Tearle put the gown on the bed, then took her hand and led her to sit down on a bench before the fire. He took a beautiful tortoiseshell comb from the top of a small table and gently began to comb Zared's hair.
"I can do this."
He pushed her hands away. "You and I will not be together long. Do not deny me what pleasure I can find."
She didn't answer him but closed her eyes as he gently combed the tangles from her hair. As a child she had never combed her hair; only when she grew older and began to notice the handsome young men who trained with her brothers had she taken a comb to her hair, and then she had merely dragged it through, tearing at the knots.
"Such a beautiful color," Tearle said. "And as soft as thistledown." He ran his hands up the back of her neck, then over her scalp, massaging it. "There is no silk to compare with your hair."
When he stopped caressing her head she opened her eyes and saw him standing between her and the fire. There was a warmth in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. "It's only hair," she said gruffly, trying to hide the fact that his words had pleased her.
"Will you get dressed now?"
Zared looked at the gown lying on the bed. Surely she could figure it out by herself. Before she could decide what to do Tearle came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders and began sliding the robe off of her. Instinctively she clutched it to her.
"I will play the lady's maid tonight," he said. "I will help you with the fastenings." He smiled. "Unless you'd rather I called Margaret."
"No, I…" She swallowed. "Perhaps I could have supper in this room."
"Zared," he said sternly, "you are going to have to leave this room at some time. You cannot stay in here forever wearing only that one robe. If you do not want me in here, I can call a maid."
He was her enemy but at least he was familiar to her. She had spent days in his company. She released her hold on the robe, and he took the robe from her. Zared snatched the gown off the bed and held it in front of her body.
"Now," he said with the sound of efficiency in his voice, "over the head. No, not that way, the other way. Here, turn this around so the front is this way."
Zared held the gown to her, clutching it so that it did not gape across her bosom. Never in her life had she gone into the light of day with her breasts unbound, and putting on the dress—her breasts without their painful binding—made her feel rather strange.
"Hold still," Tearle said from behind her as he drew the laces down the back of the dress tightly together.
Zared was used to tight lacing, but it usually covered her breasts. This tightness was lower, pulling in her waist. She looked down and saw that her breasts were quite exposed in the deep V of the neckline. She put her hand up to cover herself.
Tearle finished with the lacing then turned her around to look at her. "I think it is a perfect fit. My mother was always very slender." He stepped back to look at her. "Put your hand down. Go on, hands to your sides."
Zared obeyed him, but she didn't look at him until his silence was more than she could bear. Slowly she lifted her eyes to look at him. He wore an odd expression that seemed to make her body grow warmer.
Tearle cleared his throat and dragged his eyes away from her. "Shall we go down to dinner?" He held out his arm for her to take.
Zared took two steps toward him and promptly fell face forward. She would have hit the floor except that Tearle caught her.
"It's the train," he said.
Zared looked behind her and saw that the dress had a great deal of fabric flowing out the back of it. How, she wondered, did one walk with that dragging?
"I think you throw it over your arm," Tearle said, and when Zared gave him a look of disbelief he tried to demonstrate. "I think you do it like this."
She watched as he took a few mincing steps, then made a sweeping bend as though reaching for something. He flipped the imaginary object over his arm. Zared did everything that she could to keep from laughing. This was the Black Knight? This was the mysterious knight who felled all comers?
She gave a little frown. "I still do not understand. Will you show me again?"
"I told you that I'm not completely sure how it's done, but the ladies seem to do it with ease. Now walk like this."
She watched as he did his imitation of a lady taking tiny steps.
"Then bend—do this gracefully—pick up the train, and drop it over your arm. There, that wasn't so difficult, was it?"
"I shall try it." Zared took two steps, trying to imitate his walk, then she bent and purposely missed catching the fabric of the train. She looked up at him. "I think you will have to show me again."
He sighed. "All right, but watch carefully this time. Walk. Bend. Lift. Drop." He demonstrated each word, then turned back to her. "Now you try it."
Again Zared made a mess of trying to toss the train over her arm, and she managed to conceal her smile at his frown.
He moved to stand behind her, then put one hand about her waist. "Walk," he ordered, then he bent forward, forcing her to bend also. He took her right hand in his. "Now pick up the damned thing and throw it over your arm."
Zared again managed to drop the train. She stepped away from him and gave him an innocent look. "I seem to be a fool at this. Perhaps you should try on the gown and show me that way."
The look on his face made Zared's laughter erupt.
"Why, you little minx," he said, lunging for her.
With a motion that was almost expert Zared grabbed the train and flung it over her arm before she began to run from him. At first she began to run in earnest, immediately making for the door, but he reached it before she did and put his arm across it so that she couldn't open it. For a moment she was afraid of him. Had she teased her brothers as she had him, making fun of their masculine abilities, they would have made her pay. But when she looked into the eyes of the man she saw that he was amused by her.
She ran from him, holding her train with one hand and slipping around the bedpost with the other. At first it seemed odd to her that she knew he could catch her but that he didn't. She ran toward a table and put it between them, and when she dodged one way he blocked her exit, so she went the other way, and he blocked that way, too. She smiled, and then she laughed and moved back and forth as quickly as possible. But he was always faster.
Zared pushed a chair to the floor and made a leap across it, and he reached for her, but she ran before he could catch her. She ran toward the window seat, and when he made a lunge at her she gave a squeal of laughter and jumped to the floor. He was inches behind her, and twice he caught her, but his hands were loose on her body, and she could easily escape him.
By the time she jumped on the bed she was breathless from laughter and from running, and from something else that she didn't quite understand.
He caught her on the bed. He rolled her about, tickling her until she was dying of laughter, his hands running up and down her body.
"Do you beg me for forgiveness?" he asked, his hands at her ribs. He stopped moving his fingers as he looked down at her. She was on her back on the bed while he sat over her, his thighs straddling her hips.
"Never!" she said, but she was smiling. "I will never beg forgiveness from a Howard."
She had meant no harm by what she said—she hadn't even thought of the meaning of her words— but his face lost its good humor, and he moved off of her. She caught his arm before he left the bed. "I meant no…" She didn't know how to finish her sentence.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, then he turned and looked at her. Zared held her breath. Actually, she thought, he wasn't a bad-looking man at all. She smiled at him.
He grinned at her, and Zared thought that perhaps he was the opposite of bad-looking.
He grinned more broadly and made a lunge across the bed for her. "You'll be the death of me," he said as he caught her in his arms.
Zared squealed, her arms together, then stopped moving and looked up at him. His eyes were soft, and she didn't
understand the expression.
"You're very pretty, you know." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I'm not," she said softly. "I look like a boy."
At that he gave a snort of laughter and lay down beside her, then pulled her into his arms, her back to his front. "I never saw anyone look less like a boy."
"But no one even questions that I—"
"That shows how stupid people are."
She relaxed against him. No one had ever held her like that. There was no physical affection between her and her brothers, and there were few women in her brothers' home. Some part of her brain told her to move away from him, but it felt so good to be held that she didn't move.
His big hand smoothed the hair off of her face. Her hair was still damp from washing, and she felt him bury his face in it. She closed her eyes for a moment.
"You're not beautiful like Anne Marshall," he said softly. "You're more like… a two-day-old colt or a pup."
She pushed at his arms, but he didn't release her. "A horse? I look like a horse? Or is it a dog?"
"You know very well what I mean," he answered, and he put his face further into her hair, smelling it. His lips reached her neck and kissed her a few times.
"Mmmm. I understand," she said, her eyes closed. "Men like Anne Marshall. My brother did. He liked her even after all the terrible things she did to him." She moved her head so that he could have better access to her neck. He was placing little nibbling kisses down it. "I wager that you wish you could have had Lady Anne."
Tearle stopped kissing her and pulled her closer to him. "She was offered to me, but I turned her down."
Zared was astonished by that, and she wanted to look into his eyes to see if he was lying. She turned over in his arms so that they were facing each other. "You would not have turned down Lady Anne. She is beautiful, and she is rich. Any man who was offered her would have taken her."
"I was, but I did not." Again he began to touch the hair at her temple. "What fine red stuff this is. Like a spider's web."
"Spiders' webs are sticky. Why would you have turned down Anne Marshall?"
"Because I did not want her. She has a sharp tongue on her, and she is much too clever to live with."
"But what does that matter? Severn will not care for her tongue. He will make her obey."
"As your older brother Rogan has made his wife obey?"
She started to ask him how he knew of her family, but then she remembered that he was a Howard, and that his family spied on hers. But she also remembered that he had been out drinking with her brother Severn, and Zared knew that there were no gossips like men with a keg of beer to share. Instead of cursing him, as was her first inclination, she smiled. "Did Severn tell you of our brother?"
"In detail. He does not know whether to hate his sister-in-law or love her." Tearle ran his hand down her shoulder, his eyes lowered. "However did you hide all of that under your boy's clothes?"
Zared looked down at her breasts, which were pushing out above the velvet of her dress. She put her hand up to cover herself and at the same time started to move away from him, but he held her where she was.
He moved her hand away. "If I cannot touch, at least allow me to look my fill."
She felt herself blushing, and her body tingled all the way down to her toes. "Cannot touch?" she said, her voice catching.
"If our marriage is to end, if I ask the king to annul our marriage, then I feel that I must leave you a virgin. If you are to get another husband, then I would think that he'd want the pleasure of taking your virginity."
"Oh," she said. "Of course." She couldn't breathe very well because his hand was running over the exposed skin of her breasts.
"I hope he is a good lover to you."
"Who?"
"The man you marry. The man who has the right to give you children. The man who has the right to take his pleasure with your beautiful body."
"I am not beautiful. You have just said so. And you said that I was not clever."
"But you have never heard me say that you were not the most desirable female I have ever met in my life, have you?"
"No, I have not." Her voice was very soft. His fingers were slipping down the front of her gown.
"In all the French court I saw no woman more desirable than you."
"A-and how am I d-desirable?" Her eyes were closed. She could smell the strong masculine scent of him, feel the heat of his body so near hers.
"There is an innocence about you. Too many women know all there is to know about men and women before they spend the night together. But you, you are an unmarked slate. A man may teach you what he wants you to know."
Her eyes flew open, and she stiffened in his arms. "I know how children are conceived," she said with some anger in her voice. "I am no ignorant country girl. I may not be a clever beauty like your Lady Anne, but I know a great deal about men and women."
He gave her an infuriating smile. "You know only of the act. You know nothing of what goes before."
"Before what?"
He ran his hand over her bare shoulder. "There is what happens between a man and woman that produces children, and there is lovemaking. A world of difference exists between the two of them."
She was still feeling hurt by his saying that she knew nothing. "Perhaps you should tell me the difference, and I will tell you if you are correct."
He gave a little laugh. "Ah, my little falcon, would that I could show you the difference, but there is my sanity to consider. I think we have had enough of this and that we had better go to dinner."
He dropped his arms from around her and started to move to the other side of the bed, but she caught his shoulder.
"You would tell Lady Anne, wouldn't you? She would be clever enough to understand you, wouldn't she?"
He looked over his shoulder at her. "I imagine that Anne knows all there is to know of what goes on between men and women. If your brother does not please her on their wedding night, Anne will no doubt complain to him and to anyone else who will listen."
Zared moved away from him and leaned back on the pillows, her arms crossed over her breast. "Then I shall complain also. When I have a husband who takes me to bed, if he does not please me, I shall tell him so."
He turned back to smile at her. "And to what will you compare his lovemaking? To your other lovers?"
"Why no, I…" Her eyes widened. "Do you think the Lady Anne has had other lovers? Severn will not like that."
"Your hotheaded brother may kill her if she isn't a virgin, and Hugh Marshall will no doubt praise him for it."
She didn't understand at all. If Anne Marshall was a virgin, too, then how could she know so much of lovemaking? Zared wasn't sure what the man was saying, but she knew that she felt insulted. Her brothers had always treated her like a child, and this man was treating her like a child as well.
She turned her head away from him and started to get off the bed. She was not going to humiliate herself further by asking more questions.
"Zared," he whispered, pulling her to him.
She started to fight him, struggling against him. She didn't like the way he smirked at her and talked of other women.
He pinned her to the bed with his big body, but her arms were free, and she began to beat him on the back and shoulders. "Release me!" she demanded. "I hate you. I hate having you near me."
He caught her head in his hands and held her steady while he began to kiss her lips. She kept them closed for a moment, but the sensation was very pleasant, and she couldn't resist him for long. He nibbled at her lower lip, and the tip of his tongue very sweetly ran along the crevice between her lips. He kissed her eyes and her cheeks.
It was as though no one had ever touched her before—and in truth very few people had—and she was hungry for physical contact. She forgot that he was supposed to be her enemy, and she opened her mouth to his. It was she who turned her head sideways so that she could kiss him more deeply. Her arms stopped beating on his broad bac
k, and they went around him to hold him as tightly as possible.
Her life had been spent in very physical ways. She was no prim and proper miss who had spent her youth behind an embroidery frame. Instead she had grown up on the back of a horse with a sword in her hand. She was used to exuberance and a great deal of movement.
When she felt desire pouring through her she acted on it with all the enthusiasm that she had been allowed to express in her life. She put her tongue in his mouth and wrapped her legs about his hips, locking her ankles together.
When he seemed to want to pull away from her she went with him, hanging onto him when he rolled over so that she was on top of him.
Tearle had to take her by the shoulders and pull her away from him. He lay on his back looking up at her, and there was an expression of amazement on his face. "Where did you learn that?" he said, and there was barely concealed rage in his voice.
It took her a moment to remember who she was, where she was, and who he was. She was on top of him, her legs straddling his hips, the position he had taken with her earlier. It felt good to be on top of him, rather as though she had wrestled him to the ground and was holding him there. "Learn what?" She smiled down at him.
He did not return her smile but instead threw her to the other side of the bed and got off of it. "Some man must have taught you that. Was it Colbrand? When you were with him in that pond did you do more than bathe him?"
She was taken aback by his words, and she could feel anger rising in her, but then she relaxed against the pillows. "He taught me nothing. I know what I know."
At that he caught her about the waist, pulled her off the bed, and stood her before him. "You may not want to be my wife, but if I so much as catch you looking at another man I will—" He broke off.
"You will what?" she whispered.
He released her and stood there looking at her for a moment. "Put your shoes on and come downstairs. Supper grows cold."
When she was alone in the room Zared hugged herself and twirled around the room, the heavy velvet skirt whirling about her.