At the gate, waiting patiently despite the cold, were several of her uncle’s poorer tenants. Each one held something with which to carry their gifts, either an old basket or shawl or piece of rag. Some held out the bottom of their tunic or skirt, if that was all they had.
At the front of the small crowd were the children.
With a congenial smile, Giselle beckoned them forward, calling most of them by name and giving into their eager hands a small loaf of brown bread and such meat and other food as they could carry. A few loaves fell to the ground, to be quickly snatched up again with a rueful smile, and more than one small voice lisped a fervent thanks that went straight to Giselle’s heart.
Then she distributed the rest of the remaining food to the youths and adults. Each one bowed or curtsied, smiling and murmuring their thanks, as well.
Of all her duties during the Christmastime, this was the one Giselle enjoyed best. Unlike many of the nobles, these people were truly grateful for the food her uncle provided.
When she had given the last, she dismissed the kitchen boys and turned to go back to the hall.
She nearly collided with Sir Myles Buxton, who was leaning against the inner gate, a strange, intriguing expression on his handsome face—of approval, and something else.
Respect. Genuine, sincere respect.
Drawn by that look, she went toward him. “What are you doing here, Sir Myles?” she asked quietly. “I thought you would be dancing.”
“I found myself curious to know what other pressing duty tore you from my side,” he answered softly.
“I...I have to get back,” she stammered.
He nodded and fell into step beside her as she turned toward the kitchen. His face was all angles and planes in the moonlight, and she couldn’t read his expression.
“You do that very well,” he observed.
“It is not difficult to give away food for which we have no further use.”
“It is a rare person who can make it seem as if the giver of gifts is the one receiving the charity.”
“Perhaps that is because I enjoy it. It makes me happy to see the children smile and to think that tonight, they will be well fed.”
“You like children?”
“Very much. Don’t you?”
“I’ve never given them much thought. I suppose so.” He put his hand on her shoulder, so that she stopped walking. She faced him, alone in the winter-quiet courtyard. “Sir?”
Something was different. He was different, or she was. Whatever the cause, Giselle felt that something had altered between them, here in the intimacy of this moment.
Where was her previous dislike for an arrogant nobleman? More to the point, when had the arrogant nobleman been replaced by this respectful, soft-spoken stranger?
“I would like my own children,” he said, and with more true sincerity than she had ever heard in his voice before. “I would like them to be our children.”
Now, here, such a thing not only seemed possible but even desirable.
As marriage to him was desirable. As he was desirable.
Stunned by the force of this realization, so opposite to her resolve to save herself from the shackles of marriage for at least a little while, Giselle pulled away and hurried into the hall as quickly as a dignified lady could.
Chapter Four
He was doing it again, Giselle realized as she stood in the chapel the next morning. Sir Myles stood silently behind her, saying nothing yet managing to disrupt her thoughts and prayers as effectively as if he were muttering in her ear.
Not that it required his physical presence for him to dominate her thoughts, as last night had demonstrated. She had been unable to sleep for what seemed half the night. Instead, she had spent the time pacing and thinking, thinking and pacing, trying to rekindle her determination not to marry anyone soon.
If only Sir Myles had proved to be what she had first taken him for, another hypocritical young nobleman. Then, it would be easy to maintain her resolve not to like him. With this new Sir Myles, she was finding that increasingly difficult.
She had finally concluded that the best thing to do would be to inform him of her wishes regarding marriage in general, and the bargain she had made with her uncle. If he was truly what he seemed last night, he would understand, or at least make an effort to.
With that in mind, she wanted to speak with him very much this morning, as soon as she could.
Unfortunately, when Father Paul finished the mass and the people began to file out into the wintry air surrounded by the haunting sounds of Latin chanting, she discovered that Sir Myles had already left the chapel. Disappointed, she continued toward the hall, intending to change before getting down to the business of the day.
Then she spotted Sir Myles, suddenly and unexpectedly, near the entrance to her uncle’s solar, perhaps waiting for Sir Wilfrid. She glanced about and was relieved to see that the hall was relatively empty. “Sir Myles!” she called out softly as she hurried toward him.
He smiled when he saw her and she tried not to feel the warmth of it, although her whole being seemed to respond to the affection it promised.
“I would speak with you, sir, if you can spare a moment,” she said when she reached him. A quick look told her no one was in the solar and she gestured toward the empty room.
“Anything to oblige, my lady,” Sir Myles replied. He stepped aside to allow her to enter first. “Indeed, I am delighted to have another private moment with you.”
He followed her into the small room, which contained a large, somewhat scarred oak table, with a heavy chair behind it that her uncle usually occupied, and another before it, for visitors. A brazier was already lit in the corner, as Giselle had instructed, for her uncle might want to play a game of chess here with one of his many guests.
The room was illuminated by three small, very narrow windows—little more than slits—that kept out most of the wind, even today. Rushes sprinkled with fleabane covered the floor, except in the places where her uncle’s hounds usually lay. There the bare stone floor showed through. Because the sky was cloudy, two flambeaux were also lit and burning in sconces in the thick stone walls that were bare of tapestries, in accordance with her uncle’s preference.
Sir Myles closed the door. Giselle wanted to protest but thought better of it. Her arrangement with her uncle was unusual, and perhaps required secrecy if it was to continue.
Then Sir Myles reached into the pouch at his waist and handed her a large, ornate and singularly ugly brooch made of pale green, blue and yellow gemstones. “For the second day of Christmas,” he announced grandly.
Full of her own concerns and caught off guard by his gift, she glanced down at his offering, heavy in her hand. She preferred small, delicate pieces of lesser value but more beauty. “Thank you,” she mumbled, wondering how much it had cost and regretting the waste of money.
Then she looked at his face, and in his eyes, she saw very real anxiety. About a brooch?
“Thank you,” she repeated, shocked that her acceptance of it seemed to mean so much to him and trying to sound more sincere. “It’s...it’s...”
“Must you be so ungracious, my lady?” he demanded, the apprehension in his expression suddenly replaced by fierce anger. “Is this how you have been taught to accept a gift?”
Confused, ashamed and upset, Giselle did not take refuge in tears. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “I think it was most improper of you to shut the door. Is this how you have been taught a gentleman behaves?”
His dark brows lowered ominously as he glared at her, as if marshalling all the force of his masculinity against her. “I think I need hardly point out that coming in here was your suggestion, my lady. It was a most wise and prophetic notion, however, for I don’t think you would like any stray servant or guest to overhear what I am about to say.”
“I don’t have to listen—” she began. Then she heard the sound of footsteps nearby and the noise of servants making idle chatter. She had absolutel
y no wish to be seen in such circumstances with Sir Myles, lest they be misconstrued. “Please say what you will and let me be about my business!”
Instead of answering right away, he slowly surveyed her from head to foot in a most impertinent manner. She flushed hotly as he abruptly turned on his heel and went behind the table, where he sat in her uncle’s chair.
“Have you nothing to say to me, after all?” she charged when he still did not speak. “If not—”
“Sit down, Giselle,” he ordered brusquely.
She gasped. “Who do you think you are to—”
“Sit down!”
Giselle marched to the other chair and was about to throw herself into it when she recalled Lady Katherine’s constant admonition that a lady always acted like a lady if she wanted to command respect. She halted and slowly, demurely, in her most graceful, ladylike manner, slid into the chair. “I thanked you, which is all that is required when a gift is given, or so I thought.”
He didn’t appear to be moved by her dignified response. “Who do you think you are to accept my gifts with so little grace?” he said, glaring at her with a condemning expression on his handsome face.
She crossed her arms and did not reply. She must have been mad to feel for him as she had last night, or influenced by the moonlight.
“Are you trying to annoy me, the man you are going to marry? Where is the sense in that? I took you for an intelligent woman when I first met you, but I am beginning to think I was mistaken.” He continued to stare at her, tapping his booted foot impatiently.
He was as upset as any little boy who doesn’t get his own way, Giselle suddenly realized. She recalled how Lady Katherine treated the spoiled girls who arrived to be fostered with her.
“Oh,” she wailed dramatically and put her hand to her forehead, “forgive me!” Her apology oozed insincerity. “I did not abase myself! I did not imply that never in the history of the entire world has such a gift been given! I didn’t kneel at your feet and kiss the hem of your robe! Oh, how terrible I am!” Her voice grew colder. “Of course, you did not select these gifts to be demonstrations of your wealth. Certainly they were not intended to be manifestations of your taste! Alas, that I could have been so blind.”
His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. “I do not find this little display amusing, my lady.”
“Nor did I find your gifts pleasing, my lord.”
“Obviously.”
“I will gladly return them.”
His eyes narrowed. “They are betrothal gifts. You cannot give them back.”
“I can if I decide I will not marry you.”
His gaze searched her face. “What are you talking about? The agreement has been made.”
“But not signed.”
“What of that? It is going to be signed soon enough, of that I am certain.”
She felt a moment’s doubt. Sir Myles had spoken to her uncle in the solar for some time on the day he had arrived, or so Mary had said. Could it be that her uncle had decided he need not abide by his bargain with her?
No, that she could not believe. Her uncle would have told her if he had changed his mind, and the reason why.
“But you have not signed the contract,” she affirmed warily.
“A small detail that will be corrected soon enough.”
Giselle kept her face impassive. “I would not be so sure of that, Sir Myles.”
He rose from the chair and adopted the stance she remembered from that first day when he had climbed onto the yule log. “What nonsense is this?” he asked angrily. “Your uncle has said nothing to me of a change in our agreement.”
“Nevertheless, there has been a change.” She regarded him as steadily as she could, despite his powerful and somewhat threatening presence. “He has given me the right to refuse.”
“What?”
“My uncle is going to allow me to refuse you, if I don’t find you agreeable.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life!” Sir Myles declared.
“Be that as it may,” she said firmly, “it is true.”
Then something completely unexpected happened. Sir Myles’s gaze faltered and he looked at the floor. “And you do not find me agreeable?” he asked softly. “Any more than my gifts?”
She was quite prepared to say that she did not, except this change in his behavior confused her yet again.
What kind of man was this? Proud and insolent one moment, respectful and even anxious as any woman could wish the next.
“It’s not that you’re not agreeable, exactly,” she said slowly. “You’re certainly very handsome and manly. It’s just that I don’t wish to marry soon. I hoped my bargain with my uncle would give me a little time for liberty.”
He sighed, and then he came around behind her and began to brush his long, lean fingers over the back of her chair. “And this aversion to matrimony has nothing to do with me in particular?”
She rose and placed her slender hand lightly on his arm. “No, and I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’ve been rude and unmannerly. I...I wanted to explain myself to you this morning.
“You see, Sir Myles,” she began slowly and with unexpected shyness, “I was a long time under the fosterage of a very strict lady. That wasn’t so very bad, because I had friends there. But one by one, they married, and it was as if they had died. We never heard from them again. I can only think that was because their husbands frowned upon such visits, although I don’t see why. So you see, I was in no hurry to be similarly imprisoned. Then I learned that my uncle had betrothed me even before I came here.”
“I suppose I would be disappointed if someone had made such an arrangement for me under similar circumstances,” Myles said with an understanding smile.
“I was more than disappointed, Sir Myles,” she admitted. “I was angry. And I knew that I could not, by law, be forced to marry against my will. So I made a bargain with my uncle. If I do a fine job as chatelaine during the twelve days of Christmas, then I can refuse his choice.”
“Do you still wish to refuse me?” Myles asked softly. He looked at her—and in his eyes, she thought she saw a calculating expression that chilled her to the bone.
While Myles held his breath as he waited for her response, afraid to break the mood he had established, and telling himself, as he had been since she began her explanation, that his anxiety was unfounded and that with care, he could overcome her foolish whim not to be wed.
She looked up at him doubtfully, and before she could speak, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, certain that after that, she would forget all thoughts of refusing to agree to marry him.
Indeed, he forgot all thoughts of anything but how wonderful it was to hold her in his arms and taste her lips with his own.
It took all his self-control to break the kiss at what he judged the proper moment, so that they had kissed long enough to excite her and yet not so long as to be overwhelming, for either of them. “Forgive me, my lady,” he whispered. “I was swept away by your—”
“Stupidity?” she declared, stepping abruptly away from him with a disgusted expression. “Do you think I don’t know a clever show of playacting when I see it? Do you think those eyes of yours do not give away everything? I wouldn’t marry you now if you were the last man in England!”
For an instant, he was completely dumbfounded.
“Do you think I am some silly girl to lose the measure of freedom I have won because of your charm or your looks? That because of a moment’s intimacy in the courtyard and one kiss, I will resign myself to your will?”
Who do you think you are, boy? His father’s harsh words seemed to ring out in the air between them, so much so that Myles almost covered his ears with his hands.
Instead, and with surprising speed, he grabbed her and pulled her back into his embrace, staring into her suddenly frightened eyes. “It really doesn’t matter what you want, my lady,” he said. “The marriage agreement has been made, and I intend to see
that it is kept! No one spurns Myles Buxton! No one!”
He let go of her just as quickly. “Lady Giselle,” he said, fighting to make his tone more reasonable, to hide his anger and his anguish, as she rubbed her arms where he had grabbed her. “You had best understand this. Your uncle and I both know that this is a most advantageous match, and neither one of us would care to see it broken.”
“What of love, Sir Myles?” Giselle charged. “Does it mean nothing to you? For I assure you, I could never love a hypocrite like you!”
His lips curled into a grin that was more like a scowl. “I would never have guessed that from your kiss,” he noted haughtily. Suddenly he pulled her into his arms again and, as she struggled to get free of him, his voice dropped to a husky whisper. “You will not marry without love, is that it? Then I promise you, my arrogant young lady, that before the twelfth day of Christmas has passed, you will be passionately in love with me. Passionately.”
He pushed her away and she stared at him in astonishment. Then her eyes narrowed like an opponent on the field of battle. “Is that a challenge, sir knight?”
“If you choose to think so.”
“I do—and I accept. But what if I am not passionately in love with you by then?” she demanded scornfully.
“Then you do not have to marry me.”
She smiled slowly and with such a look in her eyes that Myles feared he had made a grievous error making such a concession. Nevertheless, he would not back down, just as he would never admit that his father was right about him.
“I trust you realize you begin with a serious disadvantage,” she said. “I do not like you.”
“A little adversity makes the challenge that much more interesting, and the triumph all the greater,” he replied.
“If it pleases you to think so,” she said as she sidled toward the door, “although I would not be too swift to celebrate your triumph. Now if you will excuse me, I have many things to do.”
The Knights of Christmas Page 14
