“Put it away!” Alex roared.
Guyot complied, muttering under his breath.
“Nicki, listen to me.” Alex leaned his weight on her, pinioning her arms to keep her from hurting herself. “No one’s going to tie you up. Do you hear me? I won’t do it, and I won’t let him do it. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “And you won’t let him cut me?”
“Nicki...I can’t lie to you. I don’t want him to do it, but we don’t have any—”
“Nay!” She squirmed and writhed, trying to wrest her arms free.
“Just hold her down,” Guyot snapped impatiently. “You’re strong enough.”
“I’ll do this my own way,” Alex told him. “I’ll let you know when it’s time. Nicki, look at me.”
She whipped her head back and forth on the pillow.
“Look at me, Nicki.” Alex took both her wrists in one hand and cupped her face with the other, forcing her to be still. “Look at me!”
Her eyes were wide and terrified. “He...he tried to tie me down and...and make me...”
“No one’s going to tie you down. I promise.”
“He had a knife.”
“Maître Guyot?”
“G-Gaspar. He was going to cut off my nose.”
“Gaspar isn’t here, Nicki. No one wants to cut off your nose.”
“No, you don’t under—”
“Look at me.” Alex quieted his voice to a murmur. “Look at me, Nicki. Look right into my eyes. That’s right.” She was trembling, but had ceased her frenetic struggling. “Keep looking at me. Just at me.” He kept up this pacifying litany until he felt her body relax under his.
“That’s better.” He kissed her cheek. “Close your eyes. Good.” He released her wrists to trail his fingers through her hair. “Think about something pleasant,” he whispered. “Think about our cave. Remember how quiet it was, way in back, where we used to talk?”
She nodded.
“We must have had a hundred candles in there at the end. They made your hair look like spun gold. Remember how the reflections from the water would shimmer all over the walls? It was like something alive.”
“I remember,” she breathed.
Alex took her right hand in his and gently laid her left arm where Guyot could reach it.
“We used to make up stories about the paintings on the walls. Or, you did. I mostly just listened. I thought you were the cleverest person I’d ever known. You used to read to me—poems and stories. Remember?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
Alex rested a hand on her left shoulder and nodded to the surgeon, who took hold of her arm. “Maître Guyot is going to do what he needs to do now.”
She opened her eyes.
“But it will be all right, because I’m here.”
“Keep her still,” Guyot cautioned as he positioned the knife. Alex pressed firmly on her shoulder.
“Alex—” She flinched and squeezed her eyes shut as the surgeon made his cut. “Oh, God.” She clutched Alex’s hand, grimacing.
“I’m here.”
“Oh, God, make him stop.”
“Look at me. Look at me, Nicki. ‘Twill be over soon.”
She winced. “I hate this.”
“I know, but it will all be over soon. You’re doing very well.”
“Liar.” She actually laughed, after a fashion. “I’m a quivering baby.”
“Only about this. Everyone has something they’re afraid of.”
She looked skeptical. “What is the great White Wolf afraid of?”
He smiled. “Mallets.”
“Aye, well...that’s understandable.”
“So is this.”
“That’s the worst of it,” Guyot announced with a smile. “That wasn’t so bad was it?”
Alex and Nicki both cast him withering looks.
* * *
Even before Alex opened his eyes, while his mind still groped toward wakefulness, he knew something wasn’t right. He wasn’t lying down; he was sitting up, leaning forward on something, his head nestled in his arms. “Hunh...?”
A soft chuckle, very soft and feminine.
Alex raised his head, squinting into the face looking down at him—Nicki, sitting up in bed in her night shift, her hair askew, smiling at him. “Good morning.”
Alex looked around, squinting at the sun pouring into the solar through the window over the writing desk. “Good morning,” he croaked as he straightened up, grimacing at the stiffness in his bad hip.
Nicki hugged a pillow to her chest and grinned. “I couldn’t wake you up, of course. I considered breaking one or two of your ribs, but I don’t know as I’ve got the strength this morning.”
“No, I shouldn’t think so,” Alex said through a yawn. “You’re much improved from last night, though. Do you remember any of it?”
“Bits and pieces. I’m not sure what was real and what wasn’t.” She held out her bandaged arm. “I remember this—most of it, anyway.”
Alex nodded. “I’m sorry. Maître Guyot insisted we had no choice. I couldn’t let you...I didn’t want you to...” He combed a hand through his disorderly hair.
“I don’t remember the pain,” she said. “Just...you holding me, and talking about our cave. You were...you were very kind to do that, Alex.”
“I didn’t want you to suffer. You’d been through so much already.”
“Was it the same thing Milo had?” she asked.
“Aye. You caught it from him. I knew I shouldn’t have let you—”
“Hush.” She touched her fingertips to his lips. “I’m his wife, remember?”
Impulsively Alex caught her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “I wish you weren’t.”
She fell silent, her fingers lightly scrubbing the needle-sharp stubble on his jaw. “Why did you come up here last night?” she asked quietly. “Did you know I was sick?”
Alex shook his head, wishing he had it in him to lie. “You’ll think it’s foolish.”
“Tell me.”
He closed his eyes. “I wanted to kiss you. I’d promised myself I’d kiss you before midnight, and...I told you you’d think it was foolish.”
She gave his face one last, raspy caress and then withdrew her hand. “It’s probably just as well that you didn’t do it.”
He opened his eyes. “But I did.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You kissed me?”
“Your cheek.” He reached out and touched the very spot, soft as thistledown. “Not because of my promise to myself—I’d forgotten all about that. I just did it because...well, I just did it. And it wasn’t quite matins yet, so I suppose I kept my promise.” And when Guyot left, Alex had paid him several times more than he’d had coming to him, in order to discourage him from gossiping about what he’d seen.
Nicki shook her head, smiling crookedly. “You make the most peculiar oaths and promises. How on earth do you manage to keep track of them all?”
He rubbed his neck. “It isn’t easy.”
“Have you ever broken an oath?”
“Never,” he said quickly. “A soldier’s oath is a pledge to God Himself. I would die before breaking one.”
“But if you had to—”
“There could never be a good enough reason.”
She smiled blearily. “Don’t you think God would understand if there were? He made us. He knows our weaknesses and the impediments we face. If anyone could forgive our breaking an oath to God, it would be God himself.”
“You don’t understand,” Alex said. “Soldiers are judged by a higher standard of honor. We can’t afford to indulge our weaknesses, or bow down to impediments. When we promise God we will do a thing, we must do it.”
Slow footsteps scraped on the stone steps in the turret; something clanked softly. Alex rose and crossed to the door. “Edith is here with your breakfast.”
“You do have exceptional hearing,” Nicki said as Alex opened the door for the elderly maid.
“Oh, my poor lamb,”
Edith exclaimed when she saw her young mistress. Alex took the breakfast tray from her before she dropped it. “Serves you right, though,” she added with a disapproving glare, “for not heeding Guyot and staying clear of his lordship.”
Nicki just sighed as Alex arranged the tray on her lap. The lumpy porridge and watered wine struck him as supremely unappetizing, but she bolted it all down and sent Edith away for more.
“You should leave, too,” she told Alex. “I want to wash up and get dressed now.”
“Don’t you think you’re rushing things? It took Milo much longer to get over this. He still hasn’t gotten out of bed.”
“Milo started out sickly,” she reminded him. “I feel fine, honestly. Just a bit woozy, and that will go away if I just get up and get on with things. And after what Edith said about Milo being worried about me, I want to reassure him that I’m all right.”
“Very well,” Alex conceded, crossing to the service staircase. “But try not to do too much.”
“Alex,” she said as he opened the door. “I’m very grateful to you for what you did for me last night, staying here with me, and...everything. But you really shouldn’t have come up here. And you mustn’t kiss me, even innocently, ever again.”
“Nicki...”
“I’m married, Alex. It’s wrong. If you persist in these...familiarities, I shall have to stop spending time alone with you. And I’d hate that. Our afternoons have been...” She ducked her head; was she blushing? “Please don’t take them away from me.”
Torn between his desire to reassure her and his obligation to seduce her, Alex found himself speechless.
“Tell Milo I’ll be down by dinnertime,” she said.
Alex nodded and ducked into the stairwell.
* * *
Milo could smell the wine in the goblet Gaspar held just out of his reach as he sat on the edge of the bed. It was like some madly intoxicating perfume, drifting around him, tickling his nostrils, teasing his senses. Damn the bastard for tormenting him this way. He knew how impatient Milo always was for that first drink of the morning.
“You do know he’s fucking her,” Gaspar said.
Milo’s perceptions could not be relied on of late—he’d become nearly as muddled and forgetful as old Edith—but he didn’t think he’d misheard. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your wife.” Gaspar swirled the wine around in the goblet, releasing more of its heady bouquet into the curtained enclosure of Milo’s bed. “And Alex de Périgeaux.”
Milo swallowed hard, imagining the sour sweetness in his mouth, in his belly, anticipating the dull warmth that would spread throughout him once he’d drunk enough. As if there could ever, truly be enough. “That’s preposterous,” he managed, mindful of how badly Gaspar would take it if he found out Milo had chosen Alex to sire a son for him.
Gaspar leaned toward him, still holding the goblet to the side. “My guess is he’s been poking her every afternoon, out there in the woods, while she was supposedly teaching him how to read. Only now that she’s back in her solar, he can do her in a regular bed, with plenty of privacy, while you’re sound asleep down here. He sneaked up there last night, you know. He was up there the whole blessed night.”
Milo fumbled with the quilt, his hands shaking even worse than they usually did upon awakening. “I...sent him up,” he said. “Edith said she wasn’t feeling well, and I can’t very well make it up those stairs so I asked Alex to—”
“Don’t you ever,” Gaspar whispered fiercely, his teeth bared, “ever, think you can lie to me.”
Rarely had Milo seen Gaspar vent his wrath, and never at him. Christ, but he needed a drink. “I...that is...”
“There can be only one reason for you to invent such a pathetic fabrication,” Gaspar said. “You’re trying to keep me from discerning the truth, which is that you enlisted your cousin to do the job I was unworthy of.”
How Milo craved the numbing cocoon of drunkenness. “Gaspar, listen to me...”
“Does she know he’s just servicing her as a favor to you, or did he actually have to sweet-talk his way under her skirts?”
Milo licked his lips. “Give me the goblet, Gaspar.”
“Does she know?”
Across the hall, soldiers turned to stare, then returned their attention to their breakfasts.
“For God’s sake, Gaspar, keep your voice—”
“Does she?”
“Nay. Of course not. She’d never go along with it. You know that.”
“Not if it was the lowly apothecary castellan doing the deed. But her husband’s highborn cousin—”
“Not if it was anyone. She has no idea why Alex really...why he...”
“Seduced her,” Gaspar spat out.
Was it true? Had Alex already managed to coax Nicolette into betraying her precious marital vows? Milo hadn’t expected such quick acquiescence. Part of him felt absurdly disappointed that she’d yielded to him so easily. Another part felt relieved, for the sooner they consummated their liaison, the greater the chance that a pregnancy would result from it.
“For the love of God, Gaspar,” Milo begged, despising himself. “Give me the wine.”
Gaspar stared at him for a few long moments, and then handed him the goblet. Milo gulped its contents breathlessly.
“This complicates things,” Gaspar murmured, gazing in an unfocused way across the hall. “This changes everything.”
“Changes what?” Milo asked.
Gaspar blinked, as if a spell had been broken. “Oh, naught that concerns you, milord.” Grabbing the jug, he refilled Milo’s goblet. “Drink up. That’s right. There’s plenty more in the buttery.
Chapter 17
Nicki watched Alex with lazy satisfaction as he hunched cross-legged over the slender volume in his hand, reading aloud from the letters of St. Jerome.
“I...gather the rose from the...thorn,” Alex said, little frown lines etched deeply between the black slashes of his brows, “the...gold?” He tilted the book toward Nicki, reclining next to him; she nodded. “The gold from the earth, the pearl from the...well, I suppose it must be ‘oyster.’ What else would one gather a pearl from?”
He showed her the book again. “Oyster,” Nicki said.
A warm breeze fluttered his hair and made his shirt ripple over the solid planes of his shoulders and chest. There was something about this virile, scarred soldier concentrating so diligently over his studies that made her ridiculously happy. He’d shown uncommon progress in the three weeks since their lessons had commenced. Nicki ached with pride for him.
“Shall the...plowman?”
Nicki nodded.
“Shall the plowman plow all day? Shall he not also enjoy the...fruit of his...labor?” Looking up, Alex caught her eye. “Are you sure this is about sex?”
She laughed. “Read on.”
Grinning, he said, “You misled me just to make me read it. It’s about...roses and pearls and—”
“Read. On.”
Sighing grumpily, he stretched out on his side facing her. “Where was I? Ah. Wedlock is the more...” He spun the book around, pointing.
“Honored.”
“...honored when the fruit of wedlock is the more...loved. Why, mother, grudge your daughter her...virginity?” Alex cocked an eyebrow. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
Nicki took the book from him and picked up the train of St. Jerome’s thoughts a few lines down. “Are you vexed with her because she chooses to wed not a soldier but a king?”
Alex’s amusement seemed to vanish. “Don’t tell me this is a treatise about the folly of marrying soldiers. Well, of course, if one could have king instead—”
“Milo’s right,” Nicki said, giggling. “You’re so terribly literal.”
“You mean ignorant.”
“No!” She sat up. “No, I mean exactly what I said. You’re literal. You see things for what they are, right there on the surface, instead of digging for all kinds of hid
den meanings and secret messages. You’re so honest and forthright yourself that you expect everyone else to be the same way.”
“Once I did,” he said quietly. Before Nicki could respond to that, he picked up the book. “So, what did St. Jerome mean about being vexed because your daughter chooses to wed a king?”
“The king,” Nicki elaborated. “The king of kings. Christ.”
“Ah.” Alex sat up, his eyes sparking. “He’s saying you should rejoice if your daughter becomes a nun—a bride of Christ.”
Nicki nodded. “Because she’ll remain a virgin. He discouraged marriage for the same reason.”
“He must have been mad,” Alex said. “Marriage is a sacred union.”
“Not to St. Jerome—unless the husband and wife don’t sleep together.”
“Who’d put up with a marriage like that?”
Nicki felt heat rising in her face. “Sometimes one has no choice.”
“Sorry,” Alex murmured. “I meant voluntarily. It may be heresy, but if this is the type of thing St. Jerome believed, he sounds very much like a raving lunatic.”
“His views were extreme, I suppose, but I see his point. One should learn to master one’s...baser drives, not be forever at the mercy of them.” If only Nicki could put into practice what she espoused. Her mother was right; she was weak about matters of the flesh, as demonstrated by her ill-fated affair with Phillipe. If further proof was needed, there was her adulterous love for Alex, a passion so unruly that she ached with the strain of containing it. Every day she rejoiced in his nearness, his warm scent, his all-seeing gaze, his raspy-deep voice. And every night, God help her, she lay awake consumed by unholy yearnings, imagining him on top of her, inside her, one with her.
Alex was shaking his head. “Sex is a joyous act—or it should be, especially between husband and wife, because then it’s sanctioned by God. And were it not for sex, no children would come into the world, and then where would we be?”
Nicki plucked at the blanket on which they sat, contemplating the predicament her own childlessness had landed her in, and the scheme she’d come up with for remaining at Peverell despite the lack of an heir. Last month, when Alex first came here, she would never have dreamed of confiding in him, but since her illness a fortnight past, she’d felt differently. They’d grown closer, although Périgeaux still weighed heavily between them and she suspected they would never regain the emotional intimacy they’d known then. But then, such intimacy would be wrong, given that she was wed to another. Alex had heeded her wishes—her threat, really—and suspended his amorous attentions, a relief inasmuch as she doubted her ability to resist him indefinitely.
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 124
