The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(73)
“You have three days to leave Scotland. Take any ship you like to any port you choose…but if you ever set foot in this country again, I will kill you.”
The man might be vicious, but he had the instincts of an animal primed for survival. He knew Stephen meant it. Twisting Robert’s arm behind his back, Stephen marched him across the parlour then out the front door. With a shove, he pushed him down the stairs and left him in a huddle on the ground.
Returning to the parlour, he hesitated over whether to summon a servant to help Maisie. She had gotten to her feet, looking more blank than he’d ever seen her. She caught his eye and read his indecision.
“Don’t call anyone. Not yet. Please.”
He swallowed, and closed the door behind him. “Are you all right?”
Why did people ask that at such times? Of course she was not all right. From halfway across the room he could see the marks on her throat where bruises would blossom, a long scratch across one cheek. Her robe had been ripped open and the ribbons torn from their seams. It hung off one shoulder, the shift beneath grubby where her brother had put his hands.
Stephen swallowed again and had to force himself to stillness. If he let himself move, he didn’t know what he might do.
Maisie moved, instead. And as she came nearer, he saw that the blankness was merely a thin mask over her fear. And fury. “Such a fool,” she said bitterly. “I should have known better. What was I thinking?”
“It is my fault,” he argued. “I should not have left you alone in Edinburgh. I just never dreamed…” His hand moved of its own accord and lightly touched the welt next to her eye. That was when Stephen realized she was shaking.
He pulled her into an embrace, meant only to comfort and ground her. To allow her to gather her considerable reserves of strength and then return to her preferred distance. The kind of comfort he had offered in Ireland after Liadan’s death, the first time he had seen that flood of pale hair loose about her shoulders…
“Stephen,” she whispered.
He drew back just enough to see her face, and waited for whatever she meant to say or ask. He was stopped by the expression in her eyes.
And then she kissed him.
She couldn’t have reached him if he hadn’t bent down to meet her. For a few heartbeats he kept careful control, trying to discern the mixed motives behind her gesture. He would not take advantage of her. He had been down that road before, and it ended every time in blood and guilt.
“Stephen,” she kept saying, every time she freed her mouth enough to speak. “Stephen, please.”
With all his force of will, Stephen finally held her off from him just enough to ask, “Is this merely turmoil? Because, God help me, I would take you even if it were, but I could not bear for you to regret it after.”
“Regret?” She choked on a laugh, partly a sob. “I love you, Stephen. For so long. Did you not know that?”
He stared at her, almost as shocked as he’d been when he walked into the parlour. “Truly?”
“I would not burden you with it, for I knew you could never want me the same way. I am not Ailis. How could you content yourself with me after women like her?”
There were no more words after that, or at least no more than a few broken syllables. Why tell Maisie she was wrong when he could show her just how wrong? Stephen bent to kiss her in earnest now, and in their mutual eagerness they stumbled across the floor. There was a window with a deep ledge, and Stephen lifted her onto it the more easily to reach her.
Always before in his life, there had been a bed, even if only a pallet inside a tent. But neither of them had the patience to delay more than was absolutely necessary. He pushed the ruined robe down to her elbows, holding her there, and kissed everywhere he could reach. When she moved to free her arms, it was to pull them out of her brocade sleeves altogether so that there was only her gossamer shift covering her, the fabric outlining the body beneath so clearly that Stephen groaned with several years’ worth of frustrated desire. He thought he managed to say her name.
Then her hands were at his waist, undoing buckles and laces and pulling him nearer, and his own hands found the hem of her shift and slid it up, and then he could not have composed a coherent thought if the entire world were on fire and he was needed to save it.
Afterward, they were both too deliciously boneless with pleasure to stay upright. He lifted her from the window ledge and slid down with his back to the wall, legs stretched out long. Maisie curled up next to him, her bright head resting on his chest.
“That,” she said dreamily, “was nothing at all like Finian.”
Indignation flared. “I should hope not,” he said. “Finian Kavanaugh was an old man.”
Her laughter rang like church bells across a once-frozen landscape. “You called me Maisie,” she added.
“Did I? I suppose at the moment I could not spare breath for the extra syllables. Mariota.” He kissed the top of her head, one hand winding a length of her thick hair around his palm. “Why did you never tell me? All these weeks of marriage, when we might have been doing this?”
“You never gave any sign that you would care to have me in your bed. Which,” she added with laughter, “I suppose you haven’t as yet.”
“I kept my distance for your sake! Because one moment you were agreeing to marry me and the next you were matter-of-factly assuring me I was free to sleep with any other woman I liked as long as I was discreet. ‘I have no objection to bearing your children,’?” he quoted. “What the devil was I supposed to think?”