recognized as David Murray. Edward was no coward. She would learn his identity soon enough, and he preferred that she hear it from him. Drawing a deep breath, he started across the room. A hand on his sleeve stopped him.
“Don’t, Edward.” Eleanor’s face was very pale. “Don’t humiliate me tonight.”
Gently, he disengaged her clutching fingers. “It isn’t like that, Eleanor. You must believe me. This has nothing to do with you.”
“It never does.” She nodded toward Mairi. “She is uncommonly lovely but not, I think, in your usual style.”
The bitterness in her voice surprised him. He did not dream that she cared so much. “I am truly sorry for your pain, my dear.”
She looked up at him, surprised and touched by his apology. “Does that mean—?” Eleanor left the rest of the question unsaid.
His handsome face reflected regret, but she was wise enough to know that contempt followed swiftly on the heels of pity. Lifting her head, she nodded toward the dancing tumblers concealed behind the doors. “They await your signal,” she reminded him. “Surely, the woman would not want you to shirk your duty.”
Mairi had already disappeared from sight with young Murray. “Very well, my dear,” he said, impatience flitting across his features. “You’ve won this time. I’ll not spoil your game. We shall signal the dancers.”
Eleanor walked beside her husband to the dais. Climbing the three steps leading to the royal banquet table, she seated herself beside him. Edward lifted his hand, and the entertainment began. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mairi, directly across from him at another table, sharing a trencher with David Murray. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that the two were close friends. Edward watched as Murray speared an oyster with his knife and held it to her lips, laughing at her grimace of distaste. Irrational jealously flooded through him. “Damn him to hell,” he swore under his breath. He would not watch another man paw his woman.
Deliberately, he tore his eyes away from the handsome pair and concentrated on the dancers. A woman, clad in a diaphanous garment, bent over backward, lifted her legs into the air, and walked on her hands. The audience roared with approval and banged their mugs on the oaken tables. Edward’s head ached. The noise and wine coupled with his own guilt was too much. Something must be done.
Suddenly, the performance was over, and the dancers disappeared behind the doors. Lord Northumberland stood and raised his goblet. “A toast,” he cried, loudly enough to still the merrymaking guests. “A toast to Edward, king of England.”
The cry was picked up and carried throughout the hall. One by one the nobility of England leaped to their feet and raised their mugs to honor their king. In the entire room, only two were still seated. Edward’s jaw tightened. There would be no mercy for Northumberland, that weasel from the borders. But now, he must face her. There was no help for it. The die was cast. Slowly, painfully, his gaze settled on the pale, shocked features of the woman he had lied to, loved, and abandoned.
From across the room, Mairi could see the startling color of Edward’s eyes. There was regret and something else in the ice-blue depths. Something that her mind refused to identify. Sweet Jesu, the king of England!
Why couldn’t she feel? She should be outraged, humiliated, shocked, anything but this dull, vacuous ache filling her chest. The knife she clutched in her hand slid out of her numb fingers and clattered loudly on the oak table. People were beginning to stare. Besides the king, she was the only one still seated. Dear God. Could it be true? Her brain began to work again. Edward wasn’t Lord Durbridge from the south of England. He was the king. The nobleman who had fallen in a bloody heap at her feet, the teasing companion who sat with her in front of the fire demanding a border ballad, the man who had shared her bed and cut his teeth on her heart, was none other than the king of England.
David stared at her, a troubled expression on his face. Blood rose in her cheeks. It seemed as if the eyes of the entire world were upon her. Rage and shame warred with each other in her breast. Carefully, she stood, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her. For a long moment her eyes met and held the anguished gaze of the king. Then, with a glittering