Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
Hesitantly Ariane leaned forward. The first brush
of her lips over Simon’s startled her. He was warm, smooth,
resilient. His beard was soft, tempting her to stroke it with her
cheek. And he tasted quite wonderful.
Slowly, savoring each drop, she licked up every bit
of the wine on Simon’s lips. When she realized what she had
done, she froze, expecting to be grabbed and flung down onto the
bed as lust overcame him.
Ariane looked at Simon with eyes that revealed her
sudden fear.
“Was it so terrible?” Simon asked.
She shook her head.
“But you were expecting it to be?”
“I—I’ve never kissed a
man’s mouth.”
Her words sank into Simon like light through
darkness, illuminating everything.
I begin to believe that Ariane
is indeed what she most often seems to be—a skittish virgin
rather than an accomplished flirt
.
“Did you expect me to bite you?” he
asked, only half-joking.
“Nay. I expected you to throw me on the bed
and—”
Abruptly Ariane stopped speaking.
“Ravish you?” Simon suggested.
She nodded.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said,
smiling crookedly. “I find you most alluring, but not so much
so that lust will overcome me after a single chaste
kiss.”
“Chaste? I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
With that, Simon wet his lips once more with wine
and turned to Ariane. His lips were smooth and shinning. They
tasted firm and warm to her, sweet and oddly salt. But nothing was
as heady as the hot darkness behind his lips, where her tongue
received a caress for each one it gave.
The half-goblet of wine Ariane had drained bloomed
in a rush of heat through her blood. Before this moment, the heady
feeling would have unnerved her. Now it simply made her want to
crowd closer to Simon, for he was her anchor in a warmly seething
sea.
Simon felt Ariane leaning toward him. Triumph and
something much hotter flared through him. Only the discipline
learned at such cost during the Holy Crusade allowed Simon to keep
himself from reaching out and wrapping Ariane up in his arms. He
knew it was too soon for the fiery, headlong joining he wanted. She
was only beginning to lose her fear of what was to come.
Silently cursing the vicious old maid who must have
filled Ariane’s ears with horror stories of the marriage bed,
Simon lured his bride into a deeper kiss, then deeper still, until
their mouths were fully mated and each knew no taste but the
other.
It was unlike anything Ariane had ever experienced.
A caressing warmth that was sunlight and velvet combined. A complex
flavor to be savored again and yet again, always changing, always
new. A hushed intimacy
rising like a silent
silver tide, lapping at the nightmare, forcing it to retreat.
Thinking nothing, feeling everything with shivering
intensity, Ariane gave herself to the kiss.
Slowly, carefully, Simon’s arms circled his
bride. Though he would have liked very much to lie down with Ariane
on the bed, her blunt expectation of being thrown down and ravished
made him decide to stay upright for a while longer.
Gently Simon pulled back from the kiss.
Ariane’s murmured complaint and blind seeking for his lips
made him smile with both triumph and tenderness.
“Simon?”
“The wine is gone.”
“Nay,” Ariane protested. “I can
taste it still.”
“Can you?”
“Aye. Can’t you?”
“Shall we see, nightingale? Part your lips
for me once more.”
Without thinking, Ariane obeyed. Simon bent and
captured her mouth with a single smooth movement, claiming it
completely with deep rhythms of penetration and retreat.
At the back of Ariane’s mind, black warnings
stirred. Before she could act on them, the kiss changed.
Simon’s tongue caressed her mouth, touching every soft bit of
it from the satin behind her lips to the different textures of her
tongue. The tender teasing so pleased Ariane that she forgot to be
wary. She joined in the sweet duel of tongue with tongue.
This time when the rhythmic penetration and retreat
began again, Ariane moaned softly and gave even more of her mouth
to Simon.
The tiny sound sent desire ripping through him,
swiftly undermining his self-control. Ariane was succumbing to him
so delicately, so hotly, that he wanted to protect and ravish her
in the same wild instant. Everything about her called to his
senses, from the subtle perfume in her
hair to
the taste of their joined mouths, from the soft warmth of her neck
beneath his fingertips to the fey fabric that caressed him even as
he caressed the female flesh beneath.
The silver laces at the neckline seemed as eager to
be undone as Simon was to undo them. He had but to touch, to think
of tugging, and warm silver strings curled around his fingers and
slid away, leaving the sweet territory beneath undefended. It was
the same for the violet cloth, a caressing welcome even as the
fabric folded aside to admit him to the secrets of his
bride’s body.
Ariane never felt the bodice of her dress give way
to Simon’s quick hands. She was lost to a kiss that was like
Simon himself, intense and controlled, fierce and tender, honest
and complex to the very core.
The pleasure of giving herself to Simon’s
kiss and taking from his mouth in return was as dizzying to Ariane
as the wine sliding through her blood, bringing heat in its
wake.
Simon’s fingertips glided from Ariane’s
cheek to her ears and down to the hollow of her throat, adding to
her pleasure. Instinctively she threaded her hands through his
golden hair in return, stroking him like a cat. And like a cat he
responded, crowding closer, silently demanding more.
Not understanding what her response was doing to
Simon, Ariane drew her fingernails from his crown to his nape even
as she sucked lightly on his tongue.
Within a heartbeat Simon’s kiss changed from
pleasuring to something far more urgent. The rhythms became more
elemental, more hungry, a frank sexual claiming.
Abruptly Ariane became aware of the heat radiating
from Simon and of the hardness in every muscle of his body. The
kisses had been new and sweet to her, far removed from her
nightmare.
But this was not.
Male hands were closing on her bare breasts even as
powerful shoulders pushed her over onto her back
with frightening ease. Soon her legs would be wrenched apart and
the pain and degradation would begin, never to end short of
death.
Nightmare and desperation exploded through Ariane.
Her hand swept out, seeking the dagger she had concealed among the
bedside draperies. The weapon’s cool silver haft came to her
as though summoned. Recklessly she slashed outward.
Ariane was very quick. The blade scored
Simon’s arm in the instant before he grabbed her wrist. For a
taut moment he looked from the jewel-studded dagger to his
bride’s wild eyes.
Swiftly Simon shifted his grip, disarming Ariane
before she knew what was happening. He flipped the dagger end over
end with quick, expert motions of his hand. With equal speed, he
caught the haft, stilling the weapon.
Ariane watched the silver cartwheels of the dagger
and knew that Simon was as thoroughly acquainted with the lethal
uses of a dagger as he was with those of the sword.
“Do not play with me like a cat with a baby
bird,” she said harshly. “Finish it.”
For a moment Simon looked at Ariane.
“Kill you?” he asked neutrally.
“Yes!”
An odd smile played over Simon’s lips.
Belatedly Ariane realized that he was amused rather than angered by
her attack.
“I’m not that harsh a lover,
nightingale. We’ll both survive the night very
nicely.”
Simon’s arm moved with deceptively casual
ease. The dagger flew straight to the far wall where a streak of
pale wood no wider than a finger provided a target. An inch of the
blade sank into the wood.
Before the haft stopped quivering, Simon reached
for his bride.
When Ariane realized that she had lost her only
chance to escape her nightmare, she went mad.
She fought Simon’s grasp with mindless, silent desperation,
knowing only that she could not submit to rape again.
Simon accepted the blows only long enough to subdue
Ariane without striking her in return. Very quickly she lay full
length under him, pinned beneath his much greater strength, barely
able to breathe, much less to fight him.
“God’s teeth,” said Simon in
exasperation. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Never!” Ariane said wildly.
“Never, do you hear me? I will never lie beneath a man while
he hammers into my body.
Never
!”
“Really,” Simon said in a silky voice.
“And just how do you propose to stop me?”
He watched the understanding of helplessness sink
into Ariane. With it came the same kind of pure animal terror he
had seen in the eyes of Saracen girls after a fortress had fallen
and the invading soldiers vented their lust on whomever they could
catch.
The chill of Ariane’s skin and the clammy
sweat that gleamed between her breasts spoke eloquently of her
fear, as did the violent tremors that raked her from head to
toe.
With grim clarity Simon remembered when Duncan had
questioned Ariane less than a fortnight ago, and Amber had been
there to underline the brutal truth of Ariane’s response.
I will do my duty, but I am
repelled by the prospect of the marriage bed
.
An icy fury descended on Simon.
Up until this instant he hadn’t truly
believed Ariane’s words. He had sensed the currents of
sensual awareness running between himself and the Norman heiress.
Whether her fear was real or simply an enhancement of the sensual
game, he had assumed that he could seduce her.
He had been wrong.
“So,” Simon said through his teeth.
“I am tied by sacred bonds and earthly necessity to a woman
who loathes her marital duties.”
“I was honest from the first,” Ariane
said tonelessly. “I told everyone who would listen that I had
no heart.”
“I can do quite well without your
heart,” Simon retorted in a savage voice. “It is your
body I want, both for pleasure and for children.”
Ariane said nothing.
In a single swift movement, Simon released Ariane
and stood up. For aching moments he said nothing. He simply looked
at the ravishing, unattainable beauty whom he had married.
Another, different kind of shudder went through
Ariane as she realized that she would not be raped tonight.
Nor would she be set free.
“Are you so dead in what passes for your
should that you don’t want children?” Simon asked with
appalling softness.
Even as Ariane opened her mouth to agree, she knew
it was a lie. Defeated, she turned her head away from Simon.
From the corner of her eye, she saw his arm coming
toward her. With a hoarse sound she threw herself to the far edge
of the bed.
Saying nothing, Simon yanked the bed covers from
beneath Ariane, leaving only a single layer over the rustling,
rose-scented mattress. Too spent to flinch, she watched numbly as
he held out his arm once more.
Blood dripped slowly but steadily onto the
mattress.
“That should do,” he said.
Blankly, Ariane looked up at Simon.
“A substitute for the blood of your
maidenhead,” he said distinctly. “Were the linen not
stained, there would be much gossip in the keep about the man who
was so great a fool as to marry a soiled woman.”
Ariane made a small sound and looked away, seeing
nothing at all.
“’Tis a good thing that your dowry is
great,” Simon said, shrugging his mantle about his shoulders.
“It is the only joy I will have of this union for a
time.”
“Forever,” Ariane said dully.
“Nay,
wife
. There
is a fire in you that is great enough to burn stone. I have felt
it. One day you will plead that I take the very thing you refuse me
now. You may look forward to it. I certainly will!”
Slowly Ariane shook her head, as much in despair as
in response to Simon’s words.
“Have a care how you mock me,” Simon
said with deadly gentleness, “else I will take what God and
king have given to me, and to hell with your virginal
fears.”
With that, Simon turned and stalked from the bed
chamber.
D
ominic swept aside the last scraps
of the previous night’s wedding feast, dragged a senseless
man-at-arms from the only upright bench, and continued hauling the
hapless man out of the great hall to the forebuilding. When he
returned to the great hall, Meg had revived the fire and was
pouring fragrant tea into clean mugs.
No smell of baking bread wafted in from the outside
kitchen. No meat roasted on spits. Fresh water had been drawn and
little more. Few of the servants were even up and about. All were
much the worse for drink.
One was snoring fit to stir the draperies.
“Ale or tea?” Meg asked as Dominic
walked up.
“Tea.”
Dominic looked at the limp men stacked like logs
against the wall of the great hall and shook his head.
Simon’s wedding had been well and truly toasted, until not
one of the knights could raise a goblet or untangle his tongue to
speak.
“’Tis just as well I brought headache
bane with me,” Meg said. “When these stout men finally
awaken, they could be felled instantly by a child with a shrill
voice.”
“They may not have to wait that long,”
Dominic said in disgust. “Were they my knights, I would take
them by the ears and throw them into the swine pen.”
Dominic took the tea Meg offered, sat on the bench
he had cleared, and drank deeply of the transparent, hot brew. As
always, anything from Meg’s herbal refreshed and restored
him. He lowered the cup with a sound of pleasure.
Six feet away, a knight snored hard enough to
choke.
“God’s teeth,” Dominic muttered.
“Have Erik’s knights no sense? Don’t they know
that dawn follows a riotous night as quickly as a quiet one? Nay,
more quickly!”
“Don’t be harsh with them,” Meg
said, refilling his cup. “They but shared Erik’s joy in
a marriage that will bring an island of peace to a troubled
land.”
Dominic snorted. “Aye. And in their
celebrations, they kept you awake most of the night.”
“Nay.”
“Then what did? For you were awake, small
falcon. I know it.”
“I dreamed,” she said simply.
Dominic went still. “Glendruid
dreams?”
Meg nodded and said nothing.
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
Dominic asked, for he knew that his wife’s dreams could not
always be put into words.
“There is danger.”
“God forbid,” Dominic muttered, looking
pointedly at the useless warriors sleeping in the hall. “Is
the danger already inside the keep?”
Meg tilted her head thoughtfully.
“Not…quite.”
“Beyond the keep?”
There was no hesitation this time.
“Aye,” she said. “It comes this
way.”
Dominic shrugged. “Small falcon, there is
always danger in the Disputed Lands.”
Fleetingly Meg smiled, for she and her husband had
had this same conversation many times before when talking about her
dreams. It wasn’t that Dominic didn’t believe her. It
was simply that until her dreams became more specific—if they
did—there was little he could do, for he already insisted
that the men under his command maintain a constant state of
vigilance.
“There is far less peril than before you came
to the Disputed Lands,” Meg pointed out.
She bent down and kissed her husband’s hard
mouth,
softening it into a lover’s warm
smile. As she moved, the tiny golden bells at her wrists and hips
chimed. A fiery braid slid forward. Golden bells trailed from it
like costly jesses, chiming with piercing sweetness.
“Glendruid Wolf,” she murmured.
“Have I told you how much I love you?”
“Not since morning chapel,” Dominic
said quickly. “’Tis a terrible long time to go without
your love.”
Meg’s laughter was as rich and beautiful as
her Glendruid hair.
Several yards away, Ariane paused at the side
entrance to the great hall, gripping her harp in both hands. She
was struck by the music of Meg’s laughter, the autumn glory
of her loosely plaited hair, and the unexpected sight of Glendruid
witch and Glendruid Wolf at play.
“You are spoiled, my wolf,” Meg
said.
“Aye. Spoil me some more,” Dominic
said, pulling her down onto his lap. “I grow faint for want
of kissing you.”
“Faint?”
Meg laughed again. Her hands slid beneath
Dominic’s mantle, pushing it over his shoulders. Openly
enjoying her husband’s unusual strength, Meg kneaded the
muscles of his chest and shoulders, approving his masculine
power.
“Oh, yes,” she said gravely, hiding her
smile. “I can feel how faint you have become for lack of my
kiss.”
“Then take pity on me. Revive me.”
Meg tilted her face up to Dominic. At the same time
she threaded her fingers into his black hair and pulled his mouth
down to hers. The kiss that followed was slow and sensual.
Unwillingly Ariane was reminded of the magic time
last evening when Simon’s kiss had held her enchanted,
forgetful of the danger that would surely follow a man’s
rising lust.
Ariane had a mad impulse to cry out to the
Glendruid witch, to warm her that a man’s kiss was like his
smile,
a lure for the unwary. Common sense made
Ariane bite her tongue before a single word was spoken.
“Are you revived?” Meg asked after a
time.
“Aye,” Dominic said huskily.
Teasingly she traced the clean line of his lip
beneath his mustache with the tip of her tongue.
“Are you quite certain?” she asked.
Dominic’s smile was dark, sensual, and fully
male. With one hand he drew his mantle back over his shoulders so
that it covered Meg and himself. With the other hand, he urged her
fingers down the center of his body.
“Tell me, small falcon. Am I
revived?”
Dominic’s breath caught as Meg’s hand
moved.
“You appear to be,” she said,
“but it could be just the bench whose hardness lies at
hand.”
“Test more…closely.”
“Someone might happen by.”
“I promise not to scream.”
“You are a devil.”
“Nay. I am but a man whose duties have kept
him too long from his wife’s warm body. Can you not feel
it?”
“Here?” she asked innocently, caressing
his thigh.
Dominic shifted smoothly, making Meg’s hand
slide between his legs.
“Can you feel it now, witch?”
Her husky laugh was that of a woman who fully
approved of what lay beneath her husband’s fine clothes. The
laughter was as sensual as fire, and like fire, it was hot.
But that wasn’t what shocked Ariane. What
shocked her was that there was no fear in Meg’s laughter. Not
even a hint. It was as though Meg anticipated the inevitable end of
such teasing as much as Dominic did.
In growing disbelief Ariane stared at the couple
with a rudeness that would have astonished her under other
circumstances. Even though Dominic and his wife were shielded by
his mantle, Ariane had no doubt that the two were involved in love
play.
A play that was as much relished by wife as by
husband.
“Your hands,” Dominic said. “They
are the sweetest kind of fire. Burn me, small falcon.”
Footsteps sounded down the spiral stone stairway
leading from the third floor to the great hall.
Dominic hissed something in a foreign tongue and
quickly set Meg back upon her feet. By the time the footsteps
resolved into Erik and Simon coming into the great hall by way of
the main entrance, Meg and Dominic were quietly eating a breakfast
of fruit, cheese, and yesterday’s herb bread.
Simon and Erik strode into the hall with similar
lithe strides. Tall, quick, broad-shouldered, strong with the lean
power of a wolf rather than the muscular heft of a bear, blond of
hair and beard, the two knights looked more like brothers than like
men born in separate lands. All that divided them was the massive
wolfhound that paced at Erik’s side.
No one noticed Ariane standing in the side
entrance, concealed by shadows, dark clothing and her own
stillness. She wanted to walk forward, to show herself and take a
place by the fire, but the sight of Simon froze her in place.
Have a care how you mock me,
else I will take what God and king have given to me, and to hell
with your virginal fears
.
A chill condensed beneath Ariane’s skin. She
stood motionless, praying not to be noticed until she could
withdraw as quietly as she had come.
When Simon came up to the fire, Dominic gave his
brother a swift, comprehensive glance. As always since the Holy
Crusade, Simon’s face gave away nothing of his thoughts.
Dominic was one of the few people who knew that his brother’s
quick wit and smile were as much an armor as any chain mail ever
worn.
Usually Dominic could see beneath Simon’s
sun-bright surface to the reality beneath.
Usually, but not this morning.
Disappointment bloomed silently within Dominic. He
needed no Learning to sense that whatever had passed between Simon
and Ariane last night had increased rather than eased the cold
darkness in his brother.
“God’s teeth,” Erik said in
disgust as he stepped over a snoring man-at-arms, “Duncan and
I will need a whip and a goad to get these men up and
about.”
“Where is Duncan? And Sven?” Simon
asked. “Usually they are the first to awaken.”
“I sent Sven out to gauge the temper of the
countryside,” Dominic said. “With all these great louts
sleeping like rocks, it would be a child’s work to take Stone
Ring Keep.”
“The sentry is at his post,” Erik
pointed out.
Dominic grunted, unimpressed. “As for
Duncan…”
“Duncan is enjoying the rowan’s
gift,” Meg said.
“Uninterrupted sleep?” Simon asked.
Cool, sardonic, Simon’s voice was a good
match for the crystal blackness of his eyes.
Glendruid dreams echoed in Meg’s mind,
speaking darkly of the violence that was gathering like a storm in
the Disputed Lands.
A storm whose center would be Stone Ring Keep.
A low cry came from Meg’s lips, a sound too
soft for anyone but her husband to hear. Instantly Dominic was on
his feet beside his wife. His arm went around her and his dark head
bent down to her cheek. Though Meg needed no support, she leaned
gratefully against her husband’s strong arm.
“What is it?” Dominic asked
urgently.
She simply shook her head.
“It isn’t the babe, is it?”
Dominic asked.
“Nay.”
“Are you certain? For a moment it seemed as
though you were in pain.”
Meg let out a long breath and looked up into her
husband’s clear grey eyes.
“The babe is hardy as a war-horse,” she
said.
She took Dominic’s scarred hand and held it
against the taut mound of her pregnancy. Dominic felt first the
heat of his wife’s body, then the subtle yet unmistakable
kick of the babe.
The expression that came to Dominic’s face
made Ariane stare. Never would she have believed that such a
formidable man could have such a tender smile.
Simon stared, too. Though he had had months to
become accustomed to Meg’s effect on Dominic, there were
still times when Simon was surprised by the depths of his
brother’s feeling for the girl fate had sent to him.
“The Glendruid Wolf looks not so fierce right
now,” Erik said in a low voice. “In their own way, he
and his witch share the rowan’s gift, don’t
they?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Simon said
coolly.
“Ah, yes. What was it Dominic said—that
your gift is to see only that which can be touched and held and
weighed and measured?”
“Aye,” Simon said with grim
satisfaction.
“It still sounds more like a curse to
me.”
“I don’t notice you galloping to Stone
Ring and its invisible rowan tree and demanding to be leg-shackled
by love.”
Erik glanced sideways at Simon. Though Simon was
always tart of speech, his tongue seemed to have an unusual edge
this morning.
“Long night?” Erik asked blandly.
“It was a night like any other.”
“Brrr.”
Simon smiled thinly.
“Does this mean that you will accept my offer
of a mantle lined with white weasels?” Erik asked.
Simon laughed ruefully. “Aye, Learned.
I’ll take your gift.”
“I’m sorry. When Lady Ariane was
accepted by Serena’s weaving, I hoped…” Erik
shrugged. “Ah, well, cold wives are why God gave us furred
animals and
lemans. I’ll send for the
mantle lining immediately.”
“I am in your debt.”
“Nay,” Erik said instantly. “It
is I who will be forever in your debt. You gave me a gift beyond
compare when you agreed to marry the cold Norman
heiress.”
Simon said nothing.
Nor did Ariane, though she heard each word all too
clearly. There was nothing for her to say in any case. The men but
spoke the truth: A fur-lined mantle would warm Simon’s body
sooner than would Ariane the Betrayed.
“If you hadn’t stepped forward,”
Erik continued, “Duncan would have wed Ariane, Amber would
have died in Ghost Glen, and my father’s lands would have
fallen to renegades.”
Simon moved restively. What had happened between
Duncan and Amber in that place beyond the baffling mists was
something that couldn’t be weighed or measured.
It confounded him.
“It matters not to me,” Simon said.
“I’ll never know the terrible coils of love, nor see
the sacred rowan bloom.”
“You are young yet.”
Simon gave Erik a sidelong glance.
“I am older than you,” Simon said.
“And I am married to a maiden carved of ice taken from the
bleak heart of the longest night of winter.”
“I’m told that there is a sweet solace
for such coldness. Her name is Marie and her eyes are as black as
yours.”
Anger and disgust snaked through Simon at the
thought of the skilled, faithless Marie, but nothing of what he
felt showed.
“You must have been talking to Sven,”
Simon said. “He sings Marie’s praises in the hope that
some strapping foreign knight will fall into her trap and spill all
his secrets along with his seed.”