Aubery shut the door behind them, relieved to be rid of everyone but still doubtful that it was safe to let them go. In his deeply contrite mood, it seemed impossible that he should be allowed to keep Fenice. He turned and stood looking at her, not realizing that his intense, anxious examination appeared to Fenice as a ferocious frown.
“I am sorry to have caused so much trouble,” she said tentatively. “I tried to tell them I was not hurt, but—”
“Then why were you limp and pale as death when I found you?” Aubery asked, coming forward and looming over her so threateningly that she shrank back slightly.
“It was hard to breathe,” she said, “and the air was too thick, that was all. I cannot tell you more, Aubery. I cannot.”
Aubery had not missed the small gesture of retreat. “What do you mean you cannot tell me more?” he snarled. “What did that beast do to you?”
“He hit me on the head,” Fenice cried, wide-eyed with terror as she caught her husband’s suspicion. “I do not know any more to tell, I swear it. I would not—”
“Forgive me,” Aubery interrupted her by catching her in his arms and kissing her. But he could feel her shaking with fear, and he freed his lips to say, “Love, love, I know he did not use you. There was no time or place. Now that I think of it, he came in to dinner only a few minutes after I did. I saw him myself. Beloved, forgive me. My pride and my temper will destroy us both if you do not help me learn to curb them.”
“Are you so proud?” Fenice asked faintly.
But instead of replying, Aubery kissed her again, first on the lips, then on the throat below the ear, then he nibbled the ear itself and ran his tongue along its edge. Fenice had been stiff with apprehension. Her capture by Savin seemed to have broken some dam of reserve in her husband which permitted him to give her the gratification she desired, spoken words of love. But the love-words had been followed by a clear declaration of what she had feared since she had felt the depth of Aubery’s rage over her disguise in Pons. If he was so angry over the contamination of serf clothing, what would he say to serf blood?
He need never know. You gave your oath not to tell. It was as if the words were broad blocks of paving on a wide, easy road—the road to hell. It was a lie she was living, and she had no right to give an oath that would involve the best man in the world in that lie. She had no right to foist on Aubery the grandchildren of a serf woman. A quiver of more intense fear passed through Fenice. She might be with child right now. Her flux was late. Of course, that might only be owing to the fear and exertion she had lived through this past week, but could she allow a child to be born, many children perhaps, all tainted, who would be beloved of their father?
Could she be sure Aubery would never discover the truth? What would happen if he did learn it after children were born of her? It was an omission in the marriage contract that would give him the right to put her aside and to declare any child born of her a bastard, she was certain of that. Would he do that? And even if he did not, if his love for the children was too strong to discard them like dross, still there would be a bitter, bitter gall mixed into that sweet love, a poison that would turn all joy to grief.
She would have to tell him. Now, just when she had reached the pinnacle she desired, when she had the proof that settled the last little doubt about her husband’s love, she would have to tell him. She could not delay even a day or two because he must be able to be rid of her before she knew for certain whether there was a child. Tears began to trickle from Fenice’s eyes.
The maids had stripped her to her shift before she had begun to protest that she did not need to be abed, and Aubery was investigating the edges of the shift’s concealment with his lips. Suddenly, Fenice became fully aware of his caresses, and she was wildly, achingly in need. The last time! She could not delay a day, but for as long as it took to love and be loved one last time, she would continue to live her lie.
‘Take off your bedgown and come into the bed,” she whispered.
“My soul, my precious jewel, heart of my heart,” Aubery murmured, “are you sure I will not hurt you?”
“No, you will not hurt me,” she sighed, holding back sobs. “You will give me a joy to hold in my heart forever.”
Aubery hesitated. He still had a vision of Fenice crushed by the heavy chests, and baskets that had fallen on her, but the caresses he had initiated to convince her that he was certain she was unsullied by Savin had, of course, stimulated his desire.
“Please,” Fenice whispered, “please, I need you.”
There was an odd note in her voice that convinced him whatever hurt he might do to her body in coupling with her would be nothing compared to what he would do to her heart if he refused. He cursed himself again for implying a defilement he knew had not been possible, but he did not curse himself very bitterly, for he was too busy flinging off his few garments. In addition, the sinuous contortions Fenice used to rid herself of her shift without getting out of the warm bed convinced him both that she could move her body without feeling pain and that the cure she suggested for her fears was a most desirable one.
Still, Aubery had not quite recovered from the shock of thinking Fenice dead or crushed and dying. She seemed infinitely precious, and he felt a need to touch her, to see with his eyes and feel with his lips the wholeness of her body, the unblemished smoothness of her skin. He never looked at her face. He had known from the moment he released her that her lovely features had not been damaged. It was the lush, creamy-skinned body for which he had feared, and it was the body that he stroked and kissed, saying over the old love-words and inventing new and more tender endearments with which to praise his pearl without price. And when he could resist the ultimate pleasure no longer, he mounted her with infinite gentleness, carefully, slowly, prolonging the aching desire because that, too, was a pleasure.
Fortunately by then Aubery’s eyes were closed. He felt the tremors shaking Fenice’s body, he even heard her sobs, but he never associated them with grief. Indeed, the violence with which she seized on him and responded to him, coming to a shuddering, moaning climax almost as soon as he entered her, gave him every reason to believe she was sobbing with joy.
He did not hurry himself, indeed, he turned them so that she was above him in order to have more freedom to caress her, sure from her quick reaction that he could bring her to climax again. And he did, twice more, although the third for her was part of his own violent orgasm. And he clung to her even after he was satisfied, holding her tight against him when she would have rolled away. It was then that he realized his neck and shoulders were wet with tears and that the sobs that shook Fenice were more violent than ever. His eyes snapped open.
“God in heaven,” he cried, “I have hurt you.”
“No,” she gasped. “No. You have given me the love I desired all my life.”
“If you are not hurt, why do you weep? Fenice, what is wrong?” He laid her down gently and sat up, leaning over her.
Wearily she wiped the tears from her face. “Once,” she said, “I promised that I would never tell you a lie. But I have lied, not with my voice, but with my silence. I have kept a secret from you.”
Aubery straightened up and looked away. “Then keep it still,” he said harshly. “I love you. I do not want to know.”
“I cannot keep it,” she whispered, “for it is a shameful thing that will break your pride and stain your children if they are born of me.”
So his penance was not done. There was still a scourging to be endured before he was absolved of the sin of his pride. “Well, then?” he asked stoically.
Fenice had stopped crying and was looking at him as if she were dying and it was the last time she would see him. “My mother was a common field serf. My father bought her for a few coppers,” she said softly.
Aubery waited, staring blankly into nothing, every muscle tensed for the blow that was coming, but Fenice said no more. “And?” he urged, thinking that, after all, she could not bear to tell him the rest.
>
“And?” Fenice sobbed, trembling. “Is that not enough?”
Slowly Aubery looked down. Fenice raised an arm as if to shield herself from a blow. “This is your dreadful secret?” he asked in a stunned voice. ‘This is what you have been hiding and weeping over, that your mother was common born?”
Hesitantly, Fenice lowered her arm. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am so very sorry. I should never have agreed to keep it secret, but Lady Alys said you would not care. You should have been told.”
“Told?” Aubery snatched her up and pulled her tight against him, shaking with laughter in his relief. “You silly little love, I always knew! I cannot now remember whether I read it in one of Alys’s letters or whether my mother or William told me—”
“You knew?” Fenice cried. “You knew, and you treated me with such honor?”
She looked at him with dazed, awed eyes, as one might gaze on a heavenly apparition, and Aubery realized that his relief had come too soon. He had not done full penance, for Fenice thought him better than she—and he was worse.
“Why should I not treat you with honor?” he asked with dull bitterness. “Your blood is at least clean. If there is a taint to stain our children, Fenice, it will come from me. No, do not shake your head. Your mother was a serf, you say. Very well. My father was as well born as any other gentleman, but he was also a liar, a thief, a cheat, a lecher, and a murderer.”
Fenice had been frightened at Aubery’s first words, but when he had done, she looked at him with honest puzzlement. “But what has that to do with you?” she asked. “Those are habits a man learns, not something bred in the blood. I am sorry to hear what you say, but your poor father was doubtless ill taught. Even common as I am, because I have been well taught, I know right from wrong.” Then, while Aubery was staring at her in somewhat dumbfound relief, she went on in a lower voice. “What cannot be taught, I fear, is a delicacy of spirit. My dear husband, I know how much I disgusted you with…with what I did at Pons—”
“Disgusted me!” Aubery exclaimed, distracted from the burden his father’s memory always laid on him. “You shamed me.”
“I know now,” Fenice whispered, her head bent, “but I was so afraid for you that I did not realize I had gone too far.”
“No, no,” Aubery said, laughing and tilting her face up so he could kiss her lips. “I was not ashamed of what you did. I was astounded at that. Fenice, my love, it was of myself that I was ashamed. So proud a fool was I that I could not bear you should succeed and set me free where I had failed. I am ashamed of that, not of your courage and devotion.”
“But I am sure no proper lady would have so defiled herself. I know you often compare me to your first lady and find me wanting—”
“No!” Aubery’s voice was so loud that Fenice jumped and pulled away, thinking she had trod on hallowed ground. He drew her back into his embrace and said, more gently, “Matilda was a good woman, Fenice. I do not mean to speak ill of her, for she could not help what she was, but she was useless to me.” He smiled rather wryly. “You are quite right that Matilda would not have found a way to extract me from that prison. She would probably have died of fright when I did not come back to the inn and would have added to my problems.”
At that moment, Fenice saw no need of salvation. She had found her own heaven. She snuggled contentedly into Aubery’s arms, but they were not as eagerly enfolding as she had expected, and when she looked up she saw his face was troubled. “You are not content, my lord,” she murmured. “You say my mother’s blood does not matter, but perhaps that is only your kindness because you love me. Only—”
“It is not your mother’s blood but your first husband’s that was in my mind,” Aubery said, his voice harsh again.
“Blood… But Delmar died of fever. There was no blood spilled.”
“That is not what I meant,” he snapped. “You never speak of him. Does his memory still touch you so keenly?”
Fenice laughed aloud. Another joy had been added to what she had thought a full cup. Aubery was jealous! Delightful as that was, she had no desire to explain too fully why she felt so little grief at Delmar’s death.
“My dearest love, I never spoke of him because I never thought of him,” she said, throwing her arms around Aubery’s neck. “My father chose him, and if he had been a devil I would not have complained. Papa has always been so good to me. Not that Delmar was a devil. He was…nothing.”
“Nothing?” Aubery echoed before he could stop himself. “He taught you to handle a man full well for a nothing.”
Fenice looked surprised. “Oh, yes, he was very good at that. But that was all he was good at. I suppose Papa hoped he would improve with age, and perhaps he would have, but while we were together, he was…nothing.” She stopped and shuddered, then said, “I am glad I did not know at first, or I-I would not have been so willing a learner. I am glad now only because what he taught has pleased you, my lord. Has it not?”
That time it was Aubery’s turn to laugh. The dull dislike in Fenice’s voice when she mentioned Delmar’s inadequacies seemed to explain why she called him a nothing. There was also a kind of comfort in her saying she had not known at first. Probably she had cared for him in the beginning and could hardly remember that now. It was like his mistake with Matilda, and he was satisfied that she held no longing in her heart for her first man.
“Well, I might not care to remember from whom you learned,” Aubery said with honesty, “but I must admit that the results of the lessons please me.” He lay down, pulling her with him, laughing. “Have you nothing new to show me?” he asked. “I, too, am an eager learner.”
About the Author
Roberta Gellis was driven to start writing her own books some forty years ago by the infuriating inaccuracies of the historical fiction she read. Since then she has worked in varied genres—romance, mystery and fantasy—but always, even in the fantasies, keeping the historical events as near to what actually happened as possible. The dedication to historical time settings is not only a matter of intellectual interest, it is also because she is so out-of-date herself that accuracy in a contemporary novel would be impossible.
In the forty-some years she has been writing, Gellis has produced more than twenty-five straight historical romances. These have been the recipients of many awards, including the Silver and Gold Medal Porgy for historical novels from the West Coast Review of Books, the Golden Certificate from Affaire de Coeur, the Romantic Times Award for Best Novel in the Medieval Period (several times) and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Historical Fantasy. Last but not least, Gellis was honored with the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
The author welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and e-mail address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Roberta Gellis
A Woman’s Estate
Fortune’s Bride
Siren Song
The Cornish Heiress
The English Heiress
The Kent Heiress
Winter Song
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