He stalked close to Bridget, growing furious. He jabbed a thumb back toward his chest. “I am the earl here, the lauded hero, the king’s favored man. The aim is to get her interested in me.”
The insolent wench didn’t retreat. Instead, she all but shouted up at him. “You can’t make someone like you.”
Frustration exploded within him, and he flung out his arms. “Then what is the damn point to all this courting?”
That gave her pause. She stood quietly for a moment, studying him, then proffered, “For two people to spend time together and get to know one another before being joined for life.”
“Bah.” He drew back to keep from throttling her with his bare hands. He swept his gaze over her from top to bottom. She stood there in that tattered homespun gown cinched at her throat with a simple rope girdle about her middle, looking and sounding more than ever like a parsimonious anchorite. It had been a huge mistake to enlist her in this endeavor. What did she know of men and women? She’d probably never desired a man, never felt the stirrings of passion in her loins. Never burned as other people burned.
Except, there was that kiss in the monks’ orchard…
They’d shared a real connection in those few moments of abandon. Abandon and heated pleasure.
Oh, aye. She certainly did know something of earthly relationships.
At his contemptuous snort, she clamped her lips, almost looking hurt. Her voice quieted. “My lord, courtship provides the opportunity for both parties to get to know and like one another. And hopefully, love will follow.”
And there it was. The coup de grace. The dreaded word women used to gain the upper hand. “Who said anything about love?”
“You did. Not in so many words, but this is what you’re talking about, isn’t it? You want her to love you the way your first wife didn’t.”
How dare she bring his past into this? He spoke through clenched teeth. “I mean for her to wed and bed me willingly and vow fidelity in a way I can believe. Love isn’t part of that.”
She sighed. Loudly. “Great blessed martyrs, you are an oaf. You are trying to make her love you to ensure what happened before won’t happen again. But that won’t work. The best we can hope for is that both you and she expose yourselves and you each like what you see. If you wish to become the man she wants, you must first learn everything about her.”
He stared at her through a red haze. An oaf? She’d called him an oaf to his face? He could have her whipped for that. In fact, he’d like to do it himself. He’d strip that threadbare garment from her back and expose her soft white flesh and—
Good God, where was he going with that?
The look of pity she gifted him with pulled him back from his unfortunate line of thought. Pity, for Christ’s sake? From her? He wouldn’t stand for it. She was an ascetic with no understanding of such matters. A damned nun.
Nuns didn’t even have soft white flesh, did they?
He kneaded his scruff, reining in his wrath, his inexplicable agitation. His errant thoughts.
She tapped her toe wordlessly, her face stern. At length, she pointed to his cheek. “Did my sister do that?”
He brushed a forefinger along his cheekbone. “My lady has a swift hand.”
She returned his halfhearted smile. “Well, the sting will pass. No flesh is broken.” She moved to the portal leading to the balcony, gazing out over the orchard. Swiveling back to him, she’d turned pensive. “My lord, may I ask you something?”
Wishing to mend their rift, he nodded.
“You are so intent on gaining Aislinn’s devotion. What about what you want? Don’t you wish to love your wife?”
Instantly, his mood went black again. What had love ever gained him? A distant father. A mother forever in sorrow. A wife dead by her own hand. He scowled. “Love is for women and minstrels. What I need is an English wife to bind me to Shyleburgh and willingly bear me sons. That is all I wish.”
She blinked at him, her expression pitying again. That was the worst. He said in an even tone, “You said last eve that my lady wishes to dance. I aim to do what I can to please her.” He whirled to the doorway. “Where is your cursed monk with that instrument?”
The clerk instantly appeared on the threshold, psaltery in hand, looking sullen.
“Come in,” Grégoire told him. He pulled a chair out from behind the desk and whipped it around. “Sit.”
While Karlan did as directed, Bridget moved to the center of the chamber. “Very well.” She cleared her throat and beckoned him impatiently. “My lord, if you please.”
Impertinent wench. He decided she owed a light penalty for that.
When she put out her hand for him to take as he’d seen dancers do, he closed his fingers firmly round hers and tugged.
She didn’t budge a smidge, her eyes widening in surprise.
He quipped, “This is where I kiss her, right?” He tipped his head nearer to hers.
“Certainly not,” she snapped, snatching her hand back. “’Twould not be proper.”
He gave her a measured smile. “And since when is decorum one of your concerns?”
She visibly bristled, drawing in a breath as if to launch a volley, but then recognized his teasing. Her eyes sparkled with amusement as she adopted a supercilious tone and raised her chin in the air.
“I beg your pardon, sir. I can be most decorous, Your Exalted Lordship.” She sank into a dramatic curtsy, her kirtle billowing around her.
His answering rumble of a chuckle brought a genuine smile to her face.
Finally. He liked seeing her smile. It brightened her face, took away the brooding that made her seem unapproachable. And if he wasn’t mistaken, every now and then a dimple flashed in her cheek. She was rather comely, actually, especially when the pink settled into her face as it did now.
Very comely, in fact.
Though not the exquisite beauty her sister was.
Aislinn. Focus on Aislinn.
“Now,” she said. “We shall begin with an old Saxon promenade. Should be slow enough for you to follow.” She nodded to Karlan, who struck up a tune.
Things went well for some time, and he actually began to recognize the rhythm of the steps. It was not unlike sparring with blades. One man strikes, the other blocks. One man thrusts, the other parries. Much the same.
His heavy boots did make him feel less than graceful, however. Once, he accidentally stepped on her toes. She stifled a cry, biting her bottom lip, but when he apologized and offered to inspect her injured appendage, she swore he hadn’t hurt her.
“Next time I shall wear sturdy wooden clogs instead of kidskin slippers,” she said with a crooked smile.
During the next dance, she directed him to draw her near. For a brief moment the devil got into him. He pulled her so firmly that she slammed against him with an oof! and almost lost her balance. Naturally, he threw his arms around her waist. To steady her.
He looked down to her face tilted up to his. Her brow was damp with perspiration, her eyes questioning, her lips parted. His entire body recognized before his mind did that a very curvy female was pressed up against it.
Merciful saints. Awareness thundered through him. He had to summon all his willpower not to take her mouth with his and repeat the kiss that had stalked his every waking thought for two days.
“Verily, you are not so talented a dancer yourself,” he murmured down at her, his whole body standing at attention.
Her eyes grew huge as awareness of his closeness hit her, as well. With a soft groan, she pushed away from his body. “What little skill I have is still greater than yours,” she said.
She had a point. He saluted her, grateful for the space to settle his unruly anatomy.
“Karlan, let us rest a moment,” she said, fanning herself. “The afternoon has grown warm.”
The clerk halted his strumming and turned his attention to tuning the strings, though he cast an assessing glance their way every now and then. The lad seemed to have something against h
im, but Grégoire hadn’t discerned what, as yet. Where had this minstrel monk come from, and what were his political leanings? Grégoire made a mental note to look into it.
Bridget plopped down upon a cushioned bench beneath the tall solar window. Sunshine flooded over her. A mild breeze lifted the airy tendrils of hair that never failed to escape her tight braid.
“Thirsty?” he asked.
Without waiting for her answer, he went to his desk, where he lifted the ewer and poured water into a glazed clay cup. He brought it to her and stood over her while she gulped the contents. He smiled. He liked the way she enjoyed her food and drink. It made her of earthy human stuff rather than angelic. Earthy, he could deal with. Angelic, not so easily. He was too thoroughly human, himself, to relate.
She gave him a self-conscious smile as she offered him the cup.
After returning the vessel to its original spot, he leaned back against the edge of his desk, arms across his chest.
“How is it that you know how to dance, at all?” he asked. ’Tisn’t useful knowledge for the convent, is it?”
“My mother taught me, long before I had decided on a religious life.”
“Ah, that’s right. You were betrothed to wed before that.” To that scoundrel Samson. From what he knew of the man, she was fortunate to have escaped him. But in escaping Samson, she had slipped away from him as well. “How old were you when you decided on the convent?”
Her cheeks pinkened. Why was she suddenly shy?
She looked over at her clerk friend. “How old were we, Karlan, when we pledged? About sixteen?”
He appeared to calculate in his head, then nodded. “Sounds about right.”
What? These two were that close? Envy pricked him, but he stifled it. “What was special about that particular moment?” It was something that had bothered him since learning she’d promised herself to the church as soon as his king vanquished hers. As the oldest, by rights, she should have been the one to wed him.
She held his gaze steadily but didn’t reply.
“Let me venture the answer,” he said in her stead, unable to hide his irritation. “You couldn’t have the man you wanted. The idea of marriage to the enemy repelled you. So you fled to the cloister, like so many of your fellow Englishwomen.”
Some of the color drained from her face. She said soberly, “Nay, I wasn’t fleeing marriage to the enemy. And to tell you the truth, I was glad to be free of my obligation to Samson. We…didn’t suit. By the time you arrived, I had decided marriage in general wasn’t for me.”
He frowned, more than a little angry that she’d slipped out from his grasp. “So you handed everything neatly to Aislinn.” Including himself, curse her. “But as Oelwine’s oldest, all this should have been yours—” He swept a hand in the air. “A high status, children. You gave it all up. Why?”
“Why does any woman decide to take the veil?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never known a nun well enough to ask her.”
She shrugged. After pondering for precisely one instant, she said, “I enjoy everything about the life. My closest friends have all devoted themselves to the church. And I wish to take advantage of the scholarship the order allows a woman. I hope to be an abbess someday.”
“Like St. Hilda of Whitby.”
Her face brightened. “You know of her?” She seemed pleased he’d heard of her hero. And damn if he wasn’t pleased to have pleased her.
“Who doesn’t?” He shrugged. “She is a legend in these parts. Even so, choosing a life of celibacy and poverty is extreme, to my mind. Do you truly never wish to have babes of your own?” That seemed so much against female nature he couldn’t fathom it was true.
Her shoulders stiffened before she rose from the window seat and turned toward the view. “That is a sacrifice God asks of us. Thankfully, I’ve had plenty of time with children while raising my younger siblings.”
A sacrifice. So, she did want children.
She spoke to the open window. “I suppose if there was any one thing that finalized my decision…” She turned round to look him in the eye, as if defying him to chastise her. But he just raised an encouraging brow. He would hear more. “It was that I could not see myself marrying a stranger because I was forced to, an unlearned oaf who didn’t believe his wife should read and write, or a man with bad manners and foul habits.” She shuddered delicately.
“And yet, the other day when I objected to the notion, you vigorously defended arranged marriages as accepted convention.”
She dropped her gaze to where she clamped one of her thumbs with the fingers of her other hand. He’d noticed the nervous habit before. “Because it’s accepted doesn’t mean I wish to endure it,” she murmured. “If I have a choice.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Ah. So it’s fine for me, and for your sister, to have no choice in these matters. But you, yourself, are above such uncomfortable conventions. Is that it?”
She shrank back a little. “You do have a choice. No one is forcing you to marry my sister, or anyone else, should you not want to. I merely wish women had the same consideration.”
“That’s not exactly true. The king demands I wed a Shyleburgh daughter. I’m as obligated as anyone. Perhaps more so.”
The responsibilities of his ancestral line kept him in fealty to his king. Tenant farmers, villeins, and servants, both in Normandy and here in England, not to mention the pride of his family—what remained of it—all depended upon his sustaining them. If he didn’t do as his king commanded and couldn’t convince the king a better alternative could be had, there would be severe repercussions.
“Which is why,” she added quietly, “despite what I may have said, I do admire you for wanting to win my sister’s heart before accepting the match.”
He wasn’t about to correct the finer points of her statement. Not when she’d come so close to giving him an actual compliment. “So you were dead set against marriage for fear of gaining an oaf of a husband. What if fortune found you a tolerable man to wed? It happens.”
She eyed him steadily. “I suppose that rarity of circumstance does occur, but it seemed too much to hope for.” She toyed with the keys dangling from her girdle. “And, of course, there is the other reason.”
Ah. Would this unlock the mystery that was Bridget of Shyleburgh? Then he cursed himself for letting the woman’s thoughts and wishes intrigue him at all. He waited silently for her to go on.
“I didn’t wish to marry a man who was obliged to have me,” she said, seeming to judge his reaction.
So, her motivation was very like his own—she desired a willing spouse. The air throbbed with the knowledge they were in agreement over something very important to each of them.
“You wished for a love match?” he asked, to break the tension.
Her shoulder went up, then down. “I suppose, once upon a time. But it was a girlish desire, and I outgrew it.” She turned once more to gaze out the window. “Besides, I’m not the sort of woman a man favors. Not like Aislinn. She’s the beauty of the family. Tall and blue-eyed. Kind and mild-mannered. Even when she lay in the cradle, everyone said she was gifted with all the best of our father’s line, while I got my mother’s sturdy Scots looks and somewhat…abrasive personality. We all felt Aislinn would make the best match for whichever lord should claim the keep.”
He didn’t know exactly how to respond. He certainly found Bridget comely with her smooth skin and soft mouth, her shapely figure and that hide-and-seek dimple. But what did he know of English views on beauty and worthiness? “All, who? Did your father believe this?”
She regarded him. “Nay. Father was against it, actually. He likes my mead too much.” Her dimple flashed. “But everyone else agreed.”
Grégoire had the uncomfortable feeling he might not agree. In fact, he was fairly certain of it.
“You know,” he said, “appearance isn’t the only quality by which a man judges a worthy bride.”
She blinked at him, her expression unreada
ble. “’Tis very important, though.”
“Not to all men.”
She glanced away and took a breath. “There now. As I intend to leave as soon as you no longer need me, shall we proceed?”
“Right you are.” He pushed away from the desk. Time to change the subject. He was growing uncomfortable with all this open introspection. A man’s secrets should be his own. “So let’s have another go at this dancing, to hasten things along.”
After eyeing him a moment, she marched over to her monk companion, as eager, apparently, as he to end the discussion. He couldn’t help passing a wolfish glance over her body as she bent over Karlan’s psaltery. How could she possibly think herself, or her body, any less desirable than Aislinn?
He genuinely liked holding her in his arms, damn it, whether dancing or kissing.
But what did that matter? Their paths were each settled upon, and they would not intersect beyond these few days, until his marriage.
His marriage to the very lovely Lady Aislinn, who fully expected to wed him though she wasn’t wholly won over yet.
Beside the clerk, Bridget said, “What do you think, Karlan? A Norman rondel next?”
For another hour they worked over the dance patterns, until Grégoire convinced her he could remember the steps, and that he would seek to impress Lady Aislinn with them that very evening.
“This eve in the hall, then,” Bridget said with a smile as she stood at the threshold on her way out. “We shall see how much you have learned and how well you can impress your bride.”
But as he sketched her a smile and a parting bow, he couldn’t help but feel that most of what he’d learned today had very little to do with Aislinn or with dancing, and everything to do with Bridget…and perhaps, even, with his own heart.
Chapter Fifteen
That night in the kitchen, Bridget jabbed a wooden spoon into the large bowl of turnips and onions she was preparing for supper, then whirled to grab the bread peel. It took both her hands to wield the heavy, long-handled tool, which she thrust into the hot oven to remove the last loaves of bread. Cook and his lads worked alongside her, heaping meat upon platters and filling pitchers with ale from large jugs.
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