Chapter 31
The moon was higher in the night sky when Lyall turned at the sound of the door and there she was.
“Glenna,” he spoke aloud, her name coming naturally from his mind to his lips.
She was not a ghost of the woman who had haunted him, that he had seen around every corner as he tried to hide from her and what he felt.
Flesh and blood Glenna stood inside his bedchamber, a royal daughter in a deep green gown, fitted to her body and with gold embroidery along the neck and in panels at the sleeves, looking like an angel, a siren, and a witch, the beautiful sorceress placed in this earth to test his mettle.
He had known she would keep pushing, that he would see her again, but not now, not when he was tired of living with himself, and the disappointments of those who should matter in his life.
Not now when he’d been tested all day by face to face encounters and still tried to feel nothing.
He could not find release from how he felt.
And here she was. He was all too aware of the determination in her manner, the gleam in her eye.
She came to him in the way a knight charged after the quintain.
He took a deep and long-suffering breath.
Her scent filled the air, that of a summer field full of flowers, reminding him of moments when he had held her.
He crossed the room putting some distance between them, and he blew out a candle, then pushed aside the chair and braced himself against the edge of the table, crossing his feet at the ankles and acting as if she did not affect him as she did. “I know why you are here.“
“And you are not pleased,” she said moving near a chair, where she stood on tiptoe and took a candle from the wall prick, using it to light another.
“You wish to save me.”
“Someone has to. They will not dare to hang you as my husband, and were anyone to try, I would go to my grave fighting for you. “ She moved by the bed and lit more candles, one, two, five, six… “ ‘Tis the simple plan, Lyall.”
When she faced him, he saw she truly thought ‘twas all so clear and sensible. But nothing in his life was simple. She stood before him, a Trojan horse in the guise of a small black-haired woman who would be his champion.
“Aside from that,” she admitted. “There is another reason. I have a selfish motive to save you.”
He gave a short laugh. “Because you gain a husband who will not bury you alive.”
“Aye. There is that,” she agreed.
“So you imagine I am safe. I think your father, his councilors, and my stepfather all would argue that point, sweetheart.”
“I do not care,” she said stubbornly.
“But I care.” He straightened and turned his back to her, unable to look her in the eye with what he was about to do. “With all of your grand ideas you have not considered one thing.”
“What would that be?”
“Why should I exchange one shackle for another?”
She paused about one heartbeat, then laughed at him and did not budge.
Stubborn, mule-headed and foolish woman!
“Oh, Lyall, really. What a poor liar you are.”
“You should leave, Glenna.”
“Perhaps I should, but I cannot. I dare not leave you again. I love you too much to let you keep running away from this…from me.” She came close and stopped next to him, so close he could hear her breath, and she lit the candle he’d blown out.
“From who we are together.” She looked at him from beneath the darkest thick lashes, a sultry look that was far beyond her experience.
She pulled the gold combs from her hair and shook her head, and her hair tumbled down as black and shiny as a rook’s wing.
The king’s daughter was bent on seduction. Her eyes met his and the gauntlet was down.
“You are only afraid of who you are and what you’ll have to face, of your father and his decisions,” he said truthfully. “I am merely the simplest answer to your problem.”
“Aye,” she nodded without hesitation. “That too is true. Convenient is it not? I can save you and you can save me.” She smiled at him, a smile that was easy and free and unconcerned, a smile that drew him unwillingly into the charms of it.
“Seems the simplest of all solutions. I expect that you would leap upon this opportunity if you cared nothing for me.”
Her words struck. That she knew him so well was different, and not so very comfortable.
“You claim you are a selfish coward,” she continued. “But a true coward would never walk away from the simple answer to a problem. I think you are no coward. Why do you do this but for my sake?”
He had no answer because she spoke the truth.
And that was how he was caught in his own game.
He could not do with her what he did with others in his life: act as if he didn’t care.
She saw him for exactly who he was, not on the surface, but deep, deep inside, the place scorched by all the hurts in his life.
“The more you balk, Lyall, the more you prove that you love me more than yourself,” she said.
He chewed it over—this whole thing between them. It was a long time before he admitted, “You are a thorn in my side. A stone in my boot. A pain in my--”
“Aye,” she agreed easily.
He looked into her eyes, so clear and trusting, so unafraid yet he was scared for her.
All she felt for him was revealed in her look, open, loving, and there was nothing more he could hide from her.
“You do not give up.” He shook his head and sank into the chair with almost no fight left in him. “What a warrior you are.”
She smiled and moved into his lap, linking her arms about his neck and her head lay softly and easily on his shoulder.
Her breath whispered against his neck and for a long time neither of them moved.
They sat as they were, her nestled against him as a great sense of peace came over him, and with it waned the one thing that had held him back, his will and need to save her from himself. “We should not be here.”
Her lips brushed his neck, then his jaw.
“Leave, sweetheart. Leave while you can. Run away and save yourself.”
When she did not move, he pulled back and she grabbed his tunic in her fists, her face a handsbreadth away, suddenly full of emotion.
“Oh lud! Do not dare put me through this again. Do not dare choose a higher road, Lyall Robertson! What I do need is not for you to decide to be honorable and walk away from me, or for you to send me away again all because you have some kind of hairy idea--foolhardy at best--that I am too good for you.”
He merely looked at her, searching for some strength and losing. To which, she crossed her arms, tossed her chin, wiggled her bottom, and glared at him.
What was not being said made the silence louder.
Then his burst of laughter was like a clap of thunder; it echoed and rang and was honest and contagious.
He pulled her to him. “My Glenna. My warrior,” he murmured softly against her lips, perhaps to himself more than to her, and he kissed her without hesitation or any feelings of regret.
When he was done with her mouth, he pulled back and capitulated with a sigh.
“Do not fret, I am still the coward. I am still selfish. I surrender. If I do not, you will harangue me, chase me, seduce me, tease me, flog me with wet towels for all eternity. In the face of that and with all my weaknesses, I have not the courage nor inclination to commit the most noble of acts—that of protecting you from your poor choice of a husband.”
“Lud, I would hope not.” She eased back against his arms. “After all we’ve been through, I would hate to think I misjudged you and found myself bound to a man of morals.”
“I have no morals, love.
“Someday we will discuss the root cellar at that inn,” she said with a half-smile and glint in her eye that promised more than retribution.
Laughing, he spun her around and began working at the ties on her gown. “Let’s rid ourselves of all this clothing.”
She turned back and did not stop kissing him, small light touches of her lips along his neck and jawline, distracting him from his task at the ties of her gown until he tore them apart and the sound of rending fabric made him groan and her laugh, giggling with her lips against his mouth.
She cupped his face in her hands. “For a man so quick to leave me, you seem to have little patience with my clothes.
“A cursed thing, these clothes,” he said, scooping her up in arms and he carried to the bed, pulling back to draw open the heavy bed curtains so he could see her completely in the amber candlelight.
“You have on more clothes than I. Take them off,” she said, laying back with her ebony hair spread out behind and beneath her, blending with the furs on the bed, a dark halo framing her pale skin and dark eyes, her wine-colored lips, moist from his kisses, her arms raised as she lay there calling to him in ways he could not name, but only feel.
He pulled off his tunic and linen chainse.
Her eyes did not leave him. “More,” she said, and he stripped off his hose and loincloth and stood before her, bare of body and bare-souled.
Overwhelmed by the sight of her and needing her body against his, he crawled onto the bed and rolled over with her wrapped in his arms, pulling apart her clothing.
First her gown, tugging it down over her buttocks and she kicked it off, then he grabbed the thin chemise with birds stitched carefully along the neck, and she stopped him.
“Do not tear it! Please. See the birds? Mairi stitched it for me. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever worn against my skin,” she said reverently.
He slipped it off her shoulders, one at a time, and down to her waist. Turning over, his hands spread open on her ribs, amazed that they were so small, then slowly his hands moved upward to take her breasts, thumbs stroking.
She sucked in a breath, and he lowered his head, her hands splayed in his hair and held him to her, her breathing in small gasps.