In the Shadow of Midnight (7 page)

“Well.” Lady Isabella waited until her niece, nephew, and husband’s liegeman gave her their full attention. “It seems as though this Welsh renegade is familiar with the game of chess.
If I am not mistaken, he has just placed us in check. William,” she added curtly, “will not be impressed.”

Ariel refused to be daunted. “He will recognize a desperate measure when he sees one.”

The countess sighed and rubbed her aching temples. “I suppose, if I were simply to forbid you from leaving Pembroke Castle, you would not heed me.”

“Sweet Aunt … I do not want to hurt you, or anger you, or ever disobey you,” Ariel insisted, “but this is my
life.
My
future.
My very
destiny
being decided. I would sooner perish on the road to Normandy than tolerate one moment of hellish exile in Radnor.”

“But the dangers—”

“I will have Henry and Sedrick to watch over me … and the Welsh pup, for what he is worth. I have made the crossing before, Aunt. I know the road to Rouen well.”

“Aye, and what if the road back leads to Wales?” Isabella asked gently.

“Well—” Ariel bit the soft pulp of her lip and gave the possibility—however remote it might be—a moment of thought before she offered a quick, too-bright smile. “At least the rogue has no pocks and smells reasonably clean.”

Lady Isabella sighed and stroked a hand down the shiny red ripple of Ariel’s hair. “Nor is he a man to trifle with. You have offered him something of great value which he will not lightly dismiss.”

“Offering and actually
giving
are two very different things, Aunt.”

“Sometimes a woman has no choice. Sometimes … a man can do things that render a woman senseless and without a will of her own.”

Ariel sat back and frowned in bemusement. “I should like to meet the man who could render
me
without a will of my own.”

“I recall saying much the same thing before I met William,” Isabella murmured despairingly. “And all it took was one glance. One moment in his presence … and I was lost.”

“Well, I have glanced at this rogue and I have been in his
presence, and I can promise you I am still in full possession of my senses.” She saw her aunt give rise to another spasm of anxiety and sought to comfort her by adding, “I will also promise, if it will ease your mind to know, that I will accept Uncle Will’s judgement in this, whatever it might be.”

“And God’s,” the countess whispered. “That He should not forsake you now.”

“Have you forsaken all your senses?” Lord Dafydd asked his brother, well out of earshot of those in the great hall. “Sending me to Normandy? Proposing a marriage between you and Ariel de Clare?”

“Do you doubt you can put an eloquent enough pledge in the marshal’s ear?”

“I could put it to the pope himself, for all the good it would do.”

Rhys grinned and pulled on his gloves, tamping each finger snug to the joint. “You do not think the old lion will see any benefit to allying himself with Gwynedd? God’s blood, man, he will see the proposal with a warrior’s eye, if nothing else. Access to Snowdonia gives him access to Ireland as well as half of northern Wales. And did you see the brother’s eyes glisten when he thought of Cardigan? I could bed the wench tonight and the brother would cheer us on.”

Dafydd reached out a hand and hooked Iorwerth’s arm, halting the echo of their heavy bootsteps in the stone corridor.

“You are not thinking of—”

“Lying in wait for the fair demoiselle and ravishing her to seal our pact?” Rhys laughed and started walking again. “In truth, the thought occurred to me. I’m hard enough to ride a brace of maids, top and bottom, and still have leavings for a slut or two. But no. You may rest easy on that count, little brother. Your tender morals are as safe as I will expect you to keep hers on the way to Normandy and back. It is important to make no mistakes, to present our intentions in the best, most honourable light. I want her to come to me willingly and pure. I want no taint of corruption or coersion to shadow this marriage.”

“In this quest for purity … are you forgetting you already
have
a wife?”

Rhys stopped suddenly enough and angrily enough to send Dafydd’s brows arching upward.

“I am not forgetting. How could I forget a spindle-legged, gap-toothed weanling who weeps ceaselessly whenever I am lucky enough—or sodden enough—to succeed in prying her knees apart?”

“Nevertheless—”

“Nevertheless,” Rhys interrupted with a scowl, “I have tried a thousand times over the past seven years of our wedded ordeal to plant the seeds of an heir in her womb … to no avail. The bitch is barren. It will take no great effort to be rid of her, which is why I am returning to Deheubarth and you are travelling to Normandy. You will seal this alliance with the old lion, promising him anything if need be, so long as you return with his sealed contract before Llywellyn sniffs anything in the wind.”

“What about the king’s men?” “What about them?”

“How can you kidnap them, hold them to ransom, then send them back to John
without
Llywellyn catching the scent?”

“It takes a grievous long time for the odour of corpses to rise up through the earth,” Rhys said matter-of-factly. “By then, my new bride will be queen of Gwynedd.”

He glared his declaration into Dafydd’s eyes a moment longer then turned and ducked through an arched doorway, leaving the younger man staring after him, his expression carefully guarded against the disdain he was feeling.

It was typical of Rhys to expect the world to bend to his designs. Typical of him to think the marshal would welcome him eagerly to the House of Pembroke. Typical to think a woman like Ariel de Glare would be as easily crushed under his thumb as the other cows he normally took to his bed.

But if he thought Llywellyn would simply stand by and do nothing while he raised the Pembroke lions over the battlements of Deheubarth …

Dafydd almost chuckled to himself. Indeed, it would be
his pleasure to escort Lady Ariel to Normandy and plead his brother’s case to the Marshal of England. It would be equally pleasurable to bring back an echo of the lion’s laughter, or, should the heavens split open and gold florins fall from the sky, to bring him back his new bride and stand aside while Rhys and Llywellyn fought each other over possession of Gwynedd.

For with any luck at all, they would kill each other and he would be free of them both.

I
t was the blade of sunlight that disturbed him. A single bright beam of light had found a narrow chink between the wooden shutters and had crept slowly across the width of the bed, stroking a path of lazy warmth across the faces of the two recuperating occupants.

The first had tiny beads of dampness glistening on her brow and throat. She looked and, indeed, was utterly drained and depleted by the activities of the hour preceding her collapse. The raw potency of the energies she had expended softened the lines of her face and showed in the swollen redness of her lips. The mottled pinkness across her breasts and belly kept her warm and scorned the need for any covering or blanket.

She dozed with her head cradled on a muscular shoulder, her body curved against another of immensely powerful proportions. A soft white arm was flung limply across a chest thickened and plated by years of wielding heavy swords and lances; a pale limb was hooked over a thigh that might have been carved from marble. The hand of her companion was broad and callused, and rested in the tangled, damp nest of her hair; another cupped the plump white flesh of her rump and periodically moved through a stretch or a vague restlessness to pull her softness against him.

The blade of sunlight spilled its liquid gold over the man’s strong, square jaw, lighting a mouth that had, until a sennight ago, been issuing battle orders and shouting words of encouragement to fellow knights as they fought a bloody melee with King Philip’s army at Blois. The rout had been a complete success, but the knight had been wounded slightly in the crush of steel and armour, and the ragged cut on his arm still glowed an angry red between the barber’s row of knotted threads.

It was only a trifling wound and the memory of earning it had probably already been lost amongst the scores of other
scars, some big, some small, that marked the powerful musculature of his body. One of the cruelest scars he bore disfigured his left cheek. It was not so hideous as to make a maid faint outright from the sight, but it was shocking enough to draw stares and sighs of pity, for without the flaw, he would have been handsome enough to leave women swooning and gawking for very different reasons.

It was just as well, though, for he had little time or interest to spare on women. He liked them well enough and used them often enough to bolster his reputation for being more than just a champion in the lists. For the most part, however, he preferred to release his tensions on the battlefield or the practice yards, leaving the wenching and whoring to those who thrived on it.

At twenty-six, he was in his prime as a fighting man and to his credit had amassed a respectable personal fortune on the tournament circuit, winning prizes of armour and horseflesh from his defeated opponents, then ransoming them back for double their original worth. He had never suffered the ignominy of a loss himself. He could, in fact, boast of being split from a saddle by only one man—coincidentally the only man who could have won a rueful smile as a result of the ungallant tumbling. That man was his father, Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer, Baron d’Amboise, Scourge of Mirebeau, champion to the dowager queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

The sunlight continued to pour its golden heat across the thick crescents of chestnut lashes and Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise was forced to open them. He squinted up into the brilliant shaft and the smokey gray of his eyes was seared almost colourless. His annoyance brought a muffled curse to his lips and he turned, pressing a kiss into the crown of the woman’s head. A yawn and a phantom itch gave him an excuse to untangle his arms and limbs and start the process of extricating himself from the bed, but the wench knew his tricks and, in a move so subtle it impressed the breath from his lungs, she parted her thighs and shifted herself sideways, drawing him slowly up and into her sleek warmth.

Half asleep, wholly focussed on the swelling spear of turgid
flesh within her, she roused herself with sinewy, catlike stretches, waiting until his blooded fullness was as thick and deep as she could coax it before she lifted her head and purred.

“You were not thinking of leaving me just yet were you, my lord?”

The husky, throaty sound of her voice washed over him, and his hands moved of their own accord to fill themselves with the incredibly ripe, round globes of her breasts. “I confess … I did not want to trouble you further.”

She looked down to where the dark red discs of her nipples had stiffened against his fingers, forming two jutting peaks, hard as berries, tempting as sin.

“When I want you to stop troubling me, my lord, I will tell you plainly enough. Listen—” she whispered, leaning over to nip the lobe of his ear between her teeth, “and tell me what you hear.”

Eduard sucked at a breath and his hands grasped hold of her hips as she began to move over him. Diamond-shaped flecks of blue altered the pewter gray of his eyes, the blue becoming darker and deeper with each stroke of sliding heat that engulfed him. The strong, supple limbs gripped his thighs like a vise and as the greedy fist of her womanhood became more and more insistent, his hips began to surge upward, answering the determined tug and pull of her flesh.

Gabrielle was blissfully aware of the mighty tremors building and gathering in the rock-hard flesh beneath her and she braced her hands on his chest, letting each thrust carry her to a new peak of sensation. He was by far her most virile lover, although his visits came so infrequently she wondered how he could survive with all this pressure stored up inside him. She would never dare ask, but she often wondered why he came to her when there were so many other, younger, prettier maids within the castle walls who would have spun rainbows to please the son of La Seyne Sur Mer. There was only one possible reason she could think of, for she did not flatter herself that her lovemaking skills were any more or less astounding, given the prowess of the man who sought them. Rather, she suspected it had something to do with the fact she was
barren, and, being a bastard himself, he had no desire to father another into the world.

Whatever the reason, she was only glad to know that when he did feel the need to release himself, he did so with her.

And did it so splendidly.

A groan shivered in Gabrielle’s throat and she urged her body through a blurred frenzy of ecstasy, not slowing or stopping until the last drop, the last shudder had been wrung from his flesh. Only then, limp and laughing from sheer exhilaration, she collapsed in a weak, trembling heap in his arms.

Eduard held her that way until his own senses were restored, then chuckled softly as he tilted her face up to his. “Why are you always determined to see me hauled back to the castle in a trundle cart?”