In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,112

she added. “You will need me, FitzRandwulf, and you will not find me so easy to slough aside.”

Having nothing more to say, and naught but a few threads of courage holding herself together, Ariel dropped a faintly mocking curtsy and bid him a polite good night. Eduard stood and watched her climb the stairs to the chambers above. When she was gone, he moved stiffly around to the side of the table and reached for his tankard, but at the last instant, swept it and the flagon onto the floor in a spray of flying ale and clattering pewter. Ariel’s cup would have followed if his eye and then his hand had not strayed to something lying on the floor by his foot. It was the scrap of linen he had torn from her hair, and, as he bent to retrieve it, the firelight glinted off several long, shiny strands trapped in the cloth.

He ran the fiery filaments through his fingers and glanced again at the top of the stairs.

She was stubborn, proud, haughty, courageous … and she had called him on his own bluff. Was a vow made to one person worth more than a vow made to another? Was a promise made against the spell of a supple pair of lips worth less than a promise given in youthful fervor?

Were his obligations to Eleanor worth more than the responsibility he felt for Ariel de Clare?

Ariel had asked him if he loved Eleanor … how could any man not? She was sweet, gentle, kind, loving. She was pure and noble, innocent and compassionate, loyal to her last drop of blood. He had watched her grow from a pretty unspoiled child to a ravishingly beautiful woman possessing none of the traits or pretensions of someone who could put their own reflection to shame.

Had Ariel asked him if he lusted after Eleanor of Brittany, his answer might have surprised her, for Eleanor was like a sister to him and their love was a result of the purest kind of friendship. When the Wolf had rescued them both from Blood-moor Keep all those years ago, Eleanor had been the one to sit by Eduard’s side and hold his hand through the feverish days and nights spent recovering from the wounds he had earned at the Dragon’s hands. Physically, his thigh had been slashed open from hip to knee and crudely cauterized on a torturer’s rack; mentally, he had endured thirteen years of hell at the beck and call of a man who hated him and a dam—Nicolaa de la Haye—whose tongue could be sharper and more painful than any knife or lash. Eleanor had heard his worst nightmares and had wept with him while he shuddered and sweated through the aftermath. She had not betrayed him by word or deed to anyone, not even his father or his stepmother, who were so proud of the boldness and courage he displayed in the daylight, but who had remained ignorant to this day of the weeping, terrified coward he became at night.

Eleanor’s childhood had been only slightly less of an ordeal. Her father had died when she was two and her mother had regarded her as a nuisance getting in the way of her succession of lovers and her royal ambitions for Arthur. Constantly passed between her grandmother’s castle at Mirebeau and the French court in Paris, Eleanor had been raised in two worlds but belonged in neither. When she came of age to be of interest to her mother’s lust for power, she was put out on display like a sad little doll, pawed and bid upon by potentates, princelings, and fat Flemish dukes. Three times she had been betrothed and three times discarded for a better political prospect. Each time she had wept her fears and frustrations out in Eduard’s arms … along with her relief.

There were only two people in Eleanor’s world who knew her first and only love had always been for the Church. Eduard was one, her brother Arthur had been the other. Her mother, even her beloved grandmother, would have scoffed at the mere idea of an Angevin princess becoming a Bride of Christ; they became brides of political alliances and profitable unions instead.

Arthur had promised when he became king he would free Eleanor to follow her heart’s desire. With her brother’s death, Eduard was alone in knowing Eleanor of Brittany was no threat to the throne of England. She would not seek it, nor would she ever