"Let us look at the horses," David said. "You will need one once you leave the castle."
"I don"t want you to buy me a horse, David."
"You will not be using the royal stables after we are wed. We will find a suitable horse today."
"After I am wed, I will not be riding your suitable horse, since I will not be wed to you."
"Then I will sell it. For convenience, we will see if there is one while you are here to choose. Just in case."
She suppressed the urge to get stubborn and fell into step beside him as they went to survey the animals. As they walked around the field examining and discussing the horses, they found several possibilities. Toward the end of their circuit they came upon a most suitable horse, a beautiful small black palfrey. The owner produced a saddle, and Christiana tried him out. While David came to terms with the man and arranged for delivery to Westminster"s stables, she scanned the crowd for signs of the long-absent Joan and Andrew. The field was too big and busy for her to find them. Just like Joan to forget the reason for coming in the first place.
A bear baiter and some dancers arrived to entertain. Christiana had no interest in the bear, but the dancers fascinated her. At court she tried never to miss dancers of any kind. This group was fairly rustic and unschooled compared to others she had seen, but still she followed their movements to the simple music for a long while. A part of her envied these women who were permitted to let the music entrance them, whose bodies swayed and curved and angled like moving pictures.
"I would have liked to be a dancer."
"You dance at banquets and feasts, do you not?" David asked.
She blushed. She hadn"t even realized that she had spoken out loud. "Aye. But that is different. That is like a dinner conversation." She gestured to the women. "This is like a meditation, I think. Sometimes I will see one who looks to be in ecstasy, who is not even aware of the world anymore."
She felt his gaze and tore her eyes away from the performance to look at him. His face held that penetrating expression that he directed at her sometimes. There was something invasive about this focused awareness, and it never failed to make her uncomfortable.
It is like I am made of gla.s.s, she thought. It wasn"t fair that he could do this. He knew how to remain forever opaque to her.
"I think that you would be a beautiful dancer," he said. "If you think that dancing thus will give you pleasure, then you should do it."
Finally the dancers took a break and the crowd that had formed drifted away.
"We should find Joan," she said, peering at the crowd.
"I"m sure that we will cross paths. If not, we will meet at the horses."
She joined him and they examined the wares that the vendors sold. She wondered what Joan was up to with that apprentice, and what Lady Idonia would say if she found out that Christiana had lost track of her.
One of the vendors offered savories of fried bread dipped in honey. The smell coming from the hot oil was delicious, and she glanced over longingly as they walked by. It was messy food and just the sort of thing that Lady Idonia had never let her buy when they went to festivals. David noticed and went to purchase some.
"It is sure to stain my clothing," she said, echoing the reason Idonia had always given for avoiding such food.
"We will manage."
He took one of the doughy savories, and gestured for her to follow him behind the stall to some trees. The vendors edged the crowd and field, and there was no one back here. He broke off a piece of the honey-covered bread and held it out. She reached for it but he pulled it away.
"There is no reason for us both to get covered with it," he said, and placed the dough near her lips. It smelled warm and yeasty and sweet and wonderful. Baring her teeth to avoid the fingers that held it, she stretched her neck forward and took the morsel in her mouth. It tasted heavenly and she rolled her eyes at the pleasure.
He laughed and broke off another small piece. She stretched for it. "I must look like a chicken," she giggled with her mouth full.
Those long fingers fed her again. She felt some honey dripping down her lip and licked to catch it. He gently flicked it away, the pad of his finger grazing the edge of her mouth. Her lower lip quivered at the sensation, and her face and neck tingled.
The last piece was too big and she had to bite into it. Her teeth nipped his fingertips and she blushed, awkwardly conscious of the contact. He still held out the rest of it, and her gaze stayed on that beautiful hand as she chewed quickly and then hesitantly took the last of the savory. His hand did not move away this time, but followed her head back. His fingertips brushed her lips and rested there. The dough suddenly felt very thick in her mouth.
She looked up at his face and saw the slight hardness around his mouth. His lids lowered as he watched her lips move beneath his hand. An odd stillness descended, and she swallowed the last of the sweet dough with difficulty.
With a deliberate movement and watchful eyes, he ran his finger around the edge of her mouth, collecting the errant honey, and then wiped the sweetness onto her lips.
She had a sudden shocking urge to lick the last of the honey off those fingers. He looked in her eyes as if he understood. One by one, he wiped his fingers across her mouth like a repeated invitation to her impulse, layering the sticky remains on her lips.
The gesture mesmerized her. The sounds of the field and races receded to a distant roar. In the still silence that engulfed her, she could hear her heart beat harder with the light pressure of each small caress. The exciting intensity that she always sensed in him spread to surround her. He looked at her a long moment when he finished. Then he abruptly took her hand and pulled her back amongst the trees. She stumbled after him, not really cooperating but not resisting either. Breathless antic.i.p.ation claimed her as they left the sanctuary of the field. She told herself that she did not want to do this, that she would not go with him, but she went anyway.
He dragged her behind a large oak. With his arm, around her shoulders he pulled her into an embrace. The other arm slid under her cloak and around her waist, pressing her body to his body as he kissed her. Those new sensations that had snuck up on her so insidiously the last time suddenly exploded all at once. It was if they had been carefully corralled for two weeks but now he had opened the gate and waved them to a frenzy. The intimacy of the embrace felt exhilarating, and a thundering tremor full of sharp sensual spikes shook her from her neck to her thighs.
He gentled his kiss and began biting and licking the honey off her lips in an unhurried way, pulling her yet closer to him. She became very alert but only to him and each touch of warmth on her mouth. Awareness of everything else washed away beneath the stunning waves of slow, tight heat that coursed over and over through her body.
His tongue grazed against her lips, inviting her to open to him. With the one thread of reason still left, she kept her mouth resolutely closed. He smiled before moving his mouth down. Did she deliberately throw her head back so that he could reach the hollow at the base of her neck? She didn"t know for sure, but his mouth was there suddenly and her arms were up and around his shoulders, and both of his hands grasped her beneath her cloak, holding her, bending her up to his kisses. She grew acutely aware of every touch, every kiss, every wonderful strange reaction that she felt. Her upraised arms brought her body closer to his, and through the stretched fabric of her clothing she could feel his muscles and warmth tingling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The pressure of his hands around her felt both dangerous and comforting. Her awareness became full of something else, too, something commanding and expectant and connected to the hollow tension that spread through her belly. It was that as much as the exquisite feelings that kept her from stopping him. Vaguely, dully, her mind considered that he was luring her toward something that she did not really understand.
He kissed her mouth again, and his hands moved. Slowly, gently, he caressed down and up her sides beneath her cloak, his fingers splaying around the outer swells of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Shockingly, insistently, they moved down her back and over her b.u.t.tocks and up her hips. The tightness in her belly ached and somewhere low inside her a throbbing demand pounded.
One hand stayed on her hips but the other moved up. She knew what he was going to do. She remembered Stephen"s crushing grip and tensed, almost finding her senses, almost finding the strength to push him away.
But he did not crush her. His fingers stroked around the edge of her breast in a gentle, delicate way, tantalizing her to an excruciating antic.i.p.ation of she knew not what. Her breath quickened to a series of short gasps as her whole body waited.
When he finally caressed her breast, she bit back a moan. The pleasure startled her. She tried to pull away.
He would not let her go. Kissing her beautifully, caressing her softly, he summoned delicious feelings. His fingers touched her as if no cloth lay between them and her skin, finding her nipple and playing with it until that throbbing sensation low by her thighs became almost unbearable. He took the yearning hard bud between his thumb and finger and rubbed gently. This time she could not catch the small cry before it escaped her.
His mouth went to her ear and kissed and probed before his quiet voice flowed into her.
"Come back to my house with me. It is but a few minutes from here through the gate."
"Why?" she muttered, still floating in the sensual stupor that his hand created.
"Why? For one thing you should visit and meet the people who live there," he said, lifting his head to kiss her temple and brow. His hand still caressed her and she found it hard to pay attention to what he said.
"For another, I am too old to make love behind trees and hedges."
Naming what they were doing intruded like a loud noise on a dream. The sounds of the races instantly thundered around her. His hand on her body suddenly felt scandalous. Burning with shame, she looked away.
"This is wrong," she said.
"Nay. It is very right."
"You know what I mean."
His hand fell away from her breast, but still he held her.
"Did your lover give you such pleasure?" he asked softly.
She blushed deeper. She could not look at him.
"I thought not."
"It was different," she said accusingly. "We are in love. This isa isa" What? What was this horrible, wonderful thing?
"Desire," he said.
So this was desire. No wonder the priests always preached against it. Desire seemed a very dangerous thing indeed.
"Well, girl, if I had to have one without the other, I would choose this," he said. "Desire can grow into something more, but if it isn"t there at the beginning it never comes, and love dies without it."
He was lecturing her like a child again. She truly resented when he did that. "This is wrong," she repeated firmly, pushing a little, putting some distance between their bodies. "You know it is. You are luring me. It isn"t fair."
"Luring you? Why would I do that?"
"Who knows why you do any of this? Why offer for me in the first place? Why pay the bride price?"
She studied him. "Maybe you want to bed me so that when he comes, the betrothal cannot be annulled."
"It is a good idea. But that never occurred to me, because I know that he is not coming."
He had said that since the first night. Calmly, relentlessly he had repeated it. "You cannot know that,"
she snapped. But there had been something in his voice this time that terrified her. As if he did know. Somehow.
"He is not here, Christiana. He has had your message a long time now."
"Perhaps not. Maybe the messenger couldn"t find him."
"I have spoken with the messenger whom you hired. He delivered the letter into the hands of the man to whom you sent it ten days after you wrote it."
"You spokea you interfered in this? How dare you!"
"It is well that I did. Your messenger had no intention of leaving at once for your mission. He planned to wait until other business took him north. It could have been weeks. Even then he might have handed it off to any number of other people along the way and spared himself the trip."
"But he went at once for you? And delivered it directly?"
"I paid him a lot of money to do so. And to offer to bring a letter back."
She had been given no return letter. A frightening sadness tried to overwhelm her. She didn"t want to hear what David was saying, didn"t want to consider the implications. The messenger had been back for a while. If he could return in this time, so could Stephen. He could have at least sent a note. But perhaps the messenger had admitted doing her betrothed"s bidding and Stephen did not want to risk it. Fortunately her anger at David defeated her forebodings, or she might have been undone right there. She glared up at him. "Do you enjoy this? Destroying people"s lives?"
He gave her a very hard look, but it quickly softened. His hand left her side and stroked her face. "In truth, it will pain me to see you hurt."
"Then help me," she cried impulsively. "Set me free and help me to go to him."
He looked at her in that way that made her feel transparent. "Nay. Because he does not want you enough to hold on to you, girl, and I find that I do."
For an instant, while he looked at her, she had thought that she saw wavering, that he might actually do what she asked. His words crushed the small hope. Petulantly she shook off his arms and moved away.
"I want to go back to Westminster now."
Wordlessly he led her back to the vendors and over to a woman selling little bits of lace. He spoke a few words to the woman, and then turned to her. "This is Goodwife Mary. Stay with her while I go and find Andrew and Lady Joan. Do not move from here," he ordered before walking away into the crowd. She got the impression that he wanted to get away from her, and she was glad that he was gone, too. He gave her commands the way that Morvan did, and she resented it. We will ride north. We will buy a horse. Stand here and do not move. She was glad that they would not be marrying. Living with him would be like having her brother around all of the time, picking at her behavior. Lady Idonia could always be tricked and subverted. This man would be too shrewd for that. She was glad that he had left for another reason. She never had any peace with him nearby. She knew now that it had to do with what had just occurred beneath the tree. Something of that excitement, of that antic.i.p.ation, was there between them even when they just rode down the Strand and talked. Merely thinking about those wonderful feelings could call up her tingling responses again. Desire, he had called it. She did not much like this desire. She did not like the invisible ties it wove between them. The excitement she had felt with Stephen seemed a thin and childish thing in comparison, and she didn"t like that either.
Stephen. He had not come yet, had not sent a letter backa A horrible, vacant ache gripped her chest. She would not think about that, would not doubt him. She especially would not contemplate what it might imply about her and David de Abyndon.
"There you are!" Joan came skipping toward her with Andrew.
Christiana glanced at her friend. Joan looked flush-faced and beautiful. A piece of hay stuck out of her hair.
"Aye, here I am. David has gone looking for you and ordered me to wait here like a child." She eyed the hay and plucked it out. "Where have you been?"
"Oh, everywhere," Joan cried. "This is much more fun if Lady Idonia isn"t with us."
"I can only imagine." She held up the hay and raised her eyebrows. Andrew flushed and moved away. Joan shrugged. "There was a hay wagon beneath a tree and we climbed the tree and jumped in. It was a lot of fun."
"I thought that you were in love with Thomas Holland."
"I am. We just played."
"Joan! He is an apprentice!"
"Oh, you are as bad as Idonia. We only kissed once."
"You kisseda for heaven"s sake!"
Joan"s eyes narrowed. "It was only one kiss. It isn"t as if I am going to marry him."
She said it lightly, but the warning was unmistakable. David had been an apprentice like Andrew, and Christiana was going to marry him. I love you, the voice and eyes said, but you are in no position to criticize me.
A new, sad emotion surged. Joan pitied her. They all pitied her, didn"t they? All of the desire and pleasure in the world could not balance that out, could it?
David emerged from the crowd then. He silently collected them and led the way to the horses.
"He looks angry," Joan whispered. "What did you do?"
It was more a matter of what she didn"t do, Christiana suspected. Still, she found herself rather pleased that he was angry. Maybe because this was the first clear emotion that she had ever seen in him. It was the first time that she knew what he was thinking.
They retrieved the horses and headed toward Westminster. Joan and Andrew fell back and began talking again, but David tried to move at a fast pace. At first Christiana kept up with him, but then she simply slowed her horse and let him pull ahead. Shortly he slowed as well and rode beside her. She rather enjoyed making him do that.
His silence became oppressive, and after noting with a sigh that he brooded when angry just like Morvan, she stopped paying him any attention. She occupied herself with speculation about Stephen"s home in Northumberland. The worry that David had given her about Stephen quickly disappeared as she found a variety of excuses for his delay in writing or coming back.
"You are thinking about him again, aren"t you?" His voice, hard and quiet, intruded on her.
"What makes you say that?" she asked guiltily.
"The look on your face, girl. It is written all over you."
She was very sure that her expression showed nothing when she thought about Stephen. In fact, she worked at it. But then, David always seemed to see and know more than she wanted him to.
"You are a coward, Christiana," he said quietly, but the angry edge was unmistakable. "It would seem that I am too real for you. You refuse to see the truth. Not just about your lover not coming and this marriage really happening, but about us."
"There is no reality to face about us."