Page 54 of The Unwilling Bride
“Has he?”
Merrick shook his head.
“Good,” she replied with genuine relief. She might be upset with Kiernan for causing her some trouble, but she wouldn’t want him seriously injured. And anyway…“He would have to be mad to think he could beat you.”
Merrick gave her a little smile that warmed her from within. “I shall take that as a compliment.” His smile disappeared. “What about Talek?”
Constance shifted in her chair. “I’d like to think he wouldn’t, but…”
“I agree. I should have had him escorted far away before I let him go.”
“Constance, I—oh, I’m sorry!” Beatrice halted awkwardly on the threshold and blushed bright red. “I didn’t realize you’d come back, my lord, or that you were here.”
As Merrick faced her, her expression became surprisingly resolute. Before Constance could figure out what that meant, Beatrice pressed her hands together as if she were praying and addressed Merrick as she entered the room. “Since you are here, my lord, I have a boon to beg of you. I would dearly like to remain here for a little while after your wedding. I realize it’s an imposition, but we are going to be related. Otherwise, when I go home, I’ll just have my maidservant, Maloren, for company and I’ll be utterly miserable. You can’t think how she goes on and on, and she’ll pester me for details about the wedding and the feast and who was here or not here until I’m like to go mad. My father won’t miss me for a moment, either. His leman can run the castle better than I can anyway and—”
Her eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her open mouth. “I didn’t mean…I shouldn’t have said…Oh, he’ll be so angry I told you!”
Constance rose and hurried to assuage her cousin’s discomfort. “I figured out what Eloise’s position was long ago, and many men have mistresses,” she assured Beatrice before glancing at a stone-faced Merrick. “Isn’t that right, my lord?”
As he nodded, she tried not to wonder if he’d ever had a mistress. He’d told her he’d be faithful once they wed; surely that was more important than any liaison he’d had in the past.
“You are welcome to stay, Beatrice,” he said.
Her cousin ran to Merrick and threw her arms around him, laying her head on his chest. “Oh, thank you, thank you!”
He was completely, utterly astounded, and Constance rushed to disengage her impetuous cousin.
Aghast at what she’d just done and to whom, Beatrice stared at Merrick with a horrified expression. “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m just so happy. And grateful.” She made her flustered way to the door. “I’ll go tell—ask—my father. Thank you, my lord, thank you!”
After she went out, Merrick raised a sardonic brow that would have done credit to Ranulf, although Constance could see laughter lurking in his dark eyes. “I fear I may regret that moment of generosity, but I can’t refuse a woman who begs.”
“She’s young, my lord.”
“In some ways, very young.” The merriment in his eyes disappeared. “As you and I were not allowed to be.”
His quiet words touched something deep within Constance, like a low note on a harp. No, she’d never been as carefree as Beatrice, and it had been a very long time since she’d been as innocent. But now she realized the burden Merrick had borne had been no lighter. “I add my gratitude to hers, my lord,” she said softly.
He came toward her and his voice fell to a deep, intimate whisper that set her blood tingling. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have revealed my inability to resist pleading women. You may use it against me.”
“On the contrary, it pleases me to know you have a weakness.”
“I assure you, I do,” he said as he took her into his arms. “And her name is Constance.”
Whatever liaisons he’d had with women in the past, they were in the past, or he wouldn’t look at her the way he did. Hold her as he did. Kiss her as he did.
With a sigh of surrender, she relaxed into him as his lips brushed gently over hers.
Regrettably, his kiss did not last long before he drew back with a heavy sigh. “I have to go back to the mill and see what can be salvaged.”
He kissed her again on the forehead, light as a moth’s wing, and then he was gone.
She leaned back against the table. To think that once she had considered him as cold as ice….
MERRICK AND HIS MEN FOUND no clues as to who had set fire to the mill that day, or on any other as the wedding of the lord of Tregellas drew near. But no other troubles disturbed the peace of the estate, and all dared hope that perhaps the fire had been an accident, however improbable, after all. The people grew secure and regarded their overlord with respect for the way he had joined with the common folk to fight the blaze. To be sure, he was a grim man, they said, but if Lady Constance treated him with affection—for the castle folk were quick to notice the change in their mistress and spread the word abroad—then he must be a good man. If she looked on him with favor, they had nothing to fear.
Even Constance, busy with the arriving guests and preparations for her marriage, came to hope that Merrick was wrong, and their lives would continue to be as calm and tranquil as possible in these troubled times. Like her doubts, her worries subsided with every moment she spent with the man she was fast growing to love.
Only Merrick, silent and serious except for those brief hours he spent with Constance, believed that this was but a momentary, blissful respite, and the worst was yet to come.
