“I should hope not.”
“Well?” she asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I cannot say, but it is important.”
He rubbed his hand over his face. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was after him again, but the concern in her eyes was proof she really needed an honest answer.
Disregarding the painful burning in his groin as his body strained against his laces, he shook his head. “Nay, milady. It doesn’t hurt. ‘Tis rather pleasurable.”
And if it wasn’t for his fear she would agree, he would offer to show her just how pleasurable it really was.
“Have you ever had a woman cry when you... nay, wait,” she said stopping herself. “I don’t want you to answer that. I don’t want to know of any women you’ve been with.”
She looked up at him and smiled a smile that made him weak in the knees. “Thank you for your honesty. I knew I could count on you.”
Draven shook his head. “You give me far too much credit.”
“Have you ever thought that you give yourself too little?”
Draven couldn’t answer and at the moment he wasn’t sure if he should.
“Oh, Draven. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes for one instant.”
“You said yourself that you are a dreamer. You see what you wish to see. The truth of me is not the hero you think. I am not Accusain to come walking naked—” why did that word keep coming up when he was with her— “through the gates to prove my love by falling on my knees before you and vowing my undying loyalty. I am a man, Emily. ‘Tis all I am.”
“Aye, you are a man. In every sense of the word. And I am a woman who can feel every inch of you when you’re near me.”
Draven’s head swam with visions of kissing her in the moonlight, of stripping her kirtle from her shoulders and taking her here on the narrow walkway.
It would be so easy.
She lifted his hand to her lips and placed a gentle kiss over the bruise on his knuckles. “I won’t press myself upon you tonight. But thank you for defending my honor.”
Emily released his hand and he felt the coldness of the night against his skin. The coldness of the solitude in his soul far more sharply than he ever had before.
The absence of her warmth was almost debilitating.
“I would wish you sweet dreams, milord, but I know you won’t sleep in my father’s hall. I shall see you in the morning.”
Draven watched her leave him. His heart cried out for him to stop her flight. To call her back to his side, but his sense of honor refused.
She wasn’t’ his.
Emily could never be his.
His heart weary, he turned back to stare at the water below. In that instant, he wished he had been the one to fall that fateful day in battle. Why had the sword not pierced his breast?
And as he had done almost every day of his life, he cursed his fate.
The next morning was a flurry of activity. Emily tried several times to get Joanne alone again and talk her out of the marriage, but her sister would have none of it.
“‘Tis done,” Joanne said dismissively. “I wanted to flee father’s hall, and now I have my wish.”
But something wasn’t right about it. Emily knew it in her heart and most definitely after what Draven had told her.
But in the end, she had no choice save to wish her sister well and watch as Joanne bound herself to a man Emily didn’t care for one little bit.
