By Arrangement (23 page)

A strange emptiness opened inside her. It felt like a desolate loneliness, despite the man who held her. She had been having a wonderful time these last hours, laughing and dancing and being overwhelmed by their mutual passion. Nestling with him outside while the love songs played had been so romantic. She bleakly realized that
she had been foolishly building another illusion, another dream.

She felt him shift and then those blue eyes were above her, studying her.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

Don't you know?
she wanted to say.
You always know.

She met his gaze and realized that he did know. At least part of it.

“I am thinking that there is more to all of this than I understand.” She made a little gesture that covered the bed. “You must find me very childish and ignorant compared to the other women whom you have known.”

Beautiful women. Worldly women. Experienced women. She could never compete with them. She didn't even know how. Why in God's name had he married her?

His hand caressed her cheek and turned her face to his. “I am most pleased with you, Christiana.”

She felt a little better then, but not much.

“Alicia was your lover, wasn't she?” she blurted.

“Aye. But it is over.”

“There were others, too, others whom I know and who know me,” she said blankly.

He just looked at her.

“Elizabeth?” she asked, thinking of that exquisitely lovely woman and feeling a spike of infuriating jealousy. No one could ever compete with Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth is an old friend, but we were never lovers.”

Protective indignation instantly replaced the jealousy. “Why not! You are better than most of the men she has been linked with. And that lord she married is old and ugly.”

He laughed. “Now you are angry with her because we didn't sleep together? Nay, there was no insult in it. Elizabeth likes her lovers very young.”

“You are young.”

“Not young enough. She likes them still partly unformed. She wants to influence them.”

“Young like Morvan?”

“Aye.”

She thought about that, and those months when Morvan had attended on Elizabeth. A long time for him. Worrying about her brother relieved her of the worries about herself.

“Do you know about the two of them, and what happened? Some at court thought that they would marry, but then it just ended. Morvan would never speak to me about it.”

He looked down at the pillow for a moment and she could tell that he did know.

“Oh, please, David, tell me,” she cajoled. “He is my brother, after all. I am very discreet, you know. I am the only female at court who didn't gossip.”

“A rare virtue that I should not corrupt.”

“I always
listened
. I just never repeated what I heard,” she said.

“Elizabeth didn't marry your brother because he never asked her to. Also, she loved him and he didn't love her. Not the way she wanted. Elizabeth would never bind herself to such an uneven love. Then there is the fact that she is barren. She has known it since girlhood. It is why only old men offer for her. They already have their heirs. One day your brother will be lord of Harclow again and he will want a son.”

“Nay, David, I do not think he ever will be. The King swore to see it happen, but he has forgotten.”

“Men do not forget the oaths that they swear.”

She wondered what else David knew about the people with whom she had spent her life. Perhaps, if she proved very discreet, he would tell her sometime. This felt very
pleasant and cozy, talking like this in the warmth of the bed. When he was up and walking about, he still remained a mystery to her, but the intimacy here temporarily banished that.

“I was surprised that the King came here this evening,” she said, wondering how far she could push the mood.

“Even kings like to have some fun. Being regal can get tedious, and Edward is still a young man. He isn't much older than I am.”

“He seems to know you well.”

“We are of similar age, and he is more comfortable with me than with the city officials who are very formal with him. And I have done some favors for him. He sends me on errands. To Flanders mostly. I carried letters to the governor of Ghent on several trips.”

“Do you still do this? These errands?”

“Aye. Some of the trips that I take are for Edward.”

That was that. She smiled at her foolish hesitation. She should have just asked earlier. It all made perfect and innocent sense. Still …

“Are they ever dangerous? These trips?”

“They haven't been.”

That wasn't the same as saying that they weren't. She decided to leave it, however.

She snuggled closer, enjoying the feel of his arm around her. She thought about some of the people she had met at the Guildhall banquet. In particular, she remembered the thin-lipped, gray-haired Gilbert de Abyndon, who had tried to ignore David's presence even while David introduced her.

“I liked Margaret, Gilbert's wife. I think that she and I could be friends. Do you think that he would permit that?”

Actually, she wanted to know if David would permit
it. Margaret was not much older than herself, and a friendly blond-haired woman. They had enjoyed their brief meeting and chat, even if their two husbands had stood there like frozen sentinels.

“Most likely. Gilbert is very ambitious. He will overlook your marriage to me because of your nobility and connections at court. Like most of the wealthier merchants, he wants to lift his family into the gentry.”

“Still, he may object to her visiting me. It is clear that you and he hate each other very much.”

Her comment was met with a long silence. She turned and found him gazing at the blue canopy much as she had done earlier. He glanced at her with a glint in his eyes. Had simply mentioning this uncle angered him? He kissed her hair as if to reassure her.

“I hate him for what he did to my mother, and he hates me because I am alive and use the Abyndon name. He is the worst of our breed, my girl. Judgmental and unbending. He is full of self-righteousness and attends church each morning before he spends his day damning people. If he had been at this house today, he would have seen nothing of the joy and pleasure but only sin and weakness. If you are going to befriend Margaret, you should know this, because that is the man she is tied to. Hopefully, for her sake, her old husband will die soon.”

She blinked at his last words. Wishing someone dead was a dreadful thing. The dispassionate way he said it stunned her even more.

“We need to find a servant to help you with your clothes and such,” he added. “Geva said that you would want to choose the girl yourself. In a few days, go and visit Margaret and ask for her help in this. See if Gilbert permits it.”

He stroked her hair and her shoulder and she stretched against him as the tingling warmth of his caress awoke her skin. She suspected that he wanted to make love again. She waited for him to start, and was surprised when he began speaking, his quiet voice flowing into her ear.

“My uncles Gilbert and Stephen were already in their twenties when my mother was still a girl. Old enough, when she turned fourteen, to know what they had in her. She was beautiful. Perfect. Even when she died, despite everything, she was still beautiful. Her brothers saw her marriage for the opportunity it was. They had it all planned. A nobleman for her. Second choice, a merchant with the Hanseatic League. Third, a husband from the gentry. They settled a fat dowry on her and began pushing her in front of such men. Every banquet, they brought her with them, dressed like a lady.”

“And did it work?”

“Aye, it worked. John Constantyn has told me what she did not. The offers poured in. Gilbert and Stephen debated the marriage that would be best for them, of course, and not her. They became too clever and played one man off against the other.”

“Did she refuse their choice? Is that why …”

“Worse than that, as my body beside you proves. They had not been careful enough with her. Their parents were dead, and the servants who supervised her indulged her. She fell in love. The man was gone by the time she found herself with child.”

“Was it one of her suitors?”

“Apparently not. Still, her brothers sought to solve the disaster in the usual ways. They demanded to know his name so they could force a marriage, but she would not give it to them. Gilbert tried to beat it out of her, and still
she would not say. And so they found another husband who would accept her under those circumstances and sought to have a quick wedding.”

Christiana grimaced inwardly. She remembered that first night in David's solar, and him asking if she was with child. He had thought that it was the same story, and that he was the other man whose quick wedding would cover up a girl's mistake.

“She would not have him,” he continued. “She was certain that her lover would return for her. She went to the priest and declared that she was unwilling.”

Braver than me
, Christiana thought.
My God, what must have been running through David's mind that night as he faced me so impassively in front of the fire?

“What did they do?”

“They sent her away. There are some relatives in Hastings and she went there. Gilbert told her to give up the child when it was born. If she did not, all of their support of her would cease and she would be as if dead to them. Under no circumstances was she to return to London.”

“But she kept you. And she came back.”

“She was sure that her lover would come, and she knew that he would not know where to find her if she wasn't here. And so she returned quickly. Somehow she found Meg and began working with the laundresses. Meg served as midwife when I was born. Those early years, we lived in a small chamber behind a stable near the river. Besides Meg and the other workers, I was my mother's only companion. Gilbert and Stephen never saw her, and true to their threat, did not so much as give her a shilling. She could have starved for all they knew or cared.”

“And you? Did you know who she was and who they were?”

“Not until I was about seven. And then I would hear
of these men with my mother's name and I began to figure some of it out. Stephen began rising in city politics then. And I knew by then that I was a bastard. The other boys made sure I knew that. Several years later she became David Constantyn's housekeeper and things got better for her, although Gilbert and Stephen never forgave him for helping her. In their minds she deserved all that had happened to her. Her misery was the price of her sin against God and them. Mostly them.”

He had told this story simply and evenly, as was his way. But she sensed that many other thoughts were tied to this tale, and that some of them concerned herself.

She remembered the drawing of this woman's face which she had seen, and looking at his perfect bones now, she could see his mother in him. But another face had contributed to these planes and deep eyes. An unknown face.

“What was her name? Your mother's name?”

“Joanna.”

“And your father? Do you know him?”

“The only father I ever knew was my master. The first time I saw him, he scolded me for stealing one of his apples. He came out of the ivy garden as I sat beneath the tree eating it while my mother helped with the laundry in the courtyard. I talked fast and hard to get out of a beating, I'll tell you that. He gave me a good wallop anyway and dragged me back to my mother. A few weeks later he showed up while we were here and took me into the city to see a thief hang. On the way back he told me that there were two ways for clever men to get rich. One was through stealing and the other was through trade, but that the thieves lived shorter lives. By age eight I had done my share of stealing, and the lesson was not lost on me.”

She pictured the urchins whom she sometimes saw on the city streets sidling up to carts and windows, running
off with food and goods. She imagined a little David amongst them. Never getting caught, of course.

“He offered to marry her, I think,” he added thoughtfully. “I remember coming upon them one day when I was about twelve. They were sitting in the hall. Something important was being discussed, I could tell. I sensed what it was.”

“She refused him, you think?”

“Aye. I assumed then that he offered because he wanted me. We had become close by then, much like father and son. We even shared a name. She had chosen mine from the Bible, but it is an unusual name in England and I knew from the start that it fascinated him that I had it. Even her position here— I thought he had accepted the mother to get the son. But I think now that maybe it was the other way around.”

“Did she refuse him because of the other man, your real father?”

“Aye. Her heart waited long after her mind gave up. I despised her for that when I was a youth, but by the time she died I understood a little.”

She thought of David's patient understanding during their betrothal, but also of his cruel, relentless prods about Stephen.

You still wait for him, after all of this time and when the truth is so clear. It is well that Edward gave you to me. You would have spent your whole life waiting, living in some faded dream.

In not repudiating her, he had taken a horrible, painful chance.

She pressed herself against the warm comfort of his body, feeling the texture of his skin against her length. It touched her that he had told her about Joanna and his early life. Little by little, in ways like this, perhaps he would cease to be a stranger to her. She also knew that it
was not in his nature to make such confidences and that only the intimacy of their marriage and passion had permitted it.

Without thinking, she rubbed her face against his chest and then turned and kissed it. She tasted the skin and kissed again. Her desire to give and take comfort and revel in their new closeness changed to something else as she kissed him, and impulsively she turned her head and gently licked his nipple. He touched her head and held it, encouraging her. A languid sensuality spread through her, and she felt the change in him, too. Only then did she remember that this was one of the things that the servant girl had told her about during her bath this morning.