Page 97 of Rebellion's Fire

“Gone?” she repeated, startled.

He looked away. “You left my mother’s hall. I know you didn’t want this. Without me here, you could have relied on the king to give you Tirebeck.”

Her throat closed up. “That’s why you left some of your men here.”

“No, I left them to make sure you didn’t send any messages to the king. And to make sure the Normans didn’t threaten you now that you’re my wife.”

“But you still weren’t sure I’d be here when you returned.” She wanted to touch his cheek, to bring back his attention and keep it, but she didn’t quite dare. In any case, it seemed that she’d never lost it.

His gaze came back to her. “I think…I wanted you to have the choice. Before I brought you back.”

Deep inside, something was hurting. She said, “When we’re apart, I suppose whatever you saw in me, in us, doesn’t seem so rare.”

A frown flickered across his brow. In one movement, shocking in its swiftness, he swept the mask from her face, as if its concealment irked him. She forced herself not to react, not to snatch it back. It was much too late for that.

“More rare,” he said, staring at her, not at her disfigurement, but at her whole face, her eyes, her lips, where he lingered. “I’m travel-stained and weary. I haven’t washed in three days. I don’t suppose you’d accept me into your bed as I am?”

Wordless, she pulled the covers back. A smile chased across his lips, lightening his heavy, dark eyes. He pulled his tunic and shirt up over his head in one movement and dropped them on the floor.

And now, it seemed she could touch him, the dark bruise on his shoulder, his unshaven, hollowed cheek. His eyes widened as if her gesture startled him. It had been thoughtless, pure instinct, but when she tried to drop her hand, not wishing to intrude if all he wished was to sleep, he turned, caught it in his, and turned his mouth into her palm.

His weight bore her back into the pillows as he lay over her and kissed her mouth as she’d longed for, deep and possessive. Although he took her without even removing all his clothes, it was unhurried, tender, inexorable, a giving and receiving of joy so intense, it made her weep. But finally, it was dark and the lamp had burned out, so she could wipe the tears in secret on the pillow, on her own hair, holding his big, hard body half-slumped across hers, still at last in exhausted sleep.

I love you. God help me, I love you.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Emerging from thedairy late the following morning, Christian lifted her face to the sun’s warmth. A breeze whipped at her veil, and darker clouds in the distance over the sea threatened the end of the fine weather. Christian didn’t mind. The fragile happiness that had been creeping over her since her unsought wedding was settling around her like a warm, comfortable cloak.

Until she lowered her gaze again and saw Adam’s tall back, just at the corner of the main hall. A woman’s arm snaked around his neck, her body seemed to be draped half across his in a teasing, sensual pose Christian had pretended not to see before when the back had been William’s. But the woman was undoubtedly the same.

Stricken, she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, for all the old feelings tumbling over her like a deluge of cold water.Not this. Not him, too. Is this all there ever is?

She didn’t even want to run and hide. She just wondered how she could kill her bright new love for Adam, because even this betrayal didn’t seem to be doing the job, judging by the terrible, galloping pain in her heart.

Adam reached up, closing his hand over Alys’s on his neck, and yanked it down. He brushed her aside like an importunate swarm of midges and walked on toward the hall. Alys stared after him, her mouth slightly open, as if stunned by her first ever rejection.

Now, it seemed, Christian’s knees were inclined not to hold her up. She allowed herself one moment, leaning against the dairy door, to deal with her easing pain and her relief, and then she straightened and walked on toward Alys’s still figure.

As she drew abreast of the other woman, Alys finally turned her head and saw her. “I’ve thought about it, lady,” Alys said in a small, hard voice. “I need to leave this place.”

Because she had no chance of being lady here, of supplanting Christian in even the smallest, least important things. Alys must find her own way, as Christian had.

“Very well.” Perhaps it was the relief of a sudden, awful suspicion disproved, but Christian wanted to skip across the yard to the hall. Restraining herself, she met Adam in the doorway coming out with her cloak over one arm.

A faint smile lit his face when he saw her. “Walk with me,” he suggested, handing her the cloak.

This kind of companionship in aimless wandering was new to her, and she found it rather wonderful. She’d accompanied her half-sisters on expeditions, but she’d had the task of looking after them, and, occasionally, her older stepsisters, who’d regarded her as more of a maid. Eua’s companionship in visiting some of her people was the closest she’d known to this—and that wasn’t very close at all.

Adam seemed to have no purpose except, intoxicatingly, to be with her. He moved easily through the hills and woods, relaxed and apparently at peace, sometimes in silence, sometimes asking her questions about her life before she came home to Scotland.

“My mother told me stories about home,” she said. “Traditions and mythical tales and actual history. I had difficulty telling which was which.”

“So do the rest of us,” Adam said wryly.

“She never said so, but I know she missed Tirebeck. Despite all that must have happened to her, she used to talk of us coming home as if we really would one day. She told me I was the heir to Tirebeck as my father’s only child, but when she died, I had no one else to feed me the tales. I didn’t forget them, though, just the language.”

“Is that why you came home?” he asked. “Because of your mother? Or was it William’s idea?”

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