"I cannought remember her face!" he cried. "Oh, sweet Mary save me, I can only see you."

"Shhh." She put her finger to his lips. "Hush." She rubbed the side of his face in a quiet cadence, a firm chafing pressure. "That is not marvelous. Iwysse, I am here with thee, best-loved. Is no more than that."

He reached up and caught her arms. "Do nought stray out from my shield, my lady," he said fiercely. He pulled her down against him. "Leave me nought."

"Never," she said. "If it be within my power, never."

Her breath stirred lightly on his face. She lay half atop him, the wool of her gown spread over his leg and thigh. He held her there.

"Nor will I leave you." He bound her wrists in both his hands. "Ne'er, lady, lest ye sends me from you."

The rise and fall of his chest lifted her, so close she was. Though he could barely see her as but a blacker shadow on blackness, he felt her weight, her hushed submission to his grasp. Her loose hair fell down between them, as if she were a maid. As if she were his wife.

"Lady," he whispered, "God shield me, I have thoughts in my head that are very madness."

"What is thy true name and place?" she asked softly.

A distant part of him seemed to know what came to him, what gift of unthinkable value, but his tongue felt near too numb to form the words. "Ruadrik," he said in a dry throat. "Wolfscar."

His hands where they gripped her arms were trembling. Only her steadiness held him motionless.

"Sir Ruadrik of Wolfscar," she said, "here I take thee, if thou will it, as my husband, to have and to holden, at bed and at board, for better for worsen, in sickness and health, til death us depart, and of this I give thee my faith. Dost thou will it?"

Only a little shiver beneath his hands and a break in her final question gave a hint that she was not calm.

"My lady, it is madness."

Her body tightened in his arms. "Dost thou will it?"

He stared up into the dark at her, bereft of words.

"Dost thou believe it is no bargain for me?" she asked in a voice spun as fragile as glass. "I told thee what I would give to be wife to thee. Dost thou will it?"

"Lady—have a care of your words, and make game of me nought, for I haf the will in my heart to answer you in troth."

"In troth have I spoken. Here and now I take thee, Ruadrik of Wolfscar, as my wedded husband, if thou wilt have me."

He turned his right hand, lacing his fingers into hers. "Lady Melanthe—Princess—" His voice failed as the immensity of it overcame him. He swallowed. "Princess of Monteverde, Countess of Bowland—my lady—I humbly take you—take thee—ah, God forgive me, but I take thee with my whole heart, though I be nought worthy, I take thee as my wedded wife to have and to hold, for fairer or fouler, in sickness and in health—for my life so long as I shall have it. Thereto I plight thee my troth." He closed his fist hard over her fingers. "I have no ring. By my right hand I wed thee, and by my right hand I honor thee with the whole of my gold and silver, and by my right hand I dow thee with all that is mine."

For a long moment neither of them moved or spoke. Beyond the heavy curtains there was a faint sigh of coals falling in upon themselves.

"Ne do I have flowers, nor a garland to kiss thee through," he murmured, cupping her face. He leaned up and pressed his lips softly against hers. At first she seemed frozen, cool as marble, and a bolt of apprehension passed through his heart, for fear that she had done it all as a mocking jape—but then she gave a low whimper and kissed him in return, hard and ruthless, as her kisses were wont to be. She put her arms about his shoulders and held to him tightly, her face pressed into his throat.

He lay gazing upward, full of bliss and horror. The world seemed to go in a slow spin about him. He did not know if it was drink or amazement.

Then he embraced her and rolled her onto her back, overlying her, using his hands to master the awkward tangle of her skirts, his rigid tarse to search out her place urgently. He mounted her, sinking inside with a groan like a beast. A fearsome ache of pleasure shot from his belly through his limbs. It drowned his senses; from a distance he felt her clutch at him, heard her swift breath—but with all the strength in him he could not stop to satisfy her. With a violent thrust he spilled his seed in her womb.

He used and possessed her to bind his right, before God, sealing her beyond resort or recourse as his wife. And when it was finished, he laid his face against her breast and wept for Isabelle, for joy, and for mortal dread of what they had just done.

FOURTEEN

She held him as he grieved, and lay waking long after the shudders of rough sobs had passed through him. He wept like a man who had lost child and kin and future. And then he slept profoundly, weight upon her such that she could hardly breathe, but she never ceased stroking her fingers through his hair.

She was jealous of his silly and dangerous wife, that he mourned her so. And yet Melanthe thought that it was his lost years and distorted vision that he mourned—pure and gentle nun that he had seemed to make the woman out for be. Melanthe remembered a shrieking and offensive female, full of herself and her prophecy, and a part of her longed to recall it to him in forceful detail. But she thought, with a little wonder at herself, that she did not care so much for her own discontent, if to undeceive him would cause him further pain.

Lying with him seemed enough. It was entirely new to her, so different was he from Ligurio, and from Allegreto's lithe and constant tension that had haunted all her nights. Ligurio had been gentler, without urgency, courteous in his dealing with her. She suspected now that he had already been ill when he had consummated their marriage, coming to her bed for the first time on her sixteenth birthday, and seldom enough in the year after, until he had not come at all.

She felt now as she thought other women must, with her lover sprawled warm and heavy upon her in trusting insensibility. Where Allegreto had the supple light shape of a beardless youth, Ruadrik's arms and shoulders were solid, hard-muscled, his cheek prickly on her bared breast and his leg a dense weight across her thigh. Even to bed, Allegreto wore hose stuffed to make him appear full intact and more; Sir Ruadrik lay with the broad expanse of his back naked to the night air, quite undeniably whole and male, having wept and gone to sleep still filling her, sliding gradually free until she felt the strange touch of his parts, heated between their bodies, a feather brush now where he had been stiff, a gentle pressure instead of invasion.

She ran her fingers down his body and then pressed her arms lightly around him. She hoped his man's sperm engendered a child in her already; and let the king...

God shield them, let the king and the court not know until she had time to consider. Never until this extraordinary hour had it come into her mind to make a secret marriage, and to such a man as this. It was incredible. She would have scorned to ashes the witlessness of any other woman who was so foolhardy assotted of a lover as to put her possessions in such peril.

Neither crown nor church would dispute her right to marry—but to wed without the king's permission, to carry her vassal lands with her to a man without her liege lord's approval—that was another offense entirely. Not a jury in the land would uphold her claim to such a thing. She might find herself a poor goodwife in truth for this night's work.

And yet she cared naught. If she could have him lie over her all the nights of her life, if she could bear his children—iwysse, she would sweep the hearth herself if she must.

But she wound her fingers through his hair and considered. It was perhaps not so impossible a thing that she had done. The old king, assotted himself, might be persuaded to smile upon her, a weak-willed and love-smitten female. It was not a match that would threaten any royal power or prerogative. Indeed there were advantages. She had not thought of marrying because she had never thought she would care to marry again. Certain she had never had the uncouth thought she would marry beneath herself, or relinquish her lawful right to refuse any man below her station.

But now that she gave her attention to the matter, she saw that to make a humble marriage was not an ill solution. She would have a man's protection, and the crown would have the certainty that she could not join her property to another great domain that might threaten the throne. Wherever this place of his might be, this Wolfscar, she had never heard of it. Another Torbec, no doubt, some remote and paltry manor he would be glad to forget.

And there was Gian...but Allegreto was dead, and Gian had lost his ability to daunt her, so far away he was. She had left him with the smiling promise that she would return to him with control of her English possessions and income, for the greater glory of Monteverde. It would take him a long time to fathom that she did not intend to come back, if he fathomed it at all. Every man had one blindness, Ligurio had taught her, no matter how clever he might be. Gian's was Monteverde. When he learned where her quitclaim had gone, he could turn his obsession to a new center and leave her in peace to marry whom she pleased.

Not that he was like to leave her entirely in peace, but his reach was not long enough to be fearsome here. And he was not a man who wasted his energy in any task, including revenge, that did not move him toward his goal.