Anita Mills Read Online Free

Celesin?”
    Richard shook his head. “Nay, I’d leave her here with Maman, for Rivaux is the stronger keep.” Even as he spoke, his hand stroked his wife’s copper hair. “When it becomes known I have renounced Stephen, there will be many to challenge me.”
    “Aye.”
    For a moment Gilliane’s eyes betrayed her fear, then she turned away. “I’d speak not of war on my wedding day, Richard.”
    Instantly, Elizabeth was sorry she’d reminded either of them of the coming conflict. ‘Twas a time for rejoicing rather than sadness, after all, for he’d arrived home but that morning. Instead, she leaned in front of her brother to speak to Gilly, teasing her.
    “There’ll be no need for mulled wine to warm your blood this night, I’ll warrant.”
    The younger girl blushed.
    “Liza …”
    “Well, you have not been kept awake whilst she turns, Richard. I vow she has scarce slept for a fortnight, first because she thought you’d come, then because she feared you would not.” Elizabeth’s green eyes warmed as she smiled. “Aye—’twill be the first rest I have had since Papa rode in without you this last time.”
    On the other side of William d’Evreux, Joanna looked up hopefully. “Maman said I could share your bed if Gilly left it.”
    “Well, Maman did not have the right of that,” Elizabeth retorted. “Tonight I sleep alone.”
    “But Maman—”
    “Nay.”
    “But Eleanor is all elbows!” the girl wailed. “And she makes noise when she sleeps.”
    “When you are the eldest left at home, then you may have a bed to yourself.”
    “As if ’twill ever happen! Hawise says you will shrivel and die here.” Joanna’s hand flew to her mouth as she realized what she’d said. “Your pardon, Liza … I did not mean …”
    But Elizabeth merely shrugged. “Better to die at Rivaux than elsewhere.”
    “Nay, lady, ’tis the lot of a woman to be a wife,” William protested. “And you are yet young enough to—”
    “Be a brood sow?” she finished for him contemptuously. “Nay, I think not. Besides, who’s to have a barren wife?”
    “Mayhap the fault was Ivo of Eury’s,” he ventured hopefully. “Your father—”
    “Gives me choice in the matter.”
    “But you mourn overlong, Lady Elizabeth. Ivo died three years and more ago, and—”
    “And you think I mourn him?” she demanded with an incredulous lift of one black brow. “Nay, I was glad he died.”
    He stared into green eyes that had grown as cold as shards of glass, and a shiver went through him. For a moment he almost believed she meant what she said. She was a strange woman, Elizabeth of Rivaux—like none he’d ever seen. Yet, try as he would, he could not help watching her, drawn to her incredible beauty despite what was said of her.
    Deliberately, she turned her attention to the food on their trencher, stabbing at a piece of venison with her knife, ignoring him. He leaned back, and tried to listen to the discussion that raged between two of Rivaux’s liege men over whether the greed of the Empress’s Angevin husband was preferable to Stephen’s misrule.
    But he found his attention returning almost immediately to the girl at his side. At twenty-two she ought to have been well past her youth, but she was not. Unlike so many who’d wed at twelve or thirteen, borne babes yearly and thickened, she was still slender and lithe.
    And long-limbed. Aye, she was taller than any female of his memory—taller than most men in Normandy. But her features were as fine and straight as her beautiful mother’s, and her hair was as black as Guy of Rivaux’s—as black as a raven’s wing, the bards claimed when they wrote songs of her. Even as he noted it, it shimmered in the torchlight and spilled over her rich gown like a mantle of black silk. It was so beautiful that it did not matter that she wore it unbound like a maiden’s. He drank deeply of his wine and allowed himself to imagine it spilling over a pillow. His eyes traveled lower to