Chapter 2 #2
“What in Christ’s name is this? Why didn’t you tell me of it before?” Without waiting for her reply, Gray pulled her to the padded bench near the fire and made her sit. “Did you meet with an accident during your journey? Have you sustained other wounds? I demand that you tell me!”
He didn’t at first notice how his commanding tone affected her.
But when he saw the deathly hue of her cheeks and the strange, haunted look intensify in her eyes, he went still.
More softly, he said, “I need to know how this happened, lady, and if you were hurt elsewhere. If you cannot remember or will not comply, I will summon a physician to examine you, to ascertain that you are in no danger.”
“There’s no need to call an examination, my lord. The bruises were the result of my own foolishness, nothing more.”
Gray waited in silence for her to continue, but she apparently felt herself finished.
The only outward sign of her feelings came in how her fingers clenched in her lap.
Her throat worked convulsively, as if she tried to hold back some strong emotion.
Placing his fingertip under the silky curve of her chin, he guided her gaze back to his again.
“Are there more bruises than those I observed?”
He thought he saw a glimmer of unshed tears beginning to build again, but then she just blinked and nodded.
Gray found himself wavering between a desire to comfort her and the urge to force her to explain.
The conflicting feelings annoyed and angered him.
She had no right to come into his life and upset the delicate balance he’d worked so hard to achieve.
He’d not allow it. He needed to get to the bottom of his wife’s secrets, and he intended to uncover this particular mystery right now.
“Show me.”
She pulled away with an abrupt motion, standing and pacing to the other side of the chamber. “Nay. ’Tis of no matter. I will heal in time.” She half-turned, her eyes downcast as she clenched her fingers again. “I swear that I will not allow it to interfere with your pleasure this night, my lord.”
Shadows masked her face, but not enough so that Gray couldn’t see the tightness there. Fear. Aye, he’d expected as much. She was virgin, after all. He’d already reminded himself of that fact, cursing his inexperience in handling one such as she.
But whether she was his virgin bride or one of Thornby’s most seasoned whores, nothing mattered as much right now as making sure that she was well.
“Lady, I’ll wait no longer for your compliance.”
Gray covered the distance between them in the space of a heartbeat. Against her soft protests, he led her toward the fire; taking a candelabrum from the mantel, he tipped it to the flames.
The tapers ignited with a popping hiss, and he set them on a small table perched near the hearth. Elise faced away from him, motionless; the mellow candle-glow bathed her hair, turning its lighter brown strands to gold.
Sweet Jesu, but this was more difficult than he’d expected.
It took all of his strength not to bury his hands in her hair, to feel its silky weight against his cheek and breathe in her sweet fragrance.
Desperate to quell the desire, Gray pulled his dagger from his belt and sliced through her smock in one quick motion.
Elise gasped as the fabric of her underdress slipped, but she couldn’t prevent Gray from seeing what she’d obviously been trying to hide from him. The bruises that flowered across the smooth expanse of her back showed even more brutality, if that was possible, than the discoloration on her arm.
No accident under heaven could have resulted in this. It had been caused by the pounding force of some kind of animal. A human animal.
Fury swept through Gray with the swiftness of a winter squall; he beat back the surging memories that the sight of her injuries invoked.
Memories of pain, darkness, misery, and impotent fury.
A muscle in his jaw twitched as he stepped forward to push his wife’s hair gently from her neck.
She shuddered, and her shoulders hunched forward protectively.
By all that was Holy. Cursing softly, Gray let its silky weight fall back down to shield her.
“Tell me who did this.” His voice echoed quiet and deadly, and he felt the all too familiar battle rage begin to build in his blood.
Whatever man had dared to touch Elise, had dared to touch his wife like this, would pay dearly.
Before morning, the wretch’s blood would soak the earth below the walls of Ravenslock.
She swung around to face him, eyes wide. Her mouth was even more drawn and pinched than before. “Please, my lord, ’tis of no matter. I beg of you to let it pass.”
Gray’s anger burned hotter, and a dark, destructive need for vengeance flared in his blood. “I’ll excuse your request on the grounds that you’ve known me but a few hours, lady. Do not ask it of me again. Just tell me the name of the bastard who did this to you. Now.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. Her eyes had filled with tears, and her voice sounded choked.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, I…because I can’t let you take action against him, or—” She broke off mid-point, choking back another sob and clenching her fingers so tightly in front of her that Gray felt sure they must snap from the pressure.
His temper broke instead, and he stalked to her, gripping her hands. “Why all the secrets? Why the heavy silences, the mysterious glances? Have you a lover whose seed already grows in your belly? Is that why you take such pains to protect his name?”
Elise’s face turned ashen, and she gasped. “Nay! I’ve taken no lover, now or at any time in my life!”
“Who, then, would dare to visit such abuse upon you?” But even as he uttered the question aloud, its answer burst upon him with startling clarity.
Only a man who had access, power, and the right given him by law to exert such force could be responsible for the deed.
And only one man fit that description, so far as Gray knew.
“Christ, it was Eduard.” He murmured it half as a statement and half as a question. His wife’s silence gave him the confirmation he needed.
Releasing her, Gray stalked to the door, preparing to hunt down and drag the bastard from his bed, King Henry’s sanctions be damned.
But before he could pull back on the wooden slab, Elise cried out and threw herself against him to block his access.
He stared at her, stunned. Though she was tall, he’d not expected her to wield such strength.
She gazed at him, her eyes blue and glistening as the dew-soaked flowers that dotted the meadows near Ravenslock; she’d pressed back against the door, so caught up in the grip of emotion that she didn’t seem to notice how the cut edges of her smock slipped from her shoulders.
Gray did.
His gaze drifted almost against his will, picking up every nuance, noticing how the creamy fabric bunched around her hand where she continued to clutch it to her breasts.
The sight enticed him beyond reason. She looked wanton in a purely innocent way, which only added to the spiking shafts of desire and rage that lanced through him at the moment.
The soft linen provided sensual contrast with the smooth contours of bare flesh above it. In the firelight her skin took on a deeper glow, a silky warmth that made Gray burn with the desire to stroke his palm over the exposed places.
And other, more hidden places as well.
Jerking his gaze up to her face once again, he tried to thrust the thought from his mind.
He nudged her, hoping to ease her from the doorway.
But she didn’t move. Her free hand had tangled itself in the cloth of his cloak, and she squirmed and pushed back in her effort to keep him from leaving their chamber.
“Please, my lord. Take no action against him. It is enough that he no longer has rule over me, and that I can hope for greater mercy at your hands. I beg of you, let it be!”
“Nay, lady. I cannot.” Gray looked down at her, exasperation filling him at her stubborn defense of a villain. “No one may harm you with my knowledge and then continue as if naught occurred.”
Elise looked horrified. She searched his face desperately, as if seeking some measure of mercy.
Finding none, her expression went blank, then took on a reckless, bitter cast. She blinked back her tears.
“Yet you may continue the righteous hypocrite! Can you say that you’ve never corrected a woman in anger, my lord?
Now that you hold dominion over me, do you not intend to beat me whenever you deem it necessary? ”
Every muscle in Gray’s body tightened. “Regardless of what other men may do, lady, since I was but a lad of fourteen, I’ve never suffered another to harm a woman in my presence.
And while there’s no denying that I dislike the slashing barb of your tongue, I do not intend to beat you for it. Now or ever.”
Dead silence greeted him. Elise blinked twice more and then the fight seemed to leave her, seeping away until she went limp and pliant against him. Yet Gray found that he couldn’t continue his plan. He couldn’t just push her aside to go after Eduard.
He felt the warmth of her palm, still resting, forgotten, on his chest; it burned through his cloak and shirt, holding him captive far more effectively than any steel shackle or metal bars might have.
The curve of her breast and hips, pressed so intimately along his body in her struggles, branded him with heat.
His desire jolted to full awareness, and he tried to shift away to curtail the swelling need that rose from being so near to her soft curves and enticing warmth.
But his abrupt movement made him pitch forward, and he came into complete, overwhelming contact with the length of her body. The erotic heat burgeoned, sending waves of pleasure through him and making him want to groan aloud with the sensation.