In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,60
love?”
“Craving … and loving … are two entirely different matters,” he said, wondering how the devil he had become trapped in this conversation. “Neither of which, I am happy to recount, have plagued me to the point of sleeplessness.”
His answer was sharp and perfunctory, meant to discourage any further probings. Naturally, it had the opposite effect on Ariel and she had to stop herself from openly speculating on what kind of woman would earn the affections of this scarred, enigmatic knight. He was a bastard, true enough, but there were many households where five and six daughters needed husbands, where the youngest and least dowered would look only too readily on a union with the D’Amboise name. Had his aim been too high, perhaps? Was it the reverse of her own situation, where she, being of noble blood, would not be expected to marry below the salt, regardless if the groom was selected by the king or by the pope himself?
She sighed, the importance of Eduard’s situation, real or imagined, being supplanted by the desperation of her own.
“I suppose I am partly to blame for what has happened,” she said miserably. “I should have heeded my aunt’s advice and paid more serious attention to the parade of suitors who have called at Pembroke. There have been so many,” she added sardonically, “’tis a certainty more than a few would have passing acquaintance with the king. Perhaps … I should have made myself so horribly unappealing, no man would have taken an interest in me. No man would have touched me, through craving or loving.”
As if on cue, a long, silky strand of her hair escaped her hood and slithered past his cheek. It was very shiny and very metallic, also the only thing about her that retained any colour other than blue or black. As he reached up to disentangle it from his shoulder and sleeve, he remembered all too vividly how it had looked that afternoon—a crushing abundance of pure flame, red and gold. Unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Unlike anything he imagined he would see again.
Thus distracted, he was taking so long to offer the expected and chivalrous reassurances that nothing she could do short of boiling her face in oil and studding it with iron spikes could render a man anything less than speechless with her beauty, she was forced to glare up at him again.
“Unless, of course,” she said in a brittle voice, “I am already so ugly I should expect nothing better than a gaoler’s son?”
Eduard met the dark sparkle of her eyes. “I hardly think you need fear that, my lady.”
“Do you not? Was that why you thought to steal a kiss from me earlier today … because you thought me to be so beautiful?”
Beautiful, Eduard mused. Half-naked. Delectably defiant. A grin pulled at his mouth as he considered all of these reasons. “In truth, I might have thought to steal more than one had you not put me in my proper place.”
Now she knew he was mocking her, and Ariel felt the heat rise in her blood. “Just because you have been put in your place … does this mean you no longer find me desirable?”
Eduard’s gaze roved over the shape of her face, lingering on the full, pouting lips before sliding lower. The swirling wind grasped at the opportunity for mischief and swept the hood of her mantle off her head and sent the fluttering wings of wool ballooning out behind her. The blanchet she wore beneath was pale and shapeless, but the wind molded it to her body like water, and the linen glowed almost silver in the glowering light. A second gust filled the air with long, rippling drifts of her hair. It clouded her face and shoulders; sleek, curling ribbons of it were flung across the gap between them, the strands clinging to his shoulders, tangling with his own dark mane.
Despite his opinion of her being a spoiled, sharp-tongued brat who deserved to be bound to a dung collector to learn humility, Eduard could not in all honesty deny the response she aroused in his body. She was a beauty, and he was no monk. His blood began to flow slowly and sluggishly, just as it did in the still moments before a battle. There was a heaviness in the pit of his belly, an expanding and swelling that not only took him by surprise, but prompted him to step forward, not back, and to meet the bright