Why, after holding self-pity at bay for so long, should she suddenly give way to it now?
“The fool does not know the prize that awaits him,” Stephen said in a soft voice. “Once he meets you, he will regret every moment he wasted.”
She sighed and rested her head against his chest again. “My father told me not to believe in fairy tales.”
Stephen brushed a loose strand of hair from her face and kissed her forehead. “There is nothing wrong in hoping for something rare.”
She felt his breath in her hair as he held her.
Unleashed emotion swirled inside her. She heard the change in his breathing and felt the tension grow between them. She waited, expectant.
She nuzzled her head against his shoulder, hoping he would kiss her hair again. When he did, she sighed and lifted her face to him. His eyes locked on hers, but he made no move to kiss her. She slid her hands up his chest and rested them on the back of his neck.
He shook his head. “This is not wise, Isobel.”
Neither was it fair that she might spend the rest of her days married to a man whose kiss, whose every touch, was hateful to her. “ ’Tis just a kiss, Stephen.”
“I do not think just a kiss is possible between us.”
Since the day her childhood came to a crashing end, she’d done what she should and what she must. She was sick to death of it.
She pulled Stephen to her and pressed her mouth to his. The kiss was at once all heat and passion, tongues moving, bodies rubbing, hands searching. When his hand covered her breast, she let her head fall back and closed her eyes. She felt the softness of his lips, the heat of his breath on her skin, as he moved down her throat and back up again.
“What makes me want you so badly?” he breathed against her ear. “Is it that I know I cannot have you?”
But he could have her.
She had no will to stop him. Nay, she would not let him stop. When she ran her tongue across his bottom lip and slipped her hands under his shirt, he understood the invitation. He leaned her back onto the floor. She loved the feel of his hands in her hair, the urgency of his kisses.
She raked her fingers down his back, reveling in the feel of tight muscles beneath the cloth. When she reached his buttocks, he groaned and pressed his hips hard against her. He held her face and covered her with kisses: her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, her temples.
All she wanted was for him to keep on kissing her, touching her. She deserved this. She needed this. They rolled and kissed beneath the curtain of her hair. And then rolled again. His tongue was in her ear. The unexpected sensation drove away the last bit of guilt nagging at the edge of her mind.
Her every muscle tensed as he made his way, sucking and kissing, down the side of her throat and along the edge of her gown. She arched her back, wanting without knowing what. When his mouth found her breast through the cloth, she had her answer.
She felt drunk, mindless. When he moved toward her other breast, she jerked her bodice down. A groan came from deep within him. As he caressed and kissed her bare breasts, sensations ripped through her. She entwined her fingers in his hair and wrapped her legs around his waist. She cried out as he sucked on her breast, pulling sensations all the way from her toes.
Then his mouth was on hers in deep, frantic kisses. She held on as he moved against her, her arms and legs wrapped around him like a vise.
Abruptly, he pulled away. He hovered over her on his hands and knees, looking down at her with eyes dark and wild. He was breathing as hard as she was.
“I am sorry,” he said. “We cannot do this.”
She clung to him even as he pulled her to her feet. Of their own accord, her arms went round his waist. She moaned at the feel of the rough cloth of his shirt against her sensitive breasts.
Dropping her hands to the tight muscles of his buttocks, she pulled his hips against her. She felt the hardness of his member. His ragged breathing told her he could not hold out against her.
Suddenly, his mouth was on hers again, hot, hungry, demanding. Her knees grew weak under the assault of sensations pounding through her. His hands were on her breasts, her hips, her thighs. Squeezing, stroking, kneading.
When her feet left the ground, she wrapped her legs around him. Without lifting his mouth from hers, he carried her backward until she felt the wall against her back. Deep, deep kisses. She was dizzy with them, drunk with them. And still she wanted more.
As he ran his hands under her skirts, along the bare skin of her thighs, an aching need grew inside her. She felt his desperation rise with hers as they moved their hands frantically over each other.
He reached between them and touched her center. The jolt of sensation made her cry out. Even through the cloth, the place he rubbed was so sensitive it was almost more than she could stand.
And yet she was pleading, “Please, please, please.”
His breathing was harsh against her ear. “I must be inside you.”
His raw need for her caused a responsive spasm deep inside her. He was tugging at her skirts. Please, Stephen. Please. Please! She grabbed a fistful of cloth caught between them and jerked at it, trying to help him. In frustration, she bit his shoulder.
She opened her eyes as the door to the storeroom flew open and crashed against the wall. A huge man entered.
She was too startled to move. But with the lightning reflexes of a fighter, Stephen turned, retrieved his sword from the ground, and pulled the knife from his belt. All the while, he kept his body between her and the intruder.
Almost at once, Stephen relaxed his stance and let the point of his sword drop to the ground.
“Hello, William.”
How Stephen managed that flat, even tone she could not imagine.
Lord FitzAlan swung the door closed and moved inside the room. Though he had not yet said a word, he fairly vibrated with anger. He seemed to fill the small space to bursting.
“Get your armor, Stephen. The army leaves within the hour. Lady Hume, I will escort you to your chamber.”
Over his shoulder Stephen said in a low voice, “Are you covered?”
Belatedly, she jerked her bodice up and began straightening her gown. Never in her life had she been so embarrassed.
Stephen placed her headdress in her shaking hands, wrapped her cape about her shoulders, and pulled her hood up.
He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I hate that you feel shamed,” he said in a soft voice.
“Stephen, the men are gathering.”
The commanding voice behind them made Isobel jump, but Stephen showed no sign he heard it.
“ ’Tis lucky William came when he did,” he whispered, touching her cheek. He broke into a devilish smile that squeezed her heart. “But I wish to God he hadn’t. How I want you, Isobel!”
Before she could catch her breath, he kissed her cheek and was gone.
FitzAlan gave her a curt nod and held out his arm. Without glancing to the left or right, he led her out into the bright sunshine, a man sure of himself and his virtue.
Humiliation, loss, and longing warred inside her as she walked beside him. The keep seemed miles away.
“Keep your head up,” FitzAlan ordered.
She did as she was told. FitzAlan did not break the silence again until they passed Saint George’s chapel.
“I apologize for my brother’s behavior,” he said, looking straight ahead. “ ’Tis not like him to force his attentions.”
She made herself say it: “He did not force his attentions on me.”
FitzAlan gave a slight nod, still not looking at her. “The king has other plans for you, Lady Hume. But if things went… too far… with my brother, Stephen will marry you.”
“They did not proceed ‘too far,’ ” she bit out, surprised at her sudden anger. It did nothing to soothe her temper to know FitzAlan’s suspicions were reasonable, given what he saw. “And I would not force Sir Stephen to marry me—or have you force him—if they
had.”
The corner of FitzAlan’s mouth lifted briefly in what looked suspiciously like a smile. It was the first she saw the slightest resemblance between the two brothers—and she did not like it.
“My brother would do as honor required, regardless of my wishes,” FitzAlan said. “Or yours, Lady Hume.”
It sounded like a warning.
“By all the saints, Stephen, are you possessed?” William thundered at him as soon as they had ridden out of the city gates.
The main force was a quarter mile ahead. William, however, rode at a pace that signaled he was in no hurry to catch up.
“Possessed or mad,” Stephen replied. There was no other explanation.
“Do you not have enough women?” William shouted. “This one you cannot have without marriage. And the king has already chosen a husband for her!”
“I did nothing that might require marriage.” A brief moment more, and he very likely would have. Sweet Jesus! He’d been swept in a raging lust that left no room for thought of consequences.
“She said the same,” William said, his voice calmer.
“You should not have embarrassed her by asking,” Stephen snapped. “I wish you would not meddle in my affairs.”
“I am inadequate to the task,” William said, “but Catherine and our mother would be displeased if I did not make some attempt to guide your love life in their stead.”
Stephen was not amused. He kept his silence for a good long time. But, as always, it was impossible to outlast William.
“We march to Falaise?” he asked. He’d known for some time the king would break tradition and campaign through the winter, but no one knew where Henry would attack first.
“Aye,” William said. “The king decided last night.”
“The people here believe the city walls of Falaise are impregnable,” Stephen said. “The city will hold out.”
“Aye, it will be a long siege,” William agreed.
The prospect of spending weeks camped out-of-doors in midwinter, bored silly, dampened Stephen’s spirits further.
“Perhaps we shall be gone long enough for you to get back what little sense you once had,” William said. “But I shall put my hope in her new husband taking her away before our return.”
Isobel, gone from Caen? Stephen needed to see her at least once more. Backing her against a wall and very nearly ravishing her was hardly a proper farewell. Proper farewell or no, sweat broke out on his forehead thinking about it.
When he could still smell her hair, her skin, how could he imagine her gone? Or worse, with her new husband. He could imagine that. His jaw began to ache from clenching it.
Yet the Frenchman seemed in no hurry to claim her. Perhaps she would still be there when he returned. Perhaps the fool would never come…
“De Roche will come,” William said, interrupting his thoughts. “Henry has him by the balls.”
Chapter Eleven
January 1418
Isobel controlled her thoughts during the day. But her dreams betrayed her. Some nights, she dreamed of Stephen telling her stories and woke up smiling. Other times, she awoke hot and breathless with the memory of his lips on her mouth, his hands moving over her body.
Last night she had one of those dreams that drove her from her bed. She stared out her window into the darkness and imagined herself in a river, the dark water running over her, until the desire to have him touch her lessened enough for her to sleep again. This morning, wisps of the dream still floated in her head. A vague longing and a heaviness in her heart remained.
Looking out her window in the harsh light of day, she lectured herself on how lucky she was Stephen was gone from Caen. She prayed she would recover from her madness before he returned. For it was madness. Madness to risk angering the king. Madness to risk being sent home to England in disgrace. And where would she have to go but to her father’s household?
Humiliated, dependent, wholly subject to her father’s will. Her father would not even permit her to escape to a nunnery. He would deem it a waste of an asset, however reduced in value. After sullying her reputation and earning the king’s ill will, what sort of marriage would her father broker for her this time?
It was past bearing.
Her father’s treason brought them enough dishonor; she could not add to her family’s shame.
For her to risk so much—ach, and for such a man! It was beyond foolishness. Even if she were a wealthy widow who could choose a man to please herself, she would be wise to stay away from the likes of Stephen Carleton.
She did not hope for a man she could love. Indeed, love would give a man far too much power over her. All she wanted was a man she could respect. A man devoted to honor and duty. Not someone who frittered his talents away on frivolous pursuits—especially the pursuit of beautiful women.
Ha! Stephen did not pursue women—he drew them like flies to a dead fish. She blew out her breath in a huff. Aye, she was just one more fly buzzing, no better than the rest.
What if FitzAlan had come to the storeroom a short time later? She put her hand to her chest. No matter what she told FitzAlan, she and Stephen would have been forced to wed. Stephen seemed no more sensible of the consequences at the time than she. But marriage was like the plague to him. Why, he went so far as to delay claiming his family lands to avoid it. How he would resent her! He would grow to hate her.
And there would always be those other women, buzzing about. She knew infidelity was commonplace among men of her class. Why, then, did imagining Stephen being led off discreetly by one lady or another leave her seething?
What was she doing, wasting her time thinking of Stephen and getting upset? She snapped up her sewing from the table and set to work.
She was diligently stitching when Robert knocked on her chamber door.
“Where is your maid?” he asked when she let him in.
She shrugged. “I do not know half the time.”
“We shall deal with her later,” he said, taking both her hands in his. “Isobel, he is here.”
Stephen was back! The smile froze on her face. Robert would not seek her out to tell her Stephen Carleton had returned to Caen. Nay, Robert did not know—could not know—she waited every day, every hour, for Stephen’s return. Foolish, foolish woman that she was.
If not Stephen, then who? Her spirits plummeted further as the answer came to her. “De Roche?”
Robert pressed his lips into a line and nodded. “The king has just come from Falaise to meet with him. You are to join them in the Exchequer hall.”
She dropped her eyes to hide her rising panic and pretended to fuss with her gown. When Robert lifted her chin with his finger, she saw sadness in his face.
“Is—is he so terrible?” she asked.
Robert squeezed her hand and said, “ ’Tis only that I let myself forget you would eventually leave my care.”
Tears stung at her eyes. “How I shall miss you!” she said, surprised by the strength of her feelings. “Surely it will take a good deal of time to settle the marriage contract. And then we must wait for the banns to be posted.”
He touched her cheek. “If the king wishes it to be done quickly, it shall be.”
“But suppose I do not like him? What if he is a hateful man?” The words tumbled out of her in a rush. “What if he is a traitor? Would the king still make me—”
“Hush, hush,” Robert said, enfolding her in his arms. “Let us meet the man first.”
She rested her head against his chest, crushing the velvet of his beautiful tunic, but he didn’t seem to mind. Having Robert hold her like this reminded her of how her father used to comfort her when she was a little girl. Her stomach tightened with unexpected longing for the father of her childhood.
“I am glad you will be with me,” she whispered.
Robert leaned back and held her at arm’s length. “Your new husband cannot help but adore you,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I predict your new life will be one of love and
grand adventure.”
A short time later, they were ushered into the Great Hall of the Exchequer. Isobel clutched Robert’s arm as he led her to the far end of the room, where King Henry sat on a raised chair. No one would mistake the king for a monk today. For this occasion, he wore an ermine-trimmed robe over a tunic emblazoned with his royal herald, the lion and fleur-de-lis, in gold, red, and blue.
They halted a few paces behind a man with whom the king was speaking. As they waited for the king to acknowledge them, Robert squeezed her fingers resting on his arm. When she raised an eyebrow at him, Robert tilted his head toward the man and nodded.
This, then, was the man who would be her husband for the rest of her days. Even from the back, she could tell he was young and strongly built. He was well dressed, from his colorful silk brocade tunic and matching leggings down to his magnificent high black boots. Beneath the elaborate liripipe hat, his hair was almost black. He wore it long, fastened with a bloodred ribbon.
She leaned to the side and craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of his face. Warts. Boils. Pox. Blackened teeth. She tried to prepare herself. It simply was not possible that he could be wealthy, well connected, young, and handsome.
The king’s next words jarred her from her observations.
“We are pleased, Lord de Roche,” the king said, sounding anything but pleased, “that you have seen fit to heed our summons. At last.”
“I apologize for my delay, sire.”
De Roche did not sound any more contrite than the king sounded pleased. This did not bode well.
“I assure you, I spent the time on your behalf,” de Roche continued. “I’ve devoted myself to persuading the men of Rouen of the wisdom of recognizing you as our sovereign lord.”
“They should not need so much persuasion.” The king gave him a hard look and added, “You must tell your compatriots not to try my patience—or God’s.”
“Of course, sire.”
De Roche’s complacent reply did not sound as though he took the king’s warning as seriously as Isobel thought he should.
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