“I will always want you with me, Sin.”
He curled his lips at that and pushed himself away from the hearth. “Don’t mock me,” he snarled angrily. “I don’t need your pity.”
Nay, what he needed was her love. But he had lived so long without anyone’s love that she wondered if it was too late for him. Maybe there was such a thing as being too strong.
“It’s not pity I feel for you.” She moved to touch his arm. To her amazement, he didn’t move away. She ran her hand gently over the biceps of his uninjured side and up to his face until she forced him to look at her and see the sincerity of her eyes. “You are my husband, Sin, sworn before God. I will always be here for you.”
Sin swallowed at her words, unable to fathom them. She couldn’t really mean them. He didn’t believe it for a minute. It was a game she was playing with him, and he could only guess why she would want to do this to him.
He stared at the floor as he remembered the times in his life he had deceived himself. The times he had lain beaten by Harold, thinking that his father had only been angry at him when he had sent him away. That if he was a good enough lad and did as the English asked and spoke no angry words to Harold, that he would be allowed to go home as King Stephen had promised. That his father would welcome him back with open arms.
In the end, his father had continued to shun him. His father’s letter to Henry hadn’t even borne Sin’s name upon it. It bore no reference to him as a son at all. It had been cold. Harsh. A final rejection that still resonated in his heart.
He remembered the sting of the Saracen whips. The beatings he’d endured during his training. The only thing that kept him sane was the belief that if he could escape them and get back to England, all would be right. His mother’s people would surely welcome him back into their fold.
And yet after Henry returned him to London, he had been sneered at, hated and feared. They had treated him worse than a leper, worse than a heretic.
“Not even God Himself could love something like you.” The Pope’s condemnation rang in his ears.
Nay, he was still that little boy who had stood before his mother on Christmas Eve with his heart full of hopeful longing. What had he ever gotten for such foolish dreams?
Nothing but more ridicule. Nothing but more hurt.
His heart had withered and died years ago from lack of use. If he opened himself up to Callie now, he was sure she would betray him.
It was the only thing in life he counted on. The only thing that was a certainty.
Reluctantly, he removed her hand from his face. “‘Tis late. You need to go to bed.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“On the floor before the hearth.”
Callie’s lip quivered as she fought against the tears inside her. Her frustration mounted. How she wished she knew a way to reach him. How to make him believe in her. In them.
But he had shut himself off from her again.
She watched as he removed his surcoat and armor. His tawny shoulders gleaming in the firelight, he took a pelt from the bed and lay down to cuddle with his sword. She clenched her fists at her sides wanting to choke him for his stubbornness.
What was it going to take to reach this man?
“Whenever you fail to win them over, lass, then mayhap you should partake of their leisure.” Her father’s words rang in her head, giving her the inspiration she needed.
She undressed until she wore nothing but her thin under kirtle, then she grabbed a pillow from the bed.
Sin listened to his wife moving about as he stared into the fire in the grate. He wanted nothing more than to join her in her bed. To go over there and pull her into his arms and finally experience the only piece of heaven a man like him could ever hope for.
But then, he was used to disappointment.
Suddenly, a pillow was placed against the back of his head. Frowning, he leaned back to see Callie making a pallet behind him.
“What are you doing?”
She shrugged as she sat on the floor and pulled his blanket over her. “I am being Ruth. I am making my bed where my husband is. If you won’t join me in my bed, then I will join you in yours.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I am?” She leaned up on one elbow to stare at him. “It seems to me ridiculous is lying on a cold, cobbled floor when you have a comfortable bed waiting for you just a few feet away.”
