In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,96

longer before leaning over the side of a bed and settling her down as carefully as he could. She was deathly pale except for the growing blue patch on her forehead … and the blood. There was a wide, smeared streak of it running from the cracked egg on her scalp to the collar of her tunic. It was matted in her hair and staining her hands; a small red rosette of it blotched the front of his gypon, just above the Crusader’s cross stitched on the gray wool.

Her skin was so white, her eyes so green and deep … capable of drowning a man’s best intentions. Eduard reached up to unlace her hands from around his neck, but she resisted, and her fingers were so cold, he took them no further than the caressing warmth of his lips.

“You … will not abandon us again?” she implored.

He cupped her hands in his and kissed the soft hollow of each palm. “No, my lady, I will not abandon you again.”

“I … would have your most solemn oath on that, sirrah,” she whispered, her gaze fastened on his mouth.

In the sudden stillness, Eduard was acutely aware of the beating of his heart and of the soft, shallow breaths that parted her lips. He knew she was half in a daze and not fully responsible for what she said or did, but somewhere between a sigh and a whisper, he bowed his head closer to hers.

“You have my most solemn oath,” he murmured. “I will not abandon you.”

“Seal it,” she said on a rush.

“My lady …?”

She untangled her hands from his and laced them around his neck again, drawing his mouth down to within a warm breath of hers.

“Seal it, damn you, before I—”

Eduard’s mouth came down lightly, obligingly over hers, smothering her words, changing them into soft, throaty sighs. That was all he intended it to be—a means of silencing her— and all it would have been if a second sigh had not parted her lips beneath his, and if his own had not betrayed him by giving her what she wanted, taking what he himself wanted.

It was madness. He knew it was madness, yet he could not stop once the taste of her flooded his senses. Ever since she had challenged him to kiss her on the ramparts, the memory had haunted him. It had taunted him in the mists by the riverbank and it had intruded again in the abbey last night. He had not set out alone in the chill and fog because of a need to scout the road ahead; he had set out alone because he was not altogether certain it was only the heat of his temper being aroused by Ariel de Clare. He feared a heat of a different, dangerous kind was beginning to disrupt his instincts, erode his judgement, but if he had been hoping to prove himself wrong, he had failed miserably in his quest. All through the day he had caught himself thinking about her. Wondering. Worrying. Then in the tavern, when he had seen the blood, and felt her reach out to him …

Eduard ignored instinct and judgement now as his lips became almost bruising in their need to atone. Ariel shivered once, violently, and he broke abruptly away, fearing he had hurt her, but her eyes were wide and dark and trusting, and he kissed her again, groaning as he shared the exquisite, shuddering crests of pleasure that quivered through her body.

Ariel’s hands went slack around his neck and the breath fluttered from her lungs on a long, blissful sigh. Her lashes fought a moment longer before they drifted closed and Eduard caught her hands, holding them a few seconds more than was necessary, releasing them only when he heard the squeak of a floorboard behind him.

Thinking it was the matron arrived with water and bandages, Eduard was startled when he turned and found Henry de Clare’s hazel eyes waiting for him.

Eduard had not heard the knight follow him up the stairs, nor had he any idea how long De Clare had been standing in the doorway, although, to judge by the warmth of his complexion, it was safe to assume he had not just arrived.

Henry looked as if he had just come from a battlefield, not a tavern brawl. His jaw bore a long gash that had bled profusely down the front of his tunic; his face was bruised, his lip cut and swollen. His eyes were bloodshot and