The Elusive Bride Read online

With a hot shudder of anticipation, Rowan stirred from his reverie and clambered up the ladder.

  What he found in the loft of the byre brought him up short.

  There lay Cecily, sound asleep, too weary to wait for breakfast. Her hair was full of golden straw, like a halo against her rich brown tresses. In sleep, her face lost its bewitching look of mischief, taking on an aspect of peaceful purity that made Rowan’s stomach clench and his throat constrict.

  A fine filament of tenderness tightened around his heart like a snare.

  Carefully removing the pears from her cloak, he set them in the hay. For a time, he rested on his haunches, absently consuming several juicy pieces of fruit while he watched Cecily sleep, silently battling his yearning for her.

  How easy it would be to love this woman. And how very, very dangerous.

  Chapter Six

  Danger!

  Cecily woke with a start, cursing herself for dropping her guard so completely.

  Something about John FitzCourtenay’s presence gave her the perilous illusion of safety. Cecily knew she must fight the temptation to rely on him for protection. She had absorbed that lesson long ago, from her father. He had always counseled his sons to watch their own backs in a fight. No other man has as great a stake in your life as you do.

  That, Cecily reflected wryly as she yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, went double for a woman.

  Her waking senses reassured her that they were not in any immediate peril. The warm, familiar scents of hay, thatch and sheep soothed her. The tranquil quiet was broken only by distant bleating, the far-off screech of a hawk and the soft buzz of a man snoring very nearby.

  Cecily considered settling back to sleep again, but hunger gripped her belly. Looking about for the pears, she found three nestled in the hay. The first she devoured ravenously, scarcely tasting it in the rush to fill the gnawing void within her. The second she savored, letting the juice run down her chin, relishing every soft bite between her teeth, bathing her whole tongue in the ripe, sweet flavor. While she grazed absently on the last, her eyes lingered over the slumbering form of her companion.

  His bronzed throat and forearms gave way to paler skin on his chest and shoulders. Wide shoulders they were, too. Firm thewed, like his arms, and strong from wielding a heavy mace or broadsword. From reining in a huge, powerful war steed.

  She’d seen her brothers naked many a time. But they had been boys.

  John FitzCourtenay was a man.

  Gazing at his bandaged arm, she remembered tending him in the night. How she itched to touch him again! To run her fingers over the solid surges of flesh that were his chest. To tease the fine, dark hairs that clustered there. It looked an inviting spot for a woman to rest her head.

  She felt her lips curl into a grin of fiendish glee at her appalling immodesty. What would Sister Goliath say if she knew? Could Cecily pray enough rosaries in a lifetime to absolve herself?

  Well, if God had not wanted women to admire half-naked men, He should have wrought them less attractive by half! Cecily mused obstinately as she dared let her gaze wander lower.

  It wasn’t often one got to see a man’s breeches above the knee. A tunic usually fell at least that far. How nicely John FitzCourtenay’s breeches clung to his sturdy hips, loins and thighs. Her gaze rested there for some time, out of…curiosity.

  Cecily licked the last drop of pear juice from her lips.

  She remembered how he’d flung himself on top of her. After the first shock of pitching to the ground and some difficulty breathing, she’d begun to enjoy the warmth of their contact. And once again experienced some difficulty breathing.

  Dismayed by the intensity of the urges he kindled within her, she’d nearly snapped the poor fellow’s head off afterward. What kind of shrew must he think her?

  John FitzCourtenay stirred in his sleep then, rolling onto his side. With a guilty start, Cecily wrenched her gaze off the lap of his breeches. Fortunately, he did not open his eyes to catch her gaping.

  A soft moan escaped his lips and his features flexed in a grimace of pain. Was he reliving some skirmish with the Turks? Cecily wondered. Or some bitter moment from his past? When his face relaxed again into the more peaceful depths of sleep, Cecily watched it with a brooding concern she could not fathom.

  Men often hid surprisingly tender hearts beneath their boldness and arrogance. She had seen it often enough in her brothers. Women, at least the women she knew, were more resilient. They could hardly afford to be otherwise. Babies lost in childbed and infancy. Sons sent away to fosterage. Daughters surrendered to convents and young marriages. A heart easily pierced by such events would soon bleed to death.

  She longed to extend this man a little of her womanly strength. Scour and purge whatever old wounds still festered. Cosset him. Heal him. Make him whole again.

  Don’t be a fool, Cis! she whispered to herself as a bead of sweat tickled down her neck. How long had the sun been beating down on the byre’s thatched roof? The heat would soon become unbearable.

  Fool, indeed. She had no business with Rowan DeCourtenay’s bastard brother, but to suffer his help in getting her to Ravensridge. There she would make the match she needed to make. For the sake of Brantham and her people. In return she would do her best to make Lord DeCourtenay a faithful, industrious wife.

  Still, as she watched John sleep, Cecily couldn’t help but wish she were free to make a match of her own choosing.

  Rowan woke abruptly, with the sound of Jacquetta’s last scream echoing inside his head. In the nightmare, he’d been back in the tower at Poitiers, watching her fall. And fall. And fall. It seemed to take hours for her to reach the ground. All the while she screamed, and all the while Fulke DeBoissard laughed.

  “John, what’s wrong?”

  He could not understand the words at first, but it didn’t matter. Arms held him, gently pressing his face into the soft hollow of a woman’s shoulder. It brought him comfort. Like a storm-tossed ship making safe harbor.

  At some point in the far distant past, too long ago for waking memory to recall, perhaps some woman had held him so. A castle servant, even a wet nurse, making crooning sounds to sooth his infant wailing. Never since then, though.

  “Don’t fret,” crooned a soothing voice. “You must have had a nightmare. My brother Giles used to have them all the time. Hush, now, and catch your breath. Can you tell me what you dreamt? Giles found it helped to talk about them.”

  Cecily Tyrell. Now Rowan remembered. He remembered they were on their way to Ravensridge, pursued by henchmen of Fulke DeBoissard. He remembered they had taken refuge in a byre. He remembered how very much he wanted to lay her down in the hay and lose himself within her.

  Most of all, he remembered all the reasons why he must not.

  “I’m fine. I’m well. Let me be.” He pushed her back, only to find his hands cupped over her delicately rounded breasts. The firm nubs of her nipples pressed into his palms.

  Desire rushed, throbbing, into his loins.

  Forcing his arms to drop, he scuttled away from Cecily—backward, like a crab.

  She didn’t make any great ado about how he’d touched her. She seemed more concerned with him and his wellbeing. “The nightmare—was it one of those strange ones where nothing makes sense, or was it about something bad that happened to you in the Holy Land?”

  “In Poitou,” Rowan answered before he could stop himself. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve had it before, though not in quite a while.”

  At least his unbidden admission distracted her.

  “You have been to Poitiers?” Cecily heaved a gusty sigh. “To Duke William’s court? Was it as magnificent as they say?”

  “It was long ago,” Rowan confessed. “But, yes, it was a very grand and worldly place. The duke always set a fine table and hired the most skilled troubadors.”

  “I would love to travel.” Cecily leaned back into the straw, her hands crossed behind her head.

  Rowan tried
to ignore the provocative way it pulled the cloth of his tunic tight across her bosom.

  “The farthest I’ve ever been from Brantham is Wenwith Priory.”

  “I meant to ask—what were you doing there? Did you truly believe you had a call to take the veil?” He couldn’t stifle a grin at the notion.

  Cecily grinned back. “I suppose not. I love Our Lord with all my heart. I’m just not very good with rules. And Benedictines live by The Rule. Oh, those bells! Up at this hour. Read the scriptures until this hour. Pray until that hour. I’d rather say a prayer when one swells in my heart. And I’d rather talk to God and Our Lady in my own words, not just the Pater Noster and the Ave. Is that wicked of me?”

  At first Rowan thought she jested. Then he saw the earnest question in the set of her features. The very real doubt in her eyes. He bit back the laughter that had risen in his throat.

  “Not wicked at all, Mistress Tyrell. After all, I was a stranger and you fed me. You had no motive in the world for helping me, but a merciful heart. Methinks that may weigh in the balance as heavily as any number of rote prayers.”

  A smile of almost blinding radiance lit her face. Truly, the brightness of it made Rowan’s eyes sting.

  “You have done much to set my mind at rest, Master John. I tell myself Our Father created the wolf and the wild hart as well as the meek sheep. Then sometimes I wonder if that is not just the willful part of my nature trying to justify itself. Now, tell me more about the court at Poitiers.”

  His reluctance to dredge up painful memories must have shown plainly on his face, for she amended, “Or the Holy Land. Tell me about Outremer and Jerusalem. Did you go there with your brother?”

  In his relief at her change of subject, Rowan misspoke. “My brother take the cross? That is almost as comical as the thought of you in a nunnery.”

  She shot him a look of puzzlement. “I was told Lord Rowan had gone to the Holy Land.”

  “Ah, Rowan!” For an instant he toyed with admitting the truth of his identity. Against all reason, he could not bring himself to do it. “I thought you meant our younger brother, Baldwin. Yes, Rowan and I went crusading together. We have never been separated since our birth…until lately, that is.”

  She sat up again, hunched forward with her chin resting on her hand. “So the two of you are of an age?”

  “Y-yes…Some men prefer to take a mistress when their wife is breeding…then the mistress may get with child as well.”

  He wondered how many of the commandments that falsehood transgressed. The one about honoring one’s father, at the very least. Possibly the one about bearing false witness as well.

  If Cecily heard the hesitation of untruth in his voice, she did not recognize it. “Is he as handsome as you?”

  Rowan felt the nettle sting of a blush rise in his cheeks. “We bear a tolerable resemblance, though few call us handsome.”

  “Then they must have no eyes,” Cecily quipped. In a wink she turned serious again. “Has he had many women, your brother? Your brother Rowan, I mean.”

  “Oh…we have had our share.”

  “Any he loved especially?”

  Had she never heard about Jacquetta DeNevers? Did she not know of his benighted marriage?

  “Perhaps…Or perhaps he was a fool and too young to know what love is.”

  “Will I suit him, do you think?” Cecily gestured to her straw-sown hair and the rough tunic she wore with such unwitting grace. A plea for reassurance glistened in her eyes. “Will I be worth all the trouble it will cost him to retake Brantham?”

  Could she truly doubt her appeal? So it seemed. As she doubted her goodness. What would she think when he refused to wed her, even at Maud’s behest? Would it further erode her belief in herself?

  His conscience burdened by a fresh load of guilt, Rowan tried to infuse his smile and his gaze with every crumb of the vast admiration he had so rapidly come to feel for her. “You’d suit any man with eyes, Mistress Cecily.”

  Laughing, she hid her face behind her hands. “You are a skilled flatterer, my friend. Whereabouts on your travels did you learn that?”

  “Nowhere that I know of. Most folk say I am far too blunt.”

  “’Tis a fault we share, then.” She toyed with a switch of straw, turning it over and over in her long, deft fingers. “Though I do not count it so. A kind word from a blunt man is a thousand times more precious than the shallow praise some folks spread about like cow dung on a fallow field.”

  How had their conversation strayed into such familiar territory? Rowan wondered suddenly. Though continuing his charade as John FitzCourtenay, he had otherwise confided in this woman more in an hour than he had in anyone else for as long as he could recall. Surely the time had come to turn their talk to more impersonal matters.

  “I wonder how much longer we have until nightfall? Is it much farther from here to Lambourn?”

  “Not but a few miles. We could be there not long after midnight if we get a good moon again. Dusk is still several hours off, I think. Plenty of time for you to entertain me with stories of the Holy Land.”

  To himself, Rowan breathed a sigh of relief. His effort to divert the flow of their talk had worked. He could spin her dozens of the travelers’ tales she seemed hungry to hear.

  Hungry. Rowan realized he was hungry again. Three pears were not much to stay the stomach of a man who’d been walking all night.

  “I wish I had a sackful of fruit from the Holy Land at this very moment,” he said. “They are wondrous strange, but fine eating. Their skin is not thin and edible like our apples and plums. Most must be peeled before one can eat the flesh inside. Ah, but they are well worth the work of peeling. There is one fruit, yellow as a pear, but long, like a sausage. The rind comes away in strips, and the flesh inside is white and soft as a milk pudding. It has a mellow sweetness to the taste—not tart like most of our fruit.”

  “You make my mouth water, Master John. What else is there? Tell me more. I am that greedy to know of the wide world.”

  Rowan thought for a moment, absurdly pleased by the way she hung on his every word. He went on to tell her of the Middle Eastern landscape. Of several skirmishes he had fought with the Turks. Of the opulent, decadent courts. Of the many holy places of pilgrimage.

  “Fancy such things,” breathed Cecily, a far-off look in her eyes. “You must have been sorry to come back to England again.”

  Rowan shook his head. “Wonders and novelties are well enough for a while. After a time, though, every traveler comes to long for the familiar things of home. I do not miss the court of my…of our cousin Joscelin in Edessa, or any of the eastern courts, for that matter. They are so rife with intrigue, my palate sickened on them long ago. I was well pleased when…Rowan decided to return to lend the Empress his sword. Though it grieves me to find my country in a far worse state than I left it.”

  “Lay that at the doorstep of the Count of Blois.” Cecily bristled.

  Rowan swallowed a smile at her fierce partiality. Though Maud’s supporters contested his right to the throne, most at least had the courtesy to call Stephen of Blois King.

  “It is strange to imagine Stephen and Maud at one another’s throats for the crown,” he replied. “At one time, I thought they might make a match. There are those who whispered they were once lovers.”

  Cecily’s eyebrows rose and she looked at him with even greater interest. “You reckoned they would make a match. Fah, but you walk in exalted company, John FitzCourtenay!”

  Rowan cursed himself for the slip. “My brother walks there. I merely skulk in his shadow. Though I see what’s what as well as anyone.”

  “Forgive me, Master John. I did not mean to sneer at your station or birth.”

  It was he who should beg pardon for continuing to deceive her, reflected Rowan, batting a fly away. Why could he not simply tell her and be done with it? He no longer feared that Cecily might betray him. But he enjoyed the camaraderie they had struck up. Some instinct warned him he would lo
se it the moment she learned his true identity.

  “I take no offense,” he assured her. “Your candor is refreshing. Perhaps you are the one to give me an honest account of how this came to war. I have heard so many different versions of events.”

  Cecily laughed. Surely John FitzCourtenay must be in jest. “If you want an unbiased report, you must seek it elsewhere. I am for the Empress, body and spirit. It galls me that she has been done out of her rightful inheritance by men who swore an oath to support her. Stephen of Blois was first on his knees. He has no business on the throne.”

  “We are agreed on that.” With a switch of straw, John FitzCourtenay gestured to emphasize his words. “Had Stephen been King Henry’s rightful heir, he would still have made a poor ruler. He is too affable by half. Countries are like families. They need strong, strict rule to flourish. I am appalled by the lawlessness I’ve seen since my return. None would have dared it in King Henry’s day. Nor The Conqueror’s.”

  Cecily wasn’t certain she agreed with his comparison between a country and a family. She knew from experience that an exacting parent often bred weakness or rebellion in his offspring. But they could argue that point some other time. A bittersweet hope possessed her, that she and John FitzCourtenay might have many such lively discussions in the years to come. Again regret tugged at her heart. She would spend the rest of her days with him close at hand—but as the wife of another man.

  “The Empress is very like her sire and grandsire.” Cecily picked up the thread of their conversation. “She would rule with a strong hand.”

  Rowan scratched his beard. Cecily recalled the brush of it against her ear, when he’d whispered to her, pinned beneath him. Her breath caught in her throat.

  “Pity Maud isn’t a man.”

  Her yearning for him instantly soured. “Not you, too, John? I thought you man enough not to be daunted by the prospect of a strong woman on the throne.”

  “I am not daunted, by her grace or any woman.” He shot her a withering look. “I only mean that women have important duties to their husbands and children, which they neglect at their peril.”