Page 27

C ELESTE’S MAIDSERVANT hurried up to Ranulf as he dismounted in the courtyard and handed Titan’s reins to one of the grooms waiting to take them. “My lord, if you please, my lord,” the young woman said, looking as if she’d rather be anywhere else than talking to him.

“What is it?” he asked, frowning. “I hope your mistress’s illness hasn’t taken a turn for the worse.”

“No, my lord, I don’t think so,” Emma said, speaking with great deference and not a little fear. “She wants to see you as soon as possible. She says it’s important.”

Ranulf’s mind was instantly alert, as if an alarm had sounded on the walls. “Really? And what might this urgent matter be?”

Emma’s thin face flushed to the roots of her mouse-brown hair. “I don’t know, my lord. She didn’t tell me. Just said I was to tell you it was important and that she needed to see you.”

“In her bedchamber, I suppose?”

“She isn’t well enough to get up yet.”

Ranulf had not been born yesterday, and it had been ten years since he’d been that green youth of eighteen, anxious for love and blind to a clever woman’s snares, so if Celeste thought to seduce him, she was most certainly going to be disappointed.

On the other hand, perhaps it would be best if he made that perfectly clear.

“Please inform her that I shall be happy to speak with her as soon as I’ve given the night’s watchword to the guard,” he said, dismissing the maidservant.

He chose “wiser” for the word, then went to the chamber given over to Celeste’s use while she was in Penterwell.

He knocked briskly on the door, reflecting that it was a good thing that Celeste had brought her own servants.

After he’d sent Eseld away—staggering dizzily and calling him a host of unflattering names—there was no one to spare to tend to a sick guest.

The door was immediately opened, although not by Emma. Celeste herself stood there, dressed—if one could call it that—in a bed robe of rich scarlet brocade loosely belted about her slender hips. Beneath the robe was a very sheer white shift, probably made of silk.

There had been a time he would have nearly died of desire to see her thus, and especially looking at him with that particular hunger in her eyes.

Unfortunately for Celeste, that time had passed.

“I had not anticipated finding you here alone and in a state of dishabille, my lady,” he said coolly. “Although I understand you have some matter of urgency to discuss with me, it will have to wait until—”

She didn’t give him a chance to finish before she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the room with surprising force and shoved the door closed behind him.

“This is rather flagrant, isn’t it?” he asked as he raised one inquisitive brow. “In the past you would have been more subtle.”

“Don’t play the righteous, pious prude with me, Ranulf,” Celeste declared, her cheeks flushed and her eyes flashing with ire. “It doesn’t suit you. I’m not trying to seduce you.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” he calmly replied. “Since you must then only wish to converse, allow me to begin. You’re obviously feeling better, so I think it’s time you left Penterwell.”

“What?” she gasped. “You would order a guest to go?”

Because she was a guest, and a woman, and despite her choice of garments and what she’d done in the past, he felt compelled to ease the order. “It’s for your own good, Celeste. There has been some serious trouble here, including murder, and I don’t want you to be in any danger.”

Instead of looking worried, her eyes lit up with delight. “So you do care about me?”

“Yes, as a friend,” he answered, and to make certain she understood there could never be anything more than that between them, he added, “Although there have been days I wished you dead.”

She backed away. “You…what?”

“Is it really so surprising that I would want you to suffer after what you did to me?”

“And do you think I didn’t suffer when I had to marry another? My family forced me to accept Lord Fontenbleu.”

He thought of the morning she’d told him they must never see each other again. “I was too poor. You said so yourself.”

She clasped her hands together, as Bea so often did. “That’s what they kept saying to me—that you were poor and I would be poor, too, if I married you.”

“I’m still poor, Celeste. I’m castellan here because of Merrick’s friendship and generosity. I have no estate of my own, and few coins to my name. Everything I own can fit into a single wooden chest.”

“But I am rich, and the man who marries me will be rich, too. I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted, Ranulf. Money, lands, power—and a wife who loves you!”

“All that, Celeste? You would give me all that?”

“Yes!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “Whatever you want, Ranulf.”

He gently pushed her away. “What I want is Bea. And I want you to leave Penterwell.”

“Please don’t hate me for what I was made to do!” she pleaded. “Try to understand and forgive me. It’s so difficult for a woman!”

“I know that, and I do pity you, Celeste,” he replied, speaking not unkindly, but firmly, too. “As for forgiveness, if that is what you really seek, you have that, as well.”

As he said it, he realized that was true. He did forgive her. “What’s past is past, Celeste,” he said gently. “Now let us speak no more of those days.”

“But my husband is dead, and we’re here— together,” she said.

“He never loved me, Ranulf, never. I was just a prize to him, something to decorate his hall and show off to his friends.” She bit her lip and looked up at him, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

“He never kissed me the way you did, never made me feel—”

“Please, Celeste,” Ranulf said, turning away. “Don’t say anything more. I’m sorry for you, truly I am, but I don’t love you.”

She stiffened as if a lightning bolt had struck her, and her expression grew as hard as that of a cheated merchant.

“Do you no longer want me because I’ve grown old and ugly?

” she demanded. “Is that why you’d rather dally here with that child and ruin your reputation—and hers, such as it is—beyond repair? ”

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 is not my 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, your delight —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.”