Raine gave no one time to congratulate her. “Come, Lady Alyx,” he said, fingers digging into her upper arm. “We have a great deal to discuss.”
“Leave her alone, Raine,” Gavin said. “Can’t you see she’s tired? And besides, this is your wedding day. Rail at her some other time.”
Raine didn’t bother to even look at his brother as he ushered Alyx from the chapel back through the courtyard and into her room. The moment the door was closed, Raine leaned against it.
“How could you, Alyx?” he whispered. “How could you say you cared for me then put me through the last few months of hell?”
It was very frustrating not to be able to talk. She looked about for a pen and paper but remembered Raine couldn’t read.
“Do you know what it’s been like the last few months?” He tossed his helmet on the bed. “For years I’ve searched for a woman I could love. A woman with courage and honor. A woman who wasn’t afraid of me or after money or land. A woman who made me think.”
He began unbuckling the leather straps that held his armor in place, tossing piece after piece in a heap on the bed. “First you drive me nearly insane in those tight hose, flipping about in front of me, looking up at me with big eyes so full of hunger you frightened me.”
With one movement, he pushed all the armor to the side, sat down on the edge of the bed and began unfastening his leg coverings. Alyx knelt before him and helped. Raine leaned back on his elbows, never stopping his tirade.
“When I found you were a female I had a fever and wasn’t sure I wasn’t dreaming, yet that night I found more joy than I ever had. There was no coyness about you, no holding back, just exuberance, pleasure given, pleasure received. Later I was furious at you for having played such an ugly trick on me, but I forgave you.”
He said the last as if he were the most magnanimous person alive, ignoring Alyx’s look of disgust as he raised his leg for her to unbuckle the second leg sheath.
A knock on the door made him pause. Several servants, dressed more costly than Alyx had ever been, entered the room bearing a large oak tub and several buckets of steamy hot water.
“Put it there,” Raine said distractedly.
Standing, Alyx watched the procession with disbelief. A tub full of hot water, brought by servants and set before them as if they were royalty. Never in her life had she had a full, hot bath. In Moreton she’d bathed from a basin and in the forest there’d been the icy stream.
“What is it, Alyx?” Raine asked when they were alone again. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
Silently, she pointed at the steaming tub.
“You want to bathe first? Go ahead.”
Cautiously, she knelt by the tub, put her hands into the water and smiled up at Raine as he began to remove the leather padding he’d worn under his armor.
“Don’t try to distract me,” he said a little too sweetly. “I am still considering blistering your behind. Do you know how I felt after I found you with Jocelin?”
She looked away from him, remembering the hurt in his eyes that night.
“It took me years to find you, then to have you tell me your... your music meant more than I did. Close your mouth! You did in effect say that. You know, Alyx, I rather like your not being able to talk. My brother wouldn’t believe that a little thing like you could outshout fifty grown men. I offered for him to put some money on his big mouth, but he declined.
“Alyx,” he warned, “don’t look so offended. You have no right to be offended. No! I am the one who’s gone through hell these last months. I never knew where you were, how many men you were sleeping with.”
At that, she sent him a look of blackness.
“You were the one who made me believe you lacked virtue—that is the kindest way I can say it. At camp I drove the people nearly insane. Some of them rebelled and refused to go near the training field.”
He frowned for a moment at the way she was pointing at him. “I spent a great deal of time there, if that’s what you mean. I was trying to wear myself out so I wouldn’t remember you and Joss.”
Alyx narrowed her eyes at him, used her hands to form a large curving mound over her chest.
“Oh, Blanche,” he said, understanding so easily that Alyx hissed at him. “It would serve you right if I had invited her into my bed, but after you I wanted no other woman. Damn you, Alyx! Stop looking so pleased with yourself. I was miserable while you were gone.”
She pointed at herself and all her love showed in her eyes.
He looked away and his voice was hoarse when he spoke again. “I nearly killed Joss when he came to me. I refused to see him and the guards wouldn’t let him pass, but he knows his way about the forest too well. One night I’d had a little too much to drink and when I woke in the morning Joss was sitting on a stool by my bed. It took a while before I would listen to him.”
Alyx heard the understatement in his words and rolled her eyes so exaggeratedly that Raine pointedly ignored her.
“I can tell you that it didn’t help my sore head any to hear of Pagnell’s capture of you, nor that the loathsome man planned to set a trap for me.”
