Her mouth curled.
“You should not be here,” Thomas said. “Someone in the duchess’ apartments will realize your absence.”
“I should not be here? Why not?”
“Sweet Jesu, Margaret. No woman should wander into a friar’s chamber in the darkest hours of the night!”
She raised her head, grinning softly. “I did not ‘wander in,’ Tom. You invited me.
Besides, I think you less the friar now than the man, Tom Neville.”
“I am still a man of God!”
“That is not what I said. I think that somewhere along your journey in the past months you have abandoned the Church, although you remain a committed man of God.”
Thomas was about to remonstrate with her when he realized the truth of her words. His commitment to God was no less—indeed, it was far stronger than it had ever been—but his commitment to the Church? Wavering, at best. Since he’d been in England he’d hardly attended regular canonical services … and here it was Matins, and he’d been sound asleep in bed. He hadn’t even kept the company of priests.
Instead he’d fallen back in with old friends and acquaintances: Lancaster, Hal, Hotspur. True, that had been partly due to circumstance, but he hadn’t fought against it, either.
Was he more Lord Thomas Neville now than Brother Thomas?
And which would serve God and St. Michael best?
“Oh!” Margaret said, and Thomas looked down.
She had her hands softly clasped about her belly—the cloak now fallen open to reveal the soft thin material of her nightgown—and she was looking up at Thomas with black eyes large with emotion.
“The child,” she whispered, and then reached out and took one of Thomas’ hands.
He almost pulled back, but then he let her draw it down to her belly, and place it gently over its firm roundness.
“Do you feel?” she said.
Thomas squatted before her in order to rest his hand comfortably. He could feel a gentle movement under his hand, almost like a fluttering, deep within Margaret’s body, and without conscious thought on Thomas’ part his other hand joined its companion on Margaret’s belly. “What is it?”
“The child is shifting.”
Unwanted, Thomas thought of Alice. She had died before her belly had begun to round out. He’d never felt this, never sat before a woman carrying his child and felt it move. He shifted his hands a little on Margaret, tracing the outlines of the child, feeling a confusing mix of wonder and fear.
This was his child, he could not deny it. The sorcery that had hound him and Margaret that afternoon had been strong, and as undeniable as what he now felt beneath his hands.
His child…
“A daughter,” said Margaret, very softly.
He lifted his eyes to her face. “And how do you know that? Witchery? Demonry?”
She smiled, but it was very sad. “A woman knows, Thomas. This baby is a girl.
She must be, for she has given me little enough trouble.”
If Margaret thought to have raised a smile on Thomas’ face with that comment, then she failed.
Instead he dropped his face away from her, more disturbed then he cared to let her see. A daughter. He remembered that terrible dream the night before he’d said the funeral mass for the Lescolopier family. The tiny girl he’d held in his arms as he’d tried to save her from St. Michael’s wrath.
“Time she went to hell,” St. Michael said, as he reached out for the baby .. . and then Alice, standing before him, asking him, “Why did you let our child die?”
“If I die in childbirth, Thomas,” Margaret said, and at the true fear in her voice (and at the terrible coincidence of her words and his thoughts) Thomas once more looked at her. “If I die, will you name her for me?”
“Margaret—”
“Name her Rosalind, for it is a sweet name, and the name of a woman who was once kind to me. Thomas, please do this for me.”
“I will do it, Margaret, but, sweet Christ, do not fear so! Not every woman dies as did Eleanor.” The combination of his thoughts and her fear had truly rattled him, as had the child— his child—he could feel under his hands, and so when next he spoke it was with a rough edge to his voice which he did not truly feel.
“Why are you here, Margaret? What is your true purpose in coming to me tonight?”
“To learn of Raby’s fate, for I do truly care for him—”
Irritation swept through Thomas, as did something that, horribly, he realized was jealousy. Had she come here to make him jealous? To flaunt her body and his child before him and speak only of Raby?
Thomas lifted his hands from her belly to the ties at her throat, and pulled loose first her cloak, then the laces that held together the bodice of her nightgown.
As he pushed the cloak away from her shoulders, and then pulled the nightgown down over her shoulders, exposing her breasts, Margaret took a great breath—which, given that her now naked breasts were directly before Thomas’ eyes, did nothing to quell his growing desire.
Had she truly come here only to ask of his uncle?”
“What do you, Thomas?”
“What did you expect, eh? Coming to me, your hair unbound, and wearing little but a shadow as clothing. What did you expect, placing my hands on your body as you did?”
Those hands, now, were tracing over her breasts, and he leaned forward, and kissed her.
She managed to pull her mouth free of his. “Thomas… do you not fear that in the morning you will hate me the more for tempting you into this sin? I fear it, for you shall surely regard me with more abhorrence than usual.”
Thomas considered her question, using the time that he did so to slide his hands behind her back and press her to him, kissing her again and again, ever more deeply.
Sin? No, not this. This was the test. The demons wanted him to so lose himself in lust, in desire, in want and need, that he would promise this woman his soul on a
platter, if only she would say she loved him.
Sin? No, here is where he could prove himself: to God, to St. Michael and to himself, and here was where he could demonstrate to the demons that he could not be tempted, and that his soul could not be bought, whatever fleshly delights the demons offered him.
He leaned back from her, his eyes now burning very dark, and pulled the nightgown entirely away from her body. Ah, God, she was beautiful! No wonder the demons had sent her. The swelling of her belly (his child) only made her the sweeter and more vulnerable.
So much more exquisitely desirable.
Thomas had not bedded a woman—he no longer counted that sorcerous encounter with Odile as a normal sexual union between a man and a woman—for over six years.
Not since Alice.
No wonder his hunger now …
Margaret now seemed so lost in her own desire that she did not appear to mind that Thomas had not answered her question. He was kneeling beside the bed now, and she made no protest when he guided her back to the mattress (it was narrow, but it would do), and gasped and twisted under his mouth as he kissed her thighs, her belly, her breasts, and then again, deeply, her mouth.
“Thomas,” she said as his mouth strayed to her neck, “Sweet Tom, do you love me?” Her voice was surprisingly strong.
He lifted his face, and looked at her. So, here it was, the true reason she had come to him.
“No,” he said, enunciating each word very carefully. “I would send you into hell before ever I loved you.”
She flinched, and turned aside her face. “No matter,” she murmured.
He had leaned back slightly from her to pull his robe over his shoulders. “Did you truly think I will ever love you, Margaret? Do you truly think yourself worthy mankind’s eternal damnation?”
“Thomas—”
“Shush,” he said, now on the bed, atop her, “and receive now what it was you came here for.”
WHEN THE door closed behind her, Thomas pulled on his robe and stood by the window, uncaring about the night’s chill.
His mind and soul were in turmoil.
The demons had tempted him, and he had denied them—why now feel so tormented?
Even if this hadn’t been the true test—Thomas had no doubt that still awaited him—then the demons must surely now realize their cause was doomed.
She had come to him, alluring and desirable, and, while he had bedded her, when she asked the inevitable question—Do you love me? —he had denied her, and meant
it in his heart and in his soul.
He had been strong when needed. He had faced the demons temptations, and had been victorious.