Taming the Beast (21 page)

If Michaela had thought she may be in love with Roderick Cherbon that morning, now she was certain of it. Her heart was breaking for Leo, for his poor mother, for Roderick.

“But why claim him as your son? Was it not enough to bring him with you? Give him a place in your home?”

“No. If…if my own illness had suddenly returned and I had died, Leo would have no claim to anything at Cherbon. He would be in the same position as in Constantinople—mayhap worse off. I made that promise to Aurelia, knowing she would likely be dead before Hugh and I and her son gained England, and I will uphold it until my last breath. Before King Henry himself, I will swear that Leo is my son. So be it.”

Roderick Cherbon sat in brooding silence, in the same chair, wearing the same cloak and boots, but in Michaela's eyes, this was a different man. A man of such honor and compassion that she had once thought only her own beloved papa to compare. The sacrifice he made for this woman and her son—lovely, innocent, beautiful Leo. Yes, the boy was precious, and Michaela loved him, true, but what Roderick had done, he had done knowing that if ever he had a son of his own blood, Leo would remain Cherbon's heir.

Roderick Cherbon loved Leo more than Michaela could have ever possibly guessed. What a fortunate, fortunate little boy.

“Leo needs to know,” Michaela said quietly.

“That he is not my true son?” Roderick shook his head. “I think not, Miss Fortune.”

“He
is
your son.
You
are his father. So be it.” Michaela walked to stand behind Roderick and hesitantly laid her hand on his right shoulder. “But he desperately needs to know that you love him.”

“I
care
for him,” Roderick clarified, turning his head slightly and Michaela knew he was looking at her hand on his shoulder.

Michaela nodded, even though she knew Roderick could not see the motion. He could not so much as speak the simple word that described how he felt, so damaged was he. Let him have his time with it, then. Roderick Cherbon could be healed—his heart as well as his body.

She brought her other hand to his opposite shoulder, squeezed. “Do you think you might also come to care for me one day, my lord?”

She felt him stiffen slightly under her hand.

“Perhaps,” he conceded gruffly. “But if you're looking for a proclamation of undying affection, you might as well bugger off. 'Tis not my manner.”

“I see,” Michaela said easily. She was kneading the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders, thrilling at the wide, hardness of him. Such a generous, vulnerable heart beneath the fierce appearance. Michaela was glad Roderick could not see her face, for she knew it must be softened with emotion. He would likely toss her out of his chamber on her bottom.

But to her surprise, Roderick reached up with his own right hand to grasp Michaela's. She curled her fingers around his and let her left hand drift up to his hair, her fingers raking it back from his temple.

“But I will try, Miss Fortune. With Leo. If it will please you.”

Michaela felt her smile to the tips of her ears and she leaned down, placing her mouth near Roderick's ear. “It will please me very, very much, my lord. Thank you.” She pressed her lips to the high, rough ledge of his cheek. She pulled away, but only slightly, and Roderick turned his face toward her.

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth, softly, his lips barely touching hers, and so Michaela flicked her tongue out to taste him.

In the fraction of a breath, Roderick had released Michaela's right hand to turn her and pull her over the arm of the chair onto his lap. Her arms snaked around his neck like the wild vines that had once claimed Cherbon, and Roderick kissed her as if he would consume her. His arms cradled her, his hands cupped her shoulder and buttock, and Michaela buried her hands in his hair, holding him to her, claiming him as her own, at last.

She heard Roderick's growl, and even though it was still frightening to her, this wild, animalistic part of him, it excited the untamed part of her own core, and she wanted to be taken by this beast, owned by him, marked by him.

His hand cupping her buttock slid up over her stomach and covered her breast, and he kneaded there, as she had worked his muscles. Only Roderick's touch was not meant to relax, and it didn't. Beneath her hip, Michaela could feel the hardness of his erection, and an instinctive part of her wanted to swing her legs around and straddle the Lord of Cherbon's lap. She felt as though she were on fire inside, and that Roderick's body was the only cure—

After he had burned her to ash, of course.

“I want you,” she said against his mouth, smashing her lips against his, mumbling her words, nibbling at him, licking him. “Roderick, please…”

His hand left her breast and traveled down to the L of her trunk and legs, where her gown had caught between her thighs. He slid a flat palm into the seam, and when he touched her there, even through the thick wool, Michaela's whole abdomen clenched.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Roderick, take me to your bed.”

He said nothing, only claimed her mouth again as his fingers snagged a fold of her gown and slid the heavy skirt up, slowly, until it bunched around her hips. His fingers found her, wet and aching, and he touched her again, invaded her, until she was arching her hips and moaning words she could not understand into his mouth. He was answering her, but she could not understand him either.

In a moment, Michaela's world went white hot, ear shattering and silent in the same moment that her climax took her. As she gasped her way back down from the pinnacle, she covered Roderick's face in small, breathy kisses, giggling, and surprisingly not at all ashamed at her present state of seminudity on his lap.

Things were going to be much different around Cherbon Castle, Michaela thought.

“Have you finished?” Roderick asked calmly.

She pulled back to look at him. “My lord?” She gave him a smile. “Why? Is there more to come?”

“I'm afraid not. But perhaps now you'll stop acting like a mare in heat and nipping at me ceaselessly. Get up, Miss Fortune, my legs are asleep.”

A knife through her heart would have been less painful, and Michaela quickly brought herself to her own feet. She stood there for a moment, looking at him as if hoping he would smile and turn his words into a tasteless lover's jest.

But all he did was wipe his hand on his pants. He glanced up at her, his face ruddy. “Was there anything else?”

“No,” Michaela choked.

He raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the door.

Michaela lifted her chin and made her way from the room with as much dignity as her legs—still shaking from the release he'd given her—would allow. But once in the corridor, his door closed firmly behind her, she found she could not go any farther. She backed up against the stones across from his doorway and slid to her bottom, never feeling so low, so worthless, in her life. She was so stunned, tears would not come. She only sat staring at his door for what seemed like an hour, shaking, shaking, at what he'd done to her.

And then the first horrendous crash fell, causing her to jump and scream, but her cry could not have possibly been heard in the din that followed. It sounded as though a battle was being waged in the lord's chamber—wood splintering, pottery crashing, and Roderick's own ragged yells. The screech of furniture on stone; ringing metal as it bounced off an unknown object.

Nay, not a battle—a full-on war, with Roderick Cherbon playing both armies.

Michaela rose to her feet and approached the door, jumping when some heavy object met its ruin against the thick wood. She stood before it, raised a palm slowly to place it against the door, as if trying to feel the man beyond it.

After several moments, amazed that the storm continued when there could not possibly be anything left to destroy, Michaela backed away from the door and walked slowly down the corridor, her thoughts pained and tangled, the sound of the Cherbon Devil's anguish haunting her steps.

The next morning, sitting amidst the ruin that was his chamber, too fatigued to even begin the struggle that putting on his boots meant, Roderick was shamed to the very depths of his black soul—a feeling he hadn't experienced in years.

When he'd taken out his anger on his belongings the previous night, he'd told himself he was angry at Michaela Fortune, for pandering to his impotence by pretending she desired him. Or for playing the harlot with him, flaunting her sexual experience. Or for drawing from him the truth about Leo and Aurelia when he'd wanted no one else to know.

But in the cold light of morning, when the heat of emotion had cowardly fled him, Roderick knew he had been furious at no one save himself. Of his own fear. His pride. His vanity. He'd wanted to make love to Michaela, and when she'd all but begged him, he had convinced himself that he would, and damn the consequences. But seeing her spread before him in the height of her pleasure, the creamy skin of her perfect legs, the muscles and flesh soft and rounded and rich, her caution and self-consciousness tossed aside, Roderick had gone stone-cold terrified.

Terrified of losing her. If not as his wife, then simply that abandoned side of her, that sensual side that yearned for his body. Once she had seen all of him, she would never want him—would never look at him in the same way again. No woman had ever looked at him like Michaela Fortune had, not before the battle, and certainly not after. The broken part of Roderick needed those looks, those words, he feared, to survive in this half life he'd been left to at Cherbon.

He could not make love to her. And yet he could not abuse her so, he knew. And he didn't want to—God! She was beautiful and perfect—perfectly flawed. The way she stumbled and tripped and stuttered and dropped any item unlucky enough to be a moment in her grasp. Leo loved her, and as mistress of the keep, she had excelled. Whenever he was near her now—verily, whenever he so much as thought of her—his hunger for her grew so that he forgot himself. He said foolish things, hurtful things, meant to drive her away and protect himself. But Roderick knew that if he continued to push her away, to hurt her so, she would eventually stop coming back, and she would take with her what little remained of his own heart.

He could see no solution. He wanted Michaela, more than he wanted Cherbon, more than he had ever wanted anything. But he felt that whichever path he chose—take her body or no—he would drive her away. For one would leave her wanting, and the other would reveal fully the horror that was himself.

He must marry her quickly, then. After they were wed, if she did leave him for whatever reason, at least he would still have Cherbon—a place to live out the rest of his wretched life. A place for Leo to be safe, until he too could flee to a brighter future than what Roderick had been dealt.

Perhaps if Roderick tried to please Michaela in other ways once they were wed…perhaps it would be enough for her. With Leo, for instance. And she'd said she loved Roderick. Was that possible? Roderick doubted it. Likely it had been but an empty nicety to placate Leo. For the first time since lying in the long, smoky hospital in Constantinople, Roderick wished for a higher power to make its presence known, to guide him.

At least when Hugh returned, he might have someone to advise him.

And what was he to do about the ridiculous old shoe, resting silently in its box in his wardrobe? Of all the objects in Roderick's chamber now mangled and splintered and destroyed, the crumbling wooden box remained intact on its shelf. Perhaps he would give it to Michaela, as a peace offering. Or to show her that she had naught to fear from her mother's old superstitious tale. She could take off the metal link she hated so desperately, too—the thing that had made her Miss Fortune.

It was a good gift, he decided. His way of a pathetic apology. And the only one he had to give her.

Roderick looked down at the floor, where the thick, heavy walking boots he was sentenced to while in the keep rested, and he decided to forego them for his riding boots instead. Yes! He may have to go ahead of them at first, seek a stable hand to help him mount, but he would take Miss Fortune and Leo riding today, and give her the shoe then.

He braced his only other walking stick on the floor—spared because it had been hidden under his bed—and heaved himself from the chair after several false starts, grabbing for the posters on the bed as he slowly and awkwardly made his way across the field of detritus that was his floor. Once at his wardrobe, he dug with his right hand through the pile of ruined clothing until he touched the smooth leather of his boots. Raising up, he found himself eye level with the crumbly old box.

Roderick tossed his riding boots to the mattress behind him and slid the box from its shelf. He hopped backward to the edge of the bed and sat, laying his cane alongside him, the box resting on his lap. He lifted the lid and looked upon the shoe again.

It was tallish—more of a boot, really. Rich brown leather—Roderick guessed deerskin—worn nearly to the thinness of cloth. He picked it up from its resting place and held it before him. He frowned. This was no woman's shoe though—the sole was long and wide, the ties rough and thick, for a man's hand.

A mad urge seized him when he noticed the shoe had been fashioned for the right foot—his undamaged foot.

Looking about the chamber—as if anyone would be about to see him—Roderick pushed the box off his lap to rest near his cane. Taking care with the worn leather, he pulled the boot onto his right foot and calf—it slid on as if greased, like sliding his cock into a woman for the first time, and Roderick groaned as a shudder overtook him. He laced the boot quickly, as if he'd done it hundreds of times, as if he knew the crudely punched eyes and turns of lace intimately.

When it was done, Roderick stretched out his right leg before him, admiring the sight of his long, muscled appendage in a boot cut from such pliable skin. He had forgotten what a normal leg looked like—his own leg, no less. And his heart galloped like hoofbeats the longer he stared. The longer he stared, he could hear the screams of the horses. And hounds—were there not hounds howling? Surely there was no ringing in his deadened ear that could mimic such a mournful sound.

The hoofbeats pounded louder, harder, faster, their reverberations singing through Roderick's muscles, and he felt himself rising from the bed to stand, even against the voice in his head screaming,
You'll fall, you fool! You'll fall!

Roderick stood. He stood, and then he took a step. And another.

And on the bed, beneath the box in which the damned shoe had been interred, lay his walking stick, forgotten.

And unneeded.

 

Michaela was sitting at a table in the great hall, Leo at her side, a variety of foodstuffs and other miscellany before them. Michaela leaned her head on her fist, her rib cage pressed against the edge of the table as she regarded the boy and pointed with her free hand to a ragged cattail, burst open like a summer storm cloud.

Leo crinkled his nose and then looked to Michaela. “Wite.”

“White, yes. Very good.” She smiled at him and then pointed to a pile of dried raspberries. “And these?”

“Wed,” Leo answered immediately.

“Spot on. You're very clever, aren't you?”

He nodded with a grin.

She slid a circle of dried carrot toward him. “What about this?”

Leo's little brows drew down in concentration as he searched his mind for the correct word. “Oh…ohr—”

“Orange, is it not?” came the deep male voice from not very far behind Michaela and she raised her head with a start, her heart tripping even as Leo scrambled from the bench.

“Papa!” Leo wrapped himself about Roderick's legs as if flung from a slingshot, and Michaela waited for the chastisement she was sure would come from Roderick, but it never did.

Actually, he was smiling. A strange smile, even unused as Michaela was to seeing it. Intense, bright—a bit frantic, perhaps.

He looked down at the boy. “It's a difficult word, is it not? Orange.”

Leo nodded. “Ee-oh like wed.”

“I should say so…red is much shorter.” He looked up at Michaela and those green eyes were all but glowing at her. “Lady Michaela is a fine tutor, though. I had no idea you knew your colors.”

Michaela could not return his smile, remembering his treatment of her the day before. Even though she had heard his anguish, she would not forgive him so easily.

“We've only started lessons today.”

Roderick's eyebrows rose and she realized his hood was thrown back. In the daylight. “I am impressed.” He patted Leo's head and Michaela thought the boy might swoon.

He carried no walking stick, but then Michaela remembered its destruction in his chamber. His boots were different today than the black ones she was used to seeing. These were slimmer, with a more pointed toe, although still more bulky than typical riding boots.

Her confusion deepened when Roderick Cherbon bent both knees and crouched before Leo. He seemed to wobble a bit, but balanced himself with little effort.

Michaela had never seen him do that—did not think his left leg was capable of it. Since coming to Cherbon, she had never seen it bent as it was now.

“Leo, I've a fancy for a ride this morn. Would you and Lady Michaela care to join me?”

Michaela heard Leo gasp and she thought for a moment he would choke on his tongue.

“Ee-oh wide on Papa's hohse?”

Roderick nodded.

“Wif him papa?”

Roderick laughed. “Yes. Now run along and fetch a cloak of some sort. We'll wait for you.”

The boy set off from the hall in a dead run, whooping with joy.

“Leo, do you need help?” Michaela called, but he was already gone, leaving her alone with Roderick.

He rose, slowly, carefully, but without a wobble. When he looked at her, his smile was gone, but still his eyes glowed like firelit gems. Michaela's cheeks began to burn and so she dropped her gaze.

She heard his footsteps drawing near, and when his boots came into her line of sight, she had just enough time to notice how lessened his limp had become.

What in heaven's name…?

Then he crouched again, this time before Michaela, and took her chin in his large, warm fingers. “Michaela,” he began quietly.

She jerked her face free from his grasp, aghast at the tears she felt welling in her eyes.

He did not take her chin again, but covered both her fisted hands in one large palm. “Michaela,” he said again. “I'm sorry.”

It didn't even
sound
like Roderick Cherbon—not the words, not the tone of voice.

“You're only apologizing because you think me to leave now. But I'm staying—I have no choice, do I? Your precious Cherbon is safe.”

His other hand joined his grip on her and he squeezed. “I'm not apologizing only because I hope you'll not leave—although that is what I hope. I'm apologizing because I've treated you horribly, and I want to make amends. To you and to Leo. Won't you help me, Michaela?”

“That's all I've
done
, is try to help you!” She snatched her hands from him, unused to his kindness and not certain how to respond to him. The hurt she still felt was coming out as anger, but she clung to it, lest he switch back once more and smash her floundering hope. “All I've received for my efforts is punishment.”

Roderick rose up enough to perch on the bench next to Michaela and he sighed. “You were right. The things you said to me last night. The way I treated Leo in the past was in part due to the way my father treated me. I don't want that for him. I want him to look back upon his childhood with fondness. To remember a father, and a mother”—at this, Michaela looked up at him—“who had only his happiness in mind. You and I, we can do that for him, can we not?”

Michaela knew she was staring like a ninny. She nodded faintly. “What's happened to you?” she blurted.

Roderick gave her a boyish smile, but in his green eyes Michaela thought she might have seen a flash of something akin to fear. “I…I don't quite know. Something, though. Is that all right?”

Michaela opened her mouth to speak—although what she would have said only God knows, because Leo came into the hall once more at a dead run, wearing one of Sir Hugh's fancy, embroidered wool undershirts. The hem came to his ankles and the sleeves flapped about him like wings as he pumped his arms. It looked like a rather fancy gown.

“Ee-oh weddy, Papa!” He was not slowing as he raced toward Roderick, and Michaela felt a collision was imminent.

But at the last moment, Roderick stood, his arms out, and scooped the boy up midstride, swinging him away from the table in a circle. Leo's hiccoughing laughter rang in the tall, dark hall like ghostly chimes.

“Well then, let's be off!” Roderick announced gaily. He looked down at Michaela and smiled. “My lady?”

Michaela tried to return the smile for Leo's sake, but all the while, her heart jarred her chest like hoofbeats on a packed winter road, her throat felt frozen tight with snow, and she was afraid.