Page 57 of The Unwilling Bride
Constance felt a stab of irritation. This was their wedding night—why did he have to speak of the king and the earl of Cornwall?
Maybe she ought to remove her gown completely.
Merrick walked over to the window. He opened the linen shutter enough to see out over the walls of Tregellas. He took deep breaths of the salt-tinged air, as if he was finding it difficult to breathe. “Since the earl is my liege lord, I expect we’ll be summoned to Tintagel.”
“Do you have an objection to answering the summons?”
“No.” Merrick turned and looked at her, his expression frustratingly inscrutable. “But I would prefer to stay here.”
She didn’t understand his reluctance unless, shethought with better humor, he would be sorry to leave her for even a short time. “It would be your duty to go, and I could go with you. Alan is quite capable of running Tregellas for a few weeks.”
“That is not what troubles me.”
She thought of the fate of his cortege when he was a boy. “Is it an attack on our party you fear?”
“That, and other things.”
“We’ll take a large escort. Ranulf can lead—”
“Ranulf should stay here to protect Tregellas.”
“Very well. But if we take sufficient men, we should be safe.”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “It isn’t only concern for our safely that makes me uneasy,” he confessed. “I have no love for the nobility. Too many of them are greedy and ambitious, seeking power at any cost.”
“You don’t have to love them. You need only tolerate them.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing with Kiernan, tolerating him?”
Was that why he’d not come near her? Had she not made her opinion of Kiernan clear? What more assurance could she give him?
She answered bluntly, and with indignation. “I resent your implication, my lord. I told you I have no deep feelings for him. I’ve hardly spoken to him at all since…” This would not be a good time to mention her conversation with Kiernan in the chapel. “Since he arrived with his father. Beatrice has spent more time in his company than I have. I thought you believed me when I said I cared nothing for him in that way.”
Merrick ran his hand through his long hair. “I did. I do.”
“Then why accuse me?”
“I didn’t mean to. I just…”
“What?” she demanded. “What are you trying to do? Enrage me? Upset me? On this, our wedding night? I believed you wanted me, my lord. Was I wrong? Would you rather we had not wed? Would you like to leave me, my lord, and have our union annulled?”
Instead of answering her heated questions, he crossed the chamber in two long strides and pulled her into his arms. His lips took hers with fiery, fierce passion, robbing her of breath and thought. His hands stroked her body, raked her unbound hair, aroused and enflamed her desire until she had to hold on to him or sink to the ground.
Still kissing her deeply, he picked her up and carried her to the bed. After he laid her upon it, he stepped back and started to strip off his clothing.
“I take it, then,” she asked breathlessly, “hat you don’t want to annul our marriage?”
Bending to pull off his boots, he raised his eyes and looked at her. The intensity of his desire made her blood throb with expectancy.
Swallowing hard, she moved back and sideways on the bed, to make room for him, her husband.
He straightened. He wore only his breeches that clung to his powerful thighs, and she could see that he was as aroused as she.
“Take off your shift,” he ordered. “I want to look at you.”
Taken aback by his brusque command, she swallowed hard as her trembling fingers fumbled trying to undo the drawstring at the neck of her shift.
She heard him remove his breeches and toss them aside. She felt the bed dip when he knelt beside her. He put his hand over hers and held them still. “If you would rather leave it on…?”
