For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale

Author:Laura Kinsale [Kinsale, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781617564802
Publisher: eReads.com
Published: 2011-05-19T08:00:00+00:00

“But ne’er have I adultered, or profaned my vows.” He paused, gripping his hand tight in hers. “Nought with my body.”

She stroked his hair, and his back. “Ah, what have they done to thee, these priests?” she whispered sadly. “Hast thou lived in this thought, that thou art wed and yet bound to be chaste, since that day I saw thee last?”

“In troth,” he said, “I have lived in thought of you.” He pulled from her and lay back on the bed, staring into darkness. “Awake and asleep, I have thought of you. Else I were dead of despair a hundred times, I think me, if I had nought you in my mind to bind me to virtue.” He shook his head. “I am no monkish man, I tell you, lady.”

She gave a bewildered soft laugh. “Ne do I understand thee not. I bind thee to purity? Thou jape me.”

“I swore to you, my lady, in Avignon. When you sent the stones. Then I thought—but I was in a frenzy; I recall it little, but that I swore my life to you. I sold the lesser emerald for arms and a horse, and took me to tighten tournies for the prizes, and then to my liege prince when I had some money and good means to show myseluen. I made your falcon my device and took your gemstone for my color. And when my body tempted me, I thought of you and Isabelle my wife, I thought how you both were pure and good and blameless, better than me, and I mote live with honor for your sake, because I was her husband and your man.”

“Depardeu,” she murmured. “Thy wife—and I? Blameless and pure? Thou art a blind man.”

“I knew naught else to do.” He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “And it is impossible, it is nought the same, now that—”

He broke off and blew all the air from his chest in a rough sigh.

“Now that thou knowest me for myself,” she said with a tone he could not read, whether amused or sad or bitter, or all three.

“I love you, my lady,” he said, his voice suppressed. “ ‘Tis all certain that I know. With my heart, with my body, though I’ve nought the right to thinken of it, though you are too high—in faith, though I burn in Hell for it.” He swallowed. “God forgive me that I say such things. I’m in drink enow to drownen me.”

She lay down beside him, half on top of him, her arm across his shoulders. “Dost thou love me?” she whispered, with an intensity that made him turn his face toward her in the dark.

He lifted his hand—he allowed himself that for the fierce plea in her voice—and brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. “Beyond reason.”

“Oh,” she said, and buried her face in his shoulder, hugging herself close. “Yesterday I was a witch in thy estimate.”

“Yea, and now ye be a wanton wench, and in a moment ye will be a haughty princess, and I know nought what next to plague and bemaze me.

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