Lord of a Thousand Nights

by Madeline Hunter

  Memories and regrets overwhelmed her with a renewal of grief for Robert more intense than she had felt for a month.

  A hand touched her shoulder, and Christiana spoke low in her ear. “One never knows how these things will work out. There are no footprints yet on the snow covering the field that you will cross.”

  Reyna smiled at her new friend's optimism. But of course there were footprints, many of them, put there by people living and dead, and the freshest ones had been made by Ian and herself in the garden yesterday.

  She decided it was a good time to visit with Alice and the servants outside. She extricated herself from the unsettling company of the man she had ostensibly wed, and spent the next few hours among her old friends.

  The sun was setting when a commotion stirred at the gate. Gregory hustled up into the hall and returned with Ian. They disappeared through the gate. Awhile later they returned, and the word spread that a messenger had come from Thomas Armstrong requesting the return of the ladies of Black Lyne Keep. Reyna heard Ian instruct Gregory to have one hundred men ready to ride to the border in the early morning. When he had finished he walked over to her.

  “Christiana was looking for you. It is time to retire, madam.”

  Reyna looked to the growing twilight. Aye, time to play out the next part of the farce. “Tell Christiana that Alice will assist me.”

  He gave her a peculiar look before walking away. Alice had overheard and came huffing to her side. “Can you make all the steps, Alice?” she asked.

  “Of course. You think I would let anyone else do this?”

  Reyna helped Alice up the stairs. On the fifth level, Alice made to enter the solar, but Reyna guided her away.

  Alice followed her into her own chamber. “Ah. You not be wanting to share the same bed that you used with Sir Robert.”

  Reyna didn't answer. Alice reached for the shoulders of her surcoat and lowered them. “You are not feeling guilty or anything, are you? Some widows do when they wed again, if they had affection for their first husbands, but Robert wouldn't want you living alone.”

  Together they unplied the wilting buds from her hair and removed the crown of roses. Alice combed the long silken strands, then unlaced and removed the lovely gown.

  The cook went over to prepare the bed.

  “Leave me now, Alice,” Reyna said.

  Alice eyed her suspiciously. “What are you up to, child?”

  “I would just like some time alone, that is all.”

  “I can see your unhappiness. Feel it. You've been odd all day. Had you planned to remain faithful to him, even in death?”

  “If I have been odd, it is because this has happened so fast and unexpectedly. Should I be dancing with delight?”

  “Perhaps not, but it might help with this knight if you didn't look as if you were facing the gallows.”

  It was an unfortunate choice of words, but not entirely an accident. Alice was reminding her of the protection Ian afforded, and of what she owed him in return. “Leave me now,” Reyna repeated.

  Alice grunted and shook her head. She patted Reyna's cheek and left.

  Reyna exhaled deeply. She went to her trunks and pulled out one of her simple gowns and drew it on. Then she quickly plied her hair into a long braid. Throwing it over her back, she moved the three night candles close to her writing table. She felt too restless to sleep yet. She would begin her letter to the Lady Hildegard in Sweden.

  She carefully composed the first Latin line to the learned abbess with whom she corresponded. The abbess had last sent her a detailed argument carefully proving that women had souls, a point on which theologians sometimes debated. Reyna had found a few flaws in the logic, which she wanted to point out so that Hildegard could correct them before circulating her thesis.

  She was preparing to dig into the body of her analysis when her chamber door opened. Ian walked in and closed the door behind him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Writing a letter.” She scratched another word onto the paper.

  She tried to concentrate on a difficult Latin construction that she needed to form. It wasn't easy to do so. Ian had a way of distracting her whenever he was near. She really wished he would leave.

  “You have a peculiar attitude toward weddings, Reyna. You spend the day ignoring your husband, and retire to write philosophy.”

  She grimaced at his tone but did not look at him. She had ignored him. She hadn't expected him to notice, or to care much if he did. Being a proud and vain man, he probably thought that she should have played her role better and fawned a bit and pretended some interest.

  She returned her thoughts to her Latin.

  A movement and sound broke into her attention. She lifted her eyes a fraction. Ian's knight belt lay on the floor near his booted legs.

  She stared at that belt and a thud of alert foreboding pounded once inside her.

  Her gaze rose up his length. He was unfastening the front of his pourpoint.

  “What are you doing?” she asked cautiously.

  “Undressing. A dutiful wife would help me.”

  The foreboding thudded again.

  “You forget that I am not a dutiful wife. I am a temporary convenience.”

  “It is temporarily convenient for you to be my wife. As such you will perform any duties that I command.” He looked at her, his eyes large and black in the candle glow. “Why are you still gowned? Why didn't Alice prepare you?”

  “Prepare me?”

  “Prepare you. For bed. For me.”

  She set down her pen. Appalled astonishment twisted inside her. “You can not think— you can not intend to sleep here.”

  “It was my intention to sleep in the solar, but since you were not there, I assumed that you did not want to share the bed used by your late husband. I will indulge you on that, for a while.”

  “It would be unfitting for us to share any bed.”

  His hands froze on the garment. “It would be most fitting. We are married.”

  “Not a real marriage, you said. A temporary convenience.” She felt real desperation now, mixed with growing anger. He knew the implications of their agreement. It was incredibly dishonorable of him to pretend that he didn't.

  Ian rested his hands on the writing table. Dark pools glinting with anger looked down at her. “Aye, convenient all around. It is convenient for Morvan to maintain the neutrality of your father. It is convenient for your protection. Since this land would have been mine anyway, the only convenience I see for myself is having a woman available when I want one.”

  She summoned every speck of courage to meet his hovering fury. “If you want a woman, go find another. There are at least a dozen here who would welcome you.”

  “But I do not welcome them, Reyna, not on my wedding night.” His voice was very low and level. “Besides, as I see it, we have some unfinished matters to attend.”

  Her breath caught. “You churl, you deliberately deceived me.” She stood to face him. “You said a marriage of convenience. Temporary. Not real.”

  “Real enough until it is annulled.”

  “Do you expect me later to lie to a bishop in order to procure that annulment?”

  “I expect your barren state to speak eloquently for you on our behalf. I said that would be the grounds for annulment, Reyna, not lack of consummation.”

  Her mind scrambled for a solution to this horrendous misunderstanding. This was terrible. Dreadful.

  Perhaps logic would help. “Ian, the goal of marriage is to produce children. We entered this arrangement with no intention of doing so. Therefore, we are not married.”

  “An elegant, if flawed, syllogism. Try this one instead. Vows make marriages, and only bishops can undo them. We just exchanged vows. Therefore, until a bishop ends it, we are married. If you sought a marriage in name only, you should have said so.”

  She noted with dismay that his logic had been completely flawless.

  He began coming around the table tow
ard her. She scurried away and kept the desk between them. Her heart pulsed like a drum, and she tried to find some explanation that would end this nightmare. There was none. Nothing that she could say would make any sense.

  Looking at him beseechingly, as if the silent words in her head could travel like an underflow on her voice, she whispered, “I can not.”

  The dark glare he shot at her almost knocked her over. “Can you not?”

  “Nay.”

  “You actually thought to live as brother and sister? You do not know men well, do you?”

  “Well enough, but this is impossible.”

  “Then you can not live here. Nor will we disrupt Morvan's plans because of your capriciousness. I offer you now another bargain, and the only one that matters this night. I have never forced a woman, and I'll be damned if I will let you drive me to it. If you can not be a wife to me, you will go to a convent. One in Brittany, I think, where you will not create future trouble. Annulment or not, you can rot there.”

  His anger rippled through the air. His expression looked dangerous and determined. He meant it. He would do it.

  He walked to the door. “Make your decision, Reyna. Subject it to all the philosophy you want.”

  Reyna sank down in the chair and gazed blankly at the candles glimmering in front of her. She dully relived the day and admitted that, if she had been paying attention, she might have been forewarned about this. The long looks. The tension twisting around them that made her so unsettled. Her smug contentment that she had managed things so well had blinded her to Ian's assumptions.

  She looked down at the ring on her finger. Dear saints, what had she done?

  He hadn't really given her much choice. His bed on occasion for several years, or immured forever in some Breton convent. No one had a right to ask that latter sacrifice of her.

  She thought about the kind old man who had showed her that some men could be good and generous. She reviewed the promises she had made. She would not betray them. Could not. But if she did this, he would be betrayed as surely as if she had deliberately planned it. Still, she would let the circumstances do it, and not her words, and try to salvage something, somehow. She owed Robert that much, even if he had insisted that she did not.

  She walked to the door, picturing the proud, insulted knight waiting for her. She doubted that Ian would be much inclined to either goodness or generosity tonight.

  This was going to be horrible. Completely horrible.

  She opened the solar door and silently stepped inside. The night had turned cool, and the servants had prepared this chamber, lighting a low fire in the hearth. Three candles glowed on their tall holders by the bed, and she wondered if, remembering her fear of night, Ian had ordered the extra ones.

  He sat against one of the window niches, one leg raised and crooked inside and the other foot resting on the floor. He didn't notice her at first while he looked out into the night.

  He was still angry. She could feel it. She stayed by the door. All of her, even her limbs, filled with a fear that eddied like water.

  He became aware of her. His head turned. She could not see his face clearly in the shadows.

  “Come here.”

  She took a deep breath and walked over. She couldn't look at him, but she felt him watching her. She stood silently for a terrible eternity, with his hot gaze on her and his power shaking the space around her.

  His fingers slid down the length of her braid. Her lowered eyes saw him grasp the end. His hand began twisting slowly, and the braid wound around it. She felt the pull on her scalp and lowered her head, but still the hand circled.

  Aye, angry, and not generous at all.

  Closing her eyes in humiliation, she had no choice but to bend her knees as the braid pulled her down. Lower. Lower still, until finally she knelt on the floor beside him, her plait wound like a snake around his lower arm. He straightened his arm, moving her head down until she was bowed. Her heart pounded with indignation, but she held her tongue.

  “It seems that you can after all, Reyna.”

  “Aye,” she whispered.

  “Aye, my lord,” he corrected.

  She gritted her teeth. “Aye, my lord.”

  She thought that he would release her then, but he did not.

  “Did you love him?”

  She startled at the unexpected question. “Love who, Ian? Robert? Reginald? Edmund? You have made me out to be the lover of several.”

  His hand tightened in warning. “Your husband. Did you love him?”

  He was offering her an excuse, an explanation for her repeated rejections. She suspected that the answer would not change anything, and so she spoke honestly. “Robert was everything to me. I built my life around him, and his death has left me without a center. He was my savior, my teacher, my father.” She paused. “He was my friend.”

  Ian glared down at her, stunned by the irrational emotion her answer evoked. An avowal of undying passion would have been easier to hear. Passion he could compete with, but her words made clear that, whatever happened this night, the old man had possessed a part of her that he would never have.

  He was jealous of a dead man, he thought with rueful anger. Her King Alfred.

  He had developed a picture of Robert of Kelso in his mind, based on the little she and others had said. Not a tall or powerfully built man, but strong in a lean, wiry way. A fine warrior, but his intelligence probably counted as much as his skill at arms there. Light gray hair at his death, and probably a beard. Not a handsome man, but kind, intelligent eyes, especially when he looked at her.

  She had come to Robert while still a child, and had lived as one in his household for several years. What had gone through his head when he finally took her to his bed? He had cared for her and loved her like a daughter. Had helped her conquer her fears and given her spirit the freedom to stretch. He had recognized her sharp mind and gently guided its development.

  He probably put off taking her a long time, and then that bed had been full of warmth and caring, but not great passion. The closeness probably counted for more than the pleasure. Their real joinings had taken place in other ways, across the fire as they discussed those books, across the table as he ate her food, across the yard as he watched her youthful play.

  Ian looked at her silent body bent in submission beneath him. She didn't move or speak, but he could feel the complex fear pouring off her. Images of her naked beneath him by the river, of her startled pleasure and wary resistance, jumbled in his mind. A strange notion prodded at him, and more words and images attached themselves to it. He was my savior, my teacher, my father, my friend.

  Ungrasping her hair, he unwound the braid. “Get undressed and get into bed, Reyna.”

  She rose to her feet and walked over to the bed, breathing to control the panic. Turning away so that she would not have to see him watch her, she unfastened the braid, hoping the fall of hair would cover her a little. She began removing her gown, and felt his relentless gaze on her the whole time.

  Slipping off the shift, she quickly climbed into the bed and pulled the sheet over her. Shutting her eyes tightly, she lay on her back and waited.

  Time pulsed past. Lots of it. She began to actually get drowsy. Opening one eye a slit, she saw Ian still sitting on the niche, looking at her. His head was cocked to one side, as if he were considering whether she was worth the trouble.

  He slid off the niche and she closed her eyes again. No longer drowsy, she listened to the sounds of his movements. Boots dropping to the floor. Cloth against cloth. A heavy weight depressed the mattress beside her. His scent and warmth assaulted her senses and her heart began pounding.

  His hand took her chin and turned her face toward him. She sensed him bend close. Lips brushed hers, and then he leaned away.

  “Don't you think that you should tell me now?”

  She opened her eyes in surprise. His naked torso hovered up on one arm. The sheet covered him to his waist.

  “I will learn the truth
soon enough,” he added.

  He knew. A variety of reactions collided inside her. She said nothing. There was nothing she could say.

  “Nay, if you did not speak to save your neck or your brother's life, you would not now to spare yourself from my angry pride.” His hand thoughtfully traced the top of the sheet along her shoulders. She sucked in her breath at the sensations that slow touch stirred. Perhaps that was how he knew. Perhaps he finally saw her shameless hunger for what it was.

  “I sat over there thinking about what you said about Robert,” he said. “And then I thought about this misunderstanding, and what you said in the garden yesterday, about having a marriage of convenience before. Other things occurred to me. The courtesan Melissa's ignorance, for one thing. I told myself later that you had faked your lack of experience when I made love to you by the river, but that night in my tent it was not yet in your interest to do so.”

  He looked her right in the eyes. “Robert of Kelso was indeed many things to you, Reyna. All that you mentioned. But I do not think that he was truly your husband. You are still a virgin, aren't you?”

  She turned her head away. He forced it back. “You can not speak of it, even now that I know? If you promised silence, you have not broken that with me. Did he make you swear an oath?”

  She desperately examined the emotions flooding her. She debated the value of continued silence and found none. Sighing deeply, exhaling a breath held for too many years, she shook her head. “He did not make me swear. He only asked me to keep my silence while he lived. He did not know that I swore to do so after he died.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “I would not have people talking about him. Ridiculing him. Guessing the reasons for it. He was a good man, respected and honored. If this were known, they would make him into a fool, or worse.”