Carole Mortimer - Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year

‘Crossing the Channel in winter?’ Even Anne knew that was dangerous.

‘There is nothing to keep me here.’

‘Of course not. You must be eager to leave.’

Was she thinking more? Things she did not say? Against his will, he worried about her, foolishly wanting to be certain she would be safe after he was gone. ‘What will happen to you?’

She tilted her head, puzzled. ‘Things will go on as they have.’ Was there doubt in her eyes? She banished it with a lifted chin. ‘Why should it be otherwise?’

She was now the lady of the woman who would be Queen. What safer life could any woman have? And yet... ‘If ever something happens. If ever you have a need...’

The laugh. The laugh he had learned was not so merry, but only part of her armour. ‘And if I do? Then what? Shall I send a falcon to fly across the Channel and find you on the field in France or Italy or the Golden Horde? Or perhaps pay a messenger to travel for six months in search of you? I doubt my need will be the same a year later, even should he find you and bring you home.’

Home. Home, a place that sounded sharply desirable. He had run from the one he had and never found another, certainly not in England. How much time had he spent on the soil of his birth since he had been knighted on the field in France? Six months? Twelve, perhaps, in ten years.

Yet leaving her alone felt, illogically, wrong. As if he had failed an unspoken obligation. An encumbrance he did not want, and yet...

It was not love. Certainly not. Yet something held him back, heavy as a dead weight on his back. The lure of a woman. Exactly the pull he had so successfully evaded all his life, reaching to trap him.

And he didn’t know how to deal with that.

* * *

If ever you have a need...

Anne could still hear the echo of his words. Empty words. Yet no one had ever said them to her before. No one except her lady had ever offered a hand of help.

She knew why. Though she asked for nothing, her needs, the needs of a cripple, were too demanding for most people. The chance was great that she would need something a man did not want to give.

And this man? What did he offer but words? Nothing solid. Nothing that would stay.

And yet his kiss....

She wanted it again, wanted that and more with a hunger stronger than that of her body. Not because no one had ever taken care of her, but because she had been fed and brushed like a horse, without feeling.

Without passion.

And when he said if you ever need, she heard passion in his voice. Probably more than he knew, more than he wanted to feel.

No, she could not, would not, ask him to stay. But, oh, just to hear that passion once in her life. To hear the timbre of his voice when he spoke of her. She could do it, just once. She could grab that moment that would not come again and then let him leave, so she would not have to see the regret in his eyes.

Tonight, her lady and the Prince would share their marriage bed. And she would sleep alone. Again and for ever, unless...

Unless...

What harm could there be? Once. Just once before she was returned to her life, never to see anything beyond the reach of her lady’s eyes.

She looked at Nicholas again, with all that hunger in her eyes. The kind of hunger she had thought never to fill—for freedom, for distant places, for love. But now, she saw the same from him.

At least, she thought she did, before the cloud trailed across the moon again.

‘There is something you can do. Now.’

Surprise in his eyes. How would he look when she told him?

‘You said if there was anything I want. There is something else I want to store in memory.’ Her fingers stroked his cheek, softly. ‘You.’

* * *

Nicholas did not waste breath to ask why she wanted it, nor thought to wonder why he wanted it, nor what would come next nor how he would walk away afterwards. He only knew he could not leave without...more. Without taking something of her with him.

So he kissed her.

He was close enough now to catch the scent of her skin. Like pepper and flowers and citron, like Anne herself, tart and sharp on the surface, with the sweetness only revealing itself later.

His lips left hers and trailed down to her throat, bared to him now, her skin smooth and warm. Her breath was short, separated from his lips only by flesh and blood. Her breasts rose and fell, pressing against his chest. For a moment, this was all. This was everything he needed. Wrapped against Anne. Nothing beyond the two of them. No time, no place, beyond this.

Dimly, he felt something surge, stirring in his loins. No, not enough. Not all he needed. He needed so much more of her...

And vaguely, as his body waxed and his mind waned, he understood, as he had not before, about Edward and Joan.

* * *

With Nicholas’s arms around her, his lips pressed to hers, Anne felt whole. As any woman might, able to give and be taken, not out of pity, but from unholy desire.

She pressed her lips to his, intending to wipe out thought, memory and consequences. She wanted only to savour sensation. The heat of his breath on her cheek. Soft lips. Rough fingers. Her fingers, roaming through his hair, to caress the curve where his neck met his shoulder.

A kiss, she thought. Perhaps more. What could be the harm?

And then, she did not think at all.

Nothing but now. But this. This she must relish. This taste, this feel, tucked away for the long days that would come after.

When she would be alone again.

She had studied stone and glass and stitches, but when she tried to summon logic, to analyse, to name, to commit his scent to memory, to learn the feel of his muscles, beneath wool and skin, she could not control her mind.

She, he, here, now. The taste of foreign lands was on his tongue, the scent so deep in his skin that to be in his arms was a journey, to be held by him was like taking wing. As if all the distant lands she had ever wanted to see were in his arms, soaring as the cathedrals did, arches like hands joined in prayer, reaching to heaven.

His lips left hers and pressed against her vulnerable throat and she gasped for a breath. One more breath. Just one more and one more and one more and then she must let go. She must not reach for things she could never have. God would give her only this one moment, to be paid for later.

As she had been paying for so much all her life.

Did he step away? Did she stumble? Suddenly, they were two people again, separated by inches that might as well have been the miles that would stretch between them as soon as he left. Miles that might as well have been the distance between this world and the next.

Look at him. You must be brave and look at him now.

He tried to speak. ‘You asked—’

She touched her fingers to his lips, wanting no words. No regrets.

But instead of silence, he grabbed her hand and pressed his lips against her palm. That simple, tender gesture hurt more than all the thoughts of separation to come.

‘Don’t.’ A single word she could barely utter.

He paused, but did not release her hand. ‘I want you.’

She nearly did fall then, not because of her weak leg, but because the force of his desire stole her strength. Had anyone ever desired her before? Ever looked at her with fire in his eyes, with longing?

And that was enough. That would be enough to keep her all the rest of her days. To be with a man who desired her. Once for the rest of her life.

She swayed toward him.

‘Lady Anne?’ The voice of one of the pages. ‘Lady Joan needs you.’

* * *

Nicholas gritted his teeth, trying to force himself back to sense, not stopping to wonder what would have happened if they had not been interrupted. He only knew that he had not wanted to let her go. Not wanted to let the world intrude until he had learned her body as well as the countryside he’d fought over.