Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
Holly’s earliest memory was of the adoring moons of her parents’ faces hovering over her crib.
“Just ’ook at Mama’s b-o-o-oootifiil baby,” her mother would croon, reaching down to finger a silky curl.
“Her is Papa’s pwecious wittle angel,” her father would lisp in reply, tickling the satiny skin beneath Holly’s chin until she rewarded him with a delighted chortle.
Soon they were joined by others, an entire galaxy of pale moons gazing raptly down at her, all eager to pinch her rosy cheeks, tweak the tip of her upturned nose, poke the chubby perfection of her downy belly. Her mother had refused to swaddle her as was the custom, pronouncing it an affront to God’s artistry to tuck away such exquisite little arms and legs.
At the conclusion of each such rite of worship, her mother would turn and solemnly inquire of their guests, “Isn’t our Holly simply the fairest creature God ever created?”
Her audience would intone their awestruck agreement, their eyes glazing over with adoration as they leaned over the crib, clucking and cooing in the fervent hope of coaxing a smile from Holly’s rosebud mouth.
“Liars,” Holly muttered, backing away from the man on the bluff. “Every one of them. Wretched, heartless liars!”
The sparkling frost of his eyes narrowed in bewilderment. “My lady? What is it? Is something the matter?” He lowered the linen towel, revealing a muscular chest shaded by damp whorls of hair. Holly could remember only too well the crisp feel of them beneath her fingertips. He took a step toward her.
She splayed a hand to ward him away and he stopped, seeming to sense that any sudden movement on his part might result in dire consequences. Such as her throwing herself over the edge of the bluff into the roiling river.
Holly’s suitors had lied to her. Her papa had lied to her. Even her beloved mama had lied to her. She could never be the fairest creature God had ever created as long as Sir Austyn of Gavenmore lived.
His was not the fey comeliness of Eugene de Legget or even the boyish charm of his fair-haired man-at-arms. His was a purely masculine beauty, as dark and compelling as the visage of one of God’s own angels cast from the portals of heaven for daring to supplant his Master’s affections in the heart of every mortal female who laid eyes on him.
His scruffy growth of beard was gone, no longer defending her from a rugged jaw mellowed by the hint of a devilish dimple in one cheek. Gone as well the bristling mustache that had shielded her from the sulky curve of lips chiseled by a master artist for the delights of kissing and other sensual pleasures Holly could only pretend to imagine.
In her pathetic na?veté, she had thought him closer to her father’s age than her own, but the dripping misericorde in his hand had shaved decades from his age. He could not have wounded her any more deeply had he plunged its blade into her thundering heart.
Her pallor must have reflected her shock for the quizzical concern in his eyes deepened. “Are you ill, my lady?”
Aye, she was ill! Sickened by her own stupidity. Sickened by the lurching betrayal of her heart. Sick with a fury she knew was as absurd as it was unjust. She wanted to fling herself at the sun-gilded planes of the bastard’s chest and beat at him with her fists. She wanted to snatch down the bodice of her gown, revealing her breasts in all of their splendor, and shout “Ha!”
She wanted to cup the damp, freshly shaven planes of his cheeks between her palms and draw his mouth, that exquisite mouth with its beguiling promise of both damnation and deliverance, down to hers for a long, thirsty draught.
To keep herself from doing anything that might expose her folly, she turned her back on him in one violent motion, But even clenching her eyes shut so tightly they ached could not blind her to the image of him standing at the edge of that bluff, the dusky sable of his hair framed by the azure sky and caressed by the breeze blowing off the river.
Remorse flooded Austyn as he gazed down at his wife’s narrow shoulders. He’d never seen anything so rigid, yet so brittle. ’Twas as if the merest nudge of his fingertip would cause her to crumble and scatter on the wind. What an utter churl he had been! It should have occurred to him before he shaved that his accursed fairness of face would only make her more conscious of her lack.
He slipped behind her, the ashen vulnerability of her nape rebuking him. He brushed a hand over her shoulder, but she shied away from his touch.
Austyn’s fingers curled helplessly in on themselves. “Forgive me, my lady. ’Twas never my intention to wound you.”
She wheeled on him. For a dazzling instant, the glistening violet of her eyes against the apricot flush of her skin blinded Austyn to her lank hair and mottled teeth. “Then what was your intention, sir? To burn me at the stake in the castle courtyard? To swab my spattered remains off the cobblestones beneath the north tower?”
He reached to rub his beard, then lowered his hand when it encountered only smooth jaw. “So Winnie’s been regaling you with the Gavenmore history, eh?”
“Only the family propensity for either murdering their wives or driving them to suicide. How long will it be before my restless spirit is wandering the corridors of Caer Gavenmore, rattling a dried chaplet of bluebells and wailing a warning to the next Gavenmore bride?”
Austyn shuddered at the image. He knew better than anyone how haunting Holly’s caterwauling could be. “You’ve no need to fret about your own well-being. All of those unfortunate incidents were crimes of—” He stopped abruptly, realizing his casual words contained jagged barbs that might shred her feelings anew.
But it was too late. Without the mask of his beard to shield his thoughts, his treacherous face had revealed him.
“Passion?” she asked softly. “Jealousy?” She met his gaze squarely, the luminous oases of her eyes now dry and barren. “Then I am relieved, sir, to know there is to be neither between us.”
Turning from him, she started down the hill toward the castle, her affronted dignity a fragile shield. Austyn watched her go, his heart plagued by an odd pang at the endearing awkwardness of her waddle.
He was too awash in regret to hear Carey come rustling up the path from the river, a string of fish dangling from one hand. “I say, fellow, have you seen Sir Aus—” The fish flopped from his fingers to the grass. “Good God, man, what have you done?”
“Proved myself an utter clod,” Austyn replied absently, laying aside the misericorde and towel to rescue his tunic from a nearby rock. “Trampled my wife’s delicate heart into the dirt.”
“And it’s not even noontide yet. But I was talking about the beard.” Carey wiped a missed streak of soap lather from Austyn’s cheek. “Why I’d forgotten how comely you were or I might have wed you myself!
Austyn cuffed him lightly on the chin. “My face was never good for naught but attracting the very sort of women I sought to avoid.”
Carey sighed wistfully. “Ah! Beautiful women. Exquisite feminine creatures with soft, creamy hands and lush, rosy lips eager to…” He shook himself out of his reverie.
Austyn buckled a crimson surcoat over his tunic. “Now that I’ve a wife and am protected from such dangerous temptations, I thought it safe to shave.”
Carey snorted. “God pity the harlot that incurs the wrath of your bride. The little minx would doubtlessly snatch her even balder than—” He lowered his eyes. “Sorry.”
Austyn picked up the memento he had carried next to his heart since that night in the moonlit garden, studying it with troubled eyes. “My wife is a most curious girl. She doesn’t seem the jealous sort. ’Tis almost as if she doesn’t deem herself worthy of fidelity.” Still haunted by her fleeing image, he closed his hand, crushing the forgotten treasure heedlessly in his fist. “When I told her my heart was pledged to another—”
“You told her such a thing? Have you lost your wits, man? Women despise candor.”
Austyn scowled. “To lie would have been a dishonor to her. And had I not told her the truth, she might have thought I found her”—it was his turn to lower his eyes—“distasteful.”
“Ah, but now you wish to make amends?”
What Austyn wished for was his beard to hide the flush he could feel creeping toward his clenched jaw. In matters of the heart, he had no choice but to bow to Carey’s superior wisdom. To avoid any entanglements that might inadvertently cost him his soul, Austyn had chosen to bargain for the majority of his pleasures. He’d learned to bring a woman to shuddering ecstasy when he’d been little more than a lad, but knew nothing of wooing one. His coin had always been persuasion enough.
“I’ll not praise her virtues in honeyed verse if that’s what you’re thinking,” he growled. “I’d rather she gut me with my own sword than repeat that debacle.”
Carey absently picked up the misericorde, tapping its hilt against his pursed lips as he contemplated how best to display his sophistication. “Women, particularly new brides, love to receive gifts. And they adore any excuse to fuss over their menfolk. Offer the girl some tokens of your affection. Give her a bit of mending to do.”
“Mending? But I’ve nothing that requires it. Your mother does all—” Yelping, Austyn jumped back as Carey jabbed the misericorde toward his side, splitting the seam of his surcoat and barely missing his ribs. He shot his man-at-arms a disbelieving glare. “What are you trying to do? Give her the pleasure of stitching up my hide?”
“Only as a last resort I’m sure you can scrape up some more garments to go on the pile.” Carey clapped him on the shoulder. “Take heart, man. The girl has probably had little enough wooing in her life. I wager ’twill take but a handful of pretty trinkets to win back her favor.”
Holly glared at Austyn’s offerings, fuming with impotent anger.
After fleeing the bluff and the regal stranger masquerading as her husband, she had spent hours restlessly prowling the castle, giving only the shadowy stairwell that wended its way to the haunted tower a wide berth. Twice she had thought she heard shuffling steps behind her, but had whirled around to find herself alone. Perhaps ’twas only rats, she had thought bitterly, or the shambling specter of her own idiocy.
She had retreated to her chamber after noontide to find a silver tray resting on the chest. A silver tray containing an array of exquisite offerings: a tiny replica of a misericorde no bigger than her smallest finger, its wooden blade carved to a delicate point; a pewter box brimming with fresh cut herbs, their wintry aroma making her nostrils tingle; a silken veil so gossamer it might have been woven from nothing more substantial than the dreams of wistful spiders.
Holly picked up each item in turn, surveying them with brutal candor. “A veil to spare my lord the sight of my face. Herbs to sweeten the foulness of my breath. And a pick to clean my rotten teeth. How thoughtful.”
A knock sounded on the door. Holly marched over to it, wielding the tiny toothpick like the most lethal of daggers. She was only too eager to plunge it into her husband’s churlish heart.
Winifred stood on the threshold, teetering beneath a mound of garments. She staggered over to the bed, dropping her burden with a grunt of relief. “From the master, my lady. He remembered your papa boasting that you were proficient in needlework.”
“Proficient?” Holly echoed acidly. ’Twas rumored throughout England that she could sew a man’s flapping tongue to his chin before he’d finished declaring his eternal devotion to her. “Thank you, Winifred,” she said stiffly, ushering the tiny woman out the door.
She wheeled around to shoot the innocuous-looking pile of garments a baleful glare, thankful to have been given yet another gust of irritation to fan the embers of her rage.
“Of all the masculine arrogance! Why the sheer vanity of it boggles the mind! He must think it the most esteemed privilege for me to prick my fingertips raw in his exalted service!”
She snatched a crimson surcoat from the top of the pile, wringing it between her hands as if it were Austyn’s thick neck. An achingly familiar aroma wafted to her nose. She buried her face in the garment, breathing deeply of an intoxicating hint of leather, horse, and crisp minty musk.
A despairing moan escaped her. She sank to her knees on the bearskin rug, still clutching the garment.
How Nathanael would laugh if she allowed him to discover her predicament! she thought. How many times had he sneered his approval while she scoffed in the crestfallen face of some poor man whose only transgression was to allow his heart to be drawn into her snare by a flutter of her silky lashes or a provocative pout?
Yet she had allowed herself to be beguiled by nothing more than the hint of an unlikely dimple in a man’s stern jaw, the wry quirk of his chiseled lips.
A dry sob, half laughter, half grief, broke from her lips. She was lying to herself even now. In truth, she had began to feel the first stirrings of infatuation for Sir Austyn as early as the tournament, when his valor on the jousting field had proved him a man of honor. She had behaved as the most abominable brat on the journey to Gavenmore, yet instead of punishing her as she deserved, he had rewarded her with patience and compassion.
He had forfeited both his freedom and the hope of a future with a woman he truly loved to wed a stranger and protect a father too tormented by grief to ever fully appreciate the sacrifice his son had made. Oddly enough, even Austyn’s fidelity to that faceless wraith of a lover stirred Holly almost as much as it pained her.
She rubbed the worn samite of the surcoat against her cheek, realizing that she was trapped in a web of her own deceit. Once she might have captured the heart of a virile man like Austyn with nothing more than a crook of one elegant fingernail. But now her fingernails were shredded to the quick and Austyn’s heart was bound to another. Her father had warned her too late of the grim consequences of forever seeking her own way.
“Oh, Papa,” she whispered. “What have I done?”
Don’t rely solely on your disguise to repel him, girl. Just be yourself .
Her father’s enigmatic advice rose unbidden in her mind. A wild hope flowered in her heart. If she could repel Austyn with her shrewish temper, might she not also win his favor with the sweetness of her demeanor? Then for once in her life, she would be assured that someone loved her for something other than her fairness of form.
And once she’d won her husband’s favor, she would be free to confess her trifling deception. Freshly dazzled by the promise of her beauty, he would gather her into his arms and seal his pledge of eternal devotion with the tenderest of kisses.
Holly sighed, enchanted by the blissful vision. It took several dazed moments for the bright crimson of the surcoat to come back into focus. When it did, she jumped to her feet, giving the garment a brisk snap. If she was going to be the sweetest, most attentive wife a Gavenmore had ever been blessed with, there was much work to be done.
She tossed a handful of wintergreen into her mouth before throwing open the door. “Elspeth!” she bellowed, chewing vigorously. “Elspeth, fetch my sewing box this very instant!”