Authors: Jennifer Blake
Innuendo layered his voice, and his eyes were avid as they roamed over her. Marguerite’s stomach muscles clenched and she curled her fingers into fists. If Lord Halliwell was unaware that she had left David somewhere behind her, it seemed best not to point out his error.
“My serving woman, rather,” she said without inflection as she made to move around him. “She may be ill, and I should go to her.”
He reached out to close his fingers around her forearm. “Not yet. I have wished for a chance to speak to you.”
“Toward what purpose, sir? I regret that you have been disappointed in the matter of our betrothal, but you must see it’s fruitless to pursue it.”
“Unless Henry should change his mind.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Now why is that? What do you know that I don’t?”
She shook her head. Her veil brushed against her cheek, and she reached to hold it back while conquering the urge to clamp her teeth upon a corner in an excess of nerves. “Nothing at all, I do assure you.”
“I do swear there’s more, and I’ll know what it is before I’m finished. You’ll not play me for a fool.”
She could sympathize with him in some sense. They were both pawns in this game Henry played. Yet she knew Halliwell had agreed to his part in it and been duly compensated. It was unrealistic of him to expect to change the results because he was dissatisfied.
“No one is playing you for anything, my lord.”
“I see it differently, especially when a female knows more of affairs of great moment than I’ve been told. Why was this David of Braesford brought into it? What is the business about? Why could I not take whatever part he’s been given?”
It was ludicrous to think of this shrunken, egotistical graybeard with his temper and grown son, playing a golden Plantagenet prince. A smile twitched one corner of her mouth before she could stop it.
“You dare laugh at me?” he exclaimed in fury, his grip digging into her arm like a falcon’s talons. “I told you before what will happen to you when you are mine.”
“And what will you do to bring that about?” she demanded as anger routed her apprehension. “Will you abandon all honor for the sake of your wounded pride? Will you hire some mercenary to take me unaware, the way you did Sir David? Will you attempt to have me killed if you can’t work your will any other way?”
His grip loosened and his sagging features grew slack. “I don’t know what you’re prattling about.”
“I hope for your sake that’s true.” She twisted from his grasp, taking a hasty step toward the stairs. “David is almost well again. I pity you if he should discover that you lie.”
David watched, his breath caught in his throat, as Marguerite threw off the hold Lord Halliwell had upon her arm then left the man standing, mouth agape, as she disappeared up the stairs. Almost, he had gone to her aid. That it had been unnecessary left him awash in a peculiar mix of pride and chagrin: pride that she had stood up to the man, chagrin that she had not required his intervention.
He wanted her to need him. And wasn’t that the height of irony, when what he was doing could well make it certain she never did?
It was a dire chance he was taking, rousing her desire, stoking her curiosity about the marriage bed. What guarantee did he have that she’d ever release him from his vow? What if some other man stepped in and reaped the benefit?
Time was growing short for seduction. Any day now, Henry might wake and give the order to return to London. He could set his plan for a decoy pretender in motion at the same time. Whether Marguerite would ride to Westminster with the king or be sent elsewhere was impossible to know, but they would almost certainly be separated.
To press forward, increasing the intimacy between them, seemed necessary. A fine line lay between enough and too much, however. He did not intend to cross it, but how was he to restrain the ferocious impulses that racked him? She was so incredibly sweet and without artifice, so innocently carnal. He could have her, he knew. All he had to do was abandon honor.
Christ above, but high principles could be a curse!
It was no easy task, breaking free of Celestine, the Comtesse de Neve, and her endless reminiscences of Paris. She had been his lover, or he had been hers. The affair had lasted a week. The
comtesse
had enjoyed coming secretly to him dressed as a servant, had been adept at helping remove his armor. She professed to be stirred profoundly by the scent of horse and sweat upon firm muscles that had been well-oiled by hard effort, and proved it by rubbing her naked body over his until they both smelled the same. She’d enjoyed riding him as much or more than being underneath him. She liked it hard and fast, and rougher than he’d been willing to supply. When she’d moved on to another man, he’d not minded at all.
It was clear she was not averse to taking up where they had left off. He was diplomatic in the extreme, but allowed her to understand that his interest lay with Marguerite. Far from being heartbroken, the
comtesse
shrugged and began a discreet flirtation with a burly man-at-arms.
The rain still pecked against the shutter over his chamber’s narrow window when he reached it. All was dark within, especially when he closed the door behind him. He stepped with care and the sour hope that the locations of the pallets being used by Astrid and Marguerite were in the same positions as before. They must have been, for he had a clear path to his own low bed with its stumps of wood for legs.
Feeling the frame of it against his shins, he undressed in a few swift moves and lowered himself to it. The crackling of its straw and creak of the rope supports were loud in the stillness. He winced as he waited to
see if he had awakened anyone, particularly Marguerite whose pallet lay against the near wall, at a right angle that put her head just below his own. She didn’t stir, however, and he relaxed by slow degrees.
Minutes passed. David lay listening to Astrid’s soft, snuffling snores and the falling rain. He was glad that he was not out in the chill, drenching wetness beyond the shutters. He’d spent many a night in such discomfort, would likely spend many more. He could not imagine this feint of Henry’s would be accomplished without many evenings spent riding between widely scattered meeting places, speaking to gatherings of yeoman farmers and younger sons, persuading them of the rightness of his claim to the throne.
His claim. What in the name of heaven was he doing?
David’s skin prickled at the thought, causing the brand on his shoulder to itch. Reaching up, he soothed it as he had a thousand times before. It felt smooth yet slightly raised, so he easily followed it with his fingertips, tracing the interlocking circles by rote. Marguerite had asked about it, but he had little to tell her. He could not remember how he had come by it, could not recall a time when it wasn’t there. It was simply a part of him in the same way some people had birthmarks. This was not a natural blemish, however, but a brand made by hot iron so long ago it had become a pale scar on the sun-browned surface of his shoulder.
Not that he’d ever seen it, of course. Others had, the women who came to him, the men he fought on the practice field, even Oliver. None had made him so aware of it as Marguerite. He could still feel her fingers smoothing over, or so it seemed, still feel her lips upon it.
He might have dreamed that part of it, of course. Most likely he had.
Flinging to his side, he let his arm drape over the edge of the bed so his fingers grazed the stone floor. Something light and fine touched his hand. He flinched before he realized it must be hair, Marguerite’s hair. Usually, she wore it confined in a braid for sleeping. She seemed to have left it loose this night, mayhap because Astrid had been asleep, so unable to plait it properly for her. Its great length would have spread around her as she turned in her sleep.
It was as soft and silken as an angel’s wing. The need to slide his fingers deeper into it was more than he could withstand. Faint warmth lingered among the strands. They seemed to have life of their own, as fine, individual hairs clung to his knuckles, his calluses and the rough edges of old injuries. If he wanted to be fanciful, he could imagine they pulled at him, urging him down to the floor, nearer their owner. And he wanted that, needed it, with a power that clamored in his blood, gripped his chest and turned his body to tempered steel.
He longed to stretch out beside Marguerite on her pallet, to pull her close against him, matching curve to curve, breath to breath. He wanted to wake her with the softest of kisses, the most devious of caresses, to incite a thousand sensations that would urge her to turn in shivering surrender. How many times had he possessed her in fervid imagination? How many years had he dropped into sleep with that image burning in his mind?
This was as close as he had ever been, as close as he might ever be.
The warmth in her hair was caused by her arm that
lay beneath its silken cover. He sensed the shape of it and fingered carefully along its length to her wrist. She must be half off her pallet, with her arm flung along the stone floor as if reaching for his bed.
A silent oath feathered his lips as he wondered if she was growing cold, if the rest of her was covered, and what he should do to make her more comfortable. He couldn’t just turn over and go to sleep now, not while thinking she might wake up stiff and chilled or even ill.
Astrid was asleep, almost literally dead to the world. He could wake her to see after her mistress, but not without disturbing Marguerite. He didn’t want to do that, in part because her nights had been disturbed enough lately, but also because he’d as soon not admit to fondling her in the darkness.
There was only one thing to be done.
Berating himself with battlefield curses in a dozen different languages, David eased from the bed and went to one knee beside Marguerite’s pallet. Using only the sensitive tips of his fingers, staring blindly into the blackness above her, he skimmed over the shape of her under a thin summer coverlet, locating the curve of her hip and the bend of her knee. As he had thought, she was lying more on the floor than on her pallet, had somehow rolled over in her sleep so she rested on her stomach.
He eased his hand higher, brushed over her shoulder that was veiled in fine strands of hair. His breath stopped in his chest.
Her shoulder was not covered.
Her shoulder was naked of cover of any kind.
His brain ceased to function for endless seconds.
When it began again, it scattered in a dozen directions. Many people slept naked, particularly in summer. They did, of course they did.
Marguerite had not in all the time she had shared his room. She had slept in her clothing, wrapped in her coverlet as if encased in armor.
What did it mean that she was naked now? Could it be an invitation? Should he have returned much earlier and discovered her? Had she been waiting for him in her state of undress?
Did it mean anything at all? Or was she merely weary of being confined in her clothing during the night?
Either way, he could not leave her on the cold, damp floor. She must be chilled, lying there.
Touching her hair, he followed the strands to where they sprang from her head to find her forehead. She was cool, right enough, her skin soft, fine-grained and satin-smooth under the roughness of his palm.
He had best finish what he’d started, before he did something he would regret.
Bending, he slid his hands underneath her, expecting to encounter the edges of her coverlet. It wasn’t there. His fingers skimmed beneath her shoulder to find purchase on warm, naked skin. One hand cupped, unerringly, the sweet, round globe of a breast, the other spread over the soft flat surface of her lower abdomen.
Sweat broke out along his backbone, pooling between his shoulder blades. His palms felt on fire. His mouth watered with desperate need to taste the smooth, warm flesh in his grasp. His lower belly clamped down while his braies bulged with his body’s sudden tumescence.
God and all his saints aid him.
Clamping his teeth together, he began to lift her, easing her gently back onto her pallet. She stirred, murmuring as she turned toward him. Abruptly, she drew a sharp, gasping breath and stiffened in his hold.
“Don’t scream,” he whispered as he hovered over her, trying not to think of where his hands were placed. “It’s not what you think.”
She breathed again, put a hand on his arm for leverage as she righted herself then eased to a sitting position. The shift of position removed her luscious curves from his hands. He groaned at their loss before he could stop himself.
Her fingers tightened upon his arm. “Are you sure it isn’t what I think?” she asked, the words as soft as a sigh.
S
he had fallen asleep. How could she have done that?
Marguerite’s intention had been to wait for David and sit up as he entered the chamber, artlessly exposing her naked state. Both Astrid and Oliver had said men found that difficult to resist, had they not? Why should he be different?
After a time, the murmur of the rain had made her sleepy. The wick in the small lamp had burned away to nothing, leaving her in darkness. To close her eyes for a moment had seemed harmless.
If she had been awake when he’d first put his hands upon her, she might have feigned sleep and waited to see what he would do next. Having removed herself from his grasp, she would never know. She could have cried. Not only would it have solved her dilemma of how to begin his seduction, but the ripples of pleasure where his hands had been made her think it might have been quite glorious.
She had indicated her willingness to go further. What happened next was up to him. She waited with her heart trembling inside her to discover it.
“You were half on the floor and…and I thought you
would be chilled,” he said, the words a quiet rasp in the darkness. “I only meant to make you more comfortable.”
“You touched me.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t know…”
“Didn’t know I had thrown off my clothes. I understand.” She paused to steady her voice. “It was a mistake, I think, for the night is damp and cool and…and the coverlet not enough to warm me.”
“You don’t know what you are saying,” he whispered.
“Do I not? Or is it that you don’t want to hear?”
“Oh, I want it, but…”
“I’ve heard much of your prowess with the ladies, but have seen little of it.” How she dared say such a thing, she hardly knew. It was as if some more bold spirit had taken possession of her while she slept.
“You’ve heard—Oliver. I’ll wring his neck for him.”
“Now, why?”
“He interferes where he should not.”
She had thought the same thing a time or two. “Why would he do that?”
“Pure meddlesome spite, because he thinks he knows best, knows my mind better than I do. He thinks he knows what I— God, Marguerite, I’m only a man, and I’ve so longed…”
“For what?” she asked, the words a mere breath of sound.
“To touch you even more.” He settled a hand upon her waist in the dark, slid his arm to circle her and draw her up to her knees. Tethered to him by that hard support, she leaned into his strength. “I will not, cannot, take you,” he went on against her hair, “but there are sweet pleasures I can show you if you will allow it.”
His face was so near she would feel his warm breath against her temple. She turned blindly toward that heat as toward life itself. A great longing pooled inside her. “I could not bear to refuse.”
He bent his head and his mouth touched hers, firm and seeking yet incredibly sensual in its smooth surfaces, its tenderness. He brushed against the molded edges of her lips, savoring them with a slow sweep of his tongue’s edge as he pulled her closer. Her mouth tingled, swelling with the need for greater pressure, deeper joining. His heat against her cool flesh made her shiver and burrow nearer. The chill tightness she held deep inside began to ease as if she were melting. She relaxed against him with a wordless murmur of need and joy.
He smoothed his palm in circles over her back, easing downward until he captured the turn of her hip. She jerked in surprised pleasure, tilting the softness of her lower body against him. The feeling was so astonishing that she moved against his hard male planes, gathering the fiery, surging sensations it brought in slow discovery. He was so solid and unmovable, his strength forged in fire yet clean and good beyond imagining. The muscles and sinews beneath his skin were a delight, and she swept her hands over them, clasping, smoothing, learning the firm texture and iron hardness of his body. That he held such limitless power in strict obedience to his will while holding her was miraculous. Yet she ached to take it into her, to feel it inside her.
At her soft moan of need, he deepened the meeting of their mouths, plunging inside, brushing the delicate inner surfaces, sliding over her teeth. He sipped the
edges of her tongue, drew it into his mouth while lapping the fragile underside.
Greatly daring, she matched his movements, applying suction that brought his tongue thrusting back into her mouth in hot demand. Heady pleasure rippled through her, a tumult of the senses fed by his hand closing upon her breast, compressing the nipple in rhythmic pulsing.
She was boneless, trembling with a hunger so deep it was frightening. Her blood thundered through her veins with primal force. She thought she was falling, half fainting, until she realized David was lowering her to her pallet on the floor. He eased down beside her, his hand spread over her abdomen as if in possession. He flexed his fingers, kneading the soft surface while casting lower, ever lower. She tensed, clamping her thighs together as he slid his hand between her legs, threaded his fingers into the fine silk curls to clasp her mound.
“What…” she began.
“Shh,” he whispered, his lips grazing her breast, “I won’t hurt you.”
He wouldn’t, and she knew it well. Yet no one had touched her there in her memory. The instinct to protect the most vulnerable center of her being made it difficult to open to him. It might have taken longer, except she was distracted as he wet her taut nipple with his tongue, blew upon it so it knotted still more, circled it, flicked it with gentle fire.
Heavy urgency filled her. She wanted him closer, wanted him over her, his hard weight against her, upon her. She needed his strength in a way that was beyond understanding.
She reached out to him, trailing her hand along the
rough linen of his braies, entranced by the hard ridge that strained against the fabric. The heat of it burned her as she curled her fingers around the long length.
He caught them, transferring her wrist to the hard fingers of his left hand. “No, sweetling. No, this is your lesson.”
He wasn’t drowning in need and lassitude as she was. He was remote, fixed upon giving her pleasure. And he was doing that with single-minded determination, his long fingers gently probing, separating her fragile folds, easing into her while his thumb circled over a place so sensitive that she hovered between pleasure and pain.
Ah, but he was not entirely unmoved. She could feel the sheen of moisture where his upper body brushed against her, feel the heavy thudding of his heart behind the barrier of his ribs.
He shifted, confining her knees with his hard thigh as he laid it across them while spreading her thighs wider. She wanted to protest, to break free. That was before he bent his head and took the strutted tip of her breast into his mouth.
All ability to think left her as he laved her with his tongue, suckled her with insistent tugs. She felt the wet slide as he skimmed his tongue down the hillock of her breast to the valley between them. He pressed warm kisses to her stomach, and lower, before nosing into the soft curls at the juncture of her thighs. Shifting, he replaced his caressing thumb with the heat and fervent adhesion of his mouth.
She came apart like precious glass hitting a stone floor, the pieces of her being shattering, scattering under the hardness of his resolve. She swallowed a sob
that was half-frantic, gratified joy, half sorrow that she was alone in its glory. Shuddering, she arched toward him, needing to be held to keep her soul from flying out of her body.
He closed his arms around her, rocking her, murmuring into her hair. His hands moved over her, soothing her, pushing away the fire. She felt protected, safe, as if she was where she belonged, had always belonged. Languor seeped into her, pushing her to the edge of sleep.
David was still impossibly strong, impossibly hard against her. That was wrong, she knew, though there was nothing she could do about it. His control was unbreakable, his resistance to temptation supreme. His honor was inviolate.
It was comforting, even gratifying in its way. It was also infuriating. And if she was hurt as well by his ability to resist sharing such completion with her, it was something she refused to admit, even to herself.
David curled his body around Marguerite while he willed his heartbeat to slow and his body to settle down. It wasn’t easy, not while the amazing joy of holding her warm and naked body against him simmered in his veins. Her hair tickled him in a thousand places while its scent of sunshine and daisies made his senses reel. Her warm breath against his chest, the feel of her under his hands, satisfied some longing he hadn’t known was inside him. He didn’t want to move, not now, not ever. For the first time in more than a decade he felt whole, as if he’d been lost and was now found.
How valiant she was to allow him to come to her this way. Her bravery and trust humbled him. The gift
of being able to pleasure her was more than he had ever thought to receive. Though he ached to have more, to thrust deep inside her at the peak of need and feel her coalesce around him, to plumb her soft, wet depths until he felt the beat of her heart, he was also content to simply lie and remember and be glad. What would happen on the morrow, next week, next month, he did not know, but at least he’d had tonight.
Astrid made soft snuffling sounds in her dark corner. Still deeply asleep, thank God. The rain had dwindled to a light patter, though it dripped from the roof into the courtyard below. The damp chill of it seeped through the shutter, brushing his fevered skin into a rash of goose bumps. Still, he did not move.
Soon now, he would release Marguerite, easing away, covering her with care. He would return to his own cold and empty bed and try his best to sleep. It was doubtful he would manage it while the taste of her lingered in his mouth, the silken feel of her skin hovered on his hands, spinning over and over in his head. He wasn’t sure he wanted to sleep, in truth, not when he could remember instead. He might never sleep again.
He fell into a light doze in his own bed, finally, as morning light began to curl pink fingers around the shutter edge’s and a rooster saluted the rain-washed dawn. It lasted barely an hour before Oliver banged his way inside and rousted him out again.
“Up, sir,” he growled, thrusting a beaker of ale into his hand. “The king requires your presence in the great hall. You are to have the honor of breaking your fast at the high table.”
Oliver’s mustache drooped in a dour expression as he
made the announcement. David was sure the sentiment was mirrored on his own face. They both knew the king should be taking his ale, beef and bread in his chamber while making ready for the promised hunt. That he was, instead, issuing commands couched as formal invitations did not bode well.
“Lady Marguerite?”
A quick glance had been enough to show her pallet neatly tidied away. She was gone from the chamber, along with Astrid. He should have known. Oliver would not have entered, otherwise.
“Broke her fast in the hall and is now with Lady Joan, awaiting a day in the saddle.”
He would like to have seen her before she dressed, awakening to her morning disarray, gloriously naked in the burgeoning light with her hair streaming down her back. He might have snatched a kiss, or even tasted her breast as he cupped it, stroked it, gazed upon its sweet contours instead of learning them in the dark.
There were many things he might have done if men were born equal and life was fair.
“And Astrid?” he asked in gruff courtesy. “She was well when you saw her?”
“As ever was, and like vinegar with it.” A sardonic smile crossed his squire’s droll features. “The poor little mite was just overtired last night.”
“She would ‘poor little mite’ you, if she heard you.”
“Oh, aye.” Oliver gave him a narrow look. “And you? Are you well enough to ride out this day?”
David snorted. “I will have to be, won’t I?”
“I could make your excuses, say the wound fever is
upon you again. The rest could brave the wet and muck while you stay abed with Lady Marguerite to tend you.”
The temptation was so strong David felt light-headed with it. Not that he lacked the strength or will to keep up with the king. Still, how sweet it would be to lie abed with Marguerite wrapped up in his coverlet with him while everyone else was away and the rain coming down. For such a day out of time, he could easily forget his duty to his king, forget crowns and plots and honor.
Forget honor, above all else.
David cursed under his breath and rubbed his hands briskly over his face before shoving them through his hair. Pushing up from the bed, he threw on his clothes, pulled on his boots and went to see what Henry wanted of him now.
The king was in a pensive mood, but courteous for all that. Acknowledging David’s bow, he waved him to the seat next to his own and piled his trencher with beef from the royal dish. He waited until ale had been poured and the servitor had moved away before he spoke.
“We note that you were in the hall last evening. It is gratifying to us to see you up and about again.”
David replied as expected, then waited to see what more would come. Recent days spent hunting had taken some of the strain from the king’s face, he thought, but there was trenchant purpose in his gray-blue eyes this morning.
“Lady Marguerite is a capable healer, or so it appears. You are fit to ride?”
That everyone should question his show of strength was his own fault, David knew. He had deliberately prolonged his convalescence. Part of it was the pleasure of
Marguerite’s close company, but it was also to protect her. She was safe from Halliwell’s attentions while shut away in their chamber, safe also from the snide glances and petty remarks of others. That was beyond the fact that he simply liked lying and watching her as she read to him or stitched a fine seam.
“As you say, sire,” he answered.
“You and the lady dealt well together?”
He tipped his head in assent. They had dealt well indeed, particularly the night before, though that was none of the king’s affair.
Or was it?
Had Henry somehow divined how matters stood between him and the lady that he asked such a question? For a fleeting instant, David allowed himself to suspect this was the purpose in sending Marguerite to care for him, that Henry meant to see the two of them wed, one way or the other. A part of it could easily be the ruin of Marguerite’s good name brought about by the time spent in close quarters with him. Guilt for that undoing could be meant to force him to the altar. Still he could not fathom what purpose of state might be served by it.