It was his life’s work, and he tended to think of it as penance for his sins. Not that he believed in penance. His sins were too great for absolution, and he no longer sought it. He simply followed his instincts, both noble and selfish, knowing he was doomed to whatever afterlife had already been decreed.
He worked for a bit, occasionally glancing over at the sleeping woman. She kept her hair tightly braided, presumably in purposeful contrast to her sister’s flowing tresses. She wore a veil, and a thin circlet of gold, but the headpiece was begining to slip. He wondered how she would look with her hair unbound, her full mouth smiling. He wondered what her mouth would taste like.
He would bed her. He would marry her. And he would leave her, and all of them, when he no longer needed them. And perhaps, if she showed herself an adept enough pupil, he would leave the finished manuscript with her.
A sudden, unexpected thought came to him. Would he leave her with more than the pages of wisdom acquired from his worldly travels. Would he leave her with a child as well?
He knew how to avoid it, both by Eastern and Western means. His knowledge of herbs was incomparable, bordering on what others might call witchcraft, and his knowledge of the rhythms of a woman’s life was equally profound, garnered from the physicians and wise men in the holy lands who took delight in a broken knight who wished to learn, not to kill and maim. They’d mended his smashed body, and in watching them he’d learned what to do about his twisted hand when it had healed sufficiently.
He realized he hadn’t moved in several long minutes, as the memories of the past swept over him. He wasn’t usually prey to wasting his time on an ancient past, but neither was he a man to deny what life demanded. He watched Alys in her gentle sleep, and thought of her lying in his arms, in that same trusting sleep, her belly round and swollen with his child.
He pushed away from the desk in sudden anger. These were the dreams of an ordinary man, not one such as Simon of Navarre, who had spent long years creating the creature who effectively terrified all who strayed into his path.
He moved to the deep set window to stare out over the night-shrouded castle. There were lights in the bake house, and he could see the tiny glow of candles from the small chapel. Brother Jerome would be praying diligently, begging forgiveness for nonexistent sins, both his own and those of his people. Little did he know the true horror of real sin.
“What were you doing at the desk?”
Alys’s voice was sleepy, soft, curious. He hadn’t realized she was awake, and watching him. A mistake—he needed to be preternaturally aware of her.
“Reading,” he said, willing to answer her this time, even with a lie. “Your company was less than inspiring.”
She sat up. Her circlet was askew, and attempts to straighten it were lamentable. He wanted to go to her and take the thing off her head, with the veil as well. He wanted to loosen her thick plaits and wrap them around his hands. Around his strong, scarred, wounded hand that symbolized all he had been through.
He curled his right hand up into its customary, claw-like position, certain she was too sleep-fuddled to notice. “I’m sorry,” she murmured in her oddly beguiling voice. “I don’t usually fall asleep like that.”
“Perhaps my company is soporific.”
She smiled at that, a small, delightful upturning of her full mouth. He liked her sleepy, her guard down. “Unlikely, my lord. Though this time the wine couldn’t have been drugged. You didn’t have the chance to get near the stuff I had tonight, and it lacked the sweet, dreamy taste of the night before.”
“Your imagination is very energetic.” He managed, as always, to keep his reaction hidden. He needed to learn that he shouldn’t underestimate her.
“That is, perhaps, the only energetic thing about me right now,” she said with a yawn, stretching with unconscious sensuality. In general she wasn’t a sensual creature—she’d spent too many years with the nuns, too many years looking after other people’s needs and ignoring her own. But he suspected that beneath her careful behavior there was a ripe sensuality waiting to be awakened.
And he was growing rapidly more impatient to awaken it. Outside the wind had picked up, whistling through the narrow arrow-slits in the thick castle wall, stirring the flames in the deep fireplace, ruffling the thick, dark tapestries.
“There’s a storm brewing,” he said, pushing away from the window. “We’ll have rain by morning. The serfs will be glad of it.”
Oddly enough, Lady Alys appeared less than pleased. “A s-storm?” she said, the nervous stammer almost imperceptible. But he was a man who missed very little.
“Have you a dislike of rain, my lady?” he questioned gently.
“Only when it interferes with my outdoor activities,” she said, rallying.
“And what are those? We’ve already ascertained that you’re terrified of horses. You seem frightened of rain as well. What else terrifies you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, clearly forgetting that one of her fears was Simon of Navarre. “I’m not afraid of rain. I’m just not overly fond of thunder and lightning.”
He glanced out the narrow slit of window once more. In the distance he could see a fork of lightning shiver in the inky dark sky, but it was too far away to be of any moment.
“Horses, thunder and lightning, me,” Navarre said softly. “Is there anything else that terrifies you?”
She didn’t deny it, wise creature that
