Page 44 of The Captive Knight
He thought,it’s never like this.
He rolled to his side to face her, eye to eye. “Stay with me today.”
“Iamwith you.”
“All day. In this bed.” It seemed impossible to be aroused so soon, but already his cock swelled. “I’ll send Esquival to fetch us food.”
His thoughts vaulted forward to what it would be like to feed her with his own hands, to eat off the flat of her belly, to teach her the pleasures of honey, but those thoughts died as her gaze skittered away from his.
“I have duties, Jehan.”
She rolled to her feet in one swift movement. He watched the heart-shape of her backside as she strode to where their clothes lay in a tangled heap upon the floor.
“Aliénor,” he ventured, sensing a chill that had nothing to do with the weather, “the castle will not fall to pieces if you abdicate your duties for one day.”
“But my absence will be noted.”
She avoided his eye as she slipped into her shift. He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, realized that there could be only one reason why she wouldn’t want her absence to be noted.
He murmured, “You want to keep this a secret.”
Her breasts lifted as she raised her arms to slip into her kirtle. “Is that such a terrible thing?”
“No,couret.But it isn’t possible.”
“Perhaps not.” She swept her hands over the wool of her kirtle to loosen rushes clinging to the fabric. “No doubt my maidservant has already noticed my absence. Surely Esquival heard us from where he’s sleeping just outside that door. Though we may prevent the two of them from talking, it won’t be long before some kitchen maid or man-at-arms notices me coming down from the tower in the early morning.”
She yanked upon her sleeve laces, looking everywhere but at him. Fresh guilt speared through him. She’d gone from heiress of the place to mistress of her one-time enemy, all within a few days.
He shouldn’t be surprised she’d prefer subterfuge, but the thought that she did left him feeling flayed, loathsome.
“I’m not ashamed,” she said suddenly, as if reading his thoughts. “I have chosen this, and I’ve done it willingly.”
How eagerly he latched onto those words as a salve against guilt.
“I will stand up in the mead hall and take your hand in mine,” she continued. “It’s just that there are some who will not…approve.”
“Thibaud?”
Aliénor shrugged and swept up her tippets to tug them up over her kirtle sleeves. Jehan figured Thibaudshoulddisapprove, but the fierce knight struck Jehan as a man of the world. He would also respect his great-niece’s decision.
Then he remembered their discussion last night and the truth hit him hard. “Your brother,” he said. “It’s he who concerns you.”
She crossed the space separating them and fell to her knees before him in a heap of skirts. “Laurent will never understand.”
“You said he’s only a boy.”
“He is, but he’s so pious and overprotective. He’ll spend days petitioning you and praying for my soul.”
If her brother intended to be a monk, the boy needed to understand worldly things eventually. Yet how could Jehan blame a brother for worrying about his sister, the woman whose gaze now pled for a solution to an impossible problem?
And how long, indeed, could they keep their coupling a secret within a castle full of kitchen gossips and idle, wounded knights?
“It wouldn’t be forever,” she said, grasping his hand where it lay on his knee. “If we could just hold off the whispers until we send him off to the monastery in Toulouse, then the news will go over easier. Then he won’t be here every day, watching us. Brooding.”
“I could send a message to the abbot.” The prince’s army roamed the countryside and French knights gathered to counter-attack, making it a dangerous time for anyone to be on the roads, but a single messenger might avoid trouble.
“If you sent a message today,” she said, “then it’s possible he’d be on his way in a week or two.”
