To think there had been a time he would gladly have died for this woman. “Beatrice is not a child.”
“And that makes what you’re doing acceptable? You’ve taken that sweet innocent and made her your leman, despite your professed friendship with her guardian.”
“Beatrice isnotmy mistress,” he said through clenched teeth, trying to contain his growing anger.
“So you say, but that is most certainly not how it looks.”
“If all you plan to do is insult me or Lady Beatrice,” he said with cold deliberation, “I shall take my leave of you. Have your maid pack your things. You’ll be departing Penterwell at first light tomorrow.”
And he prayed God the weather would be fair.
“Wait!” she cried, running between him and the door, a truly desperate look on her beautiful face. “Ranulf, please! I’m sorry. I spoke harshly, and without good cause, I know. You would never seduce such a sweet girl, despite the stories I’ve heard.”
A sliver of shame slid down Ranulf’s back, cooling his anger with remorse. “Let me pass, Celeste. We have nothing more to say to one another except goodbye.”
Rage flashed in her eyes and twisted the rest of her features. “You would have me believe you love that foolish, ignorant girl? What does she know of love or pleasing a man?”
Ranulf stepped aside, but again she moved to block him. “You would tie yourself to the daughter of a traitor? You would take charity from your friend, for that’s what her dowry would be. What’s happened to your pride, Ranulf? Your honor?”
“It will be the lady who honors me and makes me proud if she accepts my hand.”
“So you haven’t asked her yet. I wondered when she didn’t know how your brother died.”
A look of triumph came to Celeste’s face when she saw Ranulf’s expression. “Of course I had to tell her,” she said with smug satisfaction. “And it’s no wonder you didn’t. You were afraid she’d never have you if she knew you killed Edmond. What do you think she’ll make of that other tale I told her, of the wager you won after I accepted another?”
Ranulf grabbed Celeste by the shoulders and glared into her mocking face. “What did you tell Bea?”
Celeste smiled with triumphant glee. “Why, merely what was told to me about a certain wager—fourteen virgins in fourteen days, and that you won.”
“Oh, God,” he groaned, stumbling backward as if she’d hit him. Hard.
“What’s the matter, Ranulf? Ashamed, are you? You should be!”
As Celeste stood before him, mocking him as his father and his brothers had so often done, Ranulf’s pride arose, resolute and strong—the same fierce, determined pride that had taken him all the way to Sir Leonard de Brissy’s fortress on foot.
“I was in the back of the church the morning you married, Celeste,” he said. “I saw your satisfaction—nay, yourdelight—when you took Lord Fontenbleu’s hand and kissed him. You weren’t forced to have him. You—you grabbed the chance to be his wife. You threw me off with no more concern that you would a dress you tired of. God’s blood, I was naive! But I’m not anymore, and I’ve found a finer, better woman to love than you could ever be.”
“Love?” she scoffed. “What do you know about love? You mooned after me like a little boy! You wrote those horrid poems, those maudlin songs. It hurt my ears to hear you! To be sure, your adoration was flattering, and you do kiss rather well, but marry a penniless, landless fool whose own family cast him out for murder? I would have been mad!”
“As I must have been mad to think I loved you. Fortunately, I’ve come to my senses.”
“You can’t have if you’re going to wed that tainted creature.”
“If there is a tainted creature in Penterwell, you are it. Now I give you good day, Celeste.”
The woman he had once desired beyond all reason fell to her knees and threw her arms around him. “Ranulf, I’m sorry!” she cried with seeming sincerity. “I lost my temper. I regret what Idid all those years ago. I rue the day I let you go. I’ll not speak against Lady Beatrice again, but please don’t make me leave.”
“I am castellan here and you are no longer welcome,” he said as he reached down to raise her to her feet.
“Please, Ranulf, let me stay. I have nowhere else to go!”
“You have your lands, your estates, your castles. Go to one of them.”
She shook her head, her hair flying about as if tossed by the wind. “They belong to my husband’s nephew because we had no sons. Everything I possess is in this chamber.”
He thought of her fine gowns, and the jewels she’d sported. “You’re still rich. You can buy yourself a house in London, where you will surely find plenty of suitors anxious to share your wealth.”
“No, no,” she sobbed, real tears falling down her cheeks and genuine anguish in her no-longer-dulcet voice. “I have no family, no friends there. My parents are dead. They died less than a year after I was married. I have no one—no one cares for me—and London is a cold, cruel place for a woman no longer young.”
