upon hers and she was swept back to the night past when she had longed to stay with him. Ignoring the voices that urged her to resist—to bite, kick, and scratch—she sighed.
Just as abruptly as it had begun, it ended. He lifted her off his lap, set her on the bench, and stood.
Graeye peered up at the man who had so effortlessly disengaged himself from her. How had he such control over his emotions when she had none?
“I may have fallen prey to your wiles last eventide,” he said, straightening his tunic, “but I have no intention of paying your price for such an unfortunate tryst. Your scheme has failed, Lady Graeye.”
It was no easy thing to gather her wits about her after such an attack upon her senses, but his words made it less difficult than it would otherwise have been.
She pushed up off the bench. “You err.” How s
he wished her voice did not sound so small. “There is naught I want from you that you have not already given me.”
His lids narrowed. “What do you think you have stolen from me?”
Refusing to be drawn into an argument over whether she had stolen or been given his caresses, she said, “Though you do not believe me, I tell you true that I did not know who you were until this morn. It was freedom from the Church I hoped to gain, not a husband. That you have given me.”
Balmaine laughed. “Be assured, Lady Graeye, you will return to the abbey.” He adjusted his sword belt. “Though you now lack the purity to become a nun, there will be a place for you at the convent. Thus, you will go, even if I have to drag you there myself.”
She took a step nearer him. “’Tis not your decision—”
His hand sliced the air. “Everything that has anything to do with Medland is under my control. You had best accept it and prepare to enter the convent.”
Her heart lurched. Was what he said true? Could he usurp her father’s rights over her? If so, all she had done was for naught.
Though it nearly made her sick to humble herself, she said, “Then I ask you to reconsider, Baron Balmaine. My father is not well and requires someone to—”
“The decision has been made.” He strode away.
Even if Graeye could have contained her anger, she did not think she would have, for she had nothing to lose. “You have a nasty penchant for rudely interrupting when one is trying to speak,” she snapped at his retreating back. “’Tis something you ought to work at correcting, my lord.”
He pivoted and returned to her. “In future, if you have anything to say to me, Lady Graeye, address my face rather than my back.”
Though she knew he could crush her between his hands, and at that moment he looked tempted to, she drew herself up to her last hair of height. “In future? As we have no future together, Baron, ’tis an absurd request. Or should I say order?”
A muscle in his jaw convulsed. “Sheathe your claws, little cat. The day is young and we have games yet to play.”
Then he once more strode opposite, leaving her to stare after him as fear bloomed anew in her breast.
