Beauty's Curse (20 page)

Rourke dipped his head, his mouth tight. “Prince John has ordered me to marry her.”

“He placed a wager with three knights, to see who could get to the girl first! It is not just upon your shoulders,” Jamie interjected.

“I want her,” Rourke said coldly. “Why should I not have something I want? Every move I make is another man's will. She will be mine.”

“Ye can't keep her,” Jamie lowered his hand.

“I know,” Rourke said, his breath a gust of white in the chilled air. “She'll not lose everything. I'll gift her with a home.”

“Other than the small keep that we just left falling down around our ears, your lands are in the wilds of Scotland. You think this prim miss will thrive there? Away from her precious family?” Jamie snorted with disgust. “They love one another enough to lie under oath, and to brave possible death in this damn weather! Those boys knew quite well that without the priest, the lady wouldn't wed you.”

“So?” Rourke hefted his chin to glare at his foster brother's gray face.

“Think, man. She's a woman. Just a woman. And not the woman you are meant to marry. Let another man claim her as his prize to Prince John. Don't ruin everything we've worked for.”

The door to the manor opened, and the Montehue bailiff called out to them. “Is all well? Did ye find the boyssss”—Rourke noticed the bailiff catch himself—“and the priest?”

He could see well enough to stomp toward the man in patterned livery, so he shoved his foster brother to the side and yelled, “Nay, good sir, all is not well. Bring me the lady of the manor—now!”

Rourke brushed past the bailiff, searching the room. He didn't know what the damn lady looked like without ghost-white paint and a fur robe, and it pissed him off even more.

“Galiana!” he bellowed, standing with his arms akimbo and his legs spread. He didn't care that the servants cowered, or that his knights immediately got to their feet. For that matter, Galiana's men stood, too.

He strode forward five large steps and yelled her name again. None dared to question him, but he felt the weight of their stares.

His shouting was rewarded by the patter of heels on the stone floor. Looking down and sniffing, he noticed that the manor was much improved over when he had left it that morning. Not a single foul smell remained.

“What, pray tell, is the problem here?” He assumed the tall woman who spoke was Galiana. “To shout like this is the lowest of manners,” she chided before she rounded the corner and saw him.

“You speak of manners?” Rourke was itching for an argument. An explanation of why she thought she could lie, and yet think less of others for the same crime.

“Lord Rourke! You're soaked through, sir, let me order you a hot bath.” She started to turn back toward the kitchen, but he called her name again.

She halted.

Her gown was large and shaped like a grain sack. He saw it as gray, but he supposed that was no fault of hers. Not even a plain braided girdle gave it shape. Her hair, a riot of dull brown waves that the small veil she wore did nothing to hide, needed a good combing. And her face still held traces of candle soot.

Either that, or she had a permanent birthmark between her eyes.

“You needn't marry her.” Jamie's words teased his brain.

Her first words to him had held sincere concern for his well-being. When was the last time someone had cared like that? His world was filled with intrigue and danger. Hers was filled with perfumes.

“I don't want a bath, my lady.” Rourke fought to hold on to his temper. “I want to know about your kin.”

“Hmm?”

Her eyes, large and dark in a pale face with a pointed chin, gave nothing away.

“Ned?”

“You found him?” She ran forward three steps, hands out to him before she saw him shake his head.

“Nay. Jamie and I made our way to the village, my lady.”

Her lower lip trembled.

“And imagine my surprise when I found out you have not one brother, but two. Twins, my lady?”

She swallowed, mute.

Her stoicism infuriated him. “Do you not think you could have mentioned this before we went tracking Ned in the snow? That mayhap there were three travelers, instead of two?”

He took a step forward, and she stayed put. Her courage against his anger stopped him from yelling further.

“You talk of honor. Of prizing honesty. Where is your honesty, my lady?”

One of the Montehue knights made a growl in his throat before asking, “My lady? I know ye told us to respect this knight, but he's not respecting you.”

Galiana turned that pointy chin in the knight's direction and dipped her head in a regal manner. “Thank you. Lord Rourke is distraught and chilled. For certes, he meant no disrespect. No doubt the lord and I will finish this conversation over a meal and quite possibly without shouting.” She turned back to him, and Rourke felt like a five-year-old being reprimanded for behaving badly.

“My lord? Should I have the bath sent to”—her words too smooth, giving away the buried fury she felt—“your chamber?”

She was no beauty, but it didn't matter. He wanted her with an intensity he'd never felt before.

Dame Bertha called from her perch by the fire, “What of the boys, then? And Father Jonah?”

Rourke rubbed his temple, careful to stay clear of the stitches. “Off to Falcon Keep, and the family there.”

“On foot?” Galiana's question came out as a gasp.

“Nay. They bought a mule from a man in the village, and some supplies. I talked to the man, Bartholomew—”

“Good man,” Dame Bertha said.

“And he told them which villages to stay at along the way. It was foolish.”

Galiana bit her lower lip.

Rourke added, “He sold them furs and canvas, on credit, but they'll be fine.”

“At least Father Jonah is with them,” the bailiff said.

Shuffling his feet, Rourke said, “Actually, he isn't. The priest walked the boys halfway to the village, and then he went on his own. He wouldn't say where.”

Bowing her head for a moment, Galiana looked back up and met his gaze. He was struck by a flash of verdant green, like an overgrown forest filled with bushes and ferns, but he blinked, and it was gone.

“And the dispensation?” Her hands twisted in her skirt.

“The priest took it with him.”

Rourke waited for the prim lady to cry or fall into a faint, but she straightened her shoulders—by God, she was tall for a woman—and thanked him for the news.

Then she called to the boy carrying firewood to heat water for the lord's bath. “Will you need anything else, Lord Rourke? Sir Jamie?”

Jamie, damn him, said he'd take a bath. Then he added, “And, lass, ye did a fine job here.”

Galiana smiled, actually smiled, at Jamie—who she'd said she despised—and Rourke thought the smile made her look pretty, despite the gray of her gown.

“ 'Tis nerve of that man,” Galiana complained to Dame Bertha as she climbed the stairs. “Yelling for me as if I was his, his”—she frowned—“squire or some such thing.”

“It's the ways of man,” Dame Bertha clucked as she huffed up the stairs behind Galiana.

“Father doesn't do it. Mam would skin him alive.”

“That's why every man needs a good wife. Not that ye need to worry about that now, eh?”

Galiana paused at the top of the stairs. “What do you mean?”

“No need for ye to marry in a rush, now that Father Jonah has run off with the dispensation.”

“That's true,” she realized, her stomach hopping with a flurry of tangled emotions. And was that a thread of disappointment?

Nay!

“If Prince John wants ye wed to the lord, here, then ye'll have to marry at court, now, won't ye?”

“I don't know …” Galiana pressed a hand to her tummy, not sure what to make of this change of events. “I could explain, as I wanted to, to Prince John, that our family has a writ, with King Richard's seal—but will he honor it? I don't have the blasted thing. Father Jonah has it. Now what am I supposed to do? I could rewrite the dispensation from memory and—.”

“Stop dawdling, my lady,” Dame Bertha said with a slight shove toward the chamber Rourke was in. “The lord's got a temper, and ye don't want it aimed at your head again.”

“He deserves to be as shriveled as a prune,” Galiana said with a shudder. “Are you certain you don't mind helping Sir Jamie with his bath?”

“Not at all, not at all.” The old woman winked.

Galiana was left with no choice but to perform as lady of the manor and offer to scrub Rourke's back. How could she stay angry with him if he was naked as the day he was born?

Sharing an oath before God and Father Jonah would have given her the chance to explore these new feelings that Rourke aroused. No wedding; no wedding bed.

She swallowed, then opened the door with firm fingers. Galiana was the lady of the manor, and by all the saints, she could bathe a man without falling prey to her senses.

If the man were any besides Rourke Wallis, a man whose kisses melted her resistance, a man whose essence she yearned to inhale—aye, then mayhap she could do it.

Rourke's bare shoulders stuck out above the bathing tub, and his hair dripped with suds. His knees, covered in burnished gold hair, stuck out like wings of a bird, and her body hummed.

She turned on her heel to leave before she made a fool of herself.

Again.

“I need more hot water, and some mead.”

Galiana paused at the threshold. Lady, lady, lady. She could practically hear her mother's chiding voice in her ear. They'd know as soon as her brother's reached Falcon Keep how far she'd failed.

“I'll go get it,” she said.

Rourke wheeled around so fast that water splashed on the floor. “Galiana? What are you doing in here?”

Saint Agnes, help me! “I'm going to assist you with your bath.”

“You're a maid!”

She hefted her chin. “Aye. But it is my duty, as lady, to help our guests with their baths. Dame Bertha is seeing to Jamie, and you know our staff is limited.”

He leaned his head back against the tub, golden brown curls escaping over the edge. The texture of Rourke's hair was as fine as silk; her fingers remembered it quite well.

Clutching her skirt instead of Rourke, Galiana strode forward until she reached the edge of the tub. Eyes lowered to the floor, she asked, “My lord?”

“I, no—I'll finish myself,” he spluttered.

“You've soap in your hair,” Galiana pointed out, amused that he was as flustered as she. She reached for the pitcher of warm water on the low table before the fire. Next to a light repast lay a leather thong, the type a man might wear around his neck.

Her ring was attached to it, and her humor fled. Why would he not give this thing to her, when he'd made up such a story around it? What did it really mean?

Who was it truly for—what kind of woman would seep her way into this warrior's heart?

“Go,” he ordered, discomfort instead of charm in his voice.

“Sit up; let me do this one thing, and then I'll leave you to your privacy.”

“You think this funny, my lady?”

She heard the warning, and laughed with uncharacteristic defiance. “Aye.”

He tipped his face up, and she sighed. How could she stay angry with him? Strong of brow, eyebrows framing beautiful eyes, and his nose—so noble—and his strong chin …

“Why do you stare? You've seen this face of mine before.”

True. She was but memorizing it, feature by feature, so that if he didn't choose to marry her, she could have his image to dream by.

A dream Rourke was safer than the flesh-and-blood man, anyway.

“'Tis a good time to remove the stitches,” she said. “Mayhap after I rinse your hair?” She pressed the pitcher to her chest so that it didn't spill.

“Fine,” he growled. “Be quick.”

“Would you lean back?”

“Nay. I'll dip my head forward, lest you see more of me than your innocent eyes need see.”

Galiana gasped and forced her gaze away from his lap. Her belly recalled the feel of his manhood against her mound, and her fingers shook.

She poured the water carefully over his curls, using her fingers to wrest the knots free. Wanting to do this chore right, she took her time.

“Have done!” he demanded, and she noticed the strain of muscle across his bare shoulders. Thinking only to soothe, she caressed the length of skin, which immediately dotted with goose bumps, and Rourke exhaled so forcibly that the water before him rippled.

“You're cold!” Galiana jumped to her feet and ran to the towel hanging in front of the fire. She turned back, the warm cloth in her hands, to see him standing in all of his glorious flesh before her. Her eyes dropped to his groin before quickly rising back to his face.

Her cheeks were hot, so hot she thought she might expire.