In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,147

lesser degree, but of no less importance, he had ravished the sister of Lord Henry de Glare, a stalwart young lion in his own right who would no doubt take grave offence to FitzRandwulf’s lack of control.

Silence stretched between them for another awkward moment before Eduard sighed and looked down at his hands.

“What we did … what I did—” he said quietly, “was an unconscionable breach of trust, my lady, and I take full blame for it.”

“Full blame is not yours to take, my lord,” she replied softly, “for I do not recall fighting you overmuch. Challenging you, aye … but not fighting you. Thus we shall have to share the blame in equal parts.”

Eduard was adamant. “I took advantage.”

“I was a willing partner.”

“You were innocent.”

“I may have been a virgin, but I was hardly innocent.”

“My fault again,” he said with a frown. “For you still would have been innocent had I managed to keep my hands off you in St. Malo.”

“In body, perhaps. Not in thought.” She waited until the silver-gray eyes rose to hers before she added to her admission. “Had my thoughts been actions, I would have lost my innocence in the armoury at Amboise.”

“To a brute and a lecher, and a”—he paused and smiled faintly—“a great gawping ape?”

“You were the first man who looked at me as if I was a woman and not just the means to an alliance with the Marshal of England.”

“Had I known you were the marshal’s niece, I would not have looked at you at all,” he said dryly.

“See then, what we would have missed.”

Eduard’s mouth turned grim and she could almost see him withdrawing into himself again, closeting his emotions against any more displays of weakness.

“You act as if we have committed some terrible crime,” she mused.

“In the eyes of the king … and God … it will undoubtedly be regarded as such.”

Ariel turned her gaze to the fire. “For the king’s laws, I care nothing. As for God … He had ample opportunity to drown us on the rooftop if He was truly angered by what we were doing.”

“You feel no regret? No sense we have betrayed those who trusted us?”

She looked at him and her fists clenched around the folds of the blanket. “I trusted my heart, and it does not feel betrayed. Unless, of course, you did not mean it when you said you loved me.”

A tremor passed through Eduard’s body, but it was not caused by the chill of wet clothes. It was a stab of fear that slashed through him—the fear of a child who has suffered the darkest, blackest of nightmares and survived only because he has been able to put all hopes of love and being loved well behind the armoured plates surrounding his heart. He recognized some of that same fear in Ariel’s eyes as she watched him and waited for his answer … an answer that would either destroy them both or bring them out into the light.

“I meant what I said,” he whispered tautly. “I do love you.”

She seemed to wilt a moment, though there was not a flicker or shiver of visible motion anywhere in her body. “In that case, my lord, I have only one pressing regret.”

Eduard held his breath. “Yes?”

“My only regret,” she said, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue, “is that when I was so insistent with the words here and now … I had no idea the roof would be so … so unyielding.”

Eduard continued to stare at her as if he expected impalement at any moment, and he was as slow to follow Ariel’s hand down as he was to follow the hem of the blanket up over the hip she laid bare before him. The skin was chafed an angry red where it had come in contact with the coarse pebbling on the roof. In places the scratches were deep enough to have brought blood to the surface.

The swift, instinctive bracing of Eduard’s defenses still required a final, long look into her eyes before it drained from his body on a sudden rush of breath. The rush became a halting laugh, and the laugh a deep, comfortable rumble of helpless surrender that turned Ariel’s complexion an even deeper shade of pink.

“A rather unchivalrous response, my lord,” she grumbled, “Especially since you show no such ill effects yourself.”

Piqued, she started to push the blanket down, to cover herself again, when Eduard’s hand reached out and caught her around the wrist. While