Authors: Bertrice Small
Lona had waited until Sir Jasper and Lady Rowena had departed, and then hurried back into Arabella’s bedchamber. “Ahh, ‘Bella,” she sighed gustily, “you are so fortunate! He is the most handsome of men. I shall probably be matched with old Rad’s sniveling grandson, the bag of bones with the long, pointed nose that always drips.”
“He is beautiful to look upon, I will grant you,” Arabella said, pulling her friend down to sit once more upon the bed. “Yet there is something…”
“What, you goose? Sir Jasper is perfect, although I will allow that I do not like his captain, Seger,” Lona said.
“You only say that because Sir Jasper might have given Seger your father’s position,” Arabella returned.
“Nay,” Lona said, her dark brown braids shaking vigorously, her blue eyes serious. “Seger almost slithers like a snake, and I have seen him with my aunt Elsbeth on several occasions. They were kissing, and once I saw his hand up her skirt, yet in the hall he ignores her. It is as if he does not even know her.”
“Perhaps I should speak to my mother,” Arabella considered aloud. “After all, your aunt does serve her. Mayhap I will speak to Sir Jasper, for Seger is his man.”
“I do not think it would be wise, ‘Bella. Perhaps it was nothing more than a quick kiss and a cuddle. Lads and lasses are apt to do such things. Then, too, Sir Jasper might think we feared Seger, which would not reflect well upon my father. My aunt is grown, and if she were having difficulties, she would go to your mother, I am certain, but she will thank neither of us if we interfere and tell tales on her. I should not have spoken to you at all.”
“Oh, Lona, we are friends, and have been since our infancy,” Arabella reassured the other girl.
“But you will wed Sir Jasper in two years, ‘Bella, and then you will be the Lady of Greyfaire Keep. You will change, but I will not. I will always be Lona, one of FitzWalter’s lasses.”
“You will be Lona, the Lady Arabella’s personal maidservant, you goose! You will have every bit as much stature as your mother and father, and you do not have to wed with old Rad’s bony grandson if you do not wish it. As my personal servant and my friend, you will have your pick of the handsomest lads around. I promise you!” Arabella said generously.
“As long as I don’t have to wed with spindleshanks,” giggled Lona. Then she grew serious again. “Am I really to be your maid, ‘Bella?”
“Aye, if I say it,” Arabella said, “and I do.”
“And you really do like Sir Jasper, don’t you?” Lona asked.
“My cousin, the queen, says that beauty does not always mean goodness in a person,” Arabella said slowly. “I have heard whispers that Sir Jasper is a man for the ladies. They say he cuts quite a swath on both sides of the border.”
Lena’s blue eyes grew round. “Who told you such a thing?” she demanded indignantly.
“Is it true?”
“I would not know, ‘Bella.”
“But you have heard the rumors too, have you not, Lona?”
“The old women will gossip, ‘Bella, and they best like to gossip about a handsome man or a pretty woman. Have not most of the men on both sides of the border poached in forbidden waters?”
“The man I marry must be true to me, Lona. Never did I know my father to stray from my mother’s side, and I will have the same respect from my husband.”
“You are not wed yet, ‘Bella,” Lona reminded her friend. “Sir Jasper is a grown man and may dally hither and yon before your marriage. You have not the right to chastise him for it, at least not until after you are wed!”
“If I ever find that he has betrayed me with another, Lona, I shall take a knife and cut his black heart from his chest!” Arabella said fiercely.
“Has Sir Jasper seen your evil temper yet, ‘Bella?” Lona teased. “Beware, lest you frighten him away!”
The day seemed to go quickly, and soon it was evening. In her bedchamber with its little corner fireplace, Lady Rowena stepped from her tub to be toweled dry by her maidservant, Elsbeth. In the pier glass, the wedding gift of her late husband, she stared self-consciously at herself with a critical eye. Childbearing had not destroyed her body, for only two of her four children had come to term; a boy they had named Henry, who had not survived his first year, and Arabella, whom she had been carrying when he died. Guiltily she turned her eyes away from the mirror. She was wicked.
Wicked!
“Which gown, m’lady?” Elsbeth inquired.
“My head aches,” Rowena complained. “I do not think I shall go down to the hall this night. I will get into bed and sleep.”
“Shall I have Maida mix a potion, m’lady?”
“Nay. I shall not need it,” Rowena replied. “I have been fretted about Arabella all day, but a night’s sleep should cure me.”
Elsbeth slipped a simple shift over her mistress’s head, and opening the bed, helped her lady into it, tucking the coverlet about her. “I will bid you a good night then, m’lady,” she said. “When I have had my meal, I shall return.”
“Wait.” Rowena forced her voice to a more normal level. “I shall not need you again tonight, Elsbeth. You may sleep at home if you like, or in the hall.”
“Thank you, m’lady!” Elsbeth was delighted. An evening off meant she might lure Seger into another tryst. She curtsied and hurried from the bedchamber.
She had a lad, Rowena thought, not fooled.
I wonder who he is
. It did not matter. She was FitzWalter’s youngest sister-in-law, and he would see that any difficulties were smoothed over so that Elsbeth could have her happiness.
But what of my happiness?
Rowena thought.
Oh, Henry, why did you go and leave me? Did I not beg you not to go off that summer’s morning? I knew you would not come back that day. Somehow I knew. I am all alone, and I must whore in order to protect our child. It is not fair, and it would not have happened if you had but listened to me!
A small tear of self-pity rolled down her face.
Rowena Neville Grey had only vague memories of her parents, Edmund Neville and Catherine Talbot. They had died of plague when she was four, and her paternal grandparents with whom they lived, being elderly, had brought her to the family’s head, Richard Neville, the great Earl of Warwick, to foster. She had been raised by his countess along with his daughters, Isabel and Anne. She had been treated with loving kindness by all but Isabel Neville, who was over-proud and given to meanness. Had Lady Isabel singled Rowena out, it might have been different, but her ill-temper was reserved for none in particular. It was generously spread amongst all her siblings.
That the great earl, called the Kingmaker by his contemporaries, bothered to find a husband for his unimportant relative and to dower her was a kindness, Rowena knew. She might have spent her life an unpaid servant once she had left her childhood behind and her more important companions had been wed into other great houses. Instead, she had been informed upon her twelfth birthday that she would be married on her thirteenth birthday to Sir Henry Grey, Baron Greyfaire, the holder of a crucially placed keep along the English border with Scotland. Sir Henry needed a wife, and King Edward wished to make friends where he could. His predecessor was somehow managing to give him difficulty even from the Tower of London, where he was imprisoned. King Henry VI had, following his defeat to Edward IV, taken refuge in Scotland, and for over three years until his capture given his former subjects a great deal of trouble. Edward needed his borders secure, and so his sometime ally, the Kingmaker, who had aided him in gaining his throne, supplied the necessary bride in the person of his young relation and ward, for by this time Rowena’s grandparents had died.
Their marriage was celebrated on the sixteenth day of May, 1469. Rowena was given a dowry by her powerful relative that consisted of ten pieces of silver and five pieces of gold, a white mare with its saddle and bridle, and two fine oak chests bound in iron. The first chest contained all the linens she had been embroidering over the past year in anticipation of her new status as a wife, a pound bag of salt, a set of six silver spoons, and a bag containing four sticks of cinnamon, two nutmegs, and a half pound of peppercorns. The second chest held her clothing, two bolts of fabric, and the little jewelry she had inherited from her late mother, as well as a small strand of freshwater pearls given her as a wedding gift by the earl and his wife. It was not the dowry of an earl’s daughter, but neither was it a dowry of which she need be ashamed. She came to Henry a well-propertied woman able, despite her youth, to command his respect by not only her important connections, but by her possessions as well.
But now Henry was dead, and to protect her child from the lasciviousness of SirJasper Keane, she must yield her body to him. There was no one left to protect
her,
and so
she
must protect Arabella. She would have never imagined, long ago in the happy childhood she shared with her cousin Anne at Warwick and Middleham castles, that it would in the end all come to this. She sighed deeply, and then her ears, sharp with years of practice, heard his footsteps outside her door. Rowena half closed her eyes and feigned sleep.
Jasper Keane entered her bedchamber quietly, yet there was nothing stealthy in his coming. He came as a husband might come into his wife’s rooms, with a certainty of the warm welcome awaiting him. From beneath her eyelids she watched as he removed his clothing, not even realizing her breathing had become shallow as his body, every bit as attractive as his face, was revealed to her. Long legs, a long slim torso, a well-furred chest, the hair strangely darker than that upon his head. Having lain his garments neatly where he might regain them quickly, Jasper Keane walked over to the edge of the bed, and drawing back the coverlet, pulled Rowena to her feet. Her blue eyes flew open with surprise as his hand hooked itself into the rounded neck of her shift and, with a quick motion, ripped it in twain, carelessly tossing the two halves aside.
“In future, my pet,” he said in a pleasant, low voice, “you will sleep as God fashioned you. I prefer it.” Then, without further preamble, he kissed her a long, hard kiss, finally releasing her to say, “You kiss like a girl, Rowena. Open your mouth so I may have your tongue.” Obedient, she complied and he sucked her tongue into his mouth, even as his fingers cupped and kneaded her buttocks, drawing her tightly against him.
Her head swam as familiar sensations, newly awakened, surfaced, and her knees seemed to turn to jelly beneath her. It had never been quite so intense with Henry, she thought, moaning as he broke off the kiss and, lifting her up, began to lick her skin. She threw her head back, the veins in her throat straining in her effort to remain quiet, lest her cries of pleasure bring the entire keep awake. His broad tongue slid over the taut skin, moving on to the softer flesh of her breasts.
He laughed aloud as her whole body first stiffened and then shuddered as she attained her first crisis. Her pretty head fell forward upon her chest, even as he sat down upon the edge of the bed, cradling her within his arms. His fingers probed her, and finding evidence of her passion, he smiled broadly. “You are a passionate little piece, my pet,” he approved. Then he turned her over so that she lay face down across his knees, and stared with delight upon her pretty, rounded posteriors. Still bemused, Rowena came quickly to herself as his hard hand smacked down upon the tender flesh. “Ohhhh!” she cried, startled.
“Be discreet, my pet,” he warned her. “We do not wish to share our interlude with anyone else. Put your hand in your mouth if you must.” And he commenced to rain a series of stinging blows upon her helpless bottom while she whimpered and squirmed beneath his punishing hand, his other hand firmly upon her slender neck. When the globe of her skin had turned a deep, burnished pink and he could feel a heat rising from it, he reached beneath her to ascertain her condition, and smiled at the sticky wetness his fingers encountered.
He placed her face down upon the bed, and mounting her, entered her woman’s passage from the rear, his hips finding the perfect rhythm. To his delight, she immediately pulled herself to her knees and her own hips thrust back at him. “Very good, my pet,” he purred in her ear. “Very,
very
good!” he continued to approve as, lifting her carefully, he slowly turned her about onto her back, and holding her legs apart, probed her deeply.
She was dying, Rowena thought, and she deserved to die for this betrayal of Arabella that was so heavenly. She had no right to enjoy his lascivious attentions so greatly, but she was enjoying them. Enjoying them more than she had ever enjoyed making love with Henry, and she had always enjoyed making love with her late husband. Jasper Keane, however, was a master of passion, and if she must protect her dearest child from him, Rowena considered, what was wrong with enjoying this pleasure? She had not initiated this erotic bout. She was not to blame. Why should she be punished for it? Her nails dug into the muscles of his shoulders, and he thrust almost brutally.
“Aye, my little pet,” he growled softly, “claw me, for I do not mind your marks upon me.”
She barely heard his words, nor did she remember very clearly the rest of that night of fiery and tumultuous desire. In the early minutes before the dawn she awoke to find herself alone amid the tremendous tangle of bedclothes. Though replete with satisfaction, her body ached, particularly her woman’s passage, which had been so long denied a mate. Jasper’s manhood was larger than Henry’s had been, but she had seemed to have no trouble accommodating him.
Rowena longed to remain abed, for she was drained of energy. He had used her vigorously throughout the night, his great lance never seeming to flag or grow tired, and now as she lay exhausted, he was already up and gone. Reluctantly she arose from her bed and straightened the bedclothes so that Elsbeth and the other maids would not be suspicious. Then she took the two shredded halves of her shift and laid them on the barely glowing coals of her fire, watching as the fire sprang to life, adding a log that any evidence of her shameful behavior be fully eradicated. She would indeed sleep naked from now on, for she could not afford to lose any more of her undergarments.