Читать книгу The Champion - Heather Grothaus - Страница 12

“He certainly is hairy, is he not, Sister?”

Simone felt as if she had been languishing in a deep, warm pool under Nicholas’s damnable kisses, and Didier’s voice was like a bucket of icy water, tossed in just for spite.

Her eyes darted beyond the baron’s wide shoulders, searching the chamber’s darkened corners for the imp. Her view was hampered by the massive male body before her, prompting Simone to lean slightly to the side in his embrace.

Still, she did not spy Didier.

The baron’s arms tightened and he cocked his head, forcing Simone to look at him. She was surprised by the concern in his azure eyes.

“Did you hear something?” he asked.

Simone blinked. “Yea—hmmm…I thought I did.”

The sleepy grin returned to his face. “’Tis merely nerves, I’d wager. I hear naught.” He drew her close once more, and Simone could feel his heat even through the thick fur. He moved her closer to the bed. “Allow me to put you at ease.”

Nicholas sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled her to stand between his knees. Simone’s heart fluttered as her curiosity about Didier’s whereabouts warred with her awareness of the baron’s nude proximity. The man was impossibly arrogant, and still she ached for him to kiss her, to touch her again.

But ’twould not do to have one’s young ghost witnessing the act. Where was he?

Nicholas began nuzzling the edge of the fur covering her breasts, kissing her skin with his open mouth, and the warm silence of the room combined with his tender attentions convinced Simone that Didier had politely left. She placed her hands on the warm, smooth skin of Nicholas’s shoulders and breathed a delighted sigh at the contact. She had never been touched so intimately, and the baron was nudging her covering away…

“In truth, he has hair everywhere.” The awed statement came this time from somewhere over Simone’s head.

Simone squeaked and stepped away from Nicholas, hitching the fur around her. Her gaze flew upward and she spied Didier lounging on his stomach atop one of the canopy’s wide beams. His chin rested in both hands, and he peered down curiously.

Nicholas blew out a frustrated breath. “Simone, this cannot continue. I understand your—”

“Lord Nicholas, a moment, I pray,” she interrupted. “I have need of a bit of privacy.” His frown clearly displayed his annoyance, and Simone’s mind worked frantically to devise an excuse. She spied the chamber pot resting discreetly in one corner and glanced at it pointedly. “Please?”

Nicholas sighed. “Simone, we are married now. There is no need for—” Married or nay, he was mistaken if he thought to ever witness her using that base convenience. The horrified look on her face must have convinced him to humor her. “Very well. I shall wait just beyond the door.” He rose and moved around the bed, where he scooped his discarded chausses from the floor.

Simone looked away as he adjusted himself to put them on. He did not look happy in the least. “My thanks,” she called after him as the door slammed.

She spun to glare up at the boy now perched atop the canopy, his legs dangling below him. “Didier du Roche, get yourself down from there this instant!”

Didier reappeared in a blink, sitting cross-legged in the center of the rumpled bedclothes, his look of fascination making him wide eyed.

“Sister, mayhap the baron is half beast,” he ventured in an excited whisper. “There are such things, you know—half beast, half man. His staff looked to be as long as my—”

“Nay!” Simone held out a hand and shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed briefly. When she opened them again, Didier was looking at her with an offended frown. “You cannot be here at the moment, chéri. This night is proving difficult enough without your spying.”

“Where would you have me go?” the boy demanded, and then sat taller. “And you are upset. I want to stay and protect you in case the baron truly is half beast. What if he tries to eat you?”

Simone sighed. “’Tis very thoughtful of you, Didier, but I do not require protection from Lord Nicholas. The time we will spend together—as a husband and a wife—is very special and must be private.”

“I vow I won’t utter another word,” he promised.

“Simone?” Nicholas’s muffled voice called through the door. “Are you nigh ready?”

“A moment longer, my lord!” Simone turned back to Didier, frantic to convince him. “You cannot be here, little one. Please, try to understand.”

“I understand that you prefer the baron’s company to mine.” Didier’s face drew into a pout. “Why can I not stay?”

“’Tis unseemly for you to witness—”

“I won’t look, then. Whatever it is, I’ll avert my eyes.”

“Nay, Didier! You must leave before—”

“Simone,” Nicholas called. “I’m coming in, now.”

Simone clasped her hands together before her breasts, beseeching Didier. “Please, ma cher?”

Didier stretched out on his back and interlaced his fingers behind his head just as Simone heard the chamber door creak open. She spun to face Nicholas as he entered, a wary frown on his face.

He glanced about the room before closing the door and locking it behind him. “Were you speaking to someone?”

Simone forced a smile to her wooden lips. “Nay, my lord—only myself.” She cringed inwardly. Talking to oneself was not exactly indicative of sanity. Brainless twit…

The air in the chamber was becoming significantly more chilled, and Simone glanced at the bed. Didier glared at the baron.

Nicholas was silent for a moment, studying her with his hands on his narrow hips. She saw him give a shudder before he turned to the hearth.

“It grows cool, Lady Simone,” he said, stooping to feed the fire. “Let us retire to the bed and seek some warmth. I’ve grown weary of chasing you about the chamber.”

Simone looked to Didier, who was grinning broadly and patting the mattress at his side with one small hand. “Come, then—do as your husband commands.”

Get out, she mouthed to him, but he merely wrinkled his stubby nose and shook his head.

Nicholas rose from the now blazing fire and rubbed his arms. He seemed a bit surprised that Simone still stood at the bedside. He slowly made his way toward her, his hands dropping to the ties at his waist.

“My lord,” Simone stuttered, pulling her fur higher around her breasts and searching her mind for any excuse for Nicholas to remain clothed. “Perhaps we could talk for a bit—become better acquainted with each other?” She smiled brightly. “You could tell me about your home!”

His chausses were nearly undone as he reached her. “Let us not play games, Simone,” he said, not unkindly. “’Tis no secret that we hold no great affection for each other and ’twill do us no good to attempt to induce such feelings now. Let us be satisfied with our physical attraction and perhaps, one day, friendship will follow.”

Any hint of passion Simone had earlier felt for Nicholas vanished completely as Didier chortled on the bed behind her. She felt her ears burning in the cold air.

“Do not remove those!” she shouted when Nicholas brought his hands to the waist of his chausses.

“Why not?” Nicholas demanded, his frustration clear in his tone. He composed himself. “Simone, I understand your fear, but you must trust that I will be as gentle with you as possible.”

Didier was laughing so hard that he fell off the far side of the bed. Simone felt sick to her stomach.

“Nicholas, you do not understand,” she whispered. “We cannot…be together at this time.”

Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, and then comprehension dawned on his face. “Are you having your monthly?”

Simone’s hands flew to cover her flaming face as Didier’s head popped up over the side of the mattress.

“What’s a ‘monthly’?”

“Nay.” Simone’s voice was a muffled wail behind her palms. She dropped her hands and sighed. Her defeat was imminent.

Before her, the baron crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Then why in God’s name can I not enjoy my wife on our wedding night?”

“Oh, I must hear this,” Didier said, scrambling back onto the bed.

Simone took a bracing breath. “Very well. If you insist…”

“I do.”

“Little more than a year past, my mother and my younger brother were killed in a terrible accident, at our home in France.”

Nicholas nodded. “So I have heard. I am sorry for your loss, but—”

Simone squeezed her eyes shut. “We cannot be together this night because we are not alone.”

“What?”

“Mon dieu!” Didier shrieked. “I cannot believe you’re going to tell him!”

Simone straightened her spine and looked Nicholas in the eye, trying to ignore her brother. The baron glanced around the room suspiciously.

She lifted her chin. “Our every move is being watched by Didier’s spirit. He sits on the bed, even as we now speak.” She waved a hand toward the aforementioned piece of furniture where Didier watched the exchange, enraptured.

“Didier is—was—your brother?” Nicholas asked.

“Yea.”

“Your dead brother.”

Simone nodded.

Nicholas’s eyes roamed the rumpled furs, and Didier waved cheekily to him. “Bonjour, Lord Nicholas.”

The baron’s gaze pinned Simone once more. “I see naught.”

“Yea, I know,” Simone admitted, fidgeting with her fur. “Only I can see or hear him, but you must believe me. I—”

“You are mad,” Nicholas said, slowly backing away.

“Nay!” Simone stepped forward, reaching a hand to him. “I know that you must now think the rumors to be true, but I swear to you, I’m not mad.”

“’Tis little wonder your betrothed refused you,” Nicholas muttered while gathering up his discarded clothing and dressing. “Your father should be whipped for this duplicity.”

“Nicholas,” Simone huffed, “hear me out—do you not think it strange that this chamber is frigid when the windows are shut tight and a fire blazes in yonder hearth?”

“’Tis merely a draft,” he replied, pulling his tunic over his head.

Didier giggled. “A daft draft!”

Simone shot her brother a stern look before once again turning her attention to Nicholas. She knew she must convince him that she was quite sane or ’twas very likely she, Didier, and Armand would be tossed out of London on their backsides. Her mind latched on to the one person whom the stubborn man might believe.

“Lady Haith!” she exclaimed.

Nicholas paused in belting on his sword. “What of my sister-in-law?”

Simone rushed forward. “Ask her about Didier—she can hear him as well!”

Nicholas seemed to think for a moment, frowning at her warily, before shaking his head and finishing attaching his sheath. “Nay, you’re mad alright.” He picked up his boots with one hand and headed toward the door. “Rest assured that I will speak to William on the morrow—I’ll not have a raving lunatic as the next Baroness of Crane. Good evening to you, Lady du Roche.”

Simone spun to face Didier, her panic nearly out of control. Should Nicholas persuade the king to dissolve their marriage, Simone would truly be ruined. All of England would hear of the night’s events and she would never marry.

Never be rid of Armand.

“Didier, help me!” she cried, no longer caring that she spoke to a figure invisible to Nicholas.

She heard the baron unlock the chamber door, muttering about a “demented female.”

“Hurry!” she urged the boy.

Didier scrunched up his face and then spoke. Simone did not understand the meaning behind her brother’s words, but her desperation knew no bounds. She turned toward Nicholas to see him stepping across the threshold.

“Didier wishes your permission to ride Majesty as you allowed Evelyn!”

Nicholas froze in the doorway and slowly turned to face her. His eyes blazed so that Simone took an involuntary step back.

“How do you know of Evelyn?” he asked in a deadly whisper.

Simone swallowed convulsively, and she opened her mouth to speak, but no words issued forth. Nicholas reentered the room, dropping his boots as he strode toward her.

He reached her and seized her roughly by the elbow, shaking her. “How do you come by this personal knowledge of me?”

“Let go of me! I know naught of any Evelyn,” Simone insisted. “I am merely repeating what Didier told me!”

Nicholas hesitated, glaring at her with a fire that should have turned the chilled room to sweltering. Finally he spoke, and the disgust in his voice wounded Simone more than she ever could have imagined.

“Why, you manipulative viper.” He dropped her arm and backed away. “Of course you learned of her from Lady Haith. You are not so clever as you would have me think, Simone—nor I so dense.”

“You shall not speak to my sister in that manner!” Didier shrieked and rose to stand on the bed. The fire in the hearth released a curled lick of flame with a loud crack. Simone gasped as the red-orange finger flicked the hem of Nicholas’s chausses and set them alight. The baron jumped and stomped his foot with a hoarse shout, stumbling backward over his discarded footwear.

“Didier, good heavens!” Simone cried, rushing forward to slap at the flames. When the chausses were extinguished to little more than a fringe of blackened, smoking hem, she spun back to face the bed.

“That was entirely unwarranted!” she scolded the boy.

“He said hateful things to you,” Didier replied, his expression not in the least repentant. “You have done naught to deserve such name calling.”

“You cannot go about setting people afire merely because you do not care for their words, Didier, and I would think that by now you had learned to what ends arson should bring you. Lord Nicholas clearly does not understand our predicament. My lord—” Simone turned to apologize to Nicholas and to try to convince him that the strange events he’d recently witnessed were but a tiny sampling of the fantastic reality of Simone’s life during the past year.

But the room behind her was empty, the door left standing ajar.