Color flared in her cheeks.“I spoke for you because it was right.Tulley was unjust in withholding the seal and he had to know it.I merely reminded him.”
Quinn could not help but smile at her fearlessness.“You might have waited until I could watch.”
She flushed more deeply and seemed discomfited.“It was an argument that had to be made in your absence, sir.”
Sir.Again, she retreated from using his name.Quinn reached and took her hand in his, feeling that she trembled slightly.
“Is this the moment?”she asked, lifting her chin.
“Which moment would that be?”
“The one in which you declare that you mean to remain at Sayerne, and that I should return to Annossy alone.The one in which you tell me that we shall live apart instead of together, and to advise you whether I deliver of a son or not.”She continued when he did not speak.“The one in which you divide the household as you see just, and request that I send word of the babe’s gender when he or she is born.”
“I thought that you wished to hold the seal of Annossy above all else.”
“As did I.”Melissande took a breath and held his gaze.“Until I came to love my lord husband.Now I desire above all else to be by your side and become your wife in truth.”
Quinn nodded, his chest tight with emotion.He slid his thumb over her hand, awed that this lady should be his bride, his wife and his love.“It was in this chamber that my mother told me the tales shown in the tapestries she had brought as her dowry.They are all gone, of course, as is she, but I remember those tales.”
Melissande remained silent, her gaze intent.
“In every one of them, a noble and gallant knight won the love of a beautiful lady.Quite often, she was clever, too, and the way my mother told the tales, the happy couple well deserved each other.”He watched his thumb move across her hand.“They faced obstacles together, fearsome monsters, and dreadful trials, but their love for each other ensured both their success and their happiness.”
“Yet your father...”
“Yet my father was the man he was,” Quinn agreed with a sigh.“And I knew that she had loved another, but she did as bidden by her father.There was naught to be done about it, for to defy my father and her own would have been a rejection of every code of honor she knew.But she told me those tales, and she bade me find a lady deserving of my love, then do whatever was necessary to win her heart forevermore.”He lifted his gaze to Melissande’s and found himself snared by the vivid green of her eyes.“I believe I loved you from the first, my lady.My heart has been yours from before we exchanged our vows, and it is yours forevermore.”
“You love me?”
“I love you.”
Melissande flung herself toward him in her relief and Quinn smiled as he caught her close.“But you did not trust me,” she accused after he had kissed her.
“You did not trust me,” he countered, moving onto the pallet with her in his lap.“We are alike in so many matters, my Melissande.”
She laughed and curled against him in contentment.“Aye, perhaps even in our desire for the great bed in Annossy’s solar on this night of nights.”
Quinn chuckled.“We shall have one here, as well.”
“Aye.And a tapestry or two.”She lifted her hand and his mother’s ring glinted on her finger.“Oh, Quinn.”She turned her hand to grip his.“I am so honored to wear your mother’s ring.”
“I could give you no other.It was a mark of my pledge to win your love at any cost.”Quinn bent and captured her lips with his, loving how she rose to meet his embrace.His kiss soon turned incendiary and they might have surrendered to temptation, but Quinn had more to say.“Zounds, Melissande, who might have guessed that love could grow so strong so quickly?I cannot imagine my days without you.”
“Aye,” she whispered.“I love you as I never imagined I could love anyone.My only fear is that you will despise me for bringing Arnaud and his hate so close to your door.”
“Hush, my lady.”Quinn laid his fingertip across her lips.“Do not even utter his name.It was you indeed who saved me from him and that is no small thing.I am in your debt and I would take the remainder of our days to show you what that means.”
By the way his lady wife smiled, and by the way she returned his kiss, Quinn knew that she had no complaint with that.
Epilogue
It was a year after their first journey to Sayerne that Melissande retired to the solar at Sayerne.She and Quinn had ridden to that holding to oversee to the ploughing and the planting.After the evening meal and much merriment, Melissande climbed to the solar with her son in her arms.
After the roof had been repaired and the rest of the hall restored, Quinn had ordered that a great bed be built at Sayerne, much like the one at Annossy.Melissande found it nigh filling the solar, just as she had envisioned it would be.It was hung with heavy draperies, as she had wished.The braziers had already been lit in the solar for it was still cool at night and the new tapestry she had requested from the Low Countries was already hung on the wall.Melissande touched it with wonder, thinking of the stories she would tell the infant in her arms.She settled then beside the fire to nurse him while she awaited Quinn, smiling at the sound of his deep voice rising from the hall below.
Could she ever have imagined she would be this content?Could she ever have imagined that it would be her joy to see Annossy and Sayerne united, and herself the beloved wife of Jerome’s son?It defied belief, yet was so, all the same.
She and Quinn had settled into a pattern of living mostly at Annossy, but holding court monthly—on the new moon—at Sayerne.Bayard commanded the garrison at Sayerne and managed the holding for Quinn in his absence, which had ultimately cost Melissande a maid.She had known that Berthe was smitten but Bayard had been determined to offer her a home.He had built his abode at Sayerne with his own hands, with Berthe’s approval.The pair had married after Melissande was delivered of her son in January, and Berthe had moved to Sayerne then.
