The Velvet Promise Read online

  Two years! Two years ago that had been. If he had not spent most of the time in Scotland, patrolling the borders, he would have demanded her father give Alice to him. Now that he’d returned, he planned to do just that. In fact, if need be, he would go to the king with his plea. Valence was unreasonable. Alice told Gavin of her talks with her father, of her begging and pleading with him, but to no avail. Once she showed him a bruise she received for pressing Gavin’s suit. Gavin had been insane then. He’d grabbed his sword and would have gone after the man if Alice hadn’t clung to him, tears in her eyes, and begged him please not to harm her father. He could refuse her tears nothing, so he sheathed his sword and promised her he would wait. Alice reassured him that her father would eventually see reason.

  So they had continued to meet secretly, like wayward children—a situation that disgusted Gavin. Yet Alice begged him not to see her father, to allow her to persuade him.

  Gavin shifted his stance now and listened again. Still there was only silence. This morning he’d heard Alice was to marry that piece of water-slime, Edmund Chatworth. Chatworth paid the king an enormous fee so that he would not be called upon to fight in any wars. He was not a man, Gavin thought. Chatworth did not deserve the title of earl. To think of Alice married to such as that was beyond imagination.

  Suddenly all Gavin’s senses came alert as he heard the muffled sounds of the horse’s hooves on the damp ground. He was beside Alice instantly and she fell into his arms.

  “Gavin,” she whispered, “my sweet Gavin.” She clung to him, almost as if in terror.

  He tried to pull her away so he could see her face but she held him with such desperation that he dared not to. He felt the wetness of her tears on his neck and all the rage he’d felt during the day left him. He held her close to him, murmuring endearments in her little ear, stroking her hair. “Tell me, what is it? What has hurt you so?”

  She moved away so she could look at him, secure in the knowledge that the night could not betray the lack of redness in her eyes. “It’s too awful,” Alice whispered hoarsely. “It is too much to bear.”

  Gavin stiffened somewhat as he remembered what he’d heard about her marriage. “Is it true then?”

  She sniffed delicately, touched a finger to the corner of her eye and looked up at him through her lashes. “My father cannot be persuaded. I even refused food to make him change his mind, but he had one of the women…No, I won’t tell you what they did to me. He said he would—Oh, Gavin, I cannot say the things he said to me.” She felt Gavin stiffen.

  “I will go to him and—”

  “No!” Alice said almost frantically, her hands clasping his muscular arms. “You cannot! I mean…” She lowered her arms and her lashes. “I mean, it’s already done. The betrothal has been signed and witnessed. There is nothing anyone can do now. If my father withdrew me from the bargain, he would still have to pay my dowry to Chatworth.”

  “I will pay it,” Gavin said stonily.

  Alice gave him a look of surprise; then more tears gathered in her eyes. “It wouldn’t matter. My father will not allow me to marry you. You know that. Oh, Gavin, what am I to do? I will be forced to marry a man I do not love.” She looked up at him with such a look of desperation that Gavin pulled her close to him. “How could I bear to lose you, my love?” she whispered against his neck. “You are meat and drink to me, sun and night. I…I will die if I lose you.”

  “Don’t say that! How can you lose me? You know I feel the same about you.”

  She pulled away to look at him, suddenly happier. “Then you do love me? Truly love me, so that if our love is tested, I will still be sure of you?”

  Gavin frowned. “Tested?”

  Alice smiled through her tears. “Even if I marry Edmund, you will still love me?”

  “Marry!” He nearly shouted as he pushed her from him. “You plan to marry this man?”

  “Have I a choice?” They stood in silence, Gavin glaring at her, Alice with eyes demurely lowered. “I will go then. I will go from your sight. You needn’t look at me again.”

  She was almost to her horse before he reacted. He grabbed her roughly, pulling her mouth to his until he bruised her. There were no words then; none were needed. Their bodies understood each other even if they couldn’t agree. Gone was the shy young lady. In her place was the Alice of passion that Gavin had come to know so well. Her hands tore frantically at his clothes until they quickly lay in a heap.

  She laughed throatily when he stood nude before her. His body was hard-muscled from many years of training. He was a good head taller than Alice, who often towered over men. His shoulders were broad, his chest powerfully thick. Yet his hips were slim, his stomach flat, the muscles divided into ridges. His thighs and calves bulged muscle, strong from years of wearing heavy armor.

  Alice stepped away from him and sucked her breath in through her teeth as she devoured the sight of him. Her hands reached for him as if they were claws.

  Gavin pulled her to him, kissed the little mouth that opened widely under his as her tongue plunged into his mouth. He pulled her close, the feel of her gown exciting against his bare skin. His lips moved to her cheek, to her neck. They had all night, and he meant to spend his time making love to her.

  “No!” Alice said impatiently as she drew away sharply. She flung her mantle from her shoulders, careless of the expensive fabric. She pushed Gavin’s hands away from the buckle of her belt. “You are too slow,” she stated flatly.

  Gavin frowned for a moment, but as layer after layer of Alice’s clothes were flung to the ground, his senses took over. She was eager for him as he was for her. What if she did not want to take too long before their bodies were skin to skin?

  Gavin would have liked to savor Alice’s slender body for a while, but she pulled him quickly to the ground, her hand guiding him immediately inside her. He did not think then of leisurely loveplay or kisses. Alice was beneath him, urging him on. Her voice was harsh as she directed his body, her hands firm on his hips as she pushed him, harder and harder. Gavin at one time worried that he would hurt her, but she seemed to glory in the strength of him.

  “Now! Now!” she demanded beneath him and gave a low, throaty sound of triumph when he obeyed her.

  Immediately afterward she moved from beneath him, away from him. She had told him repeatedly this was because of her warring thoughts as she reconciled her unmarried state with her passion. Yet he would have liked to have held her longer, enjoyed her body more, even perhaps made love to her again. It would be a slow lovemaking this time, now that their first passion was spent. Gavin tried to ignore the hollow feeling he had, as if he had just tasted something but was still not sated.

  “I must leave,” she said as she sat up and began the intricate process of dressing.

  He liked to watch her slim legs as she slipped on the light linen stockings. At least watching her helped some of the emptiness dissipate. Unexpectedly, he remembered that soon another man would have the right to touch her. Suddenly he wanted to hurt her as she was hurting him. “I too have an offer of marriage.”

  Alice stopped instantly, her hand on her stocking and watched him, waiting for more.

  “Robert Revedoune’s daughter.”

  “He has no daughter—only sons, both of them married,” Alice said instantly. Revedoune was one of the king’s earls, a man whose estates made Edmund’s look like a serf’s farm. It had taken Alice a while, those years while Gavin was in Scotland, but she’d found out the history of all of the earls—of all of the richest men in England—before deciding that Edmund was the most likely catch.

  “Didn’t you hear that both sons died two months ago of wasting sickness?”

  She stared at him. “But I’ve never heard a daughter mentioned.”

  “A young girl named Judith, younger than her brothers. I heard she had been prepared by her mother for the church. The girl is kept cloistered in her father’s house.”

  “And you have been offered this Judith to mar