“After Earl Richard came,” he finished, “I should have gone back to the king and told him the clerk heard amiss, but I—I wanted to go to war in Wales and—and I could not bear to be parted from you. So I stayed. I told myself I would have more evidence to offer to the king after the Welsh war, but I only wanted to see you again.”
“It was not right,” Alys said, but her voice was sad rather than angry. “You know your father would never agree to such a marriage, and I will agree to nothing else.”
The last words were said harshly, but Raymond looked up at last, his expression tense with hope. “Would you take me for a husband after what you have heard?”
This time Alys’s eyes dropped. “It is nothing to do with me,” she answered. “Your father—”
“My father has no bond on me,” Raymond said, getting to his feet. “I do not care whether he agrees or not. Alys, answer me from your heart, do not think of fathers or anyone else. Of yourself, would you be willing to marry me?”
“It is not possible,” she said faintly.
“I will make it possible, if you are willing,” Raymond exclaimed. He knelt by her chair and took her hand.
“I would be willing to marry you,” she said, and withdrew her hand.
He understood, rose, and backed away a few steps. “You need not fear, I swear. Alys, I beg you, do not think me a liar. I am not that. I withheld the truth, but never spoke a lie. I will tell your father as soon as he wakes, and—”
“No. Papa will not like this. He will not like it at all. He must not be upset until he is stronger.”
“I know he will not like it,” Raymond sighed, “but I will agree to any condition, anything at all, so long as he will let us marry. Something can be worked out. My love…”
“Do not call me that,” Alys said. “I was very willing to be your wife when you had nothing. Now, I am less sure. I am not lost for love, and the more I think of this the less easy I grow. I must value myself, and what value can I have in the high world in which you live?”
“You are a pearl without price, and will be in any world,” Raymond exclaimed passionately.
“Is that your mind speaking or your shaft, Raymond?” Alys asked, deliberately crude. “I am beautiful, but close your eyes and think what I am under my face and my body.”
“It is that I desire,” Raymond assured her. “I have seen beautiful women before, and never once did it cross my mind to defy my father’s will and ask for one of them to be my wife, not even when it would have been a match to please him. Your beauty did catch my eye. It must blind the eye of any man who sees you, but it was not until I learned what you were that I thought of marriage.”
If that were true… Perhaps it was, but there were still insuperable problems. Alys sighed. “It would be easier and best for us both to turn our backs on this thing. If you will go, Raymond, I promise I will explain to my father in such a way that he will remain your friend. Go home. You will soon enough forget me.”
“I will go if you order me gone, Alys, but on my life and honor I swear I will have no other woman to wife. I have seen pure gold, and I will not have dross instead. I swear—”
“No, do not!” Alys exclaimed, putting out a hand to stop him but knowing it was too late.
“To my mind and heart you are my wife. To marry elsewhere would be a sin. I am no Turk.”
Alys stared at him, wide eyed with distress, torn between joy and fear. She did want Raymond but thought she could have buried that desire in time. Apparently, however, he had gone further than she. All Alys knew of men, really, was her father. He had sworn to love Elizabeth, and for twenty miserable years he had done so. Alys did not understand the peculiar circumstances that had riveted William’s attention and affection on his childhood sweetheart. She knew all men were not like her father, of course. She had heard of love betrayed. Nevertheless, she believed that all good men were fixed in their affections.
Then it was too late. Whatever difficulties Raymond had to face to win her would be better than the utterly hopeless misery of living as her father had lived. If Raymond could have felt as she did, that time would cure his trouble, the brief unhappiness might have been worth enduring. But Alys could not inflict a lifetime of regret on him. Besides, she did not want to. She was a little afraid of stepping into a style of life that was unfamiliar to her, but the more she looked at Raymond the more she forgot those fears.
“If you have sworn to me already,” Alys said slowly, “it is too late for me to bid you look elsewhere—and—and I love you also.” Raymond took a step toward her, but Alys shook her head firmly. “No, do not come closer. And do not be so foolish as to cry, ‘Why will you not trust me?’ It is myself I do not trust. Until we are publicly sworn, I will not even touch your hand nor permit you to touch mine.”
Raymond was not hurt. He had meant only to kiss her hand in formal thanks for her acceptance of him. However, he acknowledged her wisdom and was proud of her self-control. Despite her beauty, which would draw a gaggle of besotted ganders to woo her, he felt he would never need to doubt her. Alys was not one to yield her honor to her passion.
“Then bend your mind to how I may come to that public swearing as quick as may be,” Raymond urged. “I have been half mad, thinking you would have nothing to say to me when I confessed my stupidity, yet I cannot regret it,” he admitted, smiling, “for had I not fallen into the king’s stratagem, I would not have met you.”
Alys smiled back, her eyes sparkling. Now that the matter was settled, she felt very happy and her doubts dropped away. Somehow they would manage. “Papa will give in,” she said, “not because he is doting but for—for reasons of his own. However, as I said, he will not like it, and he will be hurt and—and so lonely, Raymond.”
“He may not need to be lonely,” Raymond pointed out. “I have a younger brother. If my father disowns me, I will truly be a penniless hireling, so—”
“Raymond,” Alys interrupted, eyes wide with horror, “would he do that?”
“I do not know,” Raymond answered honestly. “He is a kind man, too kind sometimes, and most loving to us all, but he has strict notions also and will not yield on those. It is very hard to read him, Alys. He will yield and yield and then, on some point, stick fast so that neither reason nor pleading will move him.”
“Take back your oath, Raymond. I absolve you of it gladly. If you lose so much, you will come to hate me. I could bear to lose you, but I could not bear that.”
He came forward impetuously, then stopped short when Alys shrank back into the chair. “My love—you said not to call you that, but I cannot help it—nothing could make me hate you. On this point, however, you need fear the least. For myself, I have never been happier than in these months of service with your father. And that, though you may think it unloverlike in me, had naught to do with you.”
“But you come from a great house, where—”
“Where I had no more to do than to be a doll, a pretty popinjay for my mother’s dressing. I will grieve if I am cast out, for I love my father and my mother, too, although she drives me mad, and my brother and sisters, but that is all I will grieve for. Besides, Alys, I am sure my mother would write to Queen Eleanor and beg her intervention in my favor with the king. I know what is felt about ‘foreigners,’ but I am learning English—”
Alys looked doubtful, but she was not worried about Raymond needing a livelihood. If her father agreed to the marriage, he would give them Bix. She was more concerned that so powerful a family could find a way to hurt them all.
“It is more likely that your mother would ask the king to prevent the marriage than that she would ask that help be given you.”
“If she did,” Raymond said, his eyes blazing and his lips thinned, “she would be soon sorry for it. I am not a doll that she can play with at her will. In any case, Alys, that will be my problem and in the future. For now, it is more immediate to tell me how to present my case to your father so that he will not try to kill me before I fi
nish asking for you.”
“I am not sure. Perhaps Lady Elizabeth—”
“Lady Elizabeth? I should think she would be the last person to help us.” Raymond suddenly wondered whether it was possible that Alys did not know about the marriage planned with Aubery.
“She and my father are—they are very old friends,” Alys said, her color rising as she realized what she had nearly said. “And—and Elizabeth has been like a mother to me.”
“I think she intends to be a mother to you,” Raymond pointed out dryly. “It is her son who—”
“Oh no. She does not wish me to marry Aubery,” Alys interrupted. “She thinks we would not suit. Of course, I love Aubery—”
“Do you?”
Alys was startled by the voice, low, but hard and sharp. She had never heard Raymond use that voice. “How—” she began, meaning to say, How dare you speak like that to me, and then she realized Raymond was jealous. “Silly,” she said, smiling. “I was not angry when you told me you loved your sisters. Believe me, I feel no differently about Aubery.”
“He is not your brother, however,” Raymond snapped.
“It does not make any difference,” Alys giggled. “And you may be as angry as you like, but I cannot change the fact that I do love Aubery, and John also, and always will. However—”
Raymond’s lips tightened when Alys laughed at him. Then he grew really angry. He was not accustomed to being told by “his” woman that a thing was so and, by implication, he must swallow it if he did not like it. He had been told things by Alys before, but she had been his “overlord’s” daughter then. Now she was, to his mind, his wife.
“Alys!” he roared and then clapped a hand to his mouth, but it was too late.
“What is it?” William called from the bedchamber. And Elizabeth’s voice followed, “Lie still. It is nothing.”
Alys shot out of her chair and into the bedchamber. “Forgive me, Papa. I forgot. It was a jest, and Raymond—”
“Alys,” William sighed, passing a hand over his face to rub the sleep out of it, “while I am still so sore, I wish you would tease Raymond elsewhere than my apartment.”
“It was my fault, sir,” Raymond said, edging into the room.
“I doubt it,” William remarked, and smiled wryly.
He lifted himself on an elbow, and Elizabeth bent over him to raise his pillow higher. Her wimple brushed his cheek and the scent of her filled his nostrils. The emotional shock of discovering that they had not betrayed each other had temporarily quenched William’s sexual impulse, but sleep had refreshed him. At that moment he had all he could do to keep himself from pulling her down to be kissed and caressed despite the witnesses. He had to get rid of them. He shifted his eyes to Alys and laughed softly.
“And I do not wish to hear anything you have to say, mistress mischief. Go away and take Raymond with you. You should be ashamed of yourselves, to insult my servants by setting a guard over me as if they wished me harm.”
“But sir—” Raymond protested.
“If you are worried, you may tell Diccon to close the gates to strangers for a day or two or to set a guard at the hall door and permit none but the serving men and women to enter, but I do not want anyone in the outer chamber. That is an order.”
“Very well, Papa,” Alys agreed hastily, seeing that her father’s color had risen and not wishing to excite him. It made no difference, after all. Raymond or Diccon could sit in the hall right outside the door. The safety would be the same and her father would know nothing about it. “I will sit with you now—”
“No. I slept through the night and did not disturb Elizabeth. I have the headache a little. Let Elizabeth stay. You must be behindhand with everything. Why do you not ride out with Raymond, if he can sit a horse, and see how the crops are coming and what is to be first harvested?”
Alys was about to protest that she would trouble him no more than Elizabeth, but the words froze in her throat. William’s face was still deeply flushed, although he plainly was not angry now. Another fearful glance showed her that his eyes looked funny and his expression had an odd rigidity. She swallowed nervously and glanced at Elizabeth, but there was no comfort to be found there. Elizabeth had gone white.
The stiffening sickness? Usually the dreaded condition that locked a man’s jaws and arched his body like a strung bow began within a week of the wound being taken, but sometimes much longer passed. Sometimes even after the wounds were healed, a man would complain of a difficulty in chewing or speaking. Then his fever would rise and his neck would stiffen. Soon after, he would die, screaming in agony through his locked jaws.
Alys dared not ask, dared not put that fear into her father’s mind. And she did not want to know! Terrified, she backed out of the room, unconsciously seizing Raymond’s hand and drawing him with her. Without a word, she pulled him across the hall and into his own room, where she turned and pressed her face against his breast and began to cry.
“What is it, love? What is wrong?” Raymond whispered, longing and fearing to embrace her.
“Hold me,” she sobbed, “hold me. I am afraid.”
He complied with alacrity, begging her to tell him what she feared and promising to protect her. Trembling, Alys named her terror. For a moment, Raymond clutched her tighter, also terrified, but then he loosened his grip.
“It cannot be, beloved,” he soothed. “The wounds were wide and clean and bled freely. It cannot be.” But his voice shook. “Listen, beloved,” he urged, “you are building a whole keep out of a handful of pebbles, and I know less than you. It will be many hours before he grows better or worse. Your father set us a task. Let us do it. No matter what befalls, he would not like us to disobey him.”
Alys shuddered, but she lifted her head and nodded agreement. She did not think Raymond unfeeling. She could hear the concern in his voice. What he had offered her was the only thing she herself knew to be efficacious in time of fear or sorrow—work. Following her mute nod, she made a tiny gesture of withdrawal. Immediately his arms dropped away. Alys touched his hand gently in silent thanks as she stepped back. Under the fear for her father was a masked joy for she now knew she could trust Raymond better than herself. In her fear she had offered him the opportunity to make love to her, and he had not taken that unfair advantage.
Chapter Fifteen
In William’s chamber Elizabeth had waited, frozen, until she was sure Alys and Raymond were gone. Then she bent over the bed. “When did your head start to ache?” she whispered. “Where does it hurt? Is your neck stiff?”
William’s right arm encircled her, pulling her off balance so that she nearly fell on top of him. “No,” he answered. “I have no pain and my neck is not stiff, but something else is! Do not be such an idiot, Elizabeth. I had to say something to be rid of that pair.”
Elizabeth was too close to see him properly, but there could be no doubt what he meant because he pulled her lower still and fastened his mouth to hers. His lips were warm, full with passion, but soft, his tongue quick and flexible as it sought a haven in her mouth. Slowly, she disengaged her lips from his. Now that her fear was gone, she read his expression correctly. The heavy eyes and rigid features were owing to desire not illness.
“You will hurt yourself, William,” she sighed, but without conviction. Ever since June, she had relived and dreamed of the exquisite experience of his lovemaking.
“I will do nothing,” he murmured. “Take off that stupid headdress. I want to see you.” Still she hesitated, flushed and wide eyed. “Must I get up and undress you myself, Elizabeth?” he asked, his voice harder and commanding.
With an intake of breath like a sob, she shook her head and began to remove her clothing. All the while she felt William’s eyes on her and she could hear his breathing, harsher and quicker than usual, broken once or twice by a long, shaken sigh.
She ached with desire but felt it was wrong and she fought herself, but William said, “Come here,” again a harsh command, and she came, her eyes on
her own bare feet until the edge of the bed appeared. A heartbeat longer she hesitated, heard William’s breath drawn, and quickly lay down beside him, knowing he had thrown back the light blanket. She thought he would seize her immediately, as he had the last time they were in bed together, and she closed her eyes, not to see the healing flesh torn open again with his violence. However he only touched her arm, his fingers gentle, hesitant.
“Elizabeth?” The tone of command was gone, replaced by uncertainty and anxiety. “Beloved? Are you not willing?”
A dark blush dyed her cheeks dusky rose. She opened her eyes. “Not willing! I am much too willing. I should not let you. You will hurt yourself. But I cannot help it. I want you!”
He laughed softly. “You are a most innocent elf, Elizabeth. I will not hurt myself. I will lie still if it kills me. I assure you that I will not unseat a stitch nor loosen a scab. Come, sit up, love, and bend over me so that I may love you with my mouth.”
She still did not understand how he would manage, but she could not bear to worry any longer. Eagerly she leaned over so that he could kiss her throat and breasts.
She found that one arm was enough to support her. The other stretched downward. William was whole below the waist and she knew she could touch him there without hurting him. Her hand went down his thigh, slipped between his legs investigating what, although long married, she had never before been willing to touch.
His legs spread at her touch, and where her wrist lay across his thigh, Elizabeth could feel the tension and faint trembling in it. She ran her hand up, then down. It was immediately apparent that her curiosity was having a violent effect on her lover. His lips and hands grew more urgent, and he began to moan deep in his throat. William’s excitement fed Elizabeth’s so that the pain caused by his too-hard sucking and biting turned to an exquisite pleasure. Then he tore his mouth loose.
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