“My search did bring me to your area, since I learned the fellow was headed north, near to my home. But solitude was foremost on my mind. I needed a place to find peace, if only briefly, and try to connect the few pieces of the puzzle before I moved forward.” He gently tapped the tip of her nose. “You changed all that.”
“I’m glad I could be of help,” she said with a smile, loving his playful gesture. There was something intimate about it, his way of letting her know she meant more to him than he could say.
“You’re more help than you know,” Ruddock said and gave her a quick kiss, surprised to see her frown afterwards. “My kiss does not please you?”
She shook her head, frowning. “Your kisses always more than please me.”
“It doesn’t appear so.”
“It is the thought that your father offered money to see you dead. Why, if he wanted you dead, wouldn’t he simply kill you instead of sending you away?”
She was far too astute. Whether he wanted her to know the rest of it or not, she would find out. It was only a matter of time. But he wasn’t ready to tell her.
“I don’t know, perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to see me killed,” he suggested.
“That would mean he still cared for you whether he believed you his son or not, which is quite odd. Maybe a part of him doubted what he had been told.” Her frown deepened. “How is it that none of what you told me is widely known?”
“You think my father wanted it widely known that his wife, he claimed to have loved so dearly, betrayed him with another man and that his only son, heir to his huge holdings, would go to a bastard son?”
“What of the price on your head? I recall no talk of it,” she questioned.
“You wouldn’t. Only the circle of those interested in such things were informed. My father is a powerful man and can do things even the King can’t do.”
“Will your father be pleased to learn that you’ve wed?”
“It matters not to me if he is or not.”
“He should be pleased. It means he will have heirs to see his name and legacy live on,” Sorrell said, thinking of the bairns she hoped to have one day.
Ruddock grinned. “Many heirs, since my wife is always eager to couple.”
“Aye, I am,” she said, her grin as large as his.
That she admitted such without embarrassment pleased him and caused a brief laugh. “I do adore your honesty, wife.”
“I am glad it pleases you, but it does not please me that we will be sleeping under the stars with your warriors circled around us. We will have not an ounce of privacy, which means lovemaking will have to wait, a dire situation to me.”
A slight scowl and not a spark of teasing in her green eyes let him know she was serious.
“I had thought the same myself, so tonight we will take shelter in an abbey where we will have a room, small that it might be, to ourselves.”
“You can’t be serious,” she said with a tilt of her head and her eyes turning wide. “You can’t expect me to couple with you in an abbey.”
“We’re wed. The church expects us to couple and produce children. It would be blasphemous for us not to couple.”
“Blasphemous or not, the abbey is a silent place and we are far from silent when we couple,” she argued.
He laughed. “At least the nuns will know we are fulfilling our marital duties.”
She lightly punched him in the chest, not wanting to injure her hand. “We will not couple in the abbey and that’s final.”
“Are you daring me, wife?” he asked
“I said nothing about a dare.”
“I think I heard a dare in your words,” he challenged playfully.
“You most certainly did not.”
“Is someone afraid to take on a dare?”
“No, someone knows not to take on a dare she is positive she will lose,” Sorrell said with repeated taps to his chest.
Ruddock laughed again. “You are a gem, wife.”
“Aye, I am and you will be respectful of my wishes and behave while we’re at the abbey,” she cautioned. “And I’ll have your word on that.”
“You have my word I will be a good husband and adhere to his wife’s wishes.”
“Good,” she said, now tell me about your home. I look forward to running the keep and making friends there.”
“A steward, Erskine, oversees the running of the keep, since it is such a large chore. All in the keep report to him.”
“A man replaced your mum in running the keep?”
“After my mum died, it seemed the wisest choice, since there was no one else who knew the keep as well as Erskine.”
“If your mum ran the keep, then so can I,” Sorrell said, eager to take on the challenge.