By Arrangement (30 page)

She sighed into the silence. The garden was empty despite the warm weather because the court attended dinner in the hall right now. She had avoided those crowded meals and all other events where she would be required to chat and make merry. She had escaped to Westminster for sanctuary and to heal her heart and soul.

She had found welcome and sympathy when she arrived. Lady Idonia had taken one look at her and known the reason for the visit. That little woman asked no questions and settled her in as if they had been expecting her. Joan and Isabele, warned by Idonia no doubt, sought no explanations either.

They were the only family she had known for years, and they surrounded her and protected her in her pain. Even Philippa, on hearing of her extended stay, had come to see her. Alone together in the anteroom, the Queen had tried to be a mother to her for once as she explained the difficulties of marriage. Upon leaving, she had offered to write to David and say that she requested his wife's continued attendance. He would not dare come for her then, and Christiana would have more time.

More time. For what? To reconcile herself to living her life with a man who at most wanted her available to satisfy his needs? Who had purchased a well-bred and well-formed bedmate, much as he carefully chose his horses? A man who did not believe her now after she had always been honest with him to the point of cruelty? A man who barely cared for her at all, but whom she loved despite everything?

There lay the real problem, of course. The rest she could manage and accept if she didn't love him. It was the lot of most women, and she had even ridden to her wedding assuming that it would be hers. Mutual indifference would make it bearable. Wasn't Margaret surviving?

Aye, she needed time. Time to stop loving him.

She had been working hard at that these last few weeks. She kept the memory of his harsh indifference and his attempted rape sharp in her brain. She reexamined the evidence implicating him in some treasonous game. It hadn't worked and she was in a quandary. The love wouldn't die and he had robbed her of the chance to build illusions out of ambiguities.

She looked up from the flowers. More time. How much would it take? How long before she could return to that house and that bed as indifferent to him as he was to her? How long before he could touch her and she would
feel no more than simple pleasure or, if not that, remove herself from the experience? Hadn't David said that Anne handled her whoring that way? What was she but some incredibly expensive whore?

Surely just being away from him should kill these feelings eventually.

A palace door opened. Morvan paused in the threshold. He looked at her a moment before walking over. He sat down and stayed there in silence with his arm around her back. She let her head rest on his shoulder.

She hadn't spoken with him all of this time and had actually avoided him. When they briefly saw each other, she turned away from the questions in his eyes. Now he had deliberately sought her out and she felt grateful. He possessed so much strength that there always seemed to be extra to spare for her.

She turned and looked at his profile and saw his concern. She also saw something else and suspected with a numb resignation that her time was up.

“Why are you here, Christiana?” he finally asked, demanding the information that no one else had required.

“I could not stay there.”

“Why not?”

Because my husband does not love me at all.
She could not say it. It sounded too childish. Like most nobles, Morvan probably thought the issue of love irrelevant in marriages.

“Did he hurt you? Abuse you?”

“Nay.” Not the way that Morvan meant. If he had, she would have lied. She did not want her brother killing David.

“Does he use you too hard?” he asked softly.

“Nay,” she whispered.

“Has he gone to other women? If it is that, Christiana, I must tell you that with men …”

“To my knowledge he has not, Morvan. He thinks that I went to another man. To Stephen. He does not believe me when I deny it. He was mad with anger and jealousy. We argued and said things … ugly things.”

“All couples argue. Our parents had terrible fights.”

“This was different.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Did our father love our mother?”

The question surprised him. “It was a love match. I think they still loved each other at the end.”

“Then it was different.”

“That is a rare thing, Christiana. What they had. I do not think that it is given to most. Not really.”

“Not you?”

“Nay. Not me. Like most men, I settle for brief simulacrums of it.”

She thought that sad. She remembered David saying that Elizabeth would not marry Morvan because of their uneven love. She understood Elizabeth now and knew why Elizabeth had chosen instead that old baron for whom she felt nothing. Marriage to Morvan would have torn her heart daily.

“You cannot stay here,” Morvan said gently. “Philippa spoke with me. Edward has become aware of your presence and questioned her about it. She does not think that David said anything, but the King has some affection for your husband, it seems, and interfered on his own.”

“I cannot go back there.”

“There is no place else to go.”

She closed her eyes.

“God willing, Christiana, the day will come when I will have a home. If you still need to leave, I will take you in forever and keep him from getting you back. But for now, there is no choice.” He paused and added carefully,
“Unless you want to go north to Percy. Did Stephen offer to keep you?”

She uttered a short laugh. “Nothing so formal or permanent, brother. Even if he had, I would not go, because I do not care for him now and would not dishonor you thus even if I did. Also I would not go because David has said that he will kill Stephen if I do, and I believe him.” She smiled mischievously. “Would you have let me go?”

“Probably not.”

“I did not think so.”

He smiled kindly at her. “I have asked Idonia to pack your things. Horses await. I am taking you home now.”

Her stomach twisted. “So soon?”

“Whatever is between you and David will only be a day worse tomorrow.”

He rose and held out his hand.

“I do not know if I can bear this, Morvan. The last time I saw him …”

The last time she saw him, he was about to hit her because she had spoken to him noble to commoner and implied that his touch would debase and dirty her. The last sound she had heard him make was that kick trying to break down the wardrobe door.

“He will probably be happy and relieved to see you,” Morvan said as he raised her to her feet. “It occurs to me that this is the third time that I have brought you to him. The man should have great affection for me by now.”

She forced a laugh at her brother's attempt at levity, but she didn't think for one moment that David would be relieved to see her.

David heard the horses enter the courtyard just as dinner ended. Andrew was leaving the hall and he glanced over meaningfully, confirming the riders' identities.
Michael, crowding in behind Andrew at the door, announced happily to the servants that their mistress had returned.

David gestured for everyone to go about their business. He went to the door and stepped outside. The apprentices greeted Christiana as they passed her on their way to the gate. She rode forward slowly beside her brother.

She had been gone for almost three weeks. No messages or notes had passed between them, and his option of fetching her back had been cut off by the Queen's interference. Three weeks and before that two more. He'd only had that horrible afternoon with her in all of that time.

They stopped their horses right in front of him. Christiana looked down impassively. Morvan tried to appear casual and amiable. He swung off his saddle and walked around to lift his sister down.

“Christiana asked me to escort her home,” he said as he began untying the small trunks on the saddle. “She was finding Westminster tedious.”

David waited. Christiana walked a few steps and faced him.

“He is lying,” she said quietly. “He made me come.”

“All the same, it is good to have you back.”

She glanced at him skeptically. “Did you keep Emma?”

“She is inside.”

“I will go and rest now,” she announced. “I find that I have a headache and am a bit dizzy.”

He let her pass, nodding acknowledgment of her old excuse for avoiding him.

Morvan set the trunks down near the door.

“I thank you, Morvan.”

Morvan's face hardened. “Do not thank me. She is pained about something, although I know not what. If
there had been anywhere else to take her, I would have done so.”

He mounted his horse. “I will come in a few days to see her,” he said pointedly.

“I will not hurt her over this.”

He turned his horse. “All the same, I will come.”

David crossed the courtyard and entered the side building. As he approached the stairs he saw Emma emerge from his mother's old chamber. She softly closed the door and eased over to him.

“She is most poorly, I think. She said that she could not make the steps.”

He glanced at the door behind which his young wife hid from him. Would she ever open it again of her own will, or would he eventually have to tear it down? He would wait and see. He was good at waiting.

“She will use that chamber until she feels better, then. Make her as comfortable as you can, Emma.”

CHAPTER 17

T
HE BED FELT
a little strange. Christiana snuggled under the covers even though the June night was warm enough to leave the windows open. She gazed up at the pleated blue drapery.

She did not have to be here, she reminded herself, and she still had time to change her mind. He would not be back for several nights. No one knew that their sick mistress had stolen up these stairs and entered this chamber while the household slept. She could return to Joanna's room before morning and continue her deception.

She doubted that anyone continued to be fooled by her illness, except maybe trusting Emma. The concern with which she had been treated those first days had long ago dissolved into silent curiosity.

Her arm stretched out and slid over the cool sheets where normally David slept. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here tonight. Even if she left now and never returned, he would undoubtedly sense that she had been here. It had probably been foolish to steal up to this bed
and try to imagine whether she could return to him without being devastated.

He had supported her claim of illness. For three weeks he had treated her with concern in front of the others. He greeted her warmly upon returning to the house and placed his hand over hers while the conversations continued after the meals.

When they were alone, she had seen other things in those blue eyes, however. The knowledge that she deliberately avoided him. A forbearing but not eternal patience. Sometimes, perhaps, an intelligent male mind calculating his options with her.

Since she ostensibly could not climb the stairs, she had taken to sewing in the hall after the evening meals. After the first few days, he began joining her there. A subtle tension underlaid the stilted conversations which they held across the hearth, but recently its tremoring pulse had gotten worse during the long silences. She would look up from her sewing and find him watching her and the look in his eyes would summon that old fear that wasn't fear. She would curse herself and pray that he would leave her alone in peace and not remind her with his presence and his gaze how much she still loved and wanted him.

It had been deliberate. Every touch, every gentle kiss good night when she left the hearth to return to Joanna's room, had been intended to remind her of the pleasure she felt with him. He had been playing a slow, methodical melody on the strings of her desire.

It had succeeded. The last week as she lay in her lonely bed, she had begun considering that maybe she could live this life in which she had been imprisoned. She could take the pleasure for what it was. Why deny herself? It had become clear that this special hunger, once awakened, did not sleep easily ever again.

Since the day she had returned, she had lain in
that bed every night, unable to sleep quickly, listening for the step outside her door that warned that he finally came to demand his rights and her duty.

Last night she had barely slept at all. He had intended to leave in the morning to attend one of the trade fairs inland. She did not doubt the truth of his destination this time, because John Constantyn was going with him. It would not be a long journey, but their silent evening by the hearth had been heavy with the knowledge of his impending departure. Did his memories turn as hers did to his last emotional leave-taking and what had occurred upon his return?

His kiss when she finally left him had been long and less chaste, and his hands had caressed her while he embraced her. Hungry, aching feelings long denied had flooded her before he drew away. If he had lifted her up and carried her back to his bed then, she could not have stopped him.

He did not, though. He let her leave him as he always had these last weeks. She went to the small chamber that had become her home. She waited, praying this time that he would indeed come and end this even as she dreaded that he would. Her need for his closeness overpowered her. Her insulted pride and her hurt at his indifference ceased to matter. That her desire was totally entwined with her love did not frighten her so much anymore. She would manage those feelings somehow.

He had come, but not during the night. At first light her door had opened and she had turned to find him standing there, looking down at her. She rose up against the headboard and pulled the sheet around her naked shoulders.

He sat down beside her and she saw signs of weariness in his face that suggested he had not slept much either.

“You are leaving now?” she asked.

“Aye. John awaits outside. Sieg will stay here. There are rumors that Edward has summoned the army again, Christiana. If men start arriving in the city, do not leave the house without Sieg or Vittorio.”