cling to the round thrust of her breasts. The shirt, rough as it was, could not conceal the smallness of her waist or the whiteness of the skin revealed by the deeply slitted neckline. Even a monk, sworn to resist any and all such temptations, would have felt a distinct desire to peel away the wet cloth and explore what lay beneath.
Eduard lifted a hand and touched it to the side of her neck. Ariel froze at the contact and the fiery brightness that had begun to fade from her breasts returned with a vengeance, spreading upward to where the backs of his fingers gently eased aside the edge of her shirt and held it away from the red, angry rash on her shoulder.
“Why did you not tell someone the clothing was too coarse against your skin?” he asked with a small frown.
“Should I also have told them the horse was too clumsy, the weather too cold, the ground too wet and lumpy?”
“Requesting to have the skin saved from being chafed from the bone is hardly an admission of weakness.”
Ariel held his gaze for a long moment, then shrugged away his concern with a slight roll of her shoulder. “Would that we were all like you, sirrah: open and honest with your admissions at all times.”
Eduard met the sarcasm with another frown. “In what way have I been dishonest?”
“Oh … in the way you think of me, for one thing.”
“My lady … I think of you in the manner which I am bound by oath and honour to think of you—as Lady Ariel de Clare, niece to the Earl of Pembroke, intended bride to Prince Rhys ap Iorwerth of Gwynedd.”
“How very proper of you,” she murmured.
“To think of you in any other way would be … rather improper of me, would it not?”
“There would be nothing improper in treating me as if I had a brain in my head and a spine in my back. Pushing me behind trees to hide and speaking of nothing more sinister than the weather when I am in your company does more to prick my temper than any ten challenges to prove myself equal.”
“Henry did warn me you had no love for bird songs,” he mused.
“Nor do I have a love for riddles,” she said flatly. “Or secrets.”
“Secrets, my lady?”
“Secrets. Whispered confidences. Conversations that cease abruptly when I come near. Sketched pictures in the dirt that a boot discreetly scrubs away before I look too closely.” For a moment, just a moment, she thought she had caught FitzRandwulf off guard with the charges and her unexpected success emboldened her. “You see? I am neither blind nor stupid, and if you are plotting something that involves me in any way, I have a right to know.”
“My lady …” He spoke slowly to give himself time to adapt to her quickness. “The only plotting that involves you has to do with the oath we gave your uncle to see you into the happy arms of your groom unhurt, unblemished, untouched. If we whisper among ourselves, it is because we discuss the ways and means of doing so without causing you undue concern. If we draw lines in the dirt and erase them, it is from force of habit, nothing more. With spies lurking behind every tree and beneath every rock, it has become necessary to keep a private thought private.”
“So now you accuse me of being a spy?”
“No. No, of course I do not think you are a spy …”
“Yet you do not trust me?”
The steely eyes widened guilelessly. “Demoiselle, you wound me. I had thought there was a possibility we could become fast friends.”
“Friends?” she scoffed. “You dream, my lord.”
“And you imagine conspiracies where there are none.”
“Are there not?” She allowed her smirk to tell him she believed him as much as she believed pigs could fly. “Why did you not tell me you were acquainted with my intended groom?”
“lorwerth? I have no knowledge of the man other than what his brother lets slip.”
“Not that groom,” she said irritably. “The other one … Reginald de Braose.”
Ariel had struck a second, unexpected blow to his composure, undermining it enough to put a sudden tautness in his jaw and bring to life a fine blue vein that throbbed in his temple.
“Where the devil did you hear about De Braose?” he asked harshly.
“Does it matter? The point is, I did not hear it from you, which I find odd in the extreme, considering how earnest you pretended to