Owen savored the scent of her, the taste of her on his lips where they’d touched her skin. A soft dewy taste with a hint of salt. He could feel the blood flowing in his veins, hot and fast. Pen Bryanston was rapidly becoming an obsession.
His gaze was suddenly distant. He saw another ballroom, a beautiful, flirtatious woman with no knowledge of the consequences of the deadly game she played. . . .
“What is it?”
He came back with a start. Pen was once again facing him in the dance. He noticed the dew of perspiration on her brow. She was frowning at him.
Pen was not Estelle. Pen understood consequences. She was no naÏf. She knew what he was about, just as she knew what she was about.
He smiled down at her but his eyes were still distant. “Nothing, why?” He took her hand, holding it high as she revolved around him in a graceful measure.
“Your face,” she said, dropping a sweeping curtsy.
“You can’t see my face.” He raised her and exchanged places with her in the line.
“I can see your eyes and your mouth,” she returned. “And whatever you were thinking, it was not pleasant. If the wind changes, you’ll look disagreeable for the rest of your life.”
“Ah, and then I suppose what little patience you have with me will be quite dissipated,” he said with a mournful sigh.
Pen ignored this and concentrated on her steps. The expression she’d surprised on his face had disturbed her. He had looked somehow devastated, hurt even.
The dance ended and she dabbed at her forehead with a scrap of lace that passed as a handkerchief.
She caught Robin’s stare from the other side of the hall. He hadn’t moved from the embrasure the entire evening, and as far as she could tell he hadn’t taken his eyes off her either.
She turned her eyes from Robin’s and said brusquely, “I believe it’s time you paid your debt, Chevalier. I have paid mine.”
Owen beckoned a footman who carried a tray of goblets. “It’s an ongoing debt, but I agree we should discuss my part very soon.” He handed her a goblet of cool rhenish.
Pen took it. She touched the cold glass to her neck and her temples and felt her body cool. “I believe that we should discuss it now.” Her tone was even.
Owen sipped from his own goblet. “Must it be now?”
“We’ve discussed matters of interest to you in such public circumstances.”
“True enough.” He reached out and touched his fingertip to a droplet of moisture on her neck. “Believe me, Pen, I will not renege. I will give you what you need.”
She heard the double edge to the soft promise. The spot on her neck burned. She stared at him from behind her mask.
He returned her look, his gaze quite steady, but she read the message and she knew that she was sending the same.
Acceptance.
A great roar came from the dais at the far end of the hall, where the Lord of Misrule, in a devil’s mask, sat upon his throne wielding a trident. Instantly a pack of small boys, all in devils’ costumes, darted around the room, dodging between the masked guests who now stood transfixed, waiting for what the Lord of Misrule was about to decree. The little devil figures wielding snuffers on long poles extinguished all the candles and within minutes the great room was dark, except for the light from the massive fireplaces at either end.
There was a stunned silence, then whispers and laughter. The Lord of Misrule bellowed his order for everyone to turn around three times, take six steps backwards, then reach out and seize hold of the first person of the opposite sex that they could reach. Laughter rang out as the entire masked company tried to obey, bumping into one another, stepping on toes.
Pen felt Owen take her hand. She couldn’t see clearly in the shadowy gloom as people stumbled around her, but the clasp of his hand was tight and warm and suddenly urgent. He led, she followed, snaking through the now riotous crowd. Everyone had hold of someone; hands grasped her as she passed, lewd hands that stroked, patted, grabbed at her buttocks. Laughter, shrill cries, the occasional little shriek punctuated the uproar. Blindly Pen followed where the hand led her. The excitement surged around her, through her, became a part of her. Everything was unreal, uncharted. For some reason she kept her eyes shut, locking herself into the surreal crimson world behind her eyelids.
Then she felt cooler air on her face and there was a strange quiet as if they had stepped into another world. She opened her eyes. Owen let fall the arras he had moved aside, an arras that covered a door into a small, windowless, round chamber lit by a single candle in a sconce high on the wall.
Pen looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted. “Where is this?”
“Somewhere I thought we could discuss my side of our bargain away from active ears,” he said, closing the door and turning the key.
The noise from without continued unabated. “No one will miss us.” He untied his eagle’s mask and tossed it to the floor.
“No,” Pen agreed, her fingers busy with her own mask. She was trembling as if with cold, but her hands were warm, her skin flushed with heat. When he came towards her she went into his arms. Here, in the quiet and the dimness, passion flared. Obsession became a flicker . . . for the moment.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured, moving his lips to her ear even as he worked on the pins of her hood.
“So are you,” she returned, sliding her hands inside his doublet, feeling his ribs, the hard swell of muscle beneath his fine silk shirt.
“I know.” He laughed softly. Her hood slipped from her head. His breath was warm on her neck as he kissed the tender skin behind her ear.
“I want you, Pen.” The words were suddenly fierce and his hold tightened, his mouth urgent now as he brought his lips to hers.
Pen felt herself drowning, melting into his body. His mouth was hot and hard upon her own, and she inhaled deeply his own special fragrance, where warm male flesh mingled with lavender and crisply ironed linen. She felt his body on hers, the hard jut of his penis pressing through her damask skirts. She wriggled her fingers inside the tiny pearl buttons of his shirt, desperate to touch his skin. She sucked on his lower lip, her tongue probed deep within his mouth. Her eyes were tightly closed and she was conscious of nothing but her need, the ever-tightening spiral of passion. The screams, crashes, and shrieks of laughter outside the round chamber seemed to exist on another planet.
Owen’s fingers were deft on the laces of her stomacher, and her gown opened and slid from her almost without her being aware of it. With the same swift expertise he untied the tapes of her Spanish farthingale and the awkward structure was cast aside so that she stood in nothing but her lace-edged chemise and gartered silken hose, her slippered feet lost in the frothy puddle of rose-pink damask at her ankles.
She fumbled with the laces that fastened his hose to the waistband of his doublet even as she rubbed her other palm against the bulge of his penis, aware only of her frenzied need to hold him.
He helped her, opening his hose, and she gave a little sigh of satisfaction as finally she got what she wanted. She enclosed him in her hand, reveling in the feel of the hot shaft of flesh, the corded veins pulsing against her palm. She felt blindly for the tip, easing back the little hood of skin with two fingers. She brought her finger to her mouth, tasting the drop of moisture that she’d gathered in her exploration.
His lips were pressed to the soft swell of her breasts rising from the lacy chemise. He opened the bodice and cupped her breasts in his palms, bending to kiss each in turn, sucking on her nipples that rose hard against his mouth. She shuddered against him, her thighs parting as she struggled to lift her chemise to her waist, baring her lower body.
Owen lifted her free and she curled her legs around his hips. She bit his lower lip and tasted blood.
He carried her to a table in the center of the chamber and Pen fell back, her legs still twined around his hips. He slid his hands beneath her backside, holding her up as he entered her, plunging to her core in one smooth deep movement. She moaned with satisfaction as she closed around him, holding him tightly within her.
Owen held himself very still. “Sweetheart, I daren’t move,” he whispered. “You have rendered me as incontinent as a virgin on his initiation.” He smiled ruefully down at her, the candlelight falling across his face.
Pen opened her eyes for the first time in hours, it seemed. “I, on the other hand, am no virgin, and I need you
now
!” The demand astounded her even as she made it. She had never made such a demand before and as she thrust her hips upwards, tightening her inner muscles around him, she laughed aloud with joy and the absolute sense of her own mastery.
Owen cried out as the orgasmic rush took him. He had just enough control left to pull out of her before he was completely lost. His fingers were buried deep in the soft swell of her bottom, gripping with bruising strength as he held her, his head thrown back, his eyes closed in ecstasy.
Slowly Pen returned to awareness, to the feel of the table hard beneath her back, the hands beneath her, the juices of love drying on her belly. She blinked in the candlelight, which seemed very bright, and reached up to touch his face.
Owen opened his eyes and gently slid his hands from beneath her. She lay on the table, for the moment unable to imagine making her languid limbs work enough to enable her to get to her feet.
Owen fastened his hose, then took her hands and pulled her into a sitting position. “That was very unceremonious, Pen. Next time, I’ll do better.” He bent to clasp her face between his hands and kissed her.
Next time?
Pen sat on the table. Her body still gloried in its satisfaction, her spirit still sang with pleasure.
But slowly she felt the icy tide of reality.
Dear God, what had she done?
She had given in, yielded control, lost herself, lost sight of her goal. She could think only that in lust and in passion she had betrayed her child. In her animal arousal. She had forgotten her child, forgotten Philip, forgotten her oath to honor his memory by finding the truth.
She gazed up at Owen but his features were blurred; he seemed like some figment of a strange and dreadful trance. There was no glory now, only a confused self-disgust. No residue of pleasure. Her body was cold, and she was vulnerable in her seminakedness.
She slid off the table and with almost desperate haste grabbed up her discarded clothing.
“Wait . . . wait a minute.” He took the clothes from her.
Slowly he came back into focus and Pen saw that while he was still smiling, his eyes still soft with the afterglow of desire, there was a wary puzzlement in his steady regard.
“What’s happened, Pen?”
“Nothing, I don’t know . . . nothing,” she mumbled, tucking her breasts back into her bodice with shaking fingers.
How could she possibly explain to Owen what she couldn’t explain to herself?
He frowned. “Are you regretting what happened between us?”
“It shouldn’t have happened.” Pen snatched her farthingale from his hands and fumbled with the ties at her waist. She felt that by yielding to that wild, all-consuming passion, she had somehow lost the moral right to insist that he fulfill his side of their bargain. Some part of her mind knew it was unreasonable to think like this. She was blaming Owen as much as herself, and that was not in any way reasonable. But she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“Shouldn’t . . . ?” he began, then with an impatient gesture Owen moved her hands aside and fastened the ribbons himself. He could feel her desperation even if he didn’t as yet understand it. Without another word he helped her into her gown.
Pen smoothed her skirts over her farthingale, and bent to pick up her hood. She couldn’t see the pins anywhere, they must have rolled into the dark shadows of the chamber beyond the candlelight. She stood holding the silk hood, wondering in distant perplexity how she was to put it on without pins. As if it mattered.
“You have to do what you promised,” she stated, staring over his shoulder towards the door leading to the great hall. “That’s why we came in here.”
But she knew that it wasn’t and she wasn’t surprised when Owen said incredulously, “What
nonsense
is that, Pen?”
“It’s not nonsense. We came in here to talk about when you would fulfill your side of our bargain.” Still she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze.
“We came in here to do exactly what we did,” Owen stated, articulating each word with careful deliberation. “To make the passionate love that we did.” He turned his palms up in a gesture of puzzlement, and anger now mingled with the confusion in his dark gaze. “It was agreed between us before we set foot in this chamber.”
He was right. So right. That moment in the great hall when their eyes had spoken together. When they had acknowledged the power of lust and accepted its inevitable conclusion. She remembered it in every devastating detail. But now she pushed the knowledge from her. It merely twisted the knife of her remorse and self-contempt.
“I want you to tell me when you will do what you promised,” she insisted, ignoring his statement.
“God’s blood, Pen! There’s a time and a place for your obsession, but this is neither. Not after what we have just shared.” He regretted the harshness even as he spoke, but it was too late.
She paled. He was betraying her. Dismissing her overpowering need just like everyone else had done. “The only thing that matters to me is finding out what happened to my child. We had a bargain. I would like to know when you will live up to your end of it.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose until the skin whitened as if only thus could he contain his anger at himself and his frustration with her.
“When do you want me to go?”
The simple question was all Pen needed. She felt relief, but none of the jubilation or satisfaction she would have expected.
She frowned, considering the question. It was in the early hours of the morning now, he would need some sleep. “Later today. It’s thirty miles to High Wycombe but hard riding will take you most of the way in an afternoon. You can go on to the village the next morning and make inquiries. I will send you the page I copied from the ledger. Will you be lodging with Mistress Rider?”