“You can try,” he said, moving away from the wall and closer to her. She smelled of lavender and roses, of sweet wine and womanhood, a heady combination for his deliberately controlled senses. He knelt down beside her, and with his scarred hand reached up and brushed her cheek. She didn’t flinch away in horror, as he half expected her to. She was afraid of ridiculous things, horses and thunderstorms. But a badly scarred hand left her calm.
More than calm. To his horror, she reached up and gently caught his hand in hers, and it was all he could do not to stretch it out from its false, cramped position and capture her small hand. She had good, strong, warm hands. The hands of a healer. The hands of a lover. He wondered if she’d ever touched a man with love.
It was a simple enough matter to find out. She wasn’t paying attention to anything but the scarred hand in hers, and she barely noticed when he put his good hand beneath her chin, lifting her face to meet his merciless eyes.
She noticed when he kissed her.
It was no chaste salute of courtly love. It was a lover’s kiss, and she tried to jerk away, startled, but he was already prepared, sliding his right arm behind her shoulders and keeping her trapped against him as he took his time, his open mouth against hers in a slow, deliberate, experimental kiss. She trembled against him, but she couldn’t fight or resist, he’d already seen to that, and she simply held still and let him kiss her.
Kissing was an overlooked art, one he’d trained in during the time he spent in the Near East as well. He knew how to use his tongue with skill and wicked delight, he knew how to kiss a woman into a weak mass of mindless longing. Even an obvious virgin like Alys of Summersedge.
He felt her small hands on his shoulders, not to push him away, but to hold him, her fingers digging into the flesh and muscles beneath his robes, clinging to him. She made no sound, when he would have desired it, but the tremors that shook her body were a satisfying enough proof of her surrender, and he was hard enough to take her, right then, amidst the scattered pillows that lay along the rush-strewn floor.
His bed was only a few feet away, in an alcove beyond one of the dark tapestries, and he thought he might carry her there, stripping the ugly gown from her body, stripping the fear from her soul, when his instincts ripped him from the sensual haze that was washing over him. Someone was approaching.
Very few dared, without a specific invitation, and he controlled his snarl of frustrated rage with great effort as he lifted his head to look down at Lady Alys.
She lay passive in his arms, a dazed expression on her face, her mouth damp and reddened from contact with his. And then passivity vanished, replaced by shock and panic.
But no disgust, he was pleased to note. He released her when she squirmed, but he caught her elbow when she almost collapsed onto the floor again, easing her into a comfortable position before rising. Just in time to greet Richard the Fair as he stormed into the room with his usual burly energy.
“There you are, Grendel!” he said, failing to notice the small, huddled figure of his sister as she leaned against the cushions. “I grow impatient!”
“You often do, my lord,” Simon murmured with faint weariness, knowing he could get away with it as no one in Summersedge Keep could. “What would you have of your humble servant?”
“Are you my humble servant?” Richard demanded, peering at him through the shadows. “Sometimes I doubt it very much indeed. Do you share my vision? My ambitions? You do realize that the higher your lord rises, the higher you do?”
“Indeed,” he answered. “And I wouldn’t deny I am an ambitious man in my own way. But I doubt anyone is capable of sharing the true breadth of your visions.”
Richard preened visibly. “Still, you’re a clever man. The cleverest man I know. You must have a sense of where this is leading. Of what you can do to help me. Do I have to spell it out, man?”
He turned his head, slowly, toward Lady Alys, the motion a simple, direct warning to Richard the Fair. His lordship turned bright red, sputtering in fury.
“What by the holy rood are you doing here, strumpet?” he demanded, striding across the rush-strewn floor and reaching down for her with one meaty hand. “I would have thought it was the younger one who would be eager to lift her skirts, not the perfect little nun. What have you done with her, Simon? She looks like she’s been tumbled by a blacksmith with a twelve inch rod.”
Simon said nothing, watching his intended bride’s face turn bright red with embarrassment. Her brother hauled her to her feet with more roughness than Simon would have liked, but he decided now was not the time to interfere. Like as not Richard would escalate his bullying, and then Simon would have no choice but to do something from which there was no turning back.
“I’ve been instructing her on the use of herbs in healing, my lord,” Simon murmured. “She’s a very quick learner.”
Richard stared down at her small, stubborn figure and let out a lewd bark of laughter. “I can imagine. What else have you been teaching her, you blackguard? Have you been showing her the other uses mouths can be put to?”
“Lady Alys was generous enough to grant me the boon of a chaste kiss,” he said, still watching Alys’s pale face.
“Doesn’t look chaste to me.” Richard brayed with laughter. “Perhaps we’d better hurry the wedding along. We don’t want a
