She struggled to cover the error. “Er, I merely repeat what she has told me in private, lord.”
God, forgive me these lies, but ’tis for the benefit of all!
He arched one brow, looking skeptical, but his eyes gleamed. “What else did she tell you? About me, that is.”
He was staring at her, and she was falling, falling into the undertow of those eyes. She pulled herself back. “She told me—”
“When,” he interjected, “did she tell you?”
“Not long ago. Ere supper. She told me… She told me one glance from you makes her heart beat faster. One word from your lips makes her spirit soar.”
He lowered his heavy-lidded gaze to the vicinity of Bridget’s mouth.
Down went her belly in a tailspin, and she almost swayed into his lap, into his arms. Suddenly, she yearned to run her fingers through the dark waves of his hair and to hear him murmur in her ear that she, Bridget, was his one desire!
The whisper slipped right between her teeth. “One stroke of your tongue makes me rejoice in dreams of sin.”
Silence fell; a boulder dropped inside her.
“She told you this?” he asked.
Heaven save her! She’d barely heard him, he’d spoken so quietly. No smile lit his eyes now. Only heat. Deep, drugging heat. She feared to breathe, lest that wild, intoxicating essence of his enter her lungs and affix itself like a lamprey to forever drain her soul away.
“What’s he saying?” Aislinn broke into her haze, tugging on her sleeve. “Bridgie, what’s he saying?”
Bridget looked at her sister. She looked at their lord. Words utterly failed her. The humiliation of exposing herself in such a way. No man would relish being the target of such unseemly lust.
Her hand went to her mouth. He regarded her keenly, probing deep into her with those terrible, dragon-green eyes.
Bridget jumped up, gathered her skirts, and for the first time in her life, she ran away.
Chapter Seventeen
When most of the castle awakened the next morning, Bridget had already been in the chapel for hours. She had attended Father Usrich’s daily pre-dawn service, a quiet, mood-balancing ritual that never failed to give her peace, and remained behind afterward to pray in solitude. Everything about the chapel comforted her. She adored this tiny, shadowy chamber with its miniscule altar and oversized crucifix, the small white candles flickering all about, and the gleaming implements the priest used in the service.
“Heavenly father,” she whispered, “help me to see the way. Help me to overcome this misplaced attraction and find peace in your holy grace.” She shifted, her knees having started to ache from the freezing, scarred surface of the flagstone floor. “Help me to do my duty that I may see Aislinn happily wed. And please, please let her forgive me. I do not wish to hurt anyone, least of all my beloved sister. Purify me, Holy Father, and lead me to your arms.”
But instead of God’s abstract, unconditionally loving arms, the vision her imagination conjured was of his arms encircling her. His hot, muscular, earthly arms that anchored her in place as if they never wanted to let her go. Then her own arms were around him and her fingers exploring the contours of that trim torso and that lovely, strong chest.
She knotted her folded hands together, squeezing so hard her fingers cramped. She prayed another rosary, trying to focus on the words. She prayed once more for Brother Lefrid’s soul, her dear friend who’d given her solace when her mother had died and her father had forgotten about her, when her aunt had found only hurtful things to say to her.
When that horrible youth—the one she was expected to marry, for heaven’s sake—had not only rejected her friendship and failed to court her, but had manhandled her so roughly her gown ripped, then had punched her in the stomach so hard she couldn’t breathe. He’d told her it was her place to accept him doing as he pleased with her. Her duty!
The tears no longer came when she thought of those painful episodes, but the hollow ache of rejection and betrayal still echoed inside her. He had pushed her to seek a way out of ever being subjected to another brute like him.
If only she’d known then what could be, she would not have turned from marriage, would not have handed everything to Aislinn and let her younger sister plan so eagerly for a life of status and acclaim.
FitzHenri was nothing like Samson, but to embrace that truth was folly. Thus, she concentrated on her prayers and the good brother Lefrid, her future at the convent.
It was useless. Ever shoving his way into her mind was FitzHenri, working so hard to learn about rhythm and music, looking like a dear, frustrated little boy with spiky hair when things didn’t go his way. Who smiled at her in that slow, lopsided way that sweetly tugged at her, low in her belly.
The walking temptation whose lips said the most sinful, delicious things…meant for someone else.
She groaned in anguish, not comforted in the least despite all her efforts. ’Twas time to get about the day’s work, anyway. The kitchen clatter could be heard as workers began their chores.
She pushed herself up from her wobbly knees, using the small altar railing as support.
“Lady Brigitte.”
The voice from behind startled her. She whipped round. As if her prayers had betrayed her and produced not holy grace but the devil himself, there stood Earl FitzHenri in the entrance to the chapel. Her stomach flip-flopped. How long had he been there? How loudly had she been praying? What had he heard?
She swayed.
“My lady.” He rushed forward, catching her elbow.
Embarrassed, she withdrew her arm, immediately missing his touch. Silly woman! There is no future in these longings.
“If you are finished with your prayers, I would speak with you.”
“I’m finished, aye.”
Slowly, on tingling feet and wooden legs, she stepped out of the dark chamber into the great hall. His lordship walked beside her. Not in front of her, but beside her, with his hand a whisper of warmth at the small of her back. Even her father, a man unusual in his observance of a woman’s status, generally marched ahead of any female he deigned to accompany.
Despite her emotional turmoil, this consideration felt…nice.
She prayed he didn’t broach the subject of the previous night. She’d been mortified by her own reaction to his attempts at wooing her sister, and didn’t wish to come up with an explanation.
“I have an idea,” he began.
She couldn’t bring herself to look his way. “Let’s hear it.”
“What do you think of letters?”
She slid him a wary glance. “Letters?”
“Aye. Billets-doux to my lady.” He appeared very pleased with himself. “’Tis certain they will advance my suit.”
“I assume you mean to have me write these billets-doux, correct?”
“You, I. Who writes them makes no difference.”
She snorted over that one.
He continued without remarking on her noise. “I’ve witnessed how words strung together a certain way greatly pleases my lady. However, I am a dolt with your language.”
She gave him a raised brow. He spoke as if she didn’t already know this.
“And since I’m unfamiliar with written English, I shall require the assistance of my scribe.”
Sweet heavens. If it had proved impossible for her to speak love words, how would she write them? Still, putting the sentiments onto parchment might remove her from them enough to cope. And she wouldn’t have to dwell on them overmuch. She could copy some of the more scandalous lines from Ovid and not have to put her heart into it.
“As you wish, my lord. To your solar once again.”
After they’d mounted the stairs and crossed his threshold, he announced, “By the by, I have something for you.”
“For me?”
He strode to his desk and picked up an object. When he turned, he held a book out to her.
Her heart bloomed in her chest. She ran to him. “Brother Lefrid’s C
onfessions!” Her fingers closed round the ancient tome. She could hardly believe it.
“Close your mouth, wench,” he said with the trace of a smile playing at his eyes. “Your friend meant for you to have it. ’Tis yours.”
“I had forgotten all about it. Thank you, my lord.”
Her fingertips caressed the gilded letters on the cover, the tattered spine. Brother Lefrid’s soul spoke to her from its pages. She looked back to FitzHenri, who had leaned against his desk and crossed his arms over his chest.
“But ’tis so valuable.” She hugged the book to her breast. “You will allow me to take it with me…when I depart from Shyleburgh?”
Something passed through his expression. She wasn’t sure what, but it made her breath catch just a tiny bit.
“Of course. I’m no thief or pirate, and it was given to you. I must be honest, however, and admit to reading a few pages while it was in my keeping.”
Her jaw almost hit the floor. “But…’tis in Latin.”
He shook his head with a tsk. “You English believe you are the sole occupants of the world of learning. It might surprise you that Normans place a high value on erudition, and many of us find the English to be less than accomplished.”
“I—” Her pulse raced with confusion. “I thought the only disciplines Normans studied were war and horse-craft.”
He grunted out a laugh. “You still believe us brutes. As a boy, I had a Roman tutor named Father Dimitrius who instructed me in Latin and Greek. Albeit against my wishes at the time, he had me reading not only Plato and Caesar, but Augustine and Gregory of Tours. I found I liked Latin best. ’Tis logical and concise.”
“I feel that way, too!” She felt the urge to challenge him. “Say something in Latin. Something not from a prayer or mass.”
He tilted his face to the ceiling for a moment, thinking. For an instant, his thick, dark eyelashes resembled the spiky boar bristles of her hairbrush. Wickedly, she imagined pressing her lips to the manly Adam’s apple at his throat.
Then he looked her square in the eyes and said with perfect diction, “Dominus, da mihi castitatem et continentiam. Sed noli modo.”
Lord, give me chastity and continence. But not just yet.
Words of St. Augustine! From Confessions! Slightly naughty words, not something she would have selected, but it proved he knew their meaning, since he was such a rogue.
She almost stopped breathing. He was as learned as she.
The idea of it did not fit with her notion of him. Confusion toyed with her brain. This would mean she could no longer disdain him for a lack of scholarship, and she would have to find another means to bolster herself against her feelings about him.
“But you have so much trouble with English,” she managed. It came out sounding impertinent, though she hadn’t meant it that way.
His forest-green glance stabbed her in mild reproof, but promptly softened. “I expect ’tis due to my learning it so late. I studied the other tongues as a boy, but came to English only a few years back.”
She supposed that would make a difference.
“Moreover,” he added, “English is a grunting, incomprehensible sort of language.” A twinkle—aye, a twinkle!—shone in his eyes.
“Not fair!” she chided, swatting him playfully, which brought her in contact with a hard, solid male arm. When his hand shot out to snag hers, she nearly swallowed her tongue. His dark gaze ensnared hers while his huge, warm fingers gently brushed over her own. But an instant later he’d released her hand, leaving her awhirl with contending emotions, like a castle’s pennon tossed by the wind.
As he continued to observe her, she gulped self-consciously and grappled to recall the thread of their conversation. “E-English,” she stammered—Where had her brain gone?—“has m-many flowers of learning. Haven’t you heard the Beowulf tale?”
She bit her lip. Hadn’t she recited words from it just last night? Please don’t say anything about last night. Please!
“Parts of it,” he muttered, his eyes never leaving hers. “’Tis inescapable on this isle.”
To change the subject quickly, she said, embracing the book tighter, “Well, I shall take good care of this treasure. ’Twill be under lock and key always.”
“I’m certain it shall be.” He held her gaze a moment more, coaxing a warm squeeze inside her. “By the way, I have my own books coming with my other things. City of God, and a copy of De Materia Medica, among others. You’re welcome to use them whenever you wish. I’m going to set up a small library here in the keep.”
But this was getting better and better! “De Materia Medica? Verily? St. Bede’s has a copy but it’s so old and tattered I can barely read it. And City of God! Did you know that was Charlemagne’s—”
“Favorite book? I did.”
She knew she was grinning like a fool. So powerful was the connection she sensed between them, it was all she could do to keep from leaning in to him. She yearned to embrace his brawny bulk, run her fingers through his hair. Allow their lips to touch…
She stepped back. Nay, so powerful was her gratitude. Merely gratitude. And appreciation for a fellow scholar, of sorts. Moreover, it was a good thing to be on such friendly terms with one’s brother-in-law. Other than touching lips. That was not to be, under any circumstances.
She said as a distraction, “Tell me more about this Father Dimitrius of yours. Was he ancient and stern?”
“Actually, quite the contrary. He was young and easygoing, and we became comrades. That made him a good teacher for me. Had he been the cruel disciplinarian type, I would have rebelled and not taken to any of his lessons.”
She smiled. “So, you were rebellious as a boy?” Somehow, she knew that. A picture of him came easily to her mind, a small, dark-haired boy at his little lesson table, even then too big for his chair, working over a wax tablet and playing tricks on his youthful instructor.
“What do you think?” he asked with a smile of his own.
“I think you were a mischievous bane to anyone who attempted to control you.”
His brows lifted in a suggestion of surprise. “That’s what my mother used to call me. A mischievous bane to the balance of her humors.”
“Your mother?” Never had she considered him as having parents. It made him more relatable. She knew his father was deceased. He’d become the Comte de Dragonmere upon his father’s passing. But his mother? “Does she live back home at Dragonmere?”
He nodded. “But she’s often at court in Rouen.”
Bridget tapped her chin with the corner of the book in her arms. “I suppose that would be more comfortable, with you so far away. She must be proud of you, a lauded liegeman of the king, a war hero.” A successful, learned man.
He regarded her in unfathomable silence, and for an instant, the keen-pointed fangs of loss bit into her. In entering the convent, she would never know the possibility of bearing a son like this. She swallowed around the pebble in her throat. “Do you have other family? Brothers or sisters?”
“Only cousins I don’t know well. Now,” he said, standing. “To the matter at hand. Let’s write a letter.” He motioned to the chair behind the desk. “Sit.”
She stepped round and lowered herself into place, positioning Confessions off to the side. Spread before her were the implements of scholars: several goose quills prepared and trimmed, two tiny jars of gall ink, and a few precious sheets of vellum. Taking up the quill and inspecting it, she sighed with pleasure and delved into a private, hallowed world.
A little dab of the nib into one of the jars. A tap, tap, tap against the edge to dislodge excess ink. Then carefully move the implement to the vellum.
“What are you waiting for?” the blasted man asked at her ear, making her jump. He’d placed his hands on the desk and was leaning down.
“I’m thinking,” she answered, not hiding her annoyance.
“Don’t think. Write.”
A midge couldn’t irritate more. “That would be madness.”
/> “Very well. Think of what you might wish to read.”
“That would definitely not impress Aislinn. Prayers and treatises—”
“I mean what you would wish to read in a billet-doux from a suitor.”
“I’ve told you. I don’t wish for anything of the sort.”
“You’re a woman. You must know what would appeal. Say something about her lips. Or her breasts.”
Bridget fought back the heat that threatened to rise in her face, firing him a glare instead. “Must you?”
He adopted an innocent expression. “What? I’m helping.”
“Nay. You’re not.”
His mouth closed. Finally.
She tapped the length of the quill on the desk. Thinking.
His silence lasted all of a few seconds. “At least write the greeting.”
That did it.
“Do you wish to do this? Because I will cheerfully get up and let you sit here with the quill.”
“Nay. Forgive me. Go on.”
Straightening up from the desk, he paced the chamber, hands on hips, head down, as if pondering mightily. She might have smiled, were she not determined—determined—to get through this without another warm feeling for him.
But he’d rolled his sleeves up to the elbows, exposing the thick sinews of his forearms. And the way that belt of his hung low on his slim hips—
She wrenched her eyes off that dangerous lodestone. How could she be so attracted to him? She didn’t even like large men with big muscles and the power to subjugate a woman. So this one was learned. He still used his strength to dominate all around him.
Men who had their pick of women never went for her sort—a bookish, inelegant ascetic. A man like him would never want her—other than to prove his physical superiority over her.
Besides, he belonged to someone else.
“Ah.” She lowered her head and—
He was behind her in an instant, leaning over her shoulder. Her nape prickled.
“I can’t do this with you breathing on me like that,” she snapped.
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