Radulf held up his fingers, and by the light of the smoking candles Lily could see the dark smears of blood. “You were virgin,” he stated angrily.
Lily refused to look away. “ ’Tis true,” she managed through the lump in her throat. “I was wed, but he was . . . was unable. I was a wife in name only.”
Radulf continued to stare at her, as if trying to see beyond her words, to see inside her head.
“Why did you not take another?” he demanded.
“Why wait until now, until me?”
Lily did not answer him. After a moment, when she could bear his gaze no longer, she leaned forward to rest her cheek against his chest. His heart beat strongly beneath the wall of flesh and muscle.
“I was waiting for you,” she whispered, and acknowledged as she spoke that the words were truth.
Radulf laughed in disbelief.
Lily, her hand trembling, touched his skin, exploring the rough dark hair on his chest, rubbing her fingers over it. He did not move, and she sensed his aloofness, his resistance. He thought she had lied to him, and now he distrusted her even more.
And yet he did not push her away, or move from the bed. Lily continued to caress him, her fingertips finding his nipple, and remembering what Radulf had done to her, she covered him with her mouth. Radulf took a ragged breath, his hands capturing her head and holding her still. “Lady, tell me again how you came to Grimswade church?”
Lily smiled against his chest. “I was seeking sanctuary,” she whispered, “and I have found it.”
He tilted her face so that she had no choice but to meet his eyes. “I sent my men to the wood you spoke of,” he told her harshly. “They searched and found naught of any battle between your soldiers and their attackers.”
Lily said nothing, gazing back into his eyes. In a nervous gesture, she licked her lips.
Radulf moaned deep in his throat. He wound his hands through the long strands of her hair, pressing his face to them, kissing the silken locks.
“Ah, Lily, Lily,” he groaned. “Mignonne, you are foolish if you think your gift will soften me if you lie.”
His yielding emboldened Lily. She pressed her palms to his shoulders, urging him back. When he lay among the blankets and skins, she leaned over him. The tips of her breasts brushed across his chest, and her hair made a cave about their faces.
“I will take that chance,” she told him softly. “I do not think you will hurt me, my lord.”
Radulf hesitated a moment, as if he were tempted to disillusion her, and then he was pulling her down to drink from her mouth, and all conversation was forgotten.
Chapter 5
Lily woke to the dawn, with Stephen creeping about the tent, tidying and laying out platters of food, careful not to disturb his master. She lay still until the boy had gone and then, easing her tangled hair out from beneath the heavy weight of Radulf’s arm, sat up.
Was it truly only two nights ago that she had made her way to the church? Then she had been frightened and alone, at the end of her tether.
Now she felt changed. Not just in body, though her limbs ached pleasurably and her mouth was swollen from Radulf’s kisses. But in mind and heart, too.
The dark, painful memories of her time with Vorgen seemed to have faded just a little. Radulf had undergone no difficulty; did that mean Vorgen had been wrong? That Lily was not a woman who sapped a man’s vigor with her touch? That maybe the fault had been with Vorgen alone?
Hope seeded itself in her heart. Suddenly she wished that the story she had told Radulf were the truth. How much simpler it would be now, were she really Edwin of Rennoc’s daughter! Maybe, if she were to wake Radulf, tell him who she was? Explain . . . ?
A cold whisper of warning halted her hot rush of impetuousness. Radulf was a Norman lord, and she knew the high price such men placed upon their honor and their allegiance to their king. In his greed, Vorgen had turned his back on both, and had hated himself for it even as he was powerless to stop himself. Lily knew instinctively that Radulf was not the kind of man to compromise his honor, nor would he betray his king. If she were to tell him her secret, that she was the Lady Wilfreda, he would give her up to King William.
You are foolish if you think your gift will soften me to you if you lie.
Radulf’s words echoed in her head, and Lily shivered in the chill light of morning. So she would be damned if she lied, and damned if she didn’t.
Very uneasy now, last night’s exhilaration completely faded, Lily glanced down at the sleeping man at her side, almost expecting him to have grown horns and a tail.
He lay sprawled across the bed, beautiful in a stark, masculine way, his big body still and yet alert even now. His short dark hair was disordered by sleep and Lily’s fingers, his face relaxed, the lines about his eyes smoothed out and his firm lips slightly open. Lily longed to stroke the scar on his cheek and kiss him awake.
She did neither.
