Page 36 of The Captive Knight
“Speak plainly, Aliénor.”
She sidled him a glance, a question in her eye. Then she sighed, swept the candle off the three-legged stool, and sat in its place. “I have a brother.”
He started, suddenly remembering. “The crippled one?”
“Yes.”
How could he have forgotten? Sir Rostand had told him about the boy when he’d confessed Aliénor was the new heir. Lost in the rush of the attack and his single-minded intent to protect her, he’d completely overlooked the fact that another Tournan lived within these walls. “Where is he?”
“He’s harmless,” she said, setting the candle on the floor, safely away from the drag of her tippet sleeves. “He wants nothing more than to be sent to a monastery. He’s the same age as your late squire—”
“Aliénor, is he safe?”
“Of course he is.” She clutched her hands in her lap. “He’s had a lot of practice hiding from men who mean him harm.”
“And you think I would murder him, as your father murdered my squire?”
Her throat flexed as she seized one tippet and began to pluck tufts of fur from the lining.
“Answer me.”
“I think you’re the greatest danger he’s ever faced. And I don’t trust myownjudgment about you.”
She shot up from the stool and turned away from him, pivoting so swiftly that he could not see her face. She paced, running her hands over her flat, slim belly as if to calm some tumult within.
“Your brother will no longer hide in corners like a frightened hound,” he said, crossing his arms. “He will sleep in his own bed. He will take his place at table.”
Her pacing paused.
“I will do him no harm, Aliénor.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
A measure of relief softened her shoulders. Satisfaction surged through him. He hadn’t made everything better, but the movement in the right direction made his blood rush. Then, somehow, he found himself standing in front of her, clutching her elbows. His fingers traced the lacing on the underside of her sleeves.
“He’s not even the true heir,” she said, her voice husky. “My brother, I mean.”
He nodded but his attention was diverted. The candle flickering by the stool cast the ends of her hair in fiery gold.
“Laurent was happy about being dispossessed,” she said. “He brought it about himself. It was what he wanted.”
Her words were like dust motes, cartwheeling out of his focus in favor of the shadow formed in the hollow behind her collarbone.
“That’s whyIam my father’s heir.” She met his gaze, her brown eyes soft. “Which makes things so simple for us, don’t you think?”
He barely heard her. He caught the wordsimple.It should be a simple thing not to kiss her. He’d stolen so much from her already. He should not steal this, too.
He wouldn’t touch her.
He wouldn’t kiss her.
Her lips felt warm beneath his mouth. He heard the sibilant vibrations of a muffled gasp. All the world narrowed down to the taste of her kiss, heat and moisture and new wine, and the feel of her soft mouth pillowing beneath his. Her smooth cheek filled his palm. The small muscles of her face moved in his cupped grip as she tilted her head for him. Her lashes brushed his cheek as he drew her plump lower lip into his mouth. He released her lip slowly, savoring the taste of her with a groan of hunger that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with a need to kiss every inch of her.
A fraction of his better nature held him back, waiting for her to rescue him by resisting his kiss or murmuring in maidenly modesty or pushing him away—she should, she would, shemust—but when she parted her lips at the first venture of his tongue and then grasped the edge of his doublet, all his fevered imaginings returned to him in a blast that burned away the last of his better sense.
He sank his hand into the supine give of her lower back. His imagination tumbled forward to the pleasures to come, and then the whole world tilted. He heard a scuffle of footsteps and realized they were his own as he urged her across the room to his bed-pallet.
