Tempt Me With Kisses (33 page)

Yet it was she who had brought Iain here, however unknowingly. It was because of Ganore’s connection to her that she was dead.

Sighing and clutching the blanket Rhonwen had brought her, Fiona got stiffly to her feet and, putting her hands on the curve of her back, arched to relieve the ache.

A man’s voice broke the silence. “My lady?”

She started and peered at the stairs. Dafydd stepped out into the shaft of dawn’s first light coming in through a loophole.

“Rhonwen is right to want you gone from this drafty place lest you take sick,” he said with soft-spoken sympathy that both surprised and relieved her.

She had not only been thinking of Caradoc as she sat here in the dark. A part of her had been worrying about the opinion of everyone else in Llanstephan.

“She is preparing the brazier in your chamber against the damp and chill,” he continued. “Will you not retire? I will take up your vigil while you rest, and I promise to fetch you if he comes out.”

She shook her head. “If he comes out, I intend to be here.” She lifted her arms, making the blanket flare out like a sail. “I have this, so I am warm enough, and Rhonwen also brought me a stool to sit upon.”

“Do you want to get sick, then, to punish him for staying in his solar? Is that it?”

“No!” she retorted, his charge offending her. “It is not for that I wait. I will not go from here until I speak with him.” Her gaze faltered, for she had not realized how much she valued Dafydd’s merry friendship until she feared it was destroyed, too. “Do you think ill of me, Dafydd?”

He gave her a small smile and shook his head. “No, I don’t. You should have been honest with him, of course, but I do not think he is right to behave this way. Caradoc, of all men, should understand wounded pride. That is what keeps him in that solar, for one thing. But regardless of where the hurt comes from, when he’s upset, he goes to ground, like a wounded animal, and if he didn’t care so much for you, it would have hurt him less.”

She nodded. “I have wounded him very deeply.”

“You’re not the first.”

She sat on the stool again. “It does not comfort me to think that I am like everyone else who has hurt him,” she said quietly, regret for her subterfuge eating at her once more.

“Look you, my lady, give it time,” Dafydd pleaded. “Give
him
time. He’ll come out eventually.”

“To act as if he has not been wounded, I don’t doubt. His misery will be buried, but still there, festering, sickening what was once good between us.” She shook her head. “No, Dafydd. I made a terrible mistake, and I admit it. I will not leave here until I can apologize and try to make him understand.”

Dafydd frowned. Then he mused a moment before briskly stepping up to the door and knocking loudly. The sound reverberated through the stairwell as Fiona anxiously got to her feet. Maybe Dafydd would succeed where she had failed.

“Caradoc!” he called out. “It’s Dafydd.”

She held her breath.

Caradoc made no response.

“It is dawn and your wife has been sitting out here all night getting chilled through her bones waiting to talk to you,” Dafydd continued. “Will you not speak with her?”

Still silence.

Dafydd held out his hands in surrender as he turned back to her. He gazed at her face a moment, then tried again. “Lord Rhys will be leaving. Will you come out to say your farewells?”

Only more silence rewarded his question.

“The wool merchants will be here soon, too, Caradoc. You will want to deal with them, won’t you? Or should we leave that to your wife?”

The door abruptly opened. Caradoc stood there, pale, majestic, his face stubbled, dried blood caked on the torn right sleeve of his tunic, and his eyes gleamed. Hard and cold as ice on the river in the dead of winter they looked as he glared at them.

Hell was not eternal flame and fire. Hell was freezing cold, hardening hearts and making what had been warm and alive as frigid as a corpse in the snow.

“I am still the lord of Llanstephan Fawr, and I will do my duty,” Caradoc rumbled, his words hoarse and stern. “I will bid Lord Rhys farewell in due course. I will conduct my business with the wool merchants when it is necessary.” He ran his hostile gaze over Fiona. “As for my wife, I will deal with her in my own way.”

He went to close the door.

She rushed forward and blocked the opening with her body. She would not let him shut her out again. “I have things to say to you!”

He regarded her disdainfully, as scornful as ever Ganore had been. “I am done with talking.”

“You may be, but I am not. Not until I tell you everything and explain. I understand how you feel—”

“You know
nothing
of how I feel!”

“I do! Why do you think I ran away from Iain? I—”

Caradoc grabbed her arm and pulled her into the solar, slamming the door in Dafydd’s startled face.

“Will you have this out in front of an audience, too?” he demanded. “By the saints, woman, didn’t you reveal your sin in front of enough men yesterday?”

She straightened her shoulders. She was finally alone with him, and he was finally talking. If she had to bear a few insults, that was a price she was willing to pay. “If you had let me in sooner, he wouldn’t have been there.”

He planted his feet and crossed his arms, regarding her with that same scorn. “What excuse will you offer for what you have done?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Iain, but I was ashamed of how I let myself be duped by his false vows of love. I didn’t want anybody to know about that, especially you. Nor did I expect Iain to follow me here.”

The depths of his eyes flickered, but his visage did not alter. “Go away and leave me alone, Fiona. Tell Dafydd to go, too.”

Not yet. She would not leave yet. “Caradoc, you must listen—”

“Are you
deaf
?” he roared, his face reddening and his hands balling into fists. “I am tired of talk! I am sick unto death of lies and truths revealed that are better buried! Get out and leave me
alone
!”

The easiest thing to do would be to do as he commanded. To give up trying to make him understand, and go away. But that would mean the end of all the wonderful intimacy and affection that had been between them, and she was sure the breech would be irreparable.

She was not willing to have her folly ruin their chance for happiness together, at least not until she had tried her best. “No, I will not go away. Not until you have listened to what I have to say.”

He continued to glower, but he did not order her to leave, so she said. “When I left Dunburn I did not wish to tell anyone about Iain. I thought he would give me up and leave me alone, but even I underestimated his greed and his vanity that could not bear to lose anything, not even a woman he did not love.”

“So you came here to escape your greedy lover and get a title, too.”

Still cold, still like a rock in winter.

“Escape I craved, because I was ashamed. And I thought a title would be a reason you would accept without question. Not only did I want to forget Iain, I didn’t want to admit that I had thought about you for years, and dreamed of you, and hoped to marry you. I spoke only of practicalities and not of my heart, for it was raw and wounded then. I was glad—aye, and relieved, I will confess—when you agreed to marry me. Yet you were always more than a means to escape or get a title to me. You are, and always have been, ten times the better man.”

“A bargain, then, I was,” he replied, his voice calm, as the very sick are calm, too ill to react more strongly. “A good thing Connor was not here, or not so much of a bargain would you have had.”

He sat in his chair like a judge behind his table, while Fiona stood anxiously before him. “I didn’t want Connor. I wanted
you
.”

How much Caradoc wanted to believe her! To still be under the pleasant delusion that he was her first choice, not one made out of desperation and despair.

That she had come here because she thought him worthy, not because she sought refuge and escape, and he was the first man who came to mind who could offer both.

He yearned to believe that she was honest and plainspoken, and that he could trust her. That she had not purposefully misled him until now he did not know what was truth and what a lie anymore. “If it was as you say, why not tell this Iain how you felt to his face? You had no qualms about criticizing my temper when Sir Ralph came here.”

“Because I didn’t care enough about him to explain, and he didn’t care about me.”

He must pay no heed to the anguish in her eyes or the remorse in her voice. She was so obviously capable of duping him, he could not take anything about her at face value anymore. “Was he your only lover?”

Why not ask? He was too benumbed to feel any more pain.

She grabbed his arms and looked at him with fervent, pleading eyes. “Yes! That is the truth. You must believe me.”

He could feel his frozen heart beginning to melt with the heat of her impassioned words. But the cold bitterness of his pain was still too new, too unbearable, for the warmth to best it. “I would have believed you had you told me this of your own volition when you first arrived. The loss of your virginity I could have overlooked, as long as you did not bear another man’s child. It is the deliberate deception I cannot countenance, Fiona. I remember the blood upon the sheets. Ganore said it was a whore’s trick, and now I find that she was right.”

“But Caradoc—”

“It is the
deception
, Fiona!” he shouted, rising to his feet as his temper surged into life out of the ruins of his feelings. “How can I ever trust you? What else might I discover about my wife? I told you what Ganore said to me about my mother. I trusted you with that.” His temper died as the thing he feared most found a quieter voice. “Is the love you said you felt for me a lie, too?”

Her anxious gaze searched his face. “How can you say that after the nights we have shared?”

“Because you have not been honest with me,” he retorted as he strode toward the window, then turned back to face her, glad of the distance he had put between them. “Because I should have guessed that Caradoc of Llanstephan was nobody’s first choice. Because I should have understood that you are as mercenary as this man you claim to hate.”

“Mercenary?” she gasped, her palms folded flat against her chest as if to shield it from a blow.

“What else would you call it? What else am I to believe? You came to me to hide, not to love. You gave me your money in exchange for my title, my protection and sharing my bed at night. A bargain we struck, and I was a fool to think it was more.”

“No, from the first it was more than that for me!” she cried, splaying her hands on the table between them. “I do love you, Caradoc. You must believe me! I never loved him, not as I love you.”

“So you say now that the truth is out.”

He turned away, unable to look at her, ashamed of what he had felt and how he had been fooled.

Ashamed of what he still felt, despite everything. What he feared he would always feel, because he cared for her so much. If he loved her less, the truth would not—
could
not—hurt like this. This pain, though… Could the torment of eternal damnation be worse?

She hurried to him and grasped his upper arms, making him face her. “I never
loved
Iain! He made me feel pretty and desired and I was lonely, so I let him seduce me. But I had already chosen you, long before I ever met Iain MacLachlann. Then I lost my way. When I realized what he was, I found it again and came here, to where my heart had always been. You must believe me, Caradoc.”

Oh, God, he wanted to! He wanted to think that it was as she said—that she had wanted him and only fallen victim to a clever seducer who preyed upon her weakness.

But she was no feeble female. He had seen her strength. God help him, he had admired her for it. “How
can
I believe you, Fiona? You robbed me of that choice when you spread the blood in our bed.”

The vital sparkle in her eyes dimmed, and she stepped back, away from him.

“Caradoc, I should have told you all,” she began, her voice steady but flat, as if all her feelings had departed from her. “I didn’t because I was
afraid
. Afraid you wouldn’t want me, despite the dowry. Afraid you wouldn’t respect me—as you do not now. Have you never been afraid, Caradoc? Have you never feared that your past was going to utterly ruin your present, and your future?”

“Of course I have, Fiona,” he grimly replied. “I knew that fear when Ganore told me Edgar of Llanstephan was not my natural father.”

“Think then how you would feel if someone came to tell you that her words were indeed a lie. The relief, the happiness, the hope—those are what I felt when you agreed to marry me and we first made love. I had real hope then that I could put the past behind me, and keep it there. But I could not. Yet I swear to you that you now know all there is to know, and I do love you.”

Her chin came up, and the life returned to her glimmering green eyes. “But apparently my secret has destroyed whatever love you felt for me. If I do not have your love, if you think you can never trust me again, if you cannot understand or forgive, I will go from here.”

She meant it. He saw that in her eyes, her face, the very stance of her body as she spoke. She would leave Llanstephan if he told her to.

Despite everything, he loved her. He would always love her.

But trust her? Could he ever have absolute faith in her again?

To trust Fiona or let her go was the ultimate ultimatum. His whole future, his happiness, his fate, rode upon it.

Trust her, or let her go, never to see her again, to be with her again, to hear her voice or feel her body beside his in the still, small hours of the night.

Suddenly, the answer was as simple as taking one breath after another.

No one could ever take her place in his heart, for it was a place she had created. She had made the opening and broken through the walls. She had filled his heart and his life with joy and happiness. He loved her, he needed her, and as she stood before him, still proud despite everything, he believed all that she had said.