Royal Assassin - Страница 52

Molly stared a moment. Her voice was low as she said, “I do not wish to marry you.”

“I wasn’t going to tell him that part.” I found myself grinning at her.

“You are intolerable!”

“Yes. And very cold. Please, at least let me come in out of the cold.”

She did not give me permission. But she did stand back from the window. I jumped lightly in, ignoring the jolt to my arm. I closed and fastened the shutters. I walked across the room. I knelt by her hearth and built up the fire well with logs to chase the chill from the room. Then I stood, thawing my hands at it. Molly said not a word. She stood sword straight, her arms crossed on her chest. I glanced over at her and smiled.

She didn’t smile. “You should go.”

I felt my own smile fade. “Molly, please, just talk to me. I thought, the last time we spoke, that we understood each other. Now you don’t speak to me, you turn away. . . . I don’t know what changed, I don’t understand what is happening between us.”

“Nothing.” She suddenly looked very fragile. “Nothing is happening between us. Nothing can happen between us. ‘FitzChivalry’” — and that name sounded so strange on her lips — “I’ve had time to think. If you had come to me, like this, a week ago, or a month ago, impetuous and smiling, I know I would have been won over.” She permitted herself the ghost of a sad smile. As if she were remembering the way a dead child had skipped on some long-ago summer day. “But you didn’t. You were correct and practical, and did all the right things. And foolish as it may sound, that hurt me. I told myself that if you loved me as deeply as you had declared you did, nothing — not walls, not manners or reputation or protocol — would get in the way of your seeing me. That night, when you came, when we . . . but it changed nothing. You did not come back.”

“But it was for your sake, for your reputation—” I began desperately.

“Hush. I told you it was foolish. But feelings do not have to be wise. Feelings just are. Your loving me was not wise. Nor my caring for you. I’ve come to see that. And I’ve come to see that wisdom must overrule feelings.” She sighed. “I was so angry when your uncle first spoke to me. So outraged. He made me defiant, he gave me a steel resolve to stay in spite of everything that stood between us. But I am not a stone. Even if I were, even a stone can be worn away by the constant cold drip of common sense.”

“My uncle? Prince Regal?” I was incredulous at the betrayal.

She nodded slowly. “He wished me to keep his visit to myself. Nothing, he said, could be gained by your knowing of it. He needed to act in his family’s best interests. He said I should understand that. I did, but it made me angry. It was only over time that he made me see that it was in my own best interests as well.” She paused and brushed a hand over her cheek. She was crying. Silently, just the tears running as she spoke.

I walked across the room to her. Tentatively, I took her into my arms. She didn’t resist, and that surprised me. I held her carefully, as if she were a butterfly that might be crushed too easily. She leaned her head forward, so that her forehead barely rested on my shoulder, and spoke into my chest. “In a few more months, I will have saved enough that I can start out on my own again. Not open a business, but rent a room somewhere, and find work to sustain me. And begin to start saving for a shop. That’s what I intend to do. Lady Patience is kind, and Lacey has become a real friend to me. But I do not like being a servant. And I will do it no longer than I have to.” She stopped speaking and stood still in my arms. She was trembling lightly, as if from exhaustion: She seemed to have run out of words.

“What did my uncle say to you?” I asked carefully.

“Oh.” She swallowed, and moved her face lightly against me. I think she wiped tears on my shirt. “Only what I should have expected him to say. When first he came to me, he was cold and aloof. He thought me a . . . street whore, I suppose. He warned me sternly that the King would tolerate no more scandals. He demanded to know if I was with child. Of course, I was angry. I told him it was impossible that I should be. That we had never . . .” Molly paused and I could feel how shamed she had been that anyone could even ask such a question. “So then he told me that if that was so, it was good. He asked what I thought I deserved, as reparation for your deceptions.”

The word was like a little knife twisted in my guts. The fury I felt was building, but I forced myself to keep silent that she might speak it all out.

“I told him I expected nothing. That I had deceived myself as much as you had deceived me. So then he offered me money. To go away. And never speak of you. Or what had happened between us.”

She was having trouble speaking. Her voice kept getting higher and tighter on each phrase. She fought for a semblance of calm I knew she didn’t feel. “He offered me enough to open a chandlery. I was angry. I told him I could not be paid to stop loving someone. That if the offer of money could make me love, or not love, then I was truly a whore. He grew very angry, but he left.” She gave a sudden shuddering sob, then held herself still. I moved my hands lightly over her shoulders, feeling the tension there. I stroked her hair; softer than any horse’s mane, and sleeker. She had fallen silent.

“Regal makes mischief,” I heard myself say. “He seeks to injure me by driving you away. To shame me by hurting you.” I shook my head to myself, wondering at my stupidity. “I should have foreseen this. All I thought was that he might whisper against you. Or arrange for physical harm to befall you. But Burrich is right. The man has no morals, he is bound by no rules.”

“He was cold, at first. But never coarsely rude. He came only as the King’s messenger, he said, and came himself to save scandal, that no more should know of it than needed to. He sought to avoid talk, not make it. Later, after we had talked a few times, he said he regretted to see me cornered so, and that he would tell the King it was not of my devising. He even bought candles of me, and arranged for others to know what I had to sell. I believe he is trying to help, FitzChivalry. Or so he sees it.”

To hear her defend Regal cut me deeper than any insult or rebuke she could level at me. My fingers tangled in her soft hair and I unwound them carefully. Regal. All the weeks I had gone alone, avoiding her, not speaking to her lest it cause scandal. Leaving her alone, so that Regal could come in my stead. Not courting her, no, but winning her with his practiced charm and studied words. Chopping away at her image of me while I was not there to contradict anything he said. Making himself out to be her ally while I was left voiceless to become the unthinking callow youth, the thoughtless villain. I bit my tongue before I spoke any more ill of him to her. It would only sound like a shallow angry boy striking back at one who sought to deny his will.

“Have you ever spoken of Regal’s visits to Patience or Lacey? What did they say of him?”

She shook her head, and the movement loosed the fragrance of her hair. “He cautioned me not to speak of it. ‘Women talk’ he said, and I know that is true. I should not even have spoken of it to you. He said that Patience and Lacey would respect me more if it seemed I had reached this decision on my own. He said, also . . . that you would not let me go . . . if you thought the decision came from him. That you must believe that I turned away from you on my own.”

“He knows me that well,” I conceded to her.

“I should not have told you,” she murmured. She pushed a little away from me, to look up into my eyes. “I don’t know why I did.”

Her eyes and her hair were the colors of a forest. “Perhaps you did not want me to let you go?” I ventured.

“You must,” she said. “We both know there is no future for us.”

For an instant all was stillness. The fire crackled softly to itself. Neither of us moved. But somehow I stepped to another place, where I was achingly aware of every scent and touch of her. Her eyes and the herb scents of her skin and hair were one piece with the warmth and suppleness of her body under the soft woolen night robe. I experienced her as if she were a new color suddenly revealed to my eyes. All concerns, even all thoughts, were suspended in that sudden awareness. I know I trembled, for she put her hands on my shoulders and clasped them, to steady me. Warmth flowed through me from her hands. I looked down into her eyes and wondered at what I saw there.

She kissed me.

That simple act, of offering up her mouth to mine, was like the opening of a floodgate. What followed was a seamless continuation of her kiss. We did not pause to consider wisdom or morality, we did not hesitate at all. The permission we gave each other was absolute. We ventured together into that newness, and I cannot imagine a deeper joining than our shared amazement brought us. We both came whole to that night, unfettered by expectations or memories of others. I had no more right to her than she had to me. But I gave and I took and I swear I shall never regret it. The memory of that night’s sweet awkwardness is the truest possession of my soul. My trembling fingers jumbled the ribbon at the neck closure of her nightgown into a hopeless knot. Molly seemed wise and sure as she touched me, only to betray her surprise with her sharply indrawn breath when I responded. It did not matter. Our ignorance yielded to a knowing older than us both. I strove to be both gentle and strong, but found myself amazed at her strength and gentleness both.