Fairest Of Them All (10 page)

His hesitance shamed him. If he could not feign affection for this woman, he could at least summon a measure of compassion. Some malicious soul had obviously considered it a fine jest to spread rumors of her beauty throughout the land. And did whoever garbed her for the wedding not realize the graceful lines of her cotte only made a mockery of her awkwardness? The garment hung limp over her shapeless chest, clinging instead to the chunky width of her hips. Its emerald hue tinted her blotched complexion a sickly green.

At his prolonged silence, she lifted her head, transfixing him with her gaze. She might have the lashless look of a rabbit, but there was no denying the girl had lovely eyes.

Prodded by a startling surge of protectiveness, he gently gathered her hands in his, gazed deep into those eyes and said, “I worship thee with my body.”

The knight’s husky promise coupled with his possessive touch sent a jolt of silken lightning through Holly. A rush of dismay followed. She’d learned from hazardous experience on the very patch of grass beneath their feet how hard and unrelenting the muscled length of his body could be. Given Elspeth’s dire description of the marriage act, she sincerely doubted she would survive such a homage.

As if to test Gavenmore’s resolve, Nathanael said, “You may honor your bride with a kiss.” The priest’s lips twitched with mischief. Why the rascal was enjoying himself! Holly thought, shooting him a glare.

The knight leaned down to shrink the considerable distance between their heights, closing his eyes when his lips were still a full two feet from her face.

An inopportune frisson of anticipation danced down Holly’s spine. / might yet bestow my kisses on a stranger, but you can be assured, sir, that I will never again bestow them on you. Mocked by the memory of her own words, she puckered her lips, terrified they would betray her by melting beneath his persuasion.

Her caution proved unnecessary. His lips brushed her brow in the most chaste of pecks. Attributing the stinging of her cheeks to the nettles with which Na-thanael had brushed them, she bobbed a bumbling curtsy. “You do me honor, sir.”

His expression was grave, but not unkind. “I am your husband now. You may call me Austyn and I shall call you Ivy.”

“You may if you like,” she said, but he was already turning away to discuss the dispensation of her dowry with her papa. Bewildered by the unfamiliar sensation of being snubbed, she added faintly, “but if s not my name.”

Holly was dismayed to learn that her husband wanted to depart Tewksbury within the hour. She had hoped to spend her wedding night beneath the canopy of her papa’s protection. He might not heed her cries for mercy, she thought spitefully, but he would at least have to suffer hearing them.

Austyn was dismayed to learn that his wife expected both her nurse and her priest to accompany them. He could stomach the nurse, although he thought his bride a bit old for such indulgences, but the priest was another matter. Even mounted on a humble donkey for the journey, a distinct sneer curled the man’s upper lip. There hadn’t been a priest at Gav-enmore for over two decades, a lack that suited Austyn well. What use had the damned for vain promises of God’s mercy?

As Carey led their animals into the outer bailey beneath the earl’s watchful eye, Austyn’s bride announced, “I shall require a litter.”

Austyn exchanged a droll look with his man-at-arms. Her papa had doubtlessly carted her about the countryside in a curtained litter to avert ridicule, but no man would dare mock her now that she was his wife. Not without risking both his teeth and his life.

“I fear that will be impossible,” he patiently explained. “There is no one to carry a litter. Only my man and I.” The image of such a frivolous contraption jolting over the craggy hills and dense forests of his homeland almost made him smile.

Holly rolled her eyes skyward, wondering how long her husband was going to persist in his stubborn pretense that the nearby woods weren’t teeming with hordes of Welshmen just itching to rush out and cut their throats at the first sign of treachery.

“How would you have me travel then?” she asked, enunciating each word precisely, as if addressing a child.

“On horseback, of course,” he replied, echoing her condescending tone.

Holly cast the horses a dubious look. Grazing beside the monstrous steeds that belonged to Sir Austyn and his man were four pack animals, their panniers swollen with her father’s gold. She could hardly explain that her papa had only allowed her to travel chaperoned by armed escort in the stifling confines of a litter to ward off the lustful gazes of potential abductors. She had hoped for the privacy of such a conveyance where she might unbind her throbbing breasts for a few precious hours.

She shot her papa a pleading glance. He turned his bulbous nose skyward, informing her plainly that there would be no help from that quarter.

She forced a disdainful sniff. “I do not ride.”

Gavenmore folded his arms over his chest. “Then you may ride with me.”

Holly started for the nearest pack horse. “I shall learn.”

Even more alarming than the prospect of mounting a horse for the first time was the prospect of spending hours cuddled against her husband’s imposing chest. Of feeling his wintergreen-scented breath tease her naked nape or worse yet, being forced to embrace him from behind while the sensitive peaks of her poor, tortured breasts strained against their bindings. Such proximity would make it nigh impossible to sustain her disguise. Or her virtue.

She gingerly approached the smallest of the mounts. Compared with Gavenmore’s fire-belching dragon of a destrier, the sorrel looked tiny, but as Holly drew nearer, its barreled chest seemed to swell to intimidating proportions.

She stretched out a hand toward the reins, wishing she had an apple or a carrot instead of only the succulent temptation of her fingers. “Here, horsie,” she crooned. “Nice horsie.”

The snort that came from behind her was definitely not equine in nature.

As she seized the reins, the horse tossed its snowy mane with a whicker of warning and took several prancing steps away from her. Hindered by her cumbersome skirts, Holly stumbled after it, refusing to surrender her hard-won grip.

An unladylike grunt escaped her as she grabbed the leather pommel and sought to heave herself into the saddle. The horse reared, spilling her into the dirt and giving her reason to be thankful for her cushioned backside. Ignoring the suspicious noises from behind her, she climbed to her feet, brushing off her rump.

She approached the horse again, squaring her jaw in determination. There hadn’t been a male born she couldn’t charm or outwit and that included this cantankerous gelding. Anticipating his prancing retreat, she seized the pommel and threw herself headlong over his back.

The horse moved nary an inch. Holly landed draped over the saddle on her stomach, giving her a startling view of the horse’s underbelly. No wonder both charm and wit had failed her. The horse wasn’t a gelding, but a mare—a conniving female like herself. She caught the chaplet of bluebells before it could be . trampled beneath the beast’s fickle hooves.

She had anticipated Nathanael’s dry applause. What she had not anticipated were the strong hands that closed around her waist, lifting her until she perched sideways on the saddle, her skirts flowing prettily over the mare’s flanks. As those hands lingered against the relative slenderness of her waist, she forgot to breathe.

Gavenmore frowned up at her, his eyes narrowed to frosty slits. “You’re lighter than you look, my lady. No heavier than a thistle.”

Scrambling away from his touch with such haste she almost tumbled off the other side of the horse, Holly clung to the pommel and her wits with equal desperation. “ Tis only your superior strength that makes it seem so, sir.”

Gavenmore looked less than convinced by her flattery, but it seemed to appease him for the moment.

Holly perched rigidly on the saddle while her belongings were divided among the remaining horses. She had packed little, bringing only the gowns Elspeth had spent the afternoon frantically altering. After all, if her aim was to repulse her husband, what use had she for golden fillets to adorn the cream of her brow? Embroidered girdles to emphasize the slimness of her waist? Ivory combs to tame the raven silk of her hair? Amethyst brooches to complement the color of her eyes? She sighed wistfully.

Her one concession to vanity was the tiny bottle of myrrh she’d tucked into her stocking, her one concession to sentimentality the gilded hand mirror her mother had given her on her fifth birthday.

The stab of regret she felt for abandoning her treasures was blunted by a keener grief as her father approached to bid her farewell.

He grasped her ankle. She leaned down, bracing herself for a hissed rebuke, a final denouncement of the folly that had brought them to this grim pass.

He pressed his mouth to her ear, his majestic voice reduced to a conspiratory rumble. “Don’t rely solely on your disguise to repel him, girl. Just be yourself.”

With that enigmatic advice, he slapped her mount on the rump, sending it into a smart trot. Holly had to snatch at both pommel and reins to keep her seat, but she could not resist stealing a last longing glance over her shoulder at her papa. As he lifted his squat arm in a salute, she would have given even her precious bottle of myrrh to know if it was his old familiar twinkle, the glimmer of tears, or perhaps a bit of both reflected in his misty eyes.

Holly scowled at her husband’s back, envying the ease with which he sat his massive mount. Instead of flopping aimlessly in the saddle with each spine-jarring jolt of the horse’s hooves, he rode with fluid grace, at one with the beast’s loping stride like some legendary centaur of old. She frowned, trying to remember from Nathanael’s teachings if centaurs were given to ravishing nymphs. Or was it satyrs?

Stealing a look around to make sure no one was watching, she slipped a leg over the sorrel’s back to ride astride. No one commented upon her change of position.

Holly was so accustomed to being ogled that having everyone avoid her eyes seemed a curious sort of freedom. Elspeth stared straight ahead, convinced the Welshman would behead them all and leave their bodies rotting in the forest if he discovered their trickery. Gavenmore and his man presumably could not bear the sight of her.

Only Nathanael spared her a furtive glance, tapping the underside of his chin to remind her to tilt her face toward the remaining rays of the afternoon sun. He had assured her that all men found skin tinted by sunlight coarse and repugnant. Holly obediently tipped her head back. She was willing to do almost anything to avoid the future necessity of torturing her tender skin with nettles. She soaked up the unfamiliar sensation of warmth on her face with a surprising thirst.

As the sun sank and the moon rose, lacing the meadows with a filigree of dew, Holly’s exhaustion grew. The tingling of her rump had long ago subsided to numbness. Her bound breasts ached with every plodding step of her mount. Yet Gavenmore showed no sign of halting their party for the night. When her eyelids grew too heavy to support, she slumped over the pommel, unable to summon even a ghost of pride to care if she tumbled off on her cropped little head.

Gavenmore and the man she had heard him address as Carey had slowed until her horse’s nose was practically nudging their mounts’ rumps. She heard Carey’s mutter through a fog of stupor.

“God’s blood, Austyn, are we going to ride all night?”

Her husband’s answer was lower pitched, mercifully inaudible.

“. . . best to throw up her skirts and have done with it.” Holly knew his man’s grim reply should have caused her alarm, but was too weary to remember why. “. . . all women . . . the same in the dark . . .”

“That’s where you’re wrong, lad. I know at least one woman I would never mistake for another. Not in a thousand years. Not even if I were blind.”

Holly sighed, the unrequited hunger in her husband’s voice stirring her own melancholy. Her papa had raised her to be little more than an exquisite trophy, not the sort of woman who could inspire ardor in a man like Gavenmore. As she nodded her way back into fitful sleep, she felt a reluctant pang of envy for the woman bold enough to lay claim to her husband’s volatile heart.

A rueful smile touched Austyn’s lips as he gazed up at his sleeping bride in the moonlight. Although her mount had been rooting beneath the bracken for nearly a half hour, she still slumped over the pommel, the shriveled chaplet of bluebells drooping over the tip of her nose.

A combination of admiration and guilt assailed him. She had warned him that she did not ride, yet sheer determination had kept her seated during the punishing trek he’d forced upon them all. Twas not even her frailty that had prompted him to call a halt, but the fear her aged maidservant might teeter off her mount and break a bone.

He reached up to pry her stiff fingers from the reins. Perhaps it wasn’t determination that had sealed her grip, he thought ruefully, but fear. Perhaps she dreaded sharing his tent as much as he dreaded sharing hers. Ah, well, there was little help for that now. While Austyn had tended the other horses, Carey had pitched the tent in the heart of the pine copse, then retreated a discreet distance to make camp with her servants.

As Austyn drew her limp body from the saddle, he noted with amusement that somewhere along the grueling journey she had chosen to straddle the horse, proving herself not only determined, but sensible. Perhaps his homely little bride had more to commend her than he realized. God knew his superstitious folk could use a hearty dose of common sense.

He folded her into the cup of his outstretched arms, marveling once again at her scant weight The spongy breadth of her hips and bottom did not encumber him as it should have. As he started for the tent, she nuzzled her cheek into the hollow beneath his chin. Austyn scowled to find himself seized once again by that inexplicable urge to protect, to shelter, and defend what was his own.

His grip tightened from protective to possessive as the cowled priest emerged from the shaggy boughs and planted himself in their path.