‘You did it in deceit!’
‘It was for your own good.’
‘Ah yes, my own good,’ he said silkily. ‘Swaddle me up like a babe while you are at it.’
‘Guyon please, you’re hurting me!’ Judith half sobbed, more afraid of the cadence of his voice than the grip on her arm.
‘I ought to beat you witless!’ he complained, but let her go. She floundered from the tub, the front of her gown drenched, the ends of her braids dark bronze and dripping. ‘Don’t ever try that trick on me again.’
Judith took her courage in both hands. ‘I’ll make sure that next time you don’t know!’ she retorted. ‘My only fault was that in my haste I did not disguise the taste enough.’
Guyon jerked to his feet in a swish of angry water. ‘Dare it at your peril.’
‘Threat or promise?’ she asked with a saucy confidence she was far from feeling, aware that she was playing with fire and that one step too far would ignite a totally different conflagration from the kind she was nurturing now. ‘Will you unlace my gown? It’s soaked and I’ll catch a chill.’
‘Your own fault. Call your maids.’
‘I can’t. Helgund’s sitting with Mabel and the child and if you glare at Elflin like that, you will terrify her, not to mention what Brand will do to you if he thinks you have been making improper advances to his wife.’
‘What?’ Guyon spluttered. He knew by now that he was being led a merry dance, but was too interested in its destination to halt the devious steps of its progress.
‘Well, if I sent for Elflin and she saw you in that condition, the Lord alone knows what she might misconstrue. You know how timid she is of all men, saving Brand.’
‘What cond—’ Guyon followed the direction of her amused gaze, then flicked his own back to her face. Laughter was tugging at the corners of her mouth. She raised her eyes to his. They were round and innocent and she kept them on him as she raised her arms to remove her circlet and veil.
‘Shall I leave that uncomforted, too?’ she enquired with spurious solicitude. ‘Or would you let me close enough to rub it better?’
‘Judith!’ Guyon choked, laughing despite himself. Half an hour ago he had been so weary and soul-sick that he could have lain down and died. Now the energy was flowing through him like a vigorous stream in spate. ‘What am I going to do with you?’
‘Get me with child?’ she suggested, slanting him a provocative glance. ‘Women are supposed to dote and soften when they are breeding.’
Guyon snorted. ‘Since when have you ever done what other women are supposed to do?’
‘There is always a first time. You might be pleasantly surprised.’
‘For a change,’ he said with a grin.
She gave him a lazy, answering smile. ‘Unlace me, Guy?’ she requested again.
He reached to the side fastening of her gown and began to pluck it undone. ‘You are naught but a hussy, do you know that? Summer heat indeed!’
She stepped out of the drenched garment and turned in his embrace to twine her arms about his neck and meet his lips with her own. He reached for the drawstring of her shift. ‘I have practised better deceptions,’ she admitted impishly against his mouth. ‘It’s not knotted this time.’
‘I did not think it would be,’ he said wryly as the garment slid down from her shoulders and pooled at her feet and her body blended itself with his.
CHAPTER29
Guyon stirred in response to a dazzle of light across his eyelids and squinted them open. The chamber was dim; sunlight lanced across the bed from a gap in the warped shutter. He moved his head and idly watched the motes of dust glitter in its bright rainbow bars. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why. Then came the familiar feeling as of a cold stone in the pit of his stomach, immediately dissolved by the awareness of Judith’s body curled at his side, sleeping with the innocent abandon of the kitten that was her nickname. Hard to believe in the scheming seductress of the night.
He stretched and relaxed, smiling at the incongruity. Flowers and thorns. Sharp claws sheathed in soft padding. He turned towards her and nuzzled his chin on the crown of her head. She murmured and nestled closer. Her lips moved in a sleepy kiss at the base of his throat.
He glanced beyond the luxurious comfort of his bed and wife to the shifting strands of light and the smile still on his lips became rueful as he realised that it was the first time in three days that he had woken at dawn instead of noon. As usual she had been right, he acknowledged. He had not known the depth of his exhaustion until he had succumbed to it, and succumb hehad with a vengeance. The last three days had passed him by like distant scenes from an illuminated psalter and he an illiterate turning the pages. He vaguely recalled rising to eat in the hall and speaking to people, although what he had eaten and what he had said were now a complete mystery. He also remembered going out to inspect the repair work on the curtain wall, but Judith had apprehended him with some specious excuse that had drawn him back within … and inevitably to bed where, by unfair means, she had enticed him to stay.
Restlessly he shifted his position, aware of a need to be up and doing that was born of renewed energy, not dull-edged desperation. The grief, anger and guilt were still with him, but no longer intruding upon his every waking thought. Raw, but bearable and probably a burden for life.
Lady Mabel had died on that first night. God rest her soul, since it had not had much rest on this earth. Judith had been tearful about that, although he suspected the tears were more a relieving of tension than any deeper grief for the dead woman. The child still lived. His fever was gone and he had stopped passing blood, or so Judith told him. She kept the babe from his sight and he had no desire to go and see for himself – not yet; perhaps never.
He thought of the incident with the spiked wine. He had always known she was mettlesome, but sometimes she was almost too quick for him to handle. Get me with child, she had said. He was not sure that he could imagine Judith soft and doting. It was not in her nature, or at least not yet. Perhaps children would gentle her, but he doubted it. Kittens did nothing to make a cat less feral. In fact the reverse.
