Page 45 of By the Sword
Jonathan tapped the table with the fingers of his right hand.
‘Tom,’ he said quietly, ‘there is nothing I would like more in this world than to stay, but I’m a soldier. I have sworn loyalty to my King. I have to go.’
A curtain of hair obscured the boy’s face and to Jonathan’s distress, a large tear dissipated the blot of ink.
‘Don’t get killed,’ Tom said softly, his voice choked. ‘Mother thinks I’m too young to remember but I do. I saw him, all covered with blood, and Mother was crying and crying.’
‘Your father?’ Jonathan asked, his chest tightening at the thought of what this child had witnessed.
The boy nodded and looked up at him with brimming eyes. ‘I thought you were going to die too but you didn’t and I thought that meant you would stay.’
The agony in the boy’s voice pierced Jonathan’s heart. A man of less honour would stay here in this comfortable home with the woman whom he had come to love and this boy he cared for as deeply as he would his own son. The knowledge that the King’s cause was doomed even before it began just made the decision harder. He may not even survive the months to come, his very life wasted in a lost cause.
But, as he had told Kate, it was not the King’s cause that held his loyalty but the King himself, and Jonathan had given him his word.
***
Kate closed the door to Jonathan’s bedchamber behind her and stood with her back to it, trembling from cold and nerves. The only light in the room came from a single flickering candle and the dying fire. Next to a half-empty bottle of wine, Jonathan’s sword lay on the table, polished and sharpened and ready to do battle. The man himself leaned against the chimney mantel, his coat unbuttoned. The glow from the fire cast his faceinto deep shadows as he looked up at her, his gaze raking her with the intensity of a first meeting.
The silence stretched between them.
‘Jonathan?’ Her voice shook and she bit her lip.
‘Kate, you’re shivering. Come by the fire.’
Frightened by her audacity and unsure of what she should do or say, she moved towards the fire.
‘I came to see if you had all you need for the journey,’ she lied, trying to keep her voice light and conversational.
‘I have all I need, thank you,’ he replied, and a smile twitched at the corners of his lips.
Did he know why she had really come?
He placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. The hunger in his eyes reflected the yearning in her own. Yes, he knew why she had come.
His long, strong fingers ran across her shoulders and lingered at the soft skin of her throat. Involuntarily she quivered as sensations, long forgotten, pulsed through her body.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said. ‘It had to be on your terms, not mine, Mistress Ashley.’
Her heart beat a rapid tattoo as she struggled to control her breathing. ‘I’ve been a faithful wife and a virtuous widow for a long time, Jon.’ She looked up at him, her eyes holding his. ‘You will be gone tomorrow. I know I may never see you again and I do not want to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been.’
Whatever the consequences, she thought.
He bent his head and his forehead rested against hers. She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him, revelling in the touch of his skin against hers.
‘Kate,’ he whispered, ‘I want you to be sure of one thing and that is my feelings for you. Would that our lives were different–’
‘Wishing doesn’t change anything, Jon. We only have now, here…tonight.’
‘If this is what you want?’ He straightened, searching her face.
She nodded. ‘It is.’
He ran his hands along her shoulders and up her neck, twisting his fingers in the soft hair, pulling at the pins that held it in place. It tumbled down about her shoulders and she heard the ping of the hairpins hitting the hearth.
He tilted her face up towards him, and she closed her eyes and parted her lips, surrendering herself to the moment.
They kissed hungrily and passionately, the pent-up emotions of the past month, if not the lonely years, surging through them. His fingers traced the line of her throat and the tilt of her nose as if he were in some way imprinting the memory of her.
