Page 44

Her chin lifted higher. Violet eyes locked with his gray ones, reflecting back an implacability every bit as firm as his. “I promise to look after Katerine as best I can, but if fighting breaks out, I will not hide in a corner. If I have a chance to run Duke Julian through, I’ll seize it!”
“All hell you will!” Nicholas dragged her to him with a roughness born of alarm. “You stay away from Julian. He’s ruthless and he would cut you down, woman or no, without a second glance.”
“Not if I drove a blade through his evil heart first!”
Fury swept across his face and smoldered in his eyes. His fingers tightened around her wrists painfully, but Nicholas didn’t notice how fierce his grip was until she winced. He let her go and stepped back, studying her with a darkening expression that had been known to strike terror into the hearts of armed and helmeted men. But she met his gaze unflinchingly.
“Arianne, if you don’t give me your word, I’ll have to lock you in the tower room. There’s no way in hell I’ll leave you to get yourself killed while I’m busy breaking Marcus out of the dungeon—“
“Tower room? What tower room?”
“Don’t change the subject,” he told her impatiently.
“I’m not, but…the gypsy said something to me about the tower room today. I’d forgotten about it until just now.”
“What did she say?”
“She just whispered something about the tower room. Oh, and something about the blue panel.”
Nicholas’s mouth tightened. “Now how would she know that? There is a secret door, opened by pressing on the blue panel near the stairway. Few know of the tower room. It is a sort of royal dungeon. My great-grandfather kept his enemy, the Earl of Axwith, a prisoner there for nearly three years until a kingly ransom was paid. One hundred years ago, a royal prisoner went mad after being confined there and threw himself out of the tower window onto the stone courtyard below. I thought at first that perhaps Julian would have kept Marcus there instead of in the dungeon.”
“He is not so thoughtful.” Arianne paced up and down the length of the small chamber, her feet whispering over the rushes. Candlelight gilded her hair, and the shadows thrown by her delicate strides played across her daintily elegant features. “I wonder why the gypsy told me of it,” she mused.
“Perhaps she knew that it was your destiny to be shut away there for the duration of this siege, if you will not give me your solemn oath to keep away from the danger.”
He gripped her around the waist, and without thinking his other hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back. “This is not a game, Arianne, and I won’t be put off. Your word.”
“I’ll try,” she told him, her voice quavering despite herself. Damn him, the very touch of his hand upon her waist, the sensation of his fingers in her hair, were sending her senses spinning. She fought to regain her equilibrium, but his nearness, the size and power and dark, wild ferocity of him had a dizzying effect that slurred her tongue even as she tried to fire back a sharp retort.
I’ll try? What kind of a weak, blathering response was that?
“But I shan’t run from an opportunity to repay Julian for all the suffering he’s brought…”
Nicholas made a sound like a growl deep in his throat and hauled her closer, holding her so tightly that she thought her ribs would crack.
“What am I going to do with you, woman?” he snarled, and Arianne, to steady herself from the thunderous emotions whirling through her, grasped his massive shoulders and spoke the first silly words that sprang to her lips.
“Kiss me as you did Marta!”
Dead silence shook the chamber. The candles hissed and sputtered. Shadows danced.
“Do…what? Like I did…who?”
Now a blush as fiery as a rose swept across her cheeks. “Marta…my mother’s c-cousin. I saw you kiss her at a banquet that last time in Galeron…in the alcove. I was hiding.”
His eyes darkened, turning the color of night. “And?”
Staring into those eyes, held in those arms, Arianne felt a compulsion to speak the yearning in her heart, a foolish, idiotic yearning that had been hidden there for ten long years.
“I always wondered what it would be like were you to kiss me in that way,” she whispered.
She saw the astonishment cross his face, then a flicker of laughter, immediately followed by an indefinable gleam in those keen eyes. She saw a muscle pulse in his jaw.
“It is a knight’s duty to oblige a lady.” He shifted her up against him so that her mouth was only a breath away from his.
She wanted to run. Couldn’t. Wanted to tell him she’d changed her mind. Didn’t dare to. She found herself held in an iron grip, pinned against his towering and hard-muscled body.
She wanted this kiss. Oh, dear Lord, she wanted this kiss. Yet she feared appearing foolish, young, far too innocent. She didn’t know how to kiss him back. Where to put her hands, how to form her lips.