Alinor (66 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"I have a great doubt," Ian sighed when Alinor finally lifted herself off him and lay at his side, "that I have done less in this manner than if you had let me mount you." He laughed softly. "In fact, I know the contrary. You have more ways of raising a fever, Alinor— As God is my witness, I did not sweat in this day's battle as I did tonight abed."

"Perhaps that is true." Alinor giggled, "but at least you did not tear loose any stitches, as you would have done had you played your usual part. Sleep is a quick and easy mending for weariness."

Ian glanced down at her. but he could see only the glossy black hair on the top of her head. He did not like her insistence on sleep. Her voice was not revealing, either. The low tone and slight breathlessness might be a natural result of their coupling, but they also might be produced by a struggle with tears.

"But I am now very hungry," Ian said rather plaintively. "You offered me food before. Now I need it worse."

Alinor chuckled again and rolled out of the bed. Ian pushed himself upright and watched her, but he could see nothing in her expression that conflicted with her laughter. When she handed him the wooden platter of bread and meat, however, she raised her brows.

"Why do you stare so?"

"Have I not reason enough? You are a sight to delight the eyes, clothed as you are in nothing but your hair."

"Liar," Alinor exclaimed, but smilingly, and seated herself on the bed beside him.

Ian took a bite of the meat and chewed reflectively. Alinor saw too much. He could not ignore what she said, nor could he come to the question he really wished to ask. "To call it a lie is too much," he said when he had swallowed, "but I did have another matter in my mind while my eyes took their pleasure. I wondered where you came by the idea that I had conspired with Sir Peter against your will."

Bright sparks of anger immediately lit Alinor's eyes. "Why should I not think you desired Gwenwynwyn to take the keep when you rode out, leaving his men on the walls and the gates wide open? And one of the wounded men you left behind said you rode out with Sir Peter. What should I think but that the whole thing was planned between you?"

That made Ian grin. Alinor obviously knew by now that he had not been in collusion with Sir Peter. It was leaving the keep unprotected that was enraging her. "You will have to take my word as a soldier that it was a better thing to do for the safety of all—and of the keep also. Sometimes it is better to take a risk and act quickly than to try to hold everything tight. You are a greedy little devil," he added affectionately.

It was so innocent a remark, so obviously meant to tease lovingly, yet it struck straight on the one sore spot that remained in Alinor's heart. "Greedy, am I?" she snapped. "Perhaps I am. Yet I am not so greedy as to take your jewels to give to a lover as you took mine to give to your 'fair lady.' "

"What?" Ian said, pushing the food hastily out of the way. "When did I ever take a thing of yours? Even the jewels you pressed upon me when we married, I returned to your chests. I never—"

"How easily you forget—or do you lie? I did not think you would lie, but upon so sacred a subject—" Venom dripped in Alinor's voice, a venom made more virulent from being distilled through tears for seven months.

"I do not lie upon any subject, for any reason," Ian blazed. "Who told you such a tale of me?"

"Told me a tale? Would I believe such a thing of you for a telling? You did it before my very eyes! On the morning of the melee, when I was cold and wet with sweat for fear of what would befall you— And you did not even deign to bid me farewell! You took my sapphire necklet, so that some woman who does not care a pin for you―"

"On the morning of the melee!" Ian went white. "It is true, I remember now. I did take your necklet. In the name of God, is that what has lain on your heart all these months—the price of a necklet? Name it! Name the price! I will pay you in gold—or if that will not content you, I will buy it back from the whore I gave it to, even if I give double the worth. I thought my life cheap at the price—but plainly I am not worth a sapphire necklet to you."

Alinor was staring with wide, starting eyes. "To whom did you give it?" she whispered.

"What does that matter? I told you―"

"Ian, answer me! It is all in all to me. Answer me!"

Even the intense grief Ian felt at the crumbling of his goddess was pierced by Alinor's intensity. "I gave it to buy information from a highborn whore—Lady Mary Gaillon, if you need the name—because she is known to bed de Quincy, and he is known to have a loose mouth in drink." Bitterness overcame him. "Shall I tell you where she lives so that you can buy it back at the best bargain? Do you fear I will pay too much? I assure you it will be my gold that―"

"Ian! Oh, Ian!" Alinor cried, and flung her arms around his neck.

He pushed her away brutally, nearly weeping, so that she fell from the bed to the floor. "Oh God! I called you greedy in jest, but to see you cast into transports over one necklet— I cannot bear it!"

"Who cares for the necklet," Alinor laughed, picking herself up and wiping her eyes. "You may give them all to whores for all I care! You do not love anyone but me? You do not, do you? Ian, do you love me? Tell me! You have never said it—never once. Do you?"

"Do I love you? Madwoman! I have loved you all my life, since I first laid eyes upon you on the road when you knelt to Queen Alinor. What has this to do with that accursed necklet or to whom I gave it?"

"Why did you never tell me you loved me?"

"Why did I never tell my best friend's wife that I loved her?" Ian's voice rose incredulously.

"Not then, you fool. When you came to propose marriage to me. Why did you speak as if―"

"How would you have me speak? Simon was not dead four months. I knew what had been between you. Was that false? Were you ready to speak of love?"

Alinor tried to think back. "It was not false. Oh no! But because it was so good, so very real, I was the more empty, the more ready— Oh, I do not know. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps talk of love then would have been too soon, but later―"

"I tried, more than once. You would not listen. You turned away, or turned to ice, or spoke of other things. And what of you? You blame me, but did you offer me a word of love?"

"I thought the same, that you did not wish to hear of love from me."

"Why?" Ian asked, really amazed. "What did I do or say to make you think that?"

"For one thing, you would not come next or nigh me all those weeks before our wedding," Alinor said petulantly.

That broke the tension. Ian whooped with laughter. "And, wise woman that you are, you did not see the cause for that? Was it not plain enough that I was ripe for rape?"

"I saw that clear enough, but—but that is not love, Ian."

"How right you are—which was why I spent all those weeks sleeping on the cold ground, eaten alive by lice, and bored to death. But I still do not see why, if you were angry about the necklet, you did not speak of it. I took it in haste, Alinor, because there was no time to buy anything, and I knew we did not have gold or silver sufficient in the house to content Lady Mary. If you had reminded me, I would have given you its worth, or bought you another, or redeemed that one."

"You know I do not care for that. It was not even something Simon had given me. I do not want it back. If it bought knowledge that saved you one bruise, I have its value a thousand thousand rimes over, beloved."

"Then why?" Ian burst out, unwilling to ask, but driven. "Why did I become a stranger to you? Why did you freeze when I touched you, as if I were a ravisher? Why did you weep thereafter, as if I had soiled you?"

Instead of showing signs of anger, hauteur, or renewed coldness, Alinor blushed fiery red and hung her head. Ian watched her, enchanted by an aspect of his wife he had never seen before.

"I was jealous," she whispered.

"Jealous?" Ian asked gently. "How? Of whom? I had not been out from under your eye for a moment—at least, not a moment that you did not know where I was and what I was doing. And, in truth, Alinor, you leave me no strength for such sly games."

"I was not jealous of your body. I knew you were content with what I gave you, and for when I was not by—I do not care. A man must eat and drink and piss and shit and couple—that is nature. I was not even jealous of your heart. I suppose I knew you loved me as men love earthly women. You will laugh at me."

"I swear I will not."

"I thought you held some dream of love, some woman more precious, more perfect than I—and that is not hard to find—in some inner place that I could never reach. I was
not
angry, Ian. I was ashamed that I could let some soft dream of the past change me. I strove to be a better wife, more what a man desires, not so quarrelsome or headstrong―"

"Good God! You were my dream, Alinor. Always you and only you—just as you are."

Alinor put out her hand, and Ian took it. He drew her gently, but she put her other hand on his shoulder to resist without resisting him. "I have something more to say, something for which it is even harder to find words that will carry the true meaning. Ian, I loved Simon as much as a woman can love a man. I would not have you think I forget him or that I am disloyal to him. But there was, between Simon and me, thirty years. There was as much of father and daughter between us as of husband and wife. I did not see it then. I see it now only because what is between you and me is —is so very different. I love you, Ian, as a young woman loves a young man—and for me it is the first time of such loving."

Ian did not reply to that. There was nothing to say, fortunately, because he could not have spoken anyway. He took her face between his hands and gently and carefully, as gently and carefully as one would handle a fragile glass object, rare and precious, he kissed her and drew her down beside him. For a long time neither slept; their content was too great to need a sweetening of dreams. At last the body would not be denied, however, and sleep came.

Morning came also. Alinor was aware, after a time, of restless movement in the antechamber. She turned and tried to burrow her head into Ian's shoulder to shut out the demand on her conscience. The device did not succeed. Her nuzzling rubbed on a sore spot on Ian's shoulder and woke him instead.

"Yes?" he called. "What is it?"

"Ian, this is Salisbury. I am sorry to break your rest, but I must speak to you."

"Geoffrey!" Ian cried, leaping out of bed and running into the next room.

Alinor was not two steps behind him, holding a hastily snatched up blanket around her. "What ails him?" she asked. "Can he not be wakened? Is he blind? Dizzy?"

"Geoffrey is very well," Salisbury assured them, looking from one worried face to the other. "God has been good to me, to place him in such loving hands."

From time to time in the past, Salisbury had tried to circumvent his brother's spite against one man or another. When he could not succeed, he had shrugged and put the matter out of his mind. John was more dear to him than other men. If he did not know his brother's true character, he at least knew enough of it to understand that he must accept what he could not change—or abandon his brother completely. Now, for the first time since they were small children, Salisbury considered applying active pressure to John. He owed Ian a debt; he loved the man for himself; moreover, having seen Geoffrey again after a parting of some months, he was determined that his son would grow to manhood under Ian's tutelage and no other. Geoffrey was becoming what a man dreams a son will be—and seldom are such dreams realized.

The letter Salisbury had read had made one thing clear. John intended Ian should die—and he did not really care if Geoffrey died with him. The far uglier purpose underlying the words in the letter, Salisbury did not see. That was partly because he could not yet permit himself to believe John's real intentions. In addition, the kind of jealousy that motivated them was so foreign to Salisbury's nature that he could not conceive of any motive John could have for harming his son. There remained to him only two paths—remove Geoffrey from Ian's care and abandon Ian to his fate or protect Ian from John.

"I did not come to speak of Geoffrey but—but about —about the king."

Alinor opened her mouth, clamped it shut again with determination. Salisbury had come in person to save Ian, and, if he had not brought her men, the battle might easily have gone the other way. She had not expected even so much from him, but he was still John's brother. It was wiser to keep a still tongue in her head. She went back into the bedchamber and brought out Ian's bed-robe and a pair of slippers. Then she stepped out and found a servant whom she sent to look for her baggage. In broken pieces she heard them discussing the letter that Salisbury had brought for Ian's perusal. When she had set in motion what needed to be done, she held out a hand for the letter. Ian passed it over without really thinking what he was doing. It was fortunate that the men were deeply involved in thrashing out the political consequences of Llewelyn's capture of Gwenwynwyn and did not look at her. To Alinor the intentions were sickeningly apparent. John had obviously hoped Gwenwynwyn would be stupid enough to execute all three— Ian and the two boys—and depend upon John's favor to make him supreme in Wales. To her, having so recently emerged from a bout with destructive jealousy, the double motive was clear enough. It did not occur to Alinor to abandon Geoffrey, because that could not save Ian. In any case she would not have entertained the idea. Geoffrey was a part of Ian, and Ian was hers! Her attention was drawn by the rising tone of Salisbury's voice.

"I will do it in any case, Ian. You can make it harder for me or easier for me—that is all."

"But William, I cannot abandon my life. The siege at Kemp must be brought to some conclusion―"

"I think you will find that matter finished," Salisbury interrupted bitterly. "I think the keep is in your men's hands by now. Where do you think the four hundred mercenaries that were promised to Gwenwynwyn came from?"