Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (30 page)

Slipping out of David’s Tower through a postern door shadowed by the huge bakehouse that served the castle at large, he made his way swiftly, depending on his black clothing and coldly stern demeanor to protect him and his burden.

One guardsman dared to approach him, but the yard’s torchlight was sufficient to reveal Simon’s all-black clothing. A warning scowl sent the man scurrying, unwilling to confront one of Fife’s so easily recognizable, generally ruthless men. At times, Simon mused, the reputation did prove useful.

Inside the nave of St. Margaret’s Chapel, he carefully set his burden on her feet and unwrapped her, noting in the glow of the cressets, as he whisked the blanket off her, the angry flash of sparks he had expected to see in her eyes.

“I knew it was you!”

“Then why didn’t you scream?”

“Sakes, because we’d already stirred enough gossip without stirring more. How dared you snatch me up like that!” She glanced warily toward the archway and the altar beyond before adding, “By heaven, you deserve flogging if you brought me here thinking I’d marry you. Had you done me the courtesy to ask, I’d have said I won’t have you! I told my father as much. Must I shout my refusal to the world?”

“You need only tell me,” he said calmly.

“This should not be happening,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “We did none of the things of which those horrid rumormongers accuse us, and so—”

“Did we not?”

“Nay, sir! Do
not
flatter yourself.”

He remained silent, holding her gaze until blushes suffused her lovely face.

Sibylla ignored the fire that swept through her body, ignited by the memory of his touch and his stirring kisses. Fighting to hold on to her anger, she said, “Other men have kissed me, and no one demanded that I marry any of them. There can be no need for us to marry, and I will not have it.”

“If you are certain of that, you need only say so.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“I mean just what I said. I did bring you here tonight because I’ve obtained special license for the bishop to marry us here. I thought—”

“You did
not
think, for you had no right to do that. I
gave
you no right.”

“Sibylla—”

“You gave me your word on the ramparts the other night that Fife had naught to do with . . . with your kissing me,” she said. “But how can I know that he has not ordered all this, as usual? That would explain why you told Thomas he was just in the way and why Fife stared so at me afterward. The two of you both showing up in that disastrous room, both serving Fife, could quite easily mean you were all—”

Her words ended in a shriek when he gave her a rough shake.

“Stop it,” he said harshly. “I know you are angry, but
you
know that I blame myself for what happened and would
not
conspire with anyone against you, let alone with Fife or Colville. Use your sense, Sibylla, if you still have any.”

“But how else can you have acquired a special license for so hasty a marriage if Fife did not provide it? He organized everything last time.”

He was silent, and a twinge of wary guilt stirred in her, but she suppressed it. She knew too much about the wily Fife not to suspect his involvement.

At last Simon said quietly, “I paid a large fee, Sibylla. One may pay a fee to any bishop and be married in the Kirk without banns.”

Stunned by that news but determined to speak her mind, she said, “Still you arranged this without discussing it with me. You said you respected my opinions, but you acted without a word to me, snatching me up as if I were a bundle you had forgotten to pack. Sakes, you carried me here in no more than my tunic and skirt.”

“So, tell me, lass, art angry with me because I should have given you time to dress more appropriately before abducting you or because I carried you here?”

“Both,” she snapped. “Am I never to make my own choices? If I
were
fool enough to marry you, Simon Murray, would I not be far less in your household than I am in Isabel’s? Do you still seek penance from me?”

“I do not, nor would you
ever
be less to me than to Isabel,” he said. “But if you think I will always tolerate this sort of volcanic eruption from you, I’d advise you to think again, lass. I’m having all I can do not to answer in kind.”

“Aye, sure,” she retorted. “Gentlemen may erupt whenever they like.”

“Even if that were true, I doubt it would daunt you, but I think we can find more entertaining ways of erupting together. God knows, we have only to look at one another . . .” He paused, capturing her gaze as he could do so easily. “The bishop is waiting, my wise and charming vixen,” he said softly. “So what say you? Art truly opposed to the whole notion or just furious with me?”

It wasn’t fair that when he looked at her as he did now, he seemed to see right to the part of her she had so carefully and for so long kept hidden from others.

As that thought formed, another struck. She could see him as clearly.

Those fathomless green eyes pulled her down into him until she felt as if she knew him in so many ways that the small bits she did not yet understand became insignificant. In the ways that counted, they two could almost be one person.

And that person would be Simon.

“I . . . I can’t,” she said, and for once, she found it easy to look away first. “You would swallow me up, my lord.”

He moved both hands back to her shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said, stern again. “You reject my promises, saying you cannot know I will keep them.”

“I know you mean to keep—”

“But you
do
know what you face if we don’t marry,” he went on inexorably. “Your reputation will be destroyed, Sibylla. Isabel will dismiss you, because she has to protect
her
reputation. Next and worse, your father will order you home to Akermoor, and he will keep you there this time. The alternative is marriage to a man who cares for you and believes you will make him an excellent wife.”

“A man who swore to wreak vengeance on me. Can you deny that?”

“Of course not. We both know what I said, but you know I no longer feel that way. What I shouted then was as childish and ignoble as you said it was.”

“And now, you think you are behaving
nobly
by rescuing me?”

Simon did not pause to think but for once in his life said the first words that came into his head. “You are wrong about what I think and how I feel.”

“I do not—”

“There is nowt about this that a person of sense would call noble,” he interjected. Noting the resultant flash in her eyes, he added hastily, “I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but I must say this whilst the thoughts remain clear in my mind. The fact is that before I pulled you and young Kit from that river I’d have believed myself incapable of ever doing what I’ve done tonight. But since that day, I’ve done many things I never expected to do.”

She did not reply, but sparks still glowed in her beautiful eyes, diverting him because they were as lovely when she was angry as when she smiled. “I will never tire of looking into your eyes,” he murmured before he realized he was not thinking the words but was saying them aloud.

She shut her eyes. When she opened them again, her expression had not softened. “You seem to mean that,” she said. “But Fife will doubtless reward you well if you succeed in this.”

Anger flashed in him, but the words hurt, too, and he knew he deserved them, because she had begun to trust him. That she no longer did was his fault.

Had he been wise enough not to admit Fife had pressed him again to marry her . . . But she had guessed as much, and he could not have denied it without lying.

How could he expect her to trust a liar?

Her hand on his arm stopped this painful train of thought, and he realized he had looked away from her to stare blindly into space.

As he fought to suppress his warring emotions, she said quietly, “I should not have said that. I do see that you had no thought of Fife just now, whatever influence he may have had on your actions tonight.”

“I don’t suppose you will believe that he had none.” “Nay, for you told me yourself that he’d encouraged you to try again. At the least, I’d suspect his words had put the idea into your head. You will not tell me, I think, that you entertained any thought of marriage whilst we were at Elishaw.”

He remembered watching her wade into the forest pond with the moonlight blazing down on her, turning her beautiful skin to alabaster. He had thought briefly then that, had they married, he might have enjoyed her magnificent body for several pleasurable years. But regretting a loss of pleasure for himself hardly meant he had thought then of marrying her, for he had not.

“Tell me what you are thinking,” she urged gently.

“It was nowt,” he said in the same tone, meeting her gaze with more ease than he usually felt when she looked at him so. “I can tell you that, although I had no clear thought today but to protect you, my reasons were selfish and had nowt to do with Fife. They had to do only with my own desires . . . and my deep regret that actions of mine have caused trouble for you.”

To his surprise, he got a wry smile. “There were two of us in that room, sir.”

“Aye, sure, but a more sensible man, especially one who has prided himself on controlling his emotions, as I have, would not have lost his wits—as I did.”

“Did you truly lose them?”

“I did, aye. There can be no other explanation for such foolhardiness. We both know that men roam here as they please. Since I had taken note of your departure from the great hall, it was nowt but loss of good sense to think that no other man had seen you go. Still, when I get my hands on Thomas Colville—”

“Nay,” she said. “Do not blame him. Recall that I humiliated him, too. Mayhap you should have fellow feeling for him.”

“I don’t, nor will I develop any,” he said tersely. “I was as much a lackwit the day we nearly married as your sister’s chap, Denholm, is now. So much did I think of myself then that I thought you should feel honored by my suit. That you might cast me to the wind never entered my head until you did.”

“I was younger than you and terrified of what lay ahead,” she said. “My father took no heed of my tender years when he negotiated those marriages for me. Had I not seen for myself that you take greater care with Rosalie . . . Indeed, sir, it was only when I saw how kindly you treat her that I began to like you a little.”

He smiled. “Rosalie does not thank me. I just hope she won’t elope with the first callow youth who flirts with her.”

“A number of practiced flirts have already done so,” Sibylla said.

“I know, but despite my mother’s lapse, I do trust her to deal with them.” He looked into her eyes again. “I want you to marry me, Sibylla. I don’t think I have ever wanted anything in quite this way before. If you say no and then suffer for your refusal as we both know you will, I’ll never forgive myself for my part in it.”

Sibylla nearly agreed on the spot. She knew she was angrier with the situation than she was with Simon, and she had known it for some time. But with all that had happened, her temper had snapped the moment she faced him.

She did not know of any man other than Hugh who would have dared treat her so fiercely or so decisively with no apparent fear of consequence. And Hugh had been her brother, duty bound to protect her. Simon was
not
her brother.

“What say you, lass?” he asked again. “You know better than most that I cannot force you—in troth, that no one can. But I can say honestly that I do want more than anything to have you for my wife.”

“But why?” she asked. “You have said you want me, but what do you mean by that? Why do you want to marry me, Simon?”

“Because you make me laugh,” he said without thinking.

Indignation rendered her speechless for a moment before she said, “What a thing to say to me! Do you expect me to believe that you find me so amusing that you cannot bear to live without me, sir?”

“You know better,” he said, using two fingers of his right hand to tilt her chin up. “Look at me.”

Sibylla had never been shy in her life, but the gentle amusement in his voice made her feel shy now. His touch disturbed her in other ways, too, as it always did.

The hand on her shoulder was warm, as were his fingertips on her chin. He had taken off his gloves, if he had worn any. But simple warmth was no cause for the tingling sensations that shot through her body, warming her all through.

She licked her lips as her eyes met his and then, remembering how lustily he had reacted to that before, caught her lower lip between her teeth. His pupils were so large that his eyes looked black. The tingling within her increased.

“What
did
you mean then?” she said, sounding breathless even to herself.

“I meant that I like to be with you, that I like knowing when I wake up in the morning that I’ll see you during the day and that we’ll talk together. I’ve missed all that these past two days whilst I was making all my arrangements.”

“And avoiding me,” she said.

“Aye, but moments ago, you expressed doubt that I respect your opinions. You need not.”

“No?”

“No, for I don’t just respect them; I value them. I think we’ve become good friends, lass, more quickly than one might expect, given how we met. A marriage that follows friendship must be more likely to survive than one that does not.”

“I expect so,” she admitted, wondering why the thought of friendship with Simon did not delight her, then calling herself a fool. Men married women every day without a semblance of friendship between them, simply because the marriage would increase the man’s wealth and property. Marriage was much more often a matter of property or power than of gentler feelings.

“So I’ll ask you one more time,” he said, both hands on her shoulders again. “What say you, Sibylla? Will you marry me?”

She swallowed hard, knowing she was going to say yes. First, though, she could not resist a small test of how much he valued her opinions.

“What of Kit, sir? I do still believe she may be the lost Catherine.”