“As you wish, my lady.” When he answered, Antony sounded just as forlorn as I felt. For a tiny instant, I longed to comfort him, but I immediately pushed that inclination aside. He didn’t deserve it.
Chapter Five
When I’d awoken the next morning, cold and stiff, I’d found Antony had already risen and was cooking fish over a fire. We hadn’t spoken another word to each other since his revelations and I wasn’t feeling inclined to change that. Yet, the sight of him sitting alone at the fireside made me ache in a way I couldn’t understand. What waswrongwith me? He’d played a part in my family’s destruction… I’d thought of him as my captor, my jailer, but it was more than that. He was Judas—he had betrayed my family, and for what?
Not having known my father very well, I didn’t think of him often. Yet watching Antony, I thought of him then. My father had been a warrior too. I had a memory of him coming home from battle, and the weariness on his face had nearly torn out my heart. I’d watched silently as my mother fretted over him, pulling his boots off and wiping his brow, even though they’d had servants that could have tended to such things.
“Are you hurt, my love?” I’d heard her whisper.
“Not anywhere that can be seen by the human eye,” he’d replied with a smile that was hardly a smile at all. Even as a child, I’d known he’d only done it for her benefit. “War is such a dirty, terrible thing, Katherine.”
I’d been a child and unable to make much sense of his words at the time. But now, looking at Antony, I wondered at what he’d said. Perhaps, in his own way, Antony felt as my father did. Did I owe him the chance to explain himself?
Just then, he turned his head and saw me staring. Not having decided my next course of action, I froze in place.
“Come, you must be cold and hungry. Come sit by me.”
For a moment, he sounded just as wearied as my father had that day. I could see no other alternative—Iwascold, and my stomach was so empty it hurt. So I took a seat beside him and accepted the fish he offered on a tin plate. I ate, and even though it didn’t taste very palatable, I continued to eat, as much to fill my belly as to keep from talking. When I’d eaten it down tothe bones, there was nothing left to do but wipe my hands on the bark of the trunk and look at Antony. He was poking the fire with a stick and seemed just as content to avoid talking to me as I was to him.
“We should get riding soon,” he said, looking toward the sky that was brightening as the sun began to rise.
“Where are we going?” It was a question I had yet to raise, but he didn’t seem in the least surprised.
“I had planned to take you home with me.”
There was a frank vulnerability in his voice that mere days ago I would have attacked. Feeling so raw from the rush of emotions I’d had the day before, I didn’t have it in me to exploit anyone. “What will I do there? What kind of life can I truly make for myself out in the countryside?”
“I suppose that’s something you’re going to have to find out for yourself, Cecily. Tomorrow we will reach a small town about a day’s ride from my house. There, I hope to find a priest.”
“A priest?” I echoed, dropping my eyes to my hands in my lap.
“Yes. I had hoped…”
It was not like Antony to be shy, and for some reason my belly began to churn with a nervous energy that I couldn’t explain. “Hoped what?”
“I’d thought… well, that is, I’d like… I wanted you to become my wife.”
The air whooshed out of me for the second time in as many days, though when I contemplated his words, I realized that I had expected this. Did I want to become his wife, especially after what I had learned?
“I am not going to force you to marry me, if that is what you fear,” he was quick to assure me. “If we marry, then you will have to consent. But I feel you should know that if we enter into such a contract, I expect you to respect and obey me always, regardless of the situation.”
“You do not seem to require a marriage contract to expect such things.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Antony smile at my dry remark. I went back to staring at my hands, unsure how to respond. He was the enemy, and he’d stolen me away from my home that was no more. Perhaps if he hadn’t, I would have gotten away with my cousin, or my mother, or… but I had not. Still, despite the spanking I had mentioned, he had not mistreated me. He had not forced himself upon me, or struck me even when my tongue warranted it.
“What would you expect?”
“Excuse me?” I queried, startled out of my thoughts.
“If we were to marry, what would your expectations be?”
I had never been asked such a thing before, not by my mother, and certainly not by my husband. I did not have the first idea how to respond, but Antony seemed content to wait. “Do you truly believe my husband is dead?” I asked at last, my voice as soft as the whisper of the morning wind.
“Yes, my lady. I am sorry for your loss, but it is nearly certain, especiallysince he was in Her Majesty’s army.”
I nodded, no more moved by these words than by his expectation that we should wed. “Why did you take me that day?” The question escaped my lips before I could reconsider. Once the question was out there, it hung between us, in the delicate balance of what the future would hold.
Antony considered carefully, as though he knew the great importance of his answer. And of course, he must have, because Antony always seemed to know such things. “I couldn’t bear to leave you there.” When he answered, his voice was gruff with emotion. “Knowing as I did what was coming. It took but one look at you for me to see that…”
“That I’m beautiful,” I answered, my voice wooden.
