She laughed at some private bitterness. ‘Expedient. When your cow fails to calf, get a different bull to service her.’
Miles released her and, folding his arms, frowned.
‘Not pretty, is it?’ she said. ‘I cuckolded my husband in his own keep and deceived him with my lover’s child. You see too much, my lord, or perhaps I have just grown careless of late.’
‘I see too much,’ he said, smiling painfully, ‘because I want you.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Well enough to see too clearly.’ He tried to decide from her expression the approach he should take. ‘I’ve known you for a long time, ever since you were Judith’s age and defying your father’s will. And in the years since then, I’ve watched you from a distance grow and change.’
‘And wanted me?’ she challenged.
Miles saw the trap yawning at his feet and skirted it deftly. ‘I had Christen,’ he said. ‘There was no space in me to want another woman. You know that.’
Some of the hostility left her eyes, but she remained strongly cautious.
Miles shrugged. ‘It is two years since I lost her. Sometimes it seems as close as yesterday. Sometimes the loneliness rides me so hard I think I will go mad. I have taken women to my bed so that I do not have to sleep alone, but there is no lasting solace in that. What I need is another wife and, if I can get a dispensation, your consent.’
Alicia stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘It is impossible!’ she said huskily.
‘The dispensation or your consent? Rannulf Flambard will perform any miracle for the right amount of gold and I will not take no for an answer from you … not without excellent reasons.’
Alicia sat down. ‘I could give you them,’ she said shakily.
Miles persisted. For every protest that she made, he had an answer ready, a reasonable solution. He made a nonsense of her fears … all but one. She told him the name of Judith’s father.
Miles drew breath, held it, stared at her in dawning amazement, and very slowly exhaled. She saw his mind make that final, vital connection, saw his eyes flicker.
‘Yes,’ she said harshly. ‘He was fourteen years old and I was twenty-eight, and in one night he taught me everything that Maurice did not have the imagination to know.’
‘Sweet Christ and his mother,’ Miles swore, staring at her while he tried to assimilate what she had just told him.
She watched his face, waiting for the revulsion, but it did not come. It was a blank mask behind which any thought could have lurked. She covered her face and turned away.
After a moment, Miles mustered his wits. She was trembling so hard that he thought her flesh would shiver free of her bones. He laid a firm hand on her shoulder. ‘It makes no difference to me,’ he said finally. ‘It is in the past and, knowing him, even at fourteen he was no innocent to be seduced unless he so wished.’
Alicia swallowed, remembering how it had been. She with a plan half formed, afraid to dare, and he with his mind already made up.
‘So you will marry me?’
Alicia removed her hands tentatively from her face and looked at him. ‘How can you say it makes no difference? I set out deliberately to cheat my husband. I bedded with a boy whose voice had barely broken, I—’
‘You flay yourself with guilt,’ he interrupted, capturing her hands in his. ‘I do not doubt you. The Welsh have a saying:Oer yw’r cariad a ddiffydd ar un chwa o wynt. Cold is the love that is put out by one gust of wind. I have taken women to my bed for the comfort and the pleasure they offer, never out of forced desperation. I account your sin the lesser.’
Alicia’s mouth trembled with a smile. ‘You are very persistent, my lord.’
‘It’s the mix of Welsh and Norman blood,’ he agreed cheerfully.
She shook her head and sniffed. ‘I cannot give you an answer. I am so confused that I do not know my head from my heels.’
He put out his hand as if to touch her, but let it drop again to his side, aware of how much was at stake. It was like stalking a deer. Softly, slowly and no sudden moves. ‘Perhaps you should remove to your dower lands,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It will give you time to think.’
Alicia stepped away from his disturbing proximity. It was obvious that his own mind was made up. She had shown him the black secret lurking at the bottom of her soul and he had dismissed it as of no consequence, still valuing her enough to offer her marriage. It was the first time she had felt her worth to be above that of a mere chattel. A pity it was thirty years too late.
‘I hazard you do not often lose an argument,’ she said.
‘It depends on the subject.’ He gestured. ‘I could escort you home if you wish it. I have business with Hugh of Chester, but I could take you when I return, say in four days’ time’
