“It was not—”
Rand came an abrupt halt, cursing softly before pressing his lips together.
“A girl child, then, and Henry’s daughter,” she said, leaning back in satisfaction. “It still gives rise to possibilities.”
Rand drew up and stepped down from his destrier, tossing the reins to his squire, who sidled close enough to take them. Catching up with the slow-moving litter in a few long strides, he swung inside and pulled the curtain across the opening, closing himself inside with Lady Isabel.
She dropped the bag of confections and scooted back against the litter’s front panel. Drawing up her legs, she wrapped her skirt around her bare ankles. “What…what are you doing?”
“How can I impress upon you the danger of speaking out of turn?” he demanded, leaning toward her with one arm braced on his raised knee. “You may think you are safe because Henry smiles upon you now and then or because you are a friend of his consort. But Elizabeth is yet uncrowned, and unlikely to be until she has produced an heir to the throne. As a daughter of the house of York, she remains at court on sufferance, so has no power to save you from Henry’s wrath. Indeed, she must keep her tongue between her teeth to protect herself from the watchers set around her by the queen’s mother.”
“Lady Margaret? She would never harm anyone.”
“A woman who can scheme for decades, marrying herself off to lay hands on the money necessary to raise an army strong enough to put her son on the throne, is capable of anything—and you’ll do best to remember it. Lady Margaret has only one thought in her head, and that is to gain whatever may be best for Henry. Cross her, allow her to perceive you as a threat, only at your peril.”
“Why should you care?” she asked so quietly he had to strain to hear. “Why would you warn me?”
“Because I am as devious as they are,” he said in grim despair. “I also have only one thought that has nothing to do with kings or queens.”
“And that would be?”
She should not have asked. It was all the excuse he required.
Reaching for her, he drew her into his arms so quickly he set the litter to jouncing on its straps. “To show you other uses for a lady’s mouth,” he answered in low hunger, “and particularly her small, sharp, pink-and-green-stained tongue.”
She stared up at him from where she rested against his upright knee, her eyes as smoky green as the northern hills, her flat cap and veil fallen away so her hair trailed in silken fire over his knee. Then her lashes fluttered shut as he set his mouth to hers.
She tasted of marzipan and sweet, warm female, a flavor headier than the finest mead. Rand reveled in it, intoxicated, fascinated by the softness of her lips, their moist inner surfaces, the glasslike edges of her teeth. Her breath feathered softly across his face. She was firmly rounded against him, enticing in her stillness. He released her arm, spanned the slender concave of her waist with hard fingers, skimmed upward until his palm cupped the glory of her breast. The nipple was a small, hard berry under the fine wool of her bodice. As it tightened further, he circled it with his thumb again and again in mindless exhilaration.
A low sound—part moan, part protest—left her. He heard but was beyond acknowledging it, deepening the kiss instead. The retreat of her tongue from his enticed him; the taste of her held him in thrall. The need for more, and still more of her, clamored in his head, his chest, his heated groin. Her wet softness was his grail and he searched diligently for it, sliding his hand back down over her hip and underneath the hem of her gown. He brushed upward over her calf, her thigh and higher, to where she lay unprotected, infinitely vulnerable to his marauding fingers.
She writhed, gasping at his touch, his intimate invasion. His overheated brain presented the image of how easy it would be to roll her beneath him and slide into her hot, moist depths, taking her there in the swaying bower of a litter while their guard trotted before and behind them.
He had forgotten the ford.
The litter lurched forward as they descended the near bank. Water splashed against the curtains, coming through as a drenching spray. Rand drew a sharp breath, returning abruptly to his senses. He sat for a rigid instant, fighting for control. Then he smoothed down Lady Isabel’s skirts and set her from him. Not trusting himself to speak, much less look at the woman he had mauled with such fine disregard for their circumstances, he waited until the litter lurched backward as its mules climbed from the ford. He batted aside the curtains then, and stepped down, sweeping them shut again behind him.
Some minutes later, when he had remounted the gray and cantered to the head of the column once more, his half brother fell into place beside him. “Well?” he inquired with a curl to his mouth.
“Well, what?” The words came out with more of a growl to them than Rand intended.
“How was she?”
“Comfortable,” he said, and felt heat burn the back of his neck.
“No doubt. But was she, is she, of an accommodating disposition?”
Rand gave McConnell a hard stare. “I have no idea. She deserves better than to be molested while half the men within two counties hang on every moan.”
“A sad waste of a fine opportunity, then, especially when you have the perfect excuse.”
“Nor does she need to be bedded by a man who may live only as long as it takes to reach the king’s Star Chamber. She will have a much better chance at another husband if there’s no chance she’s breeding.”
That was, to the best of his understanding, the reason he had left Isabel alone in the litter. The decision was sudden and in stark contrast to his previous intentions, so he had not been thinking too clearly.
There were, of course, those who would willingly take a pregnant woman to wife since her condition proved her ability to bear children. Most preferred a virgin, however, or at least a lengthy betrothal that would prove she was not with child. Anyway, the likelihood that Henry VII would now hand over the stepsister of the Earl of Graydon to a man charged with murder was so remote as to be laughable.
“Very noble, but will offer little satisfaction while you lie in a prison cell. Besides, if she was with your get, she could well inherit Braesford should you hang.”
“Keeping it from your possession? A strong incentive, I must say,” Rand answered in dry tones, looking away toward where the wooded copse they had traveled through followed the curve of the burn.
“Or I could offer my aid and support so she might persuade Henry that she requires a new husband to replace my bastard brother. Who knows? He could agree in honor of your memory.”
“So he might, but I wouldn’t depend on it. Besides, I don’t intend to be a mere memory.”
Rand kicked the stallion into a fast canter and left McConnell in the dust. If only his doubts and fears could be left behind so easily.
Isabel lay where Braesford had left her. She watched the spots of brightness caused by sunlight striking through the trees onto the hemp top of the litter. She should have been incensed. Instead, she was thoughtful.
Why had he stopped?
It seemed unlikely that a mere dash of water in the face could have had such effect. Had it brought him to his senses, as it seemed, or merely served to remind him of a deeper purpose? Had he really intended an object lesson in the proper use of her tongue or something more? Had he wanted to show her what was to come when they were joined in wedlock, or merely to prove she could be brought to succumb to desire for a nobody?
So this was passion, this languor in the blood and compelling urge toward surrender