By Arrangement

by Madeline Hunter

  Her annoyance flared at this game he played with her. She grabbed the towel and stood in the water, drying her arms and body with hurried movements.

  She would show this merchant what noblewomen were made of.

  She draped the large linen towel around her, catching its ends under her arm. She stepped out of the tub and kicked aside the drape. Water from her legs began pooling on the wooden floor.

  He sat atop a high chest next to the hearth, his back against the wall and one arm resting on a raised knee. His cool gaze met hers and then drifted down in a lazy way. She fought down the alarm that rose in her chest.

  He had placed another log on the fire, and the small wardrobe, crowded with chests that held Isabele's gowns and furs, felt warm enough. She sat on a stool by the tub and patted the ends of the long towel against her legs to dry them.

  She did not look at him but she knew that he watched her. She worked hard not to let him see that it unsettled her.

  “How did you know his name?” she asked, proud of how casual her voice sounded. Almost as casual and placid as his did all of the time. Except when he was jealous. She groaned inwardly at her stupidity. Perhaps it would be best to avoid talk of Stephen Percy under the circumstances.

  “I've known who he was from the beginning. Don't look so surprised. You all but told me his name that first night. I also know that you are not the first innocent girl whom he has seduced, nor will you be the last. Some men have a taste for such things, and he is one of them.”

  His words probed at forbidden thoughts buried deep in her heart, thoughts that tried to surface late at night as she lay in her bed and counted days passing and days left. She had walled those worries into a dark corner, and she rebelled at this man going near them.

  She glared at him. He sits there so damned calmly, she thought. He looks at me like he has a right to be here. Like he owns me. She braced herself against the feelings of vulnerability and tension which that look summoned.

  “I hate you,” she muttered.

  His lids lowered. “Careful, girl. I may decide to encourage your hatred. I find that I prefer it to your indifference.”

  He hopped off the chest. The movement made her tense.

  “You still wait for him,” he said. “After all of this time and when the truth is so clear. It is well that Edward gave you to me. You would have spent your whole life waiting and living in a faded dream.”

  “Perhaps I still will.” She spoke the words like a bold threat.

  “Nay. You wake up today.”

  He stepped toward her. She rose from her stool at once, clutching the towel around her and backing up. He stopped.

  She didn't like the way he watched her. Even worse, she didn't like the way that she was reacting to it. For all of her annoyance, that exquisite expectation branched through her. Sharp and vivid memories of the pleasure she had felt at Smithfield forced themselves onto her thoughts and her body.

  “I demand that you leave,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Your brother is out of this now. So is Stephen Percy. There was no duel and there will be no abduction. Finally it is just you and me.”

  Her heart pounded desperately. “You are frightening me, David.”

  “At least I have your attention for a change. Besides, I told you before. It is not fear that you feel with me.”

  “It is now.” And it was. A horrible, wonderful combination of fear and anticipation and attraction and denial. Like the lines of a rope twined in on each other, they twisted and twisted together, pulling and stretching her soul. If he didn't leave, she was sure that something would snap.

  “If you won't leave, I shall.” Somehow she found enough composure to speak calmly.

  He gestured to the clothes on the stool to his right and the door to his left. “I will not stop you, Christiana.”

  She had to pass him to leave. Was it her imagination that his blue eyes dared her to approach? He is enjoying this, she thought, and the vexation surged in her again, vanquishing those other feelings for a moment and making her brave.

  The daughter of Hugh Fitzwaryn need not be afraid of a tradesman, she thought firmly. A noblewoman could walk naked down the Strand and her status would protect her and clothe her as surely as steel. How many tailors and haberdashers of David's degree had seen her dressed in no more than a shift as they waited upon the princess and her friends? This towel covered her more. Such men did not exist if one chose to have it so.

  Aye. It would even be thus with David de Abyndon.

  She lowered her eyes and collected herself. She imagined that he was a mercer who had come to show his wares. She let her spirit withdraw from him and from those strange feelings that he summoned so easily, and she wrapped herself in the knowledge of who she was and what he was.

  Lifting her gaze, she looked more to the hearth than to him. Holding the towel around her, she calmly walked over to the stool and bent her knees so as to reach the garments.

  Fingers stroked firmly into her hair and twisted. The clothes fell from her hand as he yanked her up. Gasping with shock, she found her face inches away from flaming blue eyes.

  “Do not do that again,” he warned. “Ever.”

  She was looking into the face of danger and she knew it. She did not move. She barely breathed.

  Slowly, as he held her and looked at her, the flames cooled and the hardness left his eyes and mouth. She could see when he regained control and the anger fell from his perfect face.

  The expression that replaced it was just as dangerous in its own way, though. His hand did not release her hair. If anything, it gripped a little tighter.

  He looked over her face slowly and then down at her bare shoulders and neck. She watched his gaze drift to the damp towel clutched against her body. She had never been so thoroughly looked at in her life. His unhurried possessive inspection left her as breathless and tingling as a caress.

  He pulled her toward him. A tremor of fearful anticipation quaked through her. Her legs almost wouldn't support her as her body followed her head. He lowered his mouth to hers.

  She fought the emotions. She battled them valiantly with every bit of her strength of will. But her defenses had never been very strong against his kisses, and as this one deepened and his other arm embraced her, she melted against him as those wonderful sensations took control of her.

  His mouth moved beautifully over her face and neck and ears and shoulders, kissing and biting gently, drawing softly at the pulse points. He played at the lines of tension stretching through her like they were the strings on a lute, luring her toward acceptance. She knew what was happening, but the pleasure of the heated shocks that spiraled from each kiss made her want more, and the gentle waves flowing through her from his caress on her back promised an ocean of oblivious delight.

  He tugged gently at the back of the towel. She fought to the surface of her sensual sea.

  “Nay,” she whispered.

  “Aye,” he said.

  The towel's edge dislodged from under her arm and fell away from her back. That fear that wasn't fear shrieked and she clutched the edge of the linen tighter to her chest, her arms crossing her breasts.

  He did not try to remove it. Untangling his hand from her hair, he embraced her tightly so that her arms were imprisoned between their bodies. He lowered his mouth to the skin just above her hands while his embrace moved down her back.

  The feel of his warm hands on her bare skin exhilarated her. Even her awareness of his kisses dimmed as all of her senses focused on those heated caresses. Her whole being waited and felt and savored the progress of that touch. Low and deep in her body that strange pulse began throbbing.

  He took her mouth again and his hands went lower, down to her hips and lower back, down finally to her bottom. She started in surprise but he kissed her harder and his hands stayed there, following the swells of her body. That secret pulse grew aching and hot, and she dully realized that it was deep in her belly near her thighs and his hands were
very close to it.

  The feelings were too exquisite, too delicious to stop him. The voice of her mind grew very quiet and weak. That rational awareness only observed, noticing the scent of the man who held her and the sound of her gasping breaths. The waiting expectation she had first felt at Smithfield obliterated any real thought and grew now into something demanding and impatient and slightly painful.

  His hands drifted lower. He cupped her lower buttocks in a caress of commanding intimacy. She gasped aloud as that throbbing center of pleasure exploded with a white heat.

  His fingers rested at the very top of her thighs where they joined. She felt as she had when she waited for him to touch her breast, only the anticipation had a frantic, desperate quality to it and the pulsing expectation possessed a physical reality that stunned her.

  Suddenly the fear that had always been there when he kissed and touched her rose from the depths where the pleasure had banished it. The small voice of her mind considered that something was occurring here that had never happened with Stephen.

  “David …” she whispered, beginning a feeble protest.

  He lifted his head and looked at her with a face transformed and more handsome than ever. The glowing warmth in those eyes left her speechless.

  He pulled her hips closer to his. Her arms still held the towel to her chest, and she didn't stand of her own will now. The fingers near her thighs shifted as he moved her closer yet.

  Her belly pressed against him. She felt warmth and hardness. That hidden place, so full of ache and yearning and so close to his hand, responded forcefully.

  Her eyes flew open wide.

  He bent to kiss her again. “Aye,” he said quietly.

  A very peculiar notion teased at her mind and then forced itself on her.

  Outrageous, really.

  Impossible.

  As if reading her thoughts, he slid his hand between the back of her thighs and gently touched her. Effortlessly his fingers found that hungry ache.

  She cried out from the shock of the pleasure. Twisting violently, she jumped out of his arms and just stared at him.

  His own reaction was just as strong. She watched breathlessly as surprise gave way to perplexity and then finally to anger. Pulling the towel back around her, she moved away, trying desperately to sort her confused thoughts and emotions.

  She didn't want him angry. She wanted to explain. But explain what? That a bizarre, unnatural idea of what he wanted from her had unaccountably lodged in her mind and suddenly seemed … logical? She was probably wrong, and if she spoke of this to him, he would think her perverted. All the same, she didn't want him touching her again, especially like that, until she found out for sure that she hadn't grossly misunderstood everything.

  He just looked at her, the beautiful warmth dimming from his eyes and the placid expression reclaiming him. She felt like a fool standing there in her towel, but she didn't know what to say.

  “Very well, Christiana. If you do not want to give yourself to me now, I will wait,” he finally said, walking over to pick up his sword.

  Her mind reeled. Give yourself to me, Stephen had pleaded that day on the bed. She thought he meant in marriage. But it meant something else, didn't it? Had she gotten absolutely everything wrong?

  She needed to talk to someone. Now. Soon. Who? Joan. Would Joan know?

  David walked back over to the door. Today you wake up, he had said. Dear God, but she felt awake now. Horribly so.

  “I will not return here, Christiana. We will do it your way. Today I learned that Edward will attend our wedding. Your brother and the King will deliver you to me two Tuesdays hence. If you have need of me before that, you know where to find me.”

  He turned to go. Out of the jumbled confusion of her mind a question that she had pondered leapt forward. Without thinking, she blurted it out. “Who is Frans van Horlst to you?”

  Perhaps because it was so unexpected and so irrelevant to what had just occurred, it startled him. He quickly composed himself.

  “He is a Flemish merchant. We have business together.”

  He was lying. She just sensed it. Dear God, I don't know him at all. Twelve days and I don't know him.

  The shock to her emotions had made her very alert, very awake. Inconsistencies about David suddenly presented themselves. She had never noticed them before. She had never paid attention.

  There were a lot, and her suspicions about Frans van Horlst only added to them. What were these trips he took? How did he have access to Edward? Why offer for her and pay a huge bride price? Why did he have a servant who looked like a soldier? How did he know that Stephen was not coming?

  He knew that for sure. She just felt it.

  Finally she spoke. “Who are you? Really?”

  The question startled him anew. For the briefest instant the mask dropped, and in those eyes of lapis lazuli she saw layer upon layer of shadowed emotions. Then his careful expression returned and he smiled at her. It was a faint smile that revealed nothing.

  He opened the door. “You know who I am, my lady. I am the merchant who paid a fortune for the right to take you to my bed.”

  She stood with her arms embracing herself in the towel and listened to his steps recede through the anteroom.

  He had responded to the last question just as she had asked it, in perfect Parisian French.

  Christiana waited until the deep of night when the apartment and the castle were silent before slipping out of her bed. At the end of the room, Lady Idonia slept the sleep of the dead. Christiana wasn't surprised. Idonia had returned from her ride with Sieg flush faced and bright eyed, looking very young for her thirty-eight years. Kerchief gone and hair disarrayed, she had only halfheartedly mumbled some criticisms of David's presumptuous servant and of David himself, who had ordered Sieg to carry her off.

  She padded the few steps to Joan's bed and slipped between the curtains. She sat on the bed and jostled her shoulder. Total darkness wrapped the bed, and that suited her just fine. She felt like an idiot and didn't need to see Joan's amusement during this conversation.

  She sensed Joan jolt wake and heard her sit up.

  “It is I,” Christiana whispered. “I need to speak with you. It is very important.”

  Little stretches and yawns filled the tented space. Joan shifted over to make more room. Christiana crossed her legs and pulled part of the coverlet over them.

  “Joan, I need you to tell me what happens between a man and a woman when they are married.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Joan said. “You mean … no one ever … Idonia didn't …”

  “Idonia did. When I was about ten. But I think that I misunderstood.” Christiana remembered well what Idonia had said to her. In its own way it had been quite straightforward, up to a point, and had struck her at the time as very peculiar and not very interesting. She suspected that Idonia had assumed that over the years common sense would fill in the essential gaps, but until this afternoon her imagination had failed her.

  “You marry in less than two weeks, Christiana.”

  “Which is why I need to know now.”

  “I would say so. The notion usually takes a while to get used to.”

  “How long?”

  “For me, about three years.”

  Wonderful.

  “So tell me.”

  Joan sighed. “Let's see. Well, haven't you ever seen animals mating?”

  “I have lived at court since I was seven. Where in these crowded castles and palaces do animals mate? The stables? The kennels? Not the dinner hall or the garden. I didn't grow up on a country estate like you, Joan.”

  “Dear saints.”

  “Tell me bluntly, Joan. Plain language. No gaps.”

  Joan took a deep breath and then explained quickly. Christiana felt more the fool with each word that she heard. Deep in her heart she had known since David touched her that it was thus, but her mind simply wouldn't accept the appalling logic of it.

  Jokes suddenly made sense. Vagu
e lines in songs abruptly became clear. Stephen's hand pushing apart her thighs …

  He had not done this thing to her, but he had planned to. Only Idonia's arrival had saved her from that brutal shock. She hadn't even known what he was about.

  David … good heavens.

  “Can a man tell if you have done this before?” she asked cautiously.

  She could feel Joan's eyes boring through the blackness. “Usually.” Joan explained how they could tell. Christiana winced at the description of pain and blood.

  “Are you saying that you did this and didn't know it, Christiana? That doesn't make sense.”

  “Nay. I thought that I had …I told David that I had.”

  Joan barely suppressed a giggle. “Well, that is a switch. Normally girls need to make excuses why there isn't evidence of virginity. You, on the other hand …”

  “Don't laugh at me, Joan. This is serious.”

  “Aye. He may think that you lied to get out of the marriage, mayn't he?”

  Aye, he may, Christiana thought dully.

  Joan's hand touched her arm. “Who was it? I didn't realize there was someone. No wonder that you have been so unhappy about this betrothal. I never saw you even speak with a man more than once or twice, except maybe …” Her hand gripped tighter. “Is that who it was? Stephen Percy? Oh, Christiana.”

  She neither agreed nor disagreed. Joan knew she had guessed right, though, and in a way she was glad. It felt good to finally share that agony, even if the pain had been dulling for some time now.

  Joan's hand sought hers in the dark. When she spoke, her voice was low and sympathetic. “I must tell you something. You will hear it soon, for it will be all around the court in the next day or so. Stephen's uncle was on the bridge, and Thomas and I spoke with him. He received a messenger today from Northumberland.” She squeezed Christiana's hand. “Stephen was betrothed ten days ago. The match had been made when he was just a youth.”

  A huge, deep fissure opened up inside her, slicing through her soul as if it were carved by hot steel. It reached down to the deepest reaches, releasing at last all of those fears and suspicions and forbidden doubts. They surged and overwhelmed her.