Part 3 (1/2)
His mouth crooked into a wry grin. ”I expect you'll do any number of things that will bother me, but I'll tell you if any are unbearable.””My lord-!””Nay, my lady, forgive me. I'm teasing you.”She breathed out a sigh and relaxed a little as she washed his hand. ”Of course.”
”Did you not do this for your husband from time to time?””Aye, though not so often as all that. In general, he preferred to bathe alone. Or with only his manservants attending him.”
”Forgive me for speaking ill of the man, but I cannot admire his taste or intelligence if he chose to have manservants attending him over yourself.”Juliana shrugged and ran the cloth up and down his arm, then switched to his other shoulder. ”'Twas his choice. He valued his privacy.”
”Ah. I suppose I can understand that.”Desperate to change the subject, Juliana asked, ”But what about yourself, my lord? 'Tis strange that a man so n.o.ble and courteous and handsome as yourself has not wed again.” She stumbled on seeing the way his expression darkened. ”Or I presume you're not wed. Did you not say-? Am I wrong?”His frown was very grim. ”I am not married. My one experience with it did not encourage me to embark on the journey again.”Juliana hesitated. ”You still grieve for her.”He remained silent for some time. Just when she'd concluded he wouldn't answer, he said, ”I do not grieve for her. She wasn't worth a single tear.”After a start of astonishment, Juliana leaned over him to wash his other arm, and was treated to the scent of his body, his essential manly smell. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were dangerously close to his chest. If she looked down, she could see...Yes, the parts of him normally hidden beneath his clothes were just as impressive as what showed.
She felt the heat rising in her face when she realized he knew what she saw. That
knowledge mixed with the hard anger still showing in his expression.”Not worth a tear? Surely the loss of any human being is worth at least some grief, no matter how much they might have hurt us.”
He softened a bit. ”You take on so much responsibility, 'tis easy to forget how young you still are,” he said.”I'm one and twenty,” she protested. ”Not so very young.”
”To an old man of near thirty, you seem like a mere child.”She most definitely did not want him thinking of her as a child. ”You tease again, my lord. You are no old man.”
”Perhaps less so in body than in spirit. I've traveled too much, seen too much of battle and other evils of this world. I'm weary of it. Perhaps it's your innocence of spirit that makes you seem so young.”
She carefully cleaned his right hand, working the cloth between his fingers and over his palm. ”Do not impute too much virtue to me, my lord. I have sinned. I have sinned grievously, in truth.”
She drew back. He raised a leg to allow her easy access for cleaning it. Juliana rubbed
more soap into the cloth and set to work on his foot.”The Bible and the church say we are all sinners,” he answered. ”But some sin more and more vilely than others.”
The answer would surely dismay her, possibly even hurt, but she asked anyway. ”What did your wife do to hurt you so much?”Muscles tensed in hard bunches in his calf as she washed it.
”She lied and betrayed me. She tore my family apart and estranged me from them.”Juliana struggled to control her reaction when she heard the word ”lied.” Her conscience, always bitterly ready to reproach her, roused and nagged at her. She had little family-only her mother-but it had saved her at a time when she might have found it difficult to survive otherwise. She hated for him that he was estranged from his. ”I am sorry. It must have been terrible for you.”
He shrugged but remained tense, even as she washed his foot and asked him to change legs. ”I survived. She did not. I know not if that was G.o.d's justice or mercy.”
”How did she die?””Giving birth. The child did not survive either. Though I buried him as my son, he was not.” His tone admitted no grief but still she could feel the pain he would not voice. It hurt her on his behalf.
”Ah. She was unfaithful to you, then? 'Tis hard to believe, though, that a woman would not keep faith with someone like yourself.”
He laughed harshly, a sound that held a world of irony, but no amus.e.m.e.nt. ”I suppose she kept faith in her way, though I could not prove it, after she'd achieved her desires and cost me much of what I held dear.”
She looked up from the knee she stroked with the cloth. ”My lord? I fear you speak in riddles.”His smile held the same twisted irony. ”Ah, well. It has been said that I'm no easy man to understand. In this, though, 'tis not that it's difficult, so much as I find it difficult to speak of.”
”You needn't then, if you find it so painful.” Juliana put more soap on the rag and handed it to him when she stood up. ”If you would wash yourself, my lord, I'll begin on your hair.” She nodded toward his privates and he took her meaning as well as accepting the cloth from her.
”'Tis an old wound, and should not be so painful now as it was.” He was quiet a moment while she dipped water in a tin cup and poured it over his head to wet his hair. ”Margaret was betrothed to my brother. Not Carlwick, but my next older brother. She was a beautiful but willful young woman, charming and spoiled. Accustomed to having her own way. I believe her parents never denied her aught that she wanted if it were in their power to give it to her. When she came to our home for the betrothal to my brother, she looked at us all and decided that she wanted myself rather than Edwin.”
He sighed as she ma.s.saged the soap into his hair and relaxed somewhat. ”I cannot entirely fault her for that. Edwin is...slow in wit and not much to look upon in truth, though he has a warm and loving heart. But the arrangement was long made and 'twas her duty to honor it.”
”She did not?””She did all in her power to get out of it. She begged, pleaded, wept, moaned, even attempted to starve herself. That did not last long. She had not the will to resist food for more than a day. She came to me and begged me to run off with her, take her somewhere else, and make her my wife.””You refused her, of course.”He nodded. ”I did.” He heaved a deep breath and let it out slowly. ”She continued to resist her duty and finally concocted a vile plan.”
Juliana wondered if she wanted to hear this. But she suspected he talked of it too little,
which perhaps kept the wound from healing. And she felt privileged, in an odd way, to be the recipient of his confidence. ”What was it?””She attempted to seduce me, hoping, I suppose, that my conscience would force me to marry her once I'd bedded her. When she was unable to do that, she...I do not know exactly what she did. But she got herself pregnant-not by me-and then told my family 'twas I had done it.”
He shrugged. ”What could I have in honor done then? I denied it, but she had carefully arranged for witnesses to her attempts at seduction, and some were cleverly set up. To all it appeared my guilt was certain. My brother, Edwin, was devastated, of course, and my family furious with me.”
He sighed heavily. ”I made all the apologies I could, and explained as much as I was able. Then Margaret died in childbed, and I could stay there no longer. Fortunately, I had friends in need of a strong arm in battle and a.s.sistance in maintaining the peace of their lands.”
It wasn't until he turned to look at her that Juliana realized she'd stopped working on his hair and just held on tightly. Too tightly, no doubt, but the devastating guilt twisted her stomach into a knot.
His compa.s.sionate tone felt like another knife driven into her heart when he said, ”My lady, be not so horrified on my behalf. 'Tis long past, now. I've tried to commit her to G.o.d's mercy. Christ does enjoin us to forgive those who have trespa.s.sed against as we wish forgiveness extended to ourselves.” The tone changed to lightly ironic when he added, ”I struggle with it.”
Juliana released her hold on his hair as she tried to collect her wits. ”That was a truly terrible thing she did to you, though. To betray you and her duty thus.” Her breath stuck in her throat and her heart pounded too hard.
He put a gentle hand on her cheek. ”My lady, I'm grateful for your compa.s.sion and concern on my behalf, but take it not too much to your heart. You have burdens enough already.”
She winced. Her conscience did indeed carry too many burdens; how could she add to it
the burden of betraying him again?His fingers were warm on the skin of her face. Small pinwheels of excitement rushed into her where he touched, settling in her stomach. It was nearly unbearable, yet so pleasant and comforting at the same time, she couldn't bring herself to break the contact.
His breath caught as his hand moved against her cheek. His palm brushed the skin and fingers threaded into her hair. His gaze caught hers from a distance of only inches away. He watched her with so much intensity in his blue eyes, she couldn't bear the scrutiny and looked down. His chest was magnificent, the skin sleek, the muscles shapely, and his flat brown nipples just peering out of the mat of fine, blond hair.
It wasn't a good idea, but she couldn't resist putting a hand out to feel it, stroking down the hard flesh, feeling its warmth, the ridges, the way it rippled as he tensed.They shouldn't be doing this. She was betraying him all over again. She shouldn't be enjoying the feel of flesh against flesh so much. The closeness not only set her senses ablaze, making the warmth sing in her blood, but it found all the empty, lonely, emotionally starved crevices in her heart and began to fill them in. Why could Groswick not have been more like this man, with his sense of honor and compa.s.sion and kindness?A strangled sob came from her throat.”Hush,” he said, very gently, and leaned forward to kiss her.The pressure of his mouth against hers revealed an entire new world of sensation. She'd never realized lips could feel so much. The excitement of it stirred her blood, made it
ripple and skip in her veins. It was heat pouring into her.When he opened his mouth and probed delicately with his tongue, the jolt made her tighten all the way down to her toes. It was like nothing she'd ever known before. He was like no other man she'd met. But they shouldn't be doing this. She shouldn't be allowing it.
She opened her mouth to protest, but no sound came out. Instead he recognized the invitation she might or might not have meant to issue and inserted his tongue through the opening.
Her knees went weak and she clutched at his shoulders for support. Fire spread through her, settling in her middle, then sinking lower. She leaned against him, wanting nothing more than to be closer, even closer to him. His tongue swiped over her teeth and stroked hers. Her deep groan didn't make it out. She wanted to draw him as deeply into herself as it was possible to be.
As if her thoughts had communicated themselves to him, he put an arm around her shoulders and his other hand behind her head to draw her closer. His tongue withdrew for a moment and he nipped at her lips, then licked across them to soothe the exciting little ache.
Strange noises came from her, something between a sob and a pant. He kissed across her cheek to her ear, then down along her throat. Wherever his lips touched the skin seemed to come alive, to tingle with the thrill of it.
She put both hands flat against his chest and felt the strong, rapid thudding of his heart. Her body shook with craving. She wanted this more than anything she could remember. But it was wrong. ”My lord,” she said, the words half plea and half protest.