Chapter 14 #2
Disregarding the painful burning in his groin as his body strained against his laces, he shook his head. “Nay, milady. It doesn’t hurt. ‘Tis rather pleasurable.”
And if it wasn’t for his fear she would agree, he would offer to show her just how pleasurable it really was.
“Have you ever had a woman cry when you... nay, wait,” she said stopping herself. “I don’t want you to answer that. I don’t want to know of any women you’ve been with.”
She looked up at him and smiled a smile that made him weak in the knees. “Thank you for your honesty. I knew I could count on you.”
Draven shook his head. “You give me far too much credit.”
“Have you ever thought that you give yourself too little?”
Draven couldn’t answer and at the moment he wasn’t sure if he should.
“Oh, Draven. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes for one instant.”
“You said yourself that you are a dreamer. You see what you wish to see. The truth of me is not the hero you think. I am not Accusain to come walking naked—” why did that word keep coming up when he was with her— “through the gates to prove my love by falling on my knees before you and vowing my undying loyalty. I am a man, Emily. ‘Tis all I am.”
“Aye, you are a man. In every sense of the word. And I am a woman who can feel every inch of you when you’re near me.”
Draven’s head swam with visions of kissing her in the moonlight, of stripping her kirtle from her shoulders and taking her here on the narrow walkway.
It would be so easy.
She lifted his hand to her lips and placed a gentle kiss over the bruise on his knuckles. “I won’t press myself upon you tonight. But thank you for defending my honor.”
Emily released his hand and he felt the coldness of the night against his skin. The coldness of the solitude in his soul far more sharply than he ever had before.
The absence of her warmth was almost debilitating.
“I would wish you sweet dreams, milord, but I know you won’t sleep in my father’s hall. I shall see you in the morning.”
Draven watched her leave him. His heart cried out for him to stop her flight. To call her back to his side, but his sense of honor refused.
She wasn’t’ his.
Emily could never be his.
His heart weary, he turned back to stare at the water below. In that instant, he wished he had been the one to fall that fateful day in battle. Why had the sword not pierced his breast?
And as he had done almost every day of his life, he cursed his fate.
The next morning was a flurry of activity. Emily tried several times to get Joanne alone again and talk her out of the marriage, but her sister would have none of it.
“‘Tis done,” Joanne said dismissively. “I wanted to flee father’s hall, and now I have my wish.”
But something wasn’t right about it. Emily knew it in her heart and most definitely after what Draven had told her.
But in the end, she had no choice save to wish her sister well and watch as Joanne bound herself to a man Emily didn’t care for one little bit.
Draven, Simon and his men stood to the back of the chapel while the priest conducted the wedding mass. And when the deed was done, Emily went to Draven’s side for the walk back to the hall where the wedding feast waited.
“I can’t help but notice your discomfort,” Draven said as they left the chapel.
“Tell me, milord, what do you know of my brother-in-law?”
Draven shrugged. “He has a small demesne outside of York. I fought beside his father during Henry’s ascension, but I know very little of his personal attributes.”
“Oh.” His answer disappointed her. She had hoped he could relieve her fears.
“I’ve heard he has quite a number of gambling debts,” Simon chimed in. “Ranulf the Black has little liking for him.”
“Ranulf?” She’d never heard that name before.
“One of the king’s advisors,” Draven explained. “Much like you, Ranulf sees only the good in people. For him not to like you is quite a feat.”
“Aye,” Simon said. “He even likes Draven.”
Draven cast a droll look at his brother.
No more words were spoken as they entered the hall. Emily had a place reserved at the table with her father, but opted instead to stay by Draven’s side at one of the lower tables.
Her father met her action with blatant disapproval.
As soon as he saw her there, he crossed the room to glare at her. “Why do you sit here?”
“He’s my guardian and guest, Father, I thought it appropriate, and I meant no disrespect to you.”
“Well, I am offended,” he said gruffly.
Draven rose slowly to his feet. “Hugh, I know we have our differences, but for the sake of your daughter, I propose we lay them aside.”
Emily smiled at Draven’s kindness. It was a wonderful thing he proposed on her behalf.
Her father raked him with a glare. “You offer peace?”
“I offer a truce.”
Her father laughed coldly. “From the son of Harold of Ravenswood? Tell me, will you, too, strike at my back when I turn it?”
She dropped her jaw at his insult to Draven.
Like a fool, her father continued his tirade. “I’m not the fool Henry is. I know the blood in your veins, and I’d trust you no farther than I can see.”
Rage darkened Draven’s eyes.
“Father, please!” she begged, taking his arm. “He made a sincered offer in good faith.”
“And I declined it. As would anyone with sense. Only a fool wanting to die would ever trust a Ravenswood under his roof.”
For one moment she feared Draven would strike her father. The air between them was rife with anger and hostility.
Just as she was sure Draven would, he took a step back. “Come, Emily, Simon, we leave.”
Her throat tight, she nodded.
“But the feast isn’t over,” her father snarled. “You can’t take her yet.”
“Aye, Father, he can. And I don’t blame him for it.”
The look of hurt on her father’s face brought tears to her eyes, but she refused to cry. Or to try and change Draven’s mind yet again. Her father had done naught but insult him and on her behalf Draven had put up with it.
She would ask no more of him.
“I will have my cousin, Godfried, fetch my trunk,” she said to Draven. “If you’ll prepare the horses, I shall say goodbye to my sisters.”
Draven nodded, then left her alone with her father.
“Why could you not give just a little, Father?” she asked him when they were alone.
His face hardened. “You would have me belittle myself to a man such as he?”
Tears stung her eyes. How could he be so dense?
“I won’t argue the matter with you. I had hoped you would give him a chance to prove to you—”
“He murdered my people, Em. Have you forgotten that?”
She hesitated. “Nay, I don’t believe it. Any more than I believe him when he says you attacked his village.” She looked straight into her father’s eyes. “Did you?”
“You know better. ‘Twas a lie he told Henry to save his own arse. How could you doubt me?”
She touched her father’s arm. “I don’t doubt you.
But I think the two of you should stop blaming each other long enough to consider that if you’re both innocent, then someone else raided your lands and perhaps you should join forces to find out who that somebody is and why they want to pit the two of you against each other. ”
Her father curled his lips. “I know who the somebody is, girl, and if you were wise, you’d stay here under my protection.”
Emily patted his arm. “You know I can’t do that. The king has ordered otherwise.” She rose on her tiptoes and kissed her father gently on the cheek. “Let me say farewell to Joanne and Judith.”
She walked through the crowded room toward her sisters. A red flash dashed in front of her, and she instantly recognized her cousin’s scarlet tunic.
“Godfried?” she called before he left earshot.
He doubled back to her side. “Aye?”
“Could you please see that my trunk is taken outside to Lord Draven’s wagon?”
He nodded, then hesitated as his eyes fell to the door.
“Is something amiss?” she asked.
Godfried ran his hand through his short brown hair. “I suppose not, it’s just...”
When he didn’t finish the thought, she asked, “Just?”
He drew his brows together into a deep frown. “Last night Joanne said the man who struck Niles was Draven de Montague.”
“Aye.”
He looked straight at her. “But that’s not the man I fought the night of the village fire. I know it.”
Emily’s heart stopped. “What are you saying?”
“I fought him, Em,” Godfried said, his voice certain and his gaze sincere.
“I stood toe to toe in battle with the earl, or at least with a man dressed as he. I recognized the surcoat, but the man I fought was my height and width. Had I fought someone a head taller and that much more muscled, I would have remembered it well … and more to the point, I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. ”
“Did you tell my father?”
“I tried to last night, but he refused to believe it. He said I was mistaken.”
“But you’re certain?”
“Aye. I even wounded the man. A cut across his right forearm halfway between his wrist and elbow.”
Chills erupted all over her. She had been right! There was someone else playing her father and Draven against one another. As her cousin said, if Godfried had fought Draven he would now be lying in his grave. She’d seen Godfried train enough to know he was no match for the earl.
But who could possibly have anything to gain by pitting them against each other?
Something strange was definitely afoot. And one way or another she would find out what.
Draven didn’t breathe easily until they were out the gates and headed across her father’s property.
Emily had tried to speak to him before they left about some ridiculous notion of someone else perpetuating the hostilities between her father and him, but he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Twas more of Hugh’s lies.
And he had had enough of them.
But far be it from him to belittle her father to her. Let her have her delusions. He wasn’t a fool.
Not soon enough to suit him, they approached his property. And as they rode over a sharp hill, something in the trees to his left caught his eye.