But there was more than lust here. Ivo felt a poignancy that was in one part the suppressed emotions she had stirred up with her song, and in the other part a memory of his past. It was as if this angel really would in some way heal him, repair the broken man.
Make him whole again.
He clenched the fist he had kept hidden in the wolf-pelt cloak at his side, his maimed flesh warm inside the leather-and-steel glove he always wore in the company of others. He had learned to use his damaged hand as well as any man whose hand was whole—he had had no choice. Still he was proud of the accomplishment. Miles had thought to cripple him and render him useless, but he had failed.
“You are a stranger here.”
The woman interrupted his introspection. Her voice was as low and husky as it had been when she sang, and again he felt the shiver of its touch on his skin. Like the brush of velvet, soft and sensual.
“I am come from the south.”
No need to tell her more, thought Ivo. Indeed, he was wary to open his mouth in case all that he was, and hoped and dreamed, gushed out. His mind felt wide open and echoey, his body hummed with desire. And atop that he had the sensation of familiarity—as if he had known her before.
Ivo held out his hand to her, the good one—no need to frighten her with his deformity just yet. The touch of her soft skin made him even more crazy to have her—images of her naked body in his arms sliced his brain like a red-hot blade—and his voice came out sharper than he had intended.
“To answer your question, demoiselle, I would very much like a private audience. Do you have a room?”
He could have bitten off his tongue. Do you have a room? What sort of enticing love talk was that for a man who was once a knight? He needed his friend Gunnar Olafson here, with his smooth ways and magic smile. Why could Ivo not be more like Gunnar, wooing her delicately into his arms, instead of his usual blunt and impatient self?
She was gazing up at him—she barely came to his shoulder. She smiled a little smile, mayhap reading the anguish in his eyes, but she was not angry and not insulted. If anything, she looked pleased. Before Ivo could consider what might be the reasons for this, she spoke again.
“Aye, I have a room.”
She was not even pretending to misunderstand him. Then, just as he was again doubting the whole business, she gave a soft, reckless laugh, and held out her hand. “Come and we will sing together, my lord.”
He wanted to tell her he was not anyone’s lord, that he did not know her at all, that this was not wise. But when had Ivo ever cared about wise? Tonight his body had a will of its own. He lifted his hand and she caught his fingers tightly in her own cold ones, then she led him through an arras-covered doorway. Into the shadows.
It was chill here, and the sounds from the hall were abruptly muted. Ivo knew from long experience that he should be wary, and yet still he went with her, as though entranced. Deep inside him, there lay mistrust—the years of living in his brother’s dark shadow had made him cautious— but he did not mistrust her enough to deny himself the pleasure of her. She had offered, and Ivo meant to take.
‘Twas as simple and as brutal as that.
Briar felt dizzy, as if this were not real at all. How could it have been so simple? So easy? Not even Briar at her most optimistic had believed her enemy would fall so willingly into the net she cast. But he had, and now she held him in the palm of her hand. Literally. Briar’s fingers tightened their grasp about that warm, broad hand, feeling the ridges of calluses and scars that told of many years of battle.
His hand.
The great Lord Radulf, the King’s Sword.
Before he died, Briar’s father had cursed Radulf, blaming him for the death of Anna, Briar’s stepmother, whose murder was still unsolved. Anna’s murder had precipitated the destruction of the Kenton family. Thus, in Briar’s mind, Radulf had begun this terrible calamity. Aye, he had destroyed her family, taken from her her home and wealth, her life and all she had taken for granted. Until it was no more.
“Radulf did this,” she had said dully, the day they were cast out from Castle Kenton because their father was branded a traitor. They had trudged into the tiny village, but no one there had dared to help them or shelter them—they were all too afraid of the consequences. So they had walked on, with nowhere to go.
“Radulf did this!” She had screamed it out the second time, her voice echoing across the moors. Radulf. Her feverish mind had found a focus, a thing to hate and blame for all that had befallen them. A way to keep her alive.
Her elder sister, Jocelyn, had looked at her while Odo ambled along to the side like a great, mindless bear. Jocelyn’s blue eyes were reddened and swollen, her face puffy and blotched from crying. “ ‘Tis over and done. We must make our way as best we can, Briar, and not look backward.”
“ ‘Tis not over and done! Father swore to take vengeance, and now I swear to fulfill his wish.”
Jocelyn had gazed back at her, her thin face intent. “Put this behind you, Briar. It is wrong to seek to heal evil with more evil. I beg you, put this behind you.”
Briar had shaken her head angrily. How could she put such things behind her, forget what had happened to their father and to them? Go on as if nothing had happened? She was not like Jocelyn—her anger could not be dampened with a trickle of water.
Briar had meant what she had said that day, but in the meantime they had wandered far, eventually all the way to York, living like peasants. And no one came to their aid. They were Richard Kenton’s daughters, the traitor’s children, and therefore safer forgotten.
But Briar had not forgotten, and the need for vengeance had grown; a blind, desperate need that gave her no rest. Nor would it, until it was satisfied. The answer to her prayers came when she had heard Radulf was traveling into the north to deal with a rebellion on his wife’s lands. By then, Briar had known much of the King’s Sword, and his love for his wife. And she had known exactly how she would repay him for what he had done to her and her family.
“And what will happen then? When you have lain with Radulf, and soured Lily’s love for him? Will that content you, Briar?”
Jocelyn had been less than impressed when Briar had divulged her intended plan to her sister some weeks past. Her blue eyes had been hard and watchful as she demanded answers. Jocelyn had still not given up trying to persuade Briar to put the past behind her, and Jocelyn was no gentle flower, unlike Mary.
