Lady At Arms (16 page)

Though there was certainly air in the few inches between their faces, she could not breathe, unsettled as much by his words as his proximity. Then, mercifully, he straightened and turned away.

What had he meant in speaking such? Did he think her in love with him? Did he think she could ever feel such an emotion for a man she had once thought to see dead? Never could she love one like him. But if he were not such a man…

She squeezed her eyes closed. If only he had not wreaked such pain upon Gilbert and her. If—

“You look like a wet rat,” he said, and she lifted her lids to find him peering at her from where he had halted alongside the door.

Even if he had warranted the same observation—and he certainly did not, the dust and grit of the long ride washed away and dressed as he was in fresh clothes—she did not think she could have tossed the words back at him. She was too tired. Indeed, if she did not know better, she might think herself drained of her last drop of blood.

“Bathe yourself and get into bed,” Wardieu ordered. “I do not wish to find you sitting there when I return.”

If only holding one’s tongue were always so easy,
she marveled.

A moment later, he pulled the door open, allowing a glimpse of two guards posted outside, then closed her inside.

Ranulf paused outside the door. Ignoring the curious stares of his men, he strained to catch a sound from within the chamber that might prove Lizanne was capable of the same emotion of other women, that of tears—conscious tears, not of the sort she had shed amidst her dreams.

A moment later, he caught her muffled sob. Though he had no liking for such expressions of a woman’s misery, especially were he the cause, it heartened him to know she did possess such vulnerability. He had begun to think her made only of anger, hate, defiance and a fear she refused to allow more than a glimpse of.

He opened the door and stepped back inside.

Lizanne did not appear to hear him, head buried in her arms that were crossed on the rim of the tub.

Ranulf eased the door closed and stared at her dark head and shoulders that shook with emotion. Twice he heard a miserable, mewling sound escape her lips, but it seemed neither was allowed to give full vent to her sorrow.

When another sob broke from her, he strode forward and lowered to his haunches beside the tub. Knowing she would likely react violently to him bearing witness to her tears, he held his breath as he lowered a hand to her damp head. Though she stilled, she did not throw off his touch.

Lizanne was too stunned by Wardieu’s return to react. Opening her eyes wide, she stared at the water below her and searched for some semblance of composure. Why had he returned? That he might witness the humiliation of her suffering? To taunt her? Was he pleased to know he had reduced her to such weakness?

As much as she wanted to believe it, she did not think so. The hand upon her head was comforting, not threatening, and the compassion emanating from him was so tangible that she was certain it brushed her skin through her clothes.

Curse his patience! The anger to which she had driven him was far too short-lived for the kind of man he had once been. Where was that heartless being who had uprooted her world?

She drew a shuddering breath, slowly lifted her head, and met his gaze.

They stared into one another, and then he smoothed a tear from her jaw. “Is it really so bad?” he asked, a smile lifting a corner of his mouth.

Bad? It was not bad enough, and therein lay her dilemma. “I do not detest you,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”

The other corner of his mouth lifted. “I know. Though I do not understand exactly what you are, Lizanne Balmaine, this I do know—you are not what you try so very hard to be.”

She frowned. “Nor do I understand you. You are not at all as you should be.”

“How should I be?”

She knew she should say no more but could not keep the uncertain words from her lips. “Evil. Without conscience. Bent on taking pleasure no matter the pain of others. That is the kind of man you should be. The kind I—” She pressed her lips, broke free of his penetrating gaze, and stared at her knuckles that had grown white where she gripped the tub.

“The kind you imprisoned to exact revenge upon,” he finished for her, then uncurled her fingers from the rim and encased her hands in his. “Tell me what you believe I did to hurt you.”

She lifted her face and contemplated his eyes, nose, mouth and, lastly, pale hair. So handsome…

Halfheartedly, she chastised herself for her traitorous feelings. Changed or not, he was the same man. If only she could convince her heart of it, but it would not accept what her eyes demanded it recognize.

And since when did your heart become involved in this dangerous web spun by your thirst for revenge, Lizanne?

She shook her head. “I cannot say.”

Anger made a brief appearance in his eyes, then he drew her against him and pressed her head to his shoulder. “One day you will come to me,” he said. “You will trust me.”

She breathed in his scent through the weave of his tunic. “I know,” she murmured. “’Tis what I fear most.”

How long she let him hold her and let herself savor being held, she did not know, but too soon he pulled away. “I am expected in the hall.”

Avoiding his gaze, she sank back on her heels in the water.

He straightened. “I shall send a servant with your meal.”

She nodded. “I thank you.”

Then, once more, he left her alone. But she did not cry again.

The lack of warmth brought Lizanne fully awake. Opening her eyes, she found morning had come after the long dark of the night when Ranulf Wardieu had not returned—at least, not while she lay awake.

Fearful he might have, indeed, joined her, she lifted her head and peered over her shoulder. She was the only occupant of the bed. There had been no other.

Relieved, but also unsettled in a way she did not care to reflect upon, she sat up. And was immediately reminded of her state of undress. Having soaked her garments and found Wardieu’s chest locked on the night past, the only covering available to her had been a sheet from the bed. Around and around she had wound it about herself, and though it had held through the night, it had loosened considerably.

Dragging the makeshift garment higher and clasping it at the base of her throat, she surveyed the chamber. Bathed in the first light of morning, the shadows gradually receded as the sun rose outside the window. Colorful prisms of light, like those that arched against the sky after a long rain, fell across the floors and ever so slowly slid up the walls.

Confirming she was, indeed, alone, she pondered Wardieu’s whereabouts and his reason for not returning to the chamber. Had he spent the night with one of the maids, perhaps Elspeth?

Feeling a constriction about her chest, she chastised herself for the emotion she refused to name jealousy, thrust thoughts of the man aside, and scooted to the edge of the mattress.

Grateful for the thick rushes beneath her feet, the absence of which would have made the chill in the room less tolerable, she straightened from the bed, drew the sheet tighter about her, and securely tucked the end of the cloth into the layers beneath her collarbone. Then she crossed the chamber, passed between two chairs that had been placed in front of the hearth following the removal of the tub on the night past, and halted before the mantel over which she had draped her garments to dry.

Though the bliaut was yet damp, owing to the demise of the fire while she slept, the undergarments and chemise had dried completely.

Recalling the sorry state of her clothing upon her arrival at the castle, she delighted in their renewed crispness and pressed her face to them. As she had applied soap to them as vigorously as her body, they smelled and felt clean again, something she had not realized she missed until that moment.

She shook out her shift and, leaving the bed sheet in place lest Wardieu returned without warning, pulled it over her head. Next came the chemise. She smoothed it down her hips, made quick work of the laces, and eyed the bliaut, the damp of which would surely seep into her dry undergarments. Unseemly though it was to eschew it knowing she might not be alone much longer, she reasoned there was nothing at all seemly about her relationship with Ranulf Wardieu. The bliaut could wait. In the meantime, she had her sheet.

Plucking at it through her chemise and shift, giving herself a good shake, she loosened it. It fell and pooled about her feet, whereby she snatched it up, pulled it around her shoulders, and tied it at her neck—a mantle of sorts. Then she addressed her hair by combing her fingers through it. As she tugged at a particularly vile knot, she wondered if Wardieu had put the comb in his chest and grimaced in remembrance of her struggle on the night past when no amount of effort had budged the lock.

Once she worked the last of the tangles free, she turned from the hearth, swept her hair over her shoulder, and began braiding it. She was halfway down its length when sunlight, having left its timidity behind, shifted and shone upon the nearest chair—and its occupant.

Suppressing a yelp, Lizanne released the braid and moved her gaze along an outstretched leg, over a slowly rising and falling chest, and into penetrating black eyes.

He had not spent the night with another, then? Her grudging relief was short-lived by the realization he had witnessed her morning antics. The only good of it, and it was a great good, was that she had not bared herself as it would have been easy to do believing she was alone.

For some moments, Wardieu remained unmoving, chin propped in the palm of a hand, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair. Then he said in a tone thick with what seemed more than sleep, “As ever, morning wears well upon you, Lizanne Balmaine.”

She struggled to summon anger at him for not alerting her to his presence. Would he have done so had she made to remove the sheet before donning her undergarments?

They continued to stare at each other, the air fairly vibrating with emotions she did not know the name of and that sought to distract her from expressing indignation—and, in the end, succeeded. Instead of her enemy, she saw the one who had come to her yestereve and offered comfort. She saw he who not only made her body warm but had somehow touched her heart.

Still, she fought the treacherous waters that tried to drag her under and backed away.

You desire him,
her mind named what she did not wish to name.
But look at him! He is the one. Your enemy!

Coming up against the hearth, she splayed her hands against the stones behind.

He is responsible for all the pain. He is the one who tried to ravish you. He is the one who spilled Gilbert’s blood.

And yet her body and heart saw another—a man capable of tenderness, of honor and word, who would never take what was not given freely.

Dear God, how can he look exactly like he who haunts my dreams and yet be another?

She caught her breath when Wardieu dropped his head back and reached a hand to her.

Do not, I tell you!

In the thrumming quiet of the chamber, her breath grew shallow and her heart beat so frenetically she felt sure he could hear it.

Though her mind rejected his invitation, her legs had no such misgivings and carried her toward him.

Eyes never leaving her face, he slid his leg off the chair arm, leaned forward and grasped her hand, urged her down.

Kneeling before him, Lizanne read the emotion in his eyes that she did not doubt was in her own.

Who have you become, Lizanne? This is not who you groomed yourself to be. Think swords and daggers, not kisses and caresses. Think the games of men, not the games of simpering females whose bodies are easily used and discarded. Think!

“I cannot,” she breathed and knew he heard her from the frown that crossed his brow.

“Should not,” he murmured, then drew his hand from hers and raised it toward her face. For a moment, his fingers hovered a hair’s breadth from her flushed skin, and then he touched her.

Lizanne accepted the light caress that moved over her cheek, across the curve of her jaw, down her neck, then back up to trace her mouth.

Nearly overwhelmed by the feeling she was falling from a great height, plunging toward a destination she could not guess at but desperately wanted to reach, she swayed toward him and felt his warm breath against her lips. And then his mouth.

It seemed the most natural thing to close her eyes, to simply feel, and feel she did when he entwined his hand in her hair, drew her nearer, and deepened the kiss.

Lizanne did not realize she had lifted her own hand until she felt the strands run between her fingers and the heat of his scalp beneath them.

When he pulled his mouth from hers, she startled at the loss of intimacy, but next his lips found her jaw, then a breathtakingly sensitive spot beneath her ear.

She dropped her head back and whispered, “Ran.”

Ranulf stilled, certain he could not have heard right, but again she said, “Ran.” Not
Wardieu
or
Ranulf Wardieu
as ever she scorned. Indeed, only once had she simply called him
Ranulf
. And now
Ran.
Did it mean what it sounded like?

He opened his eyes upon her blackest hair that his fingers had loosened from its unfinished braid and which he longed to bury his face in. And that was not all he longed to do.

Walter would not approve—and rightly so.

Ranulf pulled his hand from her hair and drew back.

After a long moment, she lifted her lids.

“Say it,” he said.

Confusion flit across her features, but then she slid her hand up his lightly whiskered jaw and leaned forward as if to press her mouth to his again.

He drew further back. “Lizanne, say what you feel.”

She shook her head. “I…do not know what it is.” She frowned. “Only that I should not feel it.”

“Why?”

As soon as he asked it, he knew he should not have—at least, not at that moment—for her expression told that she was returning to a place of undisclosed accusations against which he could not defend himself, a place he did not wish to be with her ever again.