Authors: Jennifer Blake
“Are you all right?” he whispered against her hair.
“Perfect.”
He kissed her temple, her eyes, licked the salt of her tears, brushed her nose with his lips. He took her mouth then, and slowly, with an inexorable bunching of muscles, lifted away from her and slid back again. And again. And yet again.
It was a slow ravishment of the senses, a deep plundering, as if he meant to leave no small corner of her body unplumbed. He glided, lifting her with him, tilting her hips to take more of him, all of him. It was an endless beguilement as he swirled with deliberate friction upon her swollen entrance before plunging in again.
She was enthralled by the smooth flexing and stretching of his muscles, the perspiration veiling his
skin, his heat, his effortless strength and infinite control. She filled her hands with him, grasped his hips, slipped them over his back, clutched his shoulders as she moved with him, against him, with him again. Her very being expanded. Ripples of goose bumps moved over her as years of strain and frustration fell away from her.
Still he moved, relentless in his power, implacable in his will. His eyes were fiercely tender, his jaws clenched as he held himself in unwavering restraint. He focused every ounce of his attention upon her, tending her responses while unheeding of his own, urging her toward some supreme moment.
It surged through her like on onrushing storm, a thunderous cataclysm of the blood. It broke deep inside, sweeping her up in elemental fury that had David at its center. She coalesced around him in mindless wonder, drawing him into her very core, caressing him in violent internal waves. She took him as he had taken her, surrendered even as she triumphed. And in that moment, she felt his full power as he drove into her a final time, sounding her as if he meant to make them one.
And he did, he did, while the blood pounded through their veins, their heartbeats matched and melded and their breaths mingled. He took her mouth, whispering her name into it, holding the future at bay, protecting her from all the tomorrows, making this evening, this moment, enough to last a lifetime.
David lay watching Marguerite sleep, propped on one elbow beside her. The gray light that heralded dawn lay beyond the open window. A breeze drifted inside that
was ripe with the scents of wood smoke and horse dung and green growing things. He should be up and away, but could not bring himself to move.
He didn’t want to leave her, not now, not ever.
By Our Lady, but she was valiant and caring, also passionately intelligent, intelligently passionate. None of it was obvious or studied or designed to attract, and yet it swept him toward her like a hurricane. He had known more beautiful women but none that intrigued him so. None that he could love forevermore.
He had been as gentle as he could with her, but feared he had tried her sorely. He could not seem to get his fill of her. They had bathed together, eaten together, then he had taken her a second time, a third, a fourth. In the small hours of the morning he had been so lost in her, so fearful he would never hold her again, that his control had slipped. He winced now, remembering how demanding he had been, how consumed with need. He had been rougher than he intended, rougher than she deserved, rougher than she might be able to forgive.
God, beheading was too good for him.
Yet he would do it again. This night just past could be all he would ever have of this sweetest Grace of Graydon, this generous lady to whom he had pledged his life so many years ago. He had once thought it would be sufficient if he could persuade her to release him from his vow, that he could then arrange matters to suit his most fervent desire.
He had been wrong. The news brought by Marguerite set aside all his plans, destroyed his long-held dream.
Henry might well want his head, and who could blame him? The king had thought to nullify the chances
for success of one pretender by creating another that was patently false. He had not known he was inviting a worse threat into his realm. That he would strike to remove it was only to be expected. Henry was a pragmatic man who never underestimated his enemies.
Marguerite had crowned him with clover once, when they were young and the world was green and new. Mayhap she was something of a witch, after all, that she had felt it appropriate back then. Now she had crowned him again, in effect, by seeking out and returning with proof of his birth. She had, but he would readily exchange that proof for the chance to go back and live this night again.
He had no wish to be king, David thought. Such had never been his ambition, and nothing had changed in that regard. It was enough to know that he was no bastard, but had been conceived in what his mother had known to be lawful wedlock.
Edward, he had been christened Edward, after all. How typical of his royal father, to name both his firstborn sons, though from different mothers, for his own arrogant self.
Edward IV had kept him close as a babe, and as long afterward as he had a chance of being useful. He had abandoned him when other sons arrived. What connection, David thought, did he have, or wish to have, to that user of women, King Edward IV, heroic in war but incapable of anything beyond raging lust that would brook no refusal? He wanted nothing to do with his Yorkist crown, Yorkist ambition for an immortal royal line.
He could not expect Henry to believe that. It would
take a supremely confident king to act on such a belief, even if he could accept it.
The greatest danger, so far as David could see, was the chance Henry might consider Marguerite’s actions a betrayal. That the attempt to rescue her from an unwanted marriage could end with her being imprisoned or banished to a convent was unthinkable. It could not be allowed to happen.
He must leave her behind as he rode to confront Henry, then, must go now while she slept. That was bad enough, but he must also leave her without saying farewell. He could not kiss her for fear she would wake, could not have one last taste of her, no final possession.
It was a high price to pay for honor.
And yet, he was glad that she slept on, exhausted by long hours of riding over the past few days and also the love they had shared. He was not sure he could have retained his much vaunted honor if he had been forced to say goodbye.
Easing from the bed, he dressed quickly in the dark. He woke Oliver and gave the order designed to have his company saddled and ready by the time he had bathed once more and dressed in raiment fit for an audience with a king. By the time dawn rendered the eastern sky in shades of rose and gold, they were upon the road.
What lay ahead, David could not tell. All he knew was that Marguerite lay warm and safe behind him.
M
arguerite woke with a start, hovering on the edge of a perilous nightmare. She stared at the ceiling of coffered wood, her heart throbbing against her ribs. The dream faded without leaving her the sense of it, yet she felt something was wrong.
In a single moment, she understood what it was. She was alone in the bed. The mattress surface beside her was cool. David had gone.
She sat up in a rush, staring around the room. His clothing and armor were missing, and his boots. Beyond the window, the warm and golden light told its tale. The morning was advanced, two hours past dawn at least. Sounds from below were muted, infrequent, a sign that the largest part of David’s company were either not stirring or had departed, as well.
David was gone, and so was the marriage contract that had been laid aside the night before. He had gone to confront the king, and he had left her behind.
“Astrid!” Marguerite cried in anger and a terrible desolation that nearly stole her voice. Whipping back the coverlet, she leaped from the bed and began to gather up her scattered clothing. “Astrid, where are you?”
“Here, milady!” The small serving woman swung open the door, closing it hastily behind her at the sight of her mistress’s state of undress. “What is it? Are you ill? In pain?”
“When did Sir David leave? Did you see him go? Why didn’t you wake me?”
Astrid bent and picked up Marguerite’s girdle, placing it across the foot of the bed. “He was away early, milady,” she said without meeting her gaze, “or so they said in the kitchen. Most of his company went with him, those not needed on guard here. I was not awake at the time.”
Marguerite stepped to the three-legged stool and dropped down upon it with her gown crushed in her fists and sudden tears rimming her eyes. “He went without me, Astrid. Why? Why did he leave me behind?”
Astrid sighed as she came to stand beside her. She put an arm around her shoulders in a tight hug. “Oliver is gone, as well.”
“Yes, of course he is,” she said bitterly. David would take his friend, but not her, the one person, next to him, who was most intimately concerned with what was going forth.
She had thought that making love would change things between them, that he might be willing to abandon England and this dangerous business of kings and crowns. Oh, she knew he had said he must go to Henry, but she had hoped to persuade him otherwise.
Their closeness made no difference, or so it seemed. What had been an upheaval of the senses reaching to the bottom of her soul had affected him not at all. He had gone about the manly pursuit of his honor without
a thought for how she might feel or what might become of her if he was killed.
Dearest heaven, but she had gloried in his touch, his possession. He had used her with such tenderness, such caring when he could surely have been far rougher. He could have ridden her, driving into her untried body without remorse. The power and need for it was there in his savagely held control. Almost, almost, she wished he had unleashed his full strength, taking her as he might a woman who had known love often instead of an untried virgin. He had come close the last time he woke her, she knew, close enough that she had felt the potential for pain beneath the exquisite pleasure. Yet he had stopped short of it.
She did not know if she could have sustained it. It hurt her beyond bearing that she might never find out.
It was possible that she would never see him again, never know his kiss, his touch, the joy of lying with him, sleeping with his body curved protectively around hers. He could ride to this audience with the king at Westminster and simply disappear. It had happened before. A king did not require reason, need adhere to no rules. A word, a gesture and it was done.
David was such a king, or would have been if the world was a just place and all men honorable. Mayhap he was riding now to eliminate Henry and take his rightful place on the throne? Men had done more dangerous things while driven by the greed for power.
What if he had not taken her with him because he had tried her and found her wanting? He had satisfied his lust and was done with her?
What if he had decided that he deserved no less than
a princess as his consort? She had suspected he might, had she not?
Yes, or it could be he knew it was what was due the crown, what parliament and the people would require of their sovereign. The two of them had signed no marriage contract, and he was his father’s son.
He was the son of Edward IV, who had allowed his true wife to bear their son in secret, had branded him as his own then abandoned lady and child for the sake of Elizabeth Woodville’s beautiful smiles and calculated surrender.
Anguish squeezed the breath from Marguerite’s chest. Suppose she had conceived during the night just past. Would David allow her to give birth in a convent? Would he brand the child of their union in case his dynastic lady produced no heir to the throne?
Marguerite clasped her arms around her upper body, rocking back and forth with the pain of the possible, the agony of not knowing what David intended, or what would become of them both.
Astrid held her closer, resting her cheek against Marguerite’s hair. With no idea of what was in the mind of her mistress, she went on. “’Tis because they think it men’s work that yon fools went without us. They believe they grant us a favor by leaving us behind to stitch and see that food is prepared, and wait with what patience we may to hear what will befall them.”
“They don’t know Henry, not really,” Marguerite said, her voice thick with tears. “They will make a muddle of it.”
“Very likely, but what would you?” Astrid leaned
forward to peer into her face. “They have such a head start. It’s hardly worthwhile to go after them. Besides that…”
“Yes?”
“You know what I would say, milady. You know, if you will only think on it without fear, why Sir David left while you slept.”
Did she? Did she really?
She knew what she wanted to think, but that was not the same thing. Or was it? Could it be that David had thought only to protect her? Had he taken this terrible decision upon himself so she need never bear responsibility for it?
If that was really the reason, what did it say of her that she could sit here and permit it?
It might be too late to prevent what would happen. David could be dead before she arrived, executed while she was on the road. The dream that had awakened her might have been a warning of it.
Might, might, might. Anything might have happened. She did not know for sure, nor would she discover it by sitting moaning upon a stool.
Whatever her fate, she would not learn it here.
“Astrid?”
“Aye, milady.”
“We are for Westminster and an audience with the king. Tell them to make ready.”
“’Tis done, milady. I attended to it the instant I heard that Sir David had gone without you.”
A smile flickered across Marguerite’s mouth. “You are a pearl among women, though I have a feeling this was done because you would chase after Oliver.”
“Oh, yes, yon great braggart is all I desire,” Astrid declared with a toss of her head, but she grinned to herself as she said it.
Westminster was crowded, noisy and fetid from too many people squatting within too small an area. The royal palace with its walls and towers, gates and spires, churches, cloisters and jam-packed hall, dominated all. Every person that passed by Marguerite’s cavalcade carried something for the court, pulled it on a sled, rolled it in a barrow or drove it in a cart. That did not, of course, count the sheep and pigs and cows that were herded on their own four feet.
All gave way for the pennon of the Golden Knight that waved above the torches they carried as evening drew close around them. Some cursed the necessity, some shouted invective, but many whispered with awe about the second and true pretender. It was instructive.
After the austerity of the old Norman keep that had been David’s stronghold, by the grace of the king, the palace seemed sumptuous, rich beyond imagining with its silk hangings, paneled walls and floors of polished marble. The chamber to which Marguerite was shown was small and drear, but even it was larger than the solar at the keep.
She had sent ahead to apprise Henry of her coming, and to beg a private word at his mercy. When she passed through the gates, the news was taken to Henry. By the time she had bathed, slacked her thirst and donned the most impressive of the gowns from her wedding trousseau, of scarlet silk edged with braid and with brocaded
sleeves, an escort appeared to take her to the king’s apartments.
She could have done with more time to rest. She was weary beyond words and still sore in body and spirit from her night with David. She had not dreamed a bed could be so strenuous a place, or that muscles and depths she had never used could ache so from being tried. It seemed, she thought with heat in her face, that more internal massage of a particular kind might ease it. That she would ever prove the right of it seemed most unlikely.
It was as she and her escort of two men-at-arms swept along a vast corridor lit by fat candles on floor stands that she saw David. He came toward her, resplendent in a cloud-gray velvet doublet edged with gold braid, and so regally handsome that her heart faltered along with her footsteps. He wore hose of a lighter gray and a black cloak flung back from his wide shoulders so the lining of russet silk made a frame around him. Behind him walked his own escort of the king’s men, though Henry had sent four to deliver him. They were, she saw in some concern, not mere guards but members of his council.
It was only then that she realized the corridors they traveled were deserted. They were wending through the back reaches of the palace, well away from where the rest of the court enjoyed their evening entertainment. David’s visit was naturally being treated as clandestine, kept secret for the benefit of the state and his pose as an alternate pretender, but then so was hers. Whether that boded good or ill for either of them was something else again.
David paused as he saw her. His face turned grim. With a brief glance at the men treading on his heels, he came on again.
“Lady Marguerite,” he said in a voice that cut like the slash of a sword, “what brings you hither? I thought I left you otherwise engaged.”
“So you did, but such pleasant duty can only occupy for a time.” She kept her voice even, being all too well aware that their six silent and stern escorts had a dozen ears between them. She moved as she spoke, and David fell into step beside her. The two escorts blended as one, following as they turned in step down a bisecting corridor.
David gave her a hard stare. “What are you saying? Why are you here?”
Did he think she meant to betray him to Henry? The pain in that question took her breath for an instant. “Why, the same as you, Sir David,” she answered when she could speak again. “What else?”
“If you are here to see Henry…”
“The only reason I would travel so far or set foot in this benighted palace in summer.” Her smile was brittle. “Besides, we have a history, my family and the king. I’ve little doubt he will hear me out while I make a tale of my need.”
“And what will you ask, my lady, in exchange for whatever information you have for him?”
“Only what will bring my happiness. I have no need for more.”
“Freedom? Escape from yet another unwanted husband?”
“At the very least.”
He leaned closer, speaking rapidly as they were nearing the king’s apartments. “If you are doing this out of anger that I left you behind—”
“You give yourself too much credit, sir,” she said with her coolest smile. “Why should I have expected you to take me with you? I am nothing to you, after all.”
He paled there with the light of a hundred candles limning his features in orange and gold. The shift in his throat as he swallowed was fast and uneven. His eyes darkened and his mouth set in a hard line. He straightened his shoulders so they appeared impossibly broad, capable of holding up any weight.
“So be it,” he said, and nodded to the leader of his escort that he was ready to face the king.
David barely recognized this elegant lady in her scarlet silk, her scarlet veil of near transparency and necklace of rare pearls. Or rather he did, but was reluctant to accept it. This was Lady Marguerite Milton, daughter of a lord, one of the greatest heiresses in the kingdom, the lady he had revered for years as being above him. It seemed impossible that he had held her in his arms, had taken her cry of pleasure into his mouth before burying himself in her soft depths. She had little resemblance to the passionate siren who had come to him the evening before and pulled him into her kiss while shivering with desire.
He had thought he knew the Marguerite he had left behind, would have wagered his life on what she would and would not do. This great lady he knew not at all. And it made no difference whatever that his birth was now proven as greater than hers. It was too new, too
beyond belief, this change in his rank. In his blighted and doubtful heart, he was once again the orphan lad unworthy to touch the hem of her gown, certainly unworthy to touch the lady.
The entrance to the king’s apartments opened before them. They trod their way through empty ante chambers, past guards standing at blank-faced attention. They waited in a dim chamber that smelled of old candle wax, dust and nervous perspiration, saying little. The king’s seneschal announced them. He and Marguerite were ushered into the presence of Henry VII.
The audience chamber was long and narrow, marked by a row of tall, arched windows filled with thick glass divided by mullions. Linen-fold panels formed the walls, with paintings in jewel colors adding interest to the open spaces between them, as well as adorning the ceiling. A dais rose beneath the windows, set so the faces of those who came before it would be well illuminated while the king’s remained in shadow. That stratagem was of little use at the moment, as the sky was night-dark beyond the windows, and rain streaked the small glass panes.
“We admit to surprise to see you here,” Henry VII said, his gaze upon David when he had raised him from his bow and Marguerite from her curtsy. “We thought you occupied in the north upon our service.”