Margaret watched him holding his laughing,
weeping, overjoyed sister, and she felt a pain in her heart for all
that Arden had missed by his prolonged absence from home and
family.
Then Arden took Catherine by the shoulders,
set her slightly apart from him, and regarded her out of eyes in
which no trace of emotion remained. And the joy slowly ebbed from
Catherine's face as she looked back at him, for Arden was all
darkness. The tunic he wore was made of unornamented gray wool as
deep as charcoal, his straight, short hair was black, his face was
darkly tanned. Seen against the rest of his somber, powerful
figure, his blue eyes were startling in their icy paleness.
“Now, Catherine,” Arden said in a low, coolly
frightening voice, “tell me why you are at Bowen. I also want to
know what you meant when you spoke about Margaret's father forcing
her to return home.”
“It’s all rather complicated,” Catherine
said. Then she added brightly, “but I am sure you will understand
and agree once we have explained, and you will want to help
Margaret, just as I did.”
“I can see you haven't changed in all the
years I've been gone,” Arden said, frowning. “What wild scheme have
you entangled yourself in, dear sister?” He drew the last two words
out, making them sound almost like a curse.
“Do not blame Catherine,” Margaret said,
unable to bear the wounded look on her friend's face. “Except for a
few last-minute details the entire plan was mine, not hers, and
Catherine agreed to help me only after I beseeched her in the name
of our long friendship.”
“No, Margaret, I won't allow you to take all
the blame.” Catherine left Arden's side and crossed the solar to
where Margaret stood, to put an arm about her waist. “Aldis and I
saw and heard evidence enough of what your father planned to do to
you and we agreed that we could not allow it. If there is blame to
be placed, we three will share it equally. While Aldis and I live,
you will not stand alone.”
“Blame for what?” Arden demanded, his frown
growing more pronounced and his eyes colder with every moment that
passed.
“I wish to enter a convent,” Margaret stated,
very firmly. “I will become a nun.”
“Will you?” Arden murmured. Seeing the way
she was dressed, he could well believe it. Margaret's loose, dark
blue woolen gown covered her from throat to wrists to ankles, and
the edges of her white linen underdress that showed at neckline and
wrists confirmed the impression of an angular, rigid female who was
untouched by worldly passions. Margaret's hair was completely
hidden under a tight, white wimple that only added to her apparent
severe modesty. Were it not for the faint whiff of perfume that
drifted across the room to tickle his nose when she moved to lay an
arm around Catherine's shoulders, Arden might have convinced
himself that Margaret was not the same woman he had found in his
bed.
The woman in his bed had been all soft,
delicate curves and smooth, supple skin. Her hair had been a
glorious erotic enticement sliding through his hands and across his
body. Her complex, flowery perfume had roused him to a desire that
still craved fulfillment in spite of his efforts to tamp it down
and forget about it. Thinking about the Lady Margaret who had
graced his bed, Arden became painfully aware that he had not
succeeded in eliminating that desire, and he was filled with shame
for what it meant.
The Lady Margaret who stood before the solar
window with the wintery morning light shining harshly upon her face
was too tall to be attractive. She was almost as tall as Arden. And
she was much too thin for beauty, with little indication of breasts
or other feminine curves showing beneath the heavy fabric of her
gown.
Margaret's face was pale and her lips were
pinched. It was the face of a cold-hearted, man-hating spinster and
Arden could not imagine what had happened to induce such a creature
to flee from her father. Or, for that matter, why Catherine should
care enough about Margaret to help her in her flight.
All Arden wanted from his time at Bowen Manor
was peace and quiet and a chance to think without having to
consider the needs of other people. It was why he had left Tristan
and Isabel so precipitously. Now that he was at Bowen, he did not
want to visit with his sister, to be forced to respond to her
inevitable questions about his years away from England, or to have
to listen to her descriptions of her own life. Even less did he
want to see Aldis or to have to answer her queries.
And, most assuredly, Arden did not want to
have to deal with Lady Margaret and her family problems. It seemed
to him that his best defense against those problems would be an
attack, not on Margaret herself, but on Catherine. The tactic would
divert both women.
“Where is your husband?” Arden demanded of
his sister. “Has he agreed to this mad scheme of aiding a fugitive
from her parent's rightful wrath?”
“I am not wed,” Catherine replied, staring at
him with wide eyes, as if she could not believe the way he was
speaking to her. “I have been waiting – I mean, I still live at
Wortham, with Father.”
“Tell me, Catherine,” Arden said, glaring at
his sister, “has our father countenanced your presence at Bowen
with this – with this lady?” he ended, his gaze caught again by
Margaret's dignified posture and by her sober clothes. The contrast
between her present appearance and her reaction to his caresses on
the previous night left him bewildered.
“Arden, please listen to us before you begin
to scold,” Catherine begged. “Margaret and Aldis and I have good
reasons for what we have done.”
“What, exactly, did you do?” Arden asked.
Because Catherine succumbed to another bout
of coughing Margaret did most of the talking. She insisted on
taking the major share of the blame, though before the story was
done it was obvious to Arden that Catherine had acted as an eager
participant once her initial scruples were vanquished and her mind
was made up. So, apparently, had Aldis.
Left to herself, Margaret no doubt would have
gone directly to St. Helfritha's convent, from where she would most
likely have been dragged home by her father and her brother and
forcibly wed to Lord Adhemar, just as Catherine had predicted.
Thus, it was largely his sister's doing that the women were
ensconced at Bowen, to chatter and irritate Arden and get in his
way when he wanted only to be left alone.
He found Catherine's unmarried state a
surprise and could not understand why his father had been so remiss
in finding a husband for her. On the other hand, Arden was more
than a bit shocked to learn that Margaret had been married for ten
years. She did not have the demeanor of a woman who had ever found
pleasure in a man's arms. Arden was experienced enough to discern
that there remained something virginal about Margaret, an essential
part of her still untouched by her late husband.
“What of the obedience due to your father?”
Arden demanded of Margaret.
“I no longer feel any sense of duty to him,”
she retorted in a bitter tone. “He has broken his sworn oath to me.
Thus, I cannot trust any new promises he makes. I am determined to
take my future into my own hands.”
“Indeed?” Startled by her proud attitude,
Arden regarded her more closely. Margaret gazed back at him without
flinching.
Arden did not know any of the noblemen in the
tale just told to him, but from his sister's vivid descriptions of
them he could easily guess what Margaret's male relatives were
like. With little effort he could guess what Margaret's married
life had been like, too. No wonder she wanted to become a nun.
And yet, when he had first discovered her
asleep in his bed, she had been so warm and sweet, so responsive in
his arms. It was the strange contrast between this day's nun-like
virtue and the previous night's eager warmth that intrigued Arden,
and that roused in him tensions and emotions he did not want to
have. Those tensions resulted in a rising irritation.
“You have no right to involve my family in
your schemes,” he said to Margaret, making no attempt to hide his
annoyance. “When your father learns where you are hiding, he and
Lord Adhemar will join forces to make war on my father. The deaths
that ensue will be on your conscience.”
She did not cringe or go pale at his words.
She only raised her chin a notch and then grew a bit more stiff and
still. Arden was forced to admire her courage, however much he
disapproved of her actions. When she spoke again he also took note
of her intelligence, for it was obvious she had thought through the
matter of his family being drawn into her affairs.
“Only a few souls here at Bowen know who I
am,” Margaret said. “If they do not inform my father, then he will
never know where I took temporary refuge. I do not ask for your
help, Arden, only that you will not hinder what I wish to do. I
promise, as soon as the weather clears so it is possible to travel,
I will leave Bowen. I will go from here alone and I will never
reveal that I have been here. Your family's honor will be
safe.”
“You will leave today,” Arden said,
inexplicably infuriated by her calmness. The woman was rousing too
many unwelcome sensations. He wanted her gone, so he could stop
thinking about her, so he could sink back into the familiar morass
of guilt and apathy that had consumed him for so long. He would not
allow himself to admit that if what Margaret said about her father
breaking his oath to her was true, then she had just cause to defy
the man, though she stood in sore need of a champion to see her
safely installed in whatever convent she chose to enter.
Arden considered himself to be outside the
law, so he had no right to judge Margaret's actions. Nor was he the
man to be her champion. He only wanted her gone from his house.
“Margaret will not leave Bowen!” Catherine
cried. “Arden, what has happened to change you so? I do not know
you anymore.”
“You have not known me for more than ten
years,” Arden said. Tight-lipped, coldly controlled, he glared
first at his sister and then at Margaret. “You will leave today,
Lady Margaret,” he repeated, “or I will go.”
“Are you mad?” Catherine shouted at him.
“Only glance out the window and you will see that no one is going
anywhere.”
Thinking to tell her he would have no
difficulty in doing what he pleased, Arden stepped to the nearest
window. Outside, the snow was piled high – up to a tall man's
waist, Arden judged – and more was rapidly descending from clouds
that seemed to hold an unending supply. Beyond the palisade the
branches of fir trees were bent to the ground beneath the weight of
the snow they bore. The broken branches of other, leafless trees
hung aloft among the bare, swaying treetops or lay fallen on the
snow beneath the trees, there to be quickly covered with more
white.
In such a storm travel was plainly
impossible. No man could walk through snow so deep; no horse was
strong enough to break a path through it for more than a few steps.
Certainly, no woman ought to attempt to brave such weather. Arden
drew back from the window to stare at the two women in silent
frustration.
He was snowbound, perhaps for days or weeks,
trapped in his own house with his conversation-loving sister, the
cousin he wanted to avoid completely, and a would-be nun whose
enchanting perfume and well-hidden body were leading him along
paths he did not want to tread.
Arden had come to Bowen seeking a place where
he could nurse his guilt and his sorrow. He was beginning to think
he had found his Purgatory instead. Or, perhaps, his own personal
Hell.
* * * * *
Margaret tried not to look at Arden, but she
discovered to her dismay that she could not help herself. His
dark-clothed form and compelling eyes drew her attention as if by
magic. Each time she looked at him, she recalled the touch of his
naked body next to hers, the sensation of his hands moving gently
across her soft flesh. She remembered the sight of him by
candlelight, clad only in his linen shirt. She felt weak in the
knees, her breasts began to ache, and the warmth she had never
experienced before Arden touched her on the previous night began to
unfold deep inside her once again.
She warned herself not to look directly at
him, for if his cold, calculating eyes met hers, he would surely
detect her every emotion. She kept her chin up high and shifted her
gaze a little, so it was focused on the wall behind him. There she
stood, unmoving, awaiting his judgment, uncertain whether he would
turn her out into the snow, or not.
“You may stay until the weather clears,” he
said after a long silence.
“Thank you, my lord,” Margaret murmured,
still not meeting his eyes.
“I knew you would do what is right,”
Catherine said to her brother. “Perhaps you are not so greatly
changed, after all.”
Arden did not respond. Turning aside from the
women, he noticed the tray of food intended for Catherine and went
to it. He poured a large cup of wine, swallowed it in two gulps,
and poured himself another.
“My lord,” Margaret said with a sigh, “I do
not wish to raise a second unpleasant subject when we have just
resolved the first one, but there is a matter which was brought to
my attention earlier this morning by your squire, Michael. It is a
subject that must be dealt with at once.”
“What subject is that, Lady Margaret?” Arden
did not look at her. Bending over the tray, he cut himself a wedge
of cheese and began to eat it.
“It is about the other guests,” Margaret
said, trying to put deep meaning into her voice. When Arden said
nothing, she added, to prod him into speaking, “The guests who are
shortly to arrive.”
“What other guests?” Catherine joined Arden
beside the tray of food. She broke a piece of bread from the loaf.
Holding the bread in one hand, she looked from Margaret to Arden as
if assessing the tension between them. “Well, it's plain to see, I
should have been out of bed long ago. What have I missed, Arden?
Who is coming to Bowen next? Is it anyone I know?”