Chapter 15 #3
“Only in the nicest way. But I was trying to save it for you.” At least she wasn’t in shock.
He went to get a damp cloth to clean himself, and brought another to her. She was already wiping some splashes off herself with a corner of the sheet.
“Are you upset by that?” he asked carefully as he offered her the cloth. Claire of Summerbourne was not the most predictable woman.
“No.” But she looked worried. “Is that it, though? Can we not … ?”
“Look at me and answer yourself.”
She looked and blushed. “I’m glad. I want to become your wife tonight.”
He laughed for relief and in simple delight at the jewel she was. “You will, Claire. Have no fear.”
“No fear,” she echoed and smiled so sweetly it could break his heart. “And to think that earlier I was afraid of you. Of it.”
He hadn’t really thought he had a breakable heart yet now there was a pain in his chest that could only come from that. “But having seen how easily it’s conquered …” he teased, fighting, God help him, not to weep.
From habit he picked up his scabbarded sword from beside the bed, checking that it hadn’t been splattered. When he glanced at her, she was staring at it.
“I always sleep with it by my hand, Claire.”
“It is a holy blade. It will bless us.” But she frowned.
“I’m sorry. I’ll put it out of sight.” Remembering the previous night, he slid the blade out a little to be sure there were no more tricks.
It glinted dark and clean so he pushed it back and put it down a little farther back in a less obvious place, trying to come to terms with this new world.
The world in which he loved Claire of Summerbourne.
Claire—his wife, the woman he was tricking and deceiving because soon, very soon, she would have reason to hate him.
He’d snared and held and tricked and teased simply because he wanted her, and what he wanted he fought to have. What was the difference between wanting and love? He didn’t know except that there was, and it changed everything.
Just maybe, if he’d loved her sooner, he would have found the strength to let her go.
But the wheel had turned. There was nothing now but to go forward and pray. He turned to consider the sheet, whether it was too soiled for her comfort, and found her still frowning. “Claire, it would be foolish to keep my sword too far away. What if we were attacked in the night?”
“Why would we be?” she asked, but vaguely. “Someone said it cuts through metal. Through mail.”
Something in her tone, in the severity of her frown sent a splinter of icy dread into him. By all the saints, not yet. Not now. He put one knee on the bed and reached for her. “Let’s not talk of swords now, sweetheart.”
“Do most swords not?”
“Claire. We have better subjects—”
She slid from his reaching hand. “Do they not?”
He let his hand fall. “No. Most swords cannot cut through metal.”
“But there must be other swords like that.”
“Of course.” He didn’t try again to touch her.
“Then why was everyone so awestruck by it?”
“It contains the stone from Jerusalem.” He made himself meet her panicked, questioning eyes.
“They were even more astonished that it could cut through mail.” Her eyes fixed on him as if begging for something. “How many swords in England can do that?”
He knew then, and it settled like stone in his gut. He wished he could lie for her—for himself—but that was one step he would not take. “Just that one as best I know.”
She moved back a little farther. “My father was killed in chain mail. By a sword to the heart. The links were cut through.” She inched to the very edge of the bed. “Did that sword kill my father?”
After a moment she whispered, “Did you— No, it cannot be!”
The lie floated seductively to his lips. A temptation worthy of the snake in Eden. He could not be sure that he stopped it for honor’s sake, or simply because the news would come. Such a lie could not hold.
Pale and frantic, she scrambled backward off the bed. “Oh, Jesu, of course you did! Why else were you given his property, one of his women for bride?”
“Claire—”
“Why else were you given that sword! A reward … No.” She stared at him. “You had the sword before. Mail is supposed to protect from swords. You cheated.“ She came around the bed in fierce attack. “You murdered him!”
He backed away, hands raised. “Claire, listen to me—”
“How could you?” She seized the sword in both hands.
“How could you bring this here? How could you face us with his blood on your hands? How could you … !”
When she seized the hilt as if she’d draw the weapon, he ripped it from her and tossed it to the far side of the bed.
She whirled to follow it and Renald saw what she saw—stained sheets, the blood of crushed roses, and the black-scabbarded blade. The room reeked of sex and roses, with a mismatched underlay of herbs and spices.
He wasn’t surprised when she bent to vomit.
He stood frozen. For once in his life, he had no idea how to handle a woman, especially this woman, the one he wanted to guard against all harshness forever. He’d always known he was forcing her to grasp a vicious blade and now the wound was clear.
His own blood ran.
There was nothing else he could have done. Just as there’d been nothing he could have done to save her father.
You could have told her the truth.
You could have let her escape.
It was, God help them both, too late for that.