“I only want you to be happy, brother,” Marianne said softly, her eyes full of a sorrow that it pained him to see.
“I will be, Marianne,” he vowed. “You’ll see.”
“Who are you trying to convince, Nicholas? Me—or you?”
“This is useless,” he declared, heading for the door. “Until you’ve worked and suffered and strove as I have, you can’t possibly understand.”
NICHOLASstrode into his solar and closed the door. Hands splayed, head bowed, he leaned on the table and, sighing, closed his eyes.
Like a man utterly exhausted, or bending under a burden he no longer wished to carry.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THAT NIGHT,Riona had barely closed the door to Nicholas’s chamber before he swept her into his arms. Her toes brushed the stone floor as she clung to him passionately, returning his fervent kiss.
He let her down slowly, her breasts brushing against his chest, his face visible in the small flame from the oil lamp on the table. “I’ve missed you,” he said in a low whisper that made her heart beat with delicious anticipation.
He took off the scarf she still wore to fool Percival, and tossed it onto the chest nearby. She noticed a familiar-looking bundle sitting there, but she forgot it as he trailed his finger from her lips to her chin and then slowly down her neck to the valley between her breasts. She had on the scarlet gown again. She wore it as often as she could because it was his favorite.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, her body warming as it always did when he touched her. “What’s that on your chest?”
He looked down at his tunic. “Where?”
She laughed softly, and for a moment, her mood lightened. “Not there.” She pointed at the bundle on the wooden chest. “There.”
“Oh, that,” he replied.
He went and got it, and as he did, his serious expression filled her with trepidation and dismay. “Your uncle gave me this, but of course I can’t keep it. Will you take it back to him?”
“What is it?” she asked, although deep in her heart, she suspected she knew.
“Afeileadhand shirt—my wedding present for when I married you.”
She briefly closed her eyes. It was a dagger to the heart, although she knew her uncle had meant well. “He didn’t tell me he’d done that.”
“He didn’t give me a chance to refuse.”
Riona took the bundle and set it down on the bed. “He still can’t conceive that you won’t be marrying me.”
Nicholas took her shoulders in his powerful warrior’s hands and regarded her steadily, his gaze full of a yearning that devastated her, because she knew that there could be no future for them. “I would choose you, Riona, if I could. If I were rich and influential, I would send all those others packing tomorrow and carry you to the chapel in my arms to make you mine.”
“But you can’t,” she said, her heart aching, her voice steady. “And you must beware Lord Chesleigh when you choose Eleanor. He’s ambitious and dishonest, and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.”
She couldn’t tell Nicholas directly about Lord Chesleigh’s threat to her uncle’s life, but she would do what she could.
“Percival’s influence should counter anything Lord Chesleigh can do,” he replied.
“I’m not so sure. You must be prepared to fight Chesleigh, whether in court or in battle, after you marry.”
Nicholas nodded, and she knew he would heed her words.
“Enough of such grim talk,” she said with false cheer. “I don’t want to ruin our last few nights with worries about villainous Normans. I’d rather talk about you.”
Nicholas seemed anxious to shake off the weight of heavier matters, too, as he smiled. “Oh? Perhaps I’d rather talk aboutyou,and what I’m going to do with you when I carry you to my bed.”
She backed away from him. They had so little time left, she would enhance her store of memories while she could. “Not yet. First, my lord of Dunkeathe, I have a boon to beg.”
He frowned, and she regretted worrying him. “I’d like to see you in afeileadhbefore I leave Dunkeathe, that’s all. Would you put it on for me now?”
