Once Upon a Castle - Jill Gregory [45]
“Tell me, Arianne, how did you escape? Surely Julian’s men wanted you too. The Lady of Galeron would be a war prize indeed.”
She nodded, folding her hands. To be considered a trophy of war irked her, but it was a fact of her station. She had not grown up in a castle without learning her worth as a noblewoman.
“His men did try to capture me, but I escaped.” She took a breath and told him of how she had fled with two of her ladies through the secret tunnel that led beneath the bailey, how they had been attacked and her ladies captured just outside the walls, how Marcus’s knights had come to her aid, wrenching her out of the arms of the huge soldier who had grabbed her up onto his destrier. She told him of how, surrounded by knights, she’d been riding pell-mell for the shelter of Sir Elven’s manor, when they’d been overtaken by another company of enemy soldiers. In the ensuing battle, she had killed one of them herself before Felix, Marcus’s captain, had shouted an order for her to flee.
“He was right, of course. I wanted to stay and help in the fight, but I knew, as Felix did, that if I were captured, it would only strengthen Julian that much more. So I rode as far and as fast as I could. The manor house had fallen—it was burning as I went past. Some peasants took me in at nightfall and hid me in their cottage. They gave me clothes, food. They offered to hide me until help came. I stayed for a few days, but it was dangerous for them. Julian’s men were searching the countryside for me. I insisted on leaving and slowly, carefully, made my way to Dinadan.”
“Alone?” he asked sharply. “All this way?”
“Yes.” With pride, she smoothed back her hair. So he thought her too fragile a creature to survive on her own, outside the walls and courtyards of the castle. She felt pride in showing him his mistake.
“Since coming here, I’ve made contact with my brother’s men, who have in turn borne missives to Felix for me. One of the things I requested of him was that he send messages near and far searching for you.”
“One reached me…only days ago. So now I am here.”
Arianne was not fooled by the calm simplicity with which he spoke. There was more to his story than he was telling. She remembered how she had accused him of not caring for Marcus because he had not come sooner. Now, looking into the lean, harsh face before her, she realized that she had misjudged him. There was something more here, something he wasn’t telling her. Nicholas had once been a wild daredevil of a boy, perhaps even irresponsible—after all, his father had banished him, had he not?
But no longer. She would have staked her life that this man took his responsibilities seriously. They—or something—seemed to weigh on him, to be a burden upon those great, wide shoulders. He bore it well, but it was there all the same, now that she had taken care to look.
Suddenly she could have bitten off her tongue. “I said some things earlier, my lord, that I regret. I was upset, angry. I shouldn’t have judged you or spoken to you thus.”
A slow smile smoothed the harsh line of his lips. His grave face lightened. “Don’t think of it, Ari.”
Ari. The nickname he and Marcus had tagged her with all those years ago, when she’d tried in vain to keep up with them.
“But I believe my words have wounded you, my lord…”
This time his smile was so quick and unexpectedly warm that it pierced straight to her heart. “You’re a strange woman, Arianne. One moment you despise me, and the next you worry over having hurt me with words. What am I to do with you?”
Flustered by the light, musing way he was gazing into her eyes, and fighting weariness and the temptation to succumb to his very potent and thoroughly male charm, Arianne spoke the first words that popped into her head.
“Take me to bed, my lord.”
His dark, slanting brows rose and laughter sprang into those cool gray eyes.
Too late, Arianne realized what she had said.
“I mean, lead me to bed…to my bed…er, a bed. I am weary beyond belief…I must sleep