Enchanted (9 page)

Laughing, Erik bent to touch Stagkiller, who had
been prodding his master with increasing urgency.

“What is it, beast?” Erik asked.
“What makes you uneasy?”

The affection in Erik’s voice was as apparent
as the wolfhound’s great, gleaming fangs.

“Perhaps he wants to change bodies with
you,” Simon said blandly.

“Do you believe everything Sven hears when he
listens under eaves in the countryside?”

Simon laughed and said nothing.

Stagkiller bumped insistently against Erik.

“Are you trying to knock me off my
feet?” Erik grumbled.

As he bent to look into the wolfhound’s eyes,
Erik caught the subdued flash of gemstones in Ariane’s hair
from the corner of his eye.

“Lady Ariane,” Erik said,
straightening. “Good morning to you.”

A stillness came over Simon. Then he moved swiftly,
bringing Ariane into view. Instantly he knew that she had overheard
every word.

That didn’t bother Simon particularly, for he
had said nothing to Erik that he hadn’t first said to his
unwilling wife.

But the pain Simon sensed in Ariane did bother him.
It both chastened and angered him.

“Have you taken breakfast?” Simon
asked, his tone neutral.

Ariane gripped her harp tighter, holding it across
her body as though it were a shield.

“No,” she said in a low voice.

“Then do so. You are as thin as one of your
beloved harp strings.”

Ariane’s fingers moved. A flurry of notes
rose in a minor key, then fell off sharply.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“I’m well aware of your lack of
appetite.”

Simon’s voice was cool, unaccented,
impersonal. The silence that followed his words was broken by a
slight movement of Ariane’s fingers.

“You were present when Amber questioned
me,” Ariane said tightly. “You knew how I
felt.”

“Thank you, gracious wife, for reminding me
that night is indeed caused by the absence of the sun, and cold by
the absence of heat.”

This time the silence that followed Simon’s
words was broken by nothing at all. When it became apparent that
neither of them intended to speak again, Erik cursed beneath his
breath and spoke gallantly to the Norman heiress.

“The dawn that follows the longest
night,” Erik said, “Is always the most warm.”

Ariane looked at Erik for a long moment before she
spoke. “You are very kind, lord.”

“Kind?”

“To suggest that all nights end with dawn,
when you know full well that some nights never end.”

“I know nothing of the sort.”

Ariane’s eyes widened slightly as she sensed
the savage impatience that lay just beneath Erik’s polished
surface.

“As you say, lord.”

Erik sighed and wished Ariane were less comely. It
would have been easier to be angry at an unwilling woman who was
also ugly.

“Your eyes,” Erik said.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“Your eyes are magnificent. ’Tis a
miracle the fairies haven’t stolen you away out of
jealousy.”

Erik’s words brought back all too clearly the
moment when Ariane had told Simon just how attractive he was to
her.

When Ariane risked a sideways glance at her
husband, Ariane saw a faint smile and knew that he, too,
remembered.

“Thank you, lord,” Ariane said.

Her smile was a reflex born of her childhood. She
had been trained to accept just such courtly exchanges among
highborn men and women.

“But if fairies were to steal from
mortals,” Ariane continued, “it would be your eyes at
risk, not mine. They are a most unusual shade of gold, like an
autumn sun reflected by water.”

“Or like a wolf’s eyes reflecting
fire,” Simon said blandly.

Erik shot him a sideways look. “You are too
kind.”

“Undoubtedly,” Simon said.

With a stifled laugh, Erik turned back to
Ariane.

“As your husband is likely too ill-mannered
to have mentioned your beauty,” Erik said, “it falls to
me to point out that even the stars in the sky lack your amethyst
fire.”

Again Ariane smiled politely, but a bit more
warmly. “You are the one who is too kind.”

Simon watched with growing irritation as Erik and
Ariane traded compliments. Such polite rituals shouldn’t have
annoyed Simon, but they did. Seeing his wife respond to
Erik’s handsome face and courtly manners was distinctly
irksome.

“I’m not kind,” Erik protested.
“I merely speak the truth.”

Then he looked at Ariane for the space of a breath,
as though seeing her for the first time as a woman rather than as a
cold obstacle to his plans for the Disputed Lands.

“Your hair is like silk cut from the night
sky,” Erik said slowly. “Dark, yet full of light. Your
skin would shame a pearl into hiding its perfect face. Your
eyebrows have the elegant lines of a bird in flight. And your mouth
is a bud waiting to—”

“Enough,” Simon interrupted curtly.
“I haven’t heard such a pile of overripe compliments
since I was in the court of a Saracen prince.”

Though Simon hadn’t raised his voice, its
tone was a clear warning. Erik gave him a measuring look. Simon
raised his left eyebrow in silent challenge.

Abruptly Erik smiled like the wolf he was reputed
to be. Simon’s message was clear: Cold or not, Ariane was
Simon’s wife, and he meant to make sure that everyone
understood it.

That was welcome news to Erik, who had been afraid
Simon would simply ignore his icy wife but for the duty of
providing sons to fight for his lord and brother, the Glendruid
Wolf. That kind of cold, practical liaison would result in deadly
danger. Erik didn’t know why, but he knew it was truth. It
was his gift to see such patterns where others saw only unconnected
events.

“I will leave you to compliment your lady in
peace,” Erik said.

“Wise of you.”

Ariane glanced at Simon. He was smiling.

And he was deadly serious.

Erik withdrew, hiding his own smile of
satisfaction.

“That was unnecessary,” she said in a
low voice.

“It was very necessary,” Simon
said.

“Why? What harm is there in an exchange of
courtly compliments?”

Simon stepped toward Ariane. She caught herself
just before she stepped back. Even so, Simon saw her reflexive
flinching away.

“The harm,” he said softly, savagely,
“is in the fact that you flinch at my least movement, yet
fawn over Erik as though bent on seducing him.”

“I never—”

“The harm,” interrupted Simon,
“is in your beauty. Men come to you like dogs after a bitch
in heat, helpless to control their own lust.”

Ariane’s mouth opened in shock.
“That’s not—”

He overrode her words without a pause.

“The harm, dear wife, is that a compliment
that begins
with your eyes soon ends with
comparing your lips to a bud on the brink of flowering.”

A small shiver of memory went through Ariane.

“The harm—” Simon continued
coolly.

“You made me feel like that,” she said
without thinking. “A bud that was full of
sweetness.”

Though soft, Ariane’s words cut off the
rising anger in Simon. He looked at her mouth, tender as a petal,
sweet as nectar, the unblemished pink of a wild rose just before it
blooms.

Dominic hailed Simon from the head of the room. If
Simon heard, he failed to turn away from his study of
Ariane’s lips.

“Simon,” she whispered. “Lord
Dominic calls you.”

Simon ignored Ariane’s words as he had
ignored his brother’s greeting.

“Last night,” Simon said huskily,
“your mouth was just like a tightly furled bud. The feel of
you slowly opening to my kiss made my head spin as wine never
has.”

The narrowed, glittering darkness of Simon’s
eyes was both warning and lure to Ariane.

“When you finally did open,” Simon
said, “I knew how a bee feels when it slides between fragrant
petals and sips nectar from the heart of the flower.”

Breath wedged in Ariane’s chest as
Simon’s words vividly recalled the sweet glide of tongue over
tongue, the taste of him spreading through her mouth, making her
weak with a longing she couldn’t name.

Without knowing it, she whispered her
husband’s name.

“Aye,” Simon said. “You remember
it, too. Soon you will open for me in a different way, and the
honey of your desire will be the nectar that drenches
me.”

A shimmer of heat went through Ariane. It was
startling and pleasurable.

“But until that day,” Simon continued
smoothly, “you will trade compliments only with me, for I am
the only
bee whose sweet sting your petals will
ever know.”

Ariane opened her mouth to answer. Nothing came out
but a sound that could have been Simon’s name. She licked
lips that were suddenly dry.

“You tempt me without mercy,” Simon
said fiercely beneath his breath. “Would that I could do the
same to you.”

He turned with startling speed and strode toward
Dominic, leaving Ariane to the solace of the harp she held so
tightly against her breasts.

“’T
is a beautiful day,
lady,” Blanche said. “Almost worth the six days of
storm that came before.”

A sound like a cascading sigh came from the harp
Ariane held. The notes were as haunted as her eyes. Ariane’s
fingers continued their slow drawing over the harp while Blanche
set aside the comb and began braiding her lady’s hair.

Ariane hardly noticed Blanche’s fingers. She
was caught between nightmare and unnervingly sweet memories of
Simon’s kiss.

Six days a wife
.

Tonight will be the seventh
night
.

“’Tis a blessing the weather has
changed,” Blanche muttered as she braided Ariane’s long
hair. “The knights are wild to be hunting. Or wenching. The
cotters’ daughters are hiding in with the swine.”

Will this be the night Simon
finally comes to my bedchamber again
?

Or will he let my nerves
string ever tighter as I wait for him to stalk to my bed, drag my
nightdress up my legs and hammer within me until I
bleed
?

Ariane forced herself to breathe.

What a pity one cannot
conceive babes with a kiss
.

Her hands changed on the harp as she remembered the
sweet restraint and gliding caress of Simon’s mouth.

If he remembered her kiss with equal favor, it
didn’t show in his manner. Since the morning after their
marriage, Simon had been polite to Ariane and no more.

I don’t want any more
from him
.

It was a lie, and Ariane knew it.

Yet it was also the truth, and she knew that
too.

She wanted Simon’s kisses, his gentle
touches, his smiles. She didn’t want the passion that ran
through his blood like lightning through a storm, making his eyes
both dark and glittery at once. She was frightened of the male
strength that so easily could overwhelm her, holding her helpless
while he forced her body to admit his seed.

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
.

“Lady?” Blanche asked.

Ariane blinked. The tone of her handmaiden’s
voice told Ariane that she had been called more than once.

“Yes?” Ariane asked.

“Does your hair suit you?”

“Yes.”

With a grimace Blanche set aside the comb. Ariane
hadn’t so much as glanced at her reflection in the brass
mirror.

“If I had your face and form,” Blanche
said, “I’d not hide away up in my room like a nun in
her cloister.”

“Then would that we could trade forms,”
Ariane muttered, “as Lord Erik and his wolfhound are reputed
to do upon a full moon.”

Blanche shuddered and crossed herself
hurriedly.

“Don’t be such a goose,” Ariane
said. “Lord Erik has been very kind to us.”

“They say Satan is charming, too.”

“Satan doesn’t wear the cross of a true
believer.”

“Lord Erik does?”

“Yes.”

Blanche’s expression showed her
disbelief.

“Ask the chaplain of Stone Ring Keep if you
don’t believe me,” Ariane said.

Her voice was as curt as the staccato notes she
plucked from the harp.

“Will you breakfast in your bedchamber
again?” Blanche asked carefully.

Ariane was on the point of agreeing when
restlessness overcame her. She realized that she was tired of her
self-imposed exile from the keep’s life. Abruptly she stood
up, harp in hand.

“Nay,” Ariane said. “I will
breakfast in the great hall.”

Blanche’s pale eyes widened, but she said
only, “As you wish.”

Ariane started for the door, then stopped. She set
aside her harp and began impatiently unlacing the dress she had
chosen to wear this morning. The cloth’s mauve folds and pink
trimming at cuff and hem no longer pleased her.

“Bring me the dress I was married in,”
Ariane said.

“That one? Why?”

“It pleases me more than my other
clothes.”

With a sideways glance at her unpredictable lady,
Blanche went to the wardrobe that held the few dresses Ariane had
brought with her from Blackthorne Keep.

“A vexed odd fabric,” Blanche
muttered.

She held the strange cloth no more closely than she
had to in order to bring the dress to her mistress.

“Odd? How so?” Ariane asked.

“The weaving looks soft as a cloud and feels
rough as thistle leaves. I don’t see how you can bear to have
it against your skin, even to please the Learned.”

Startled, Ariane gave her handmaiden a long
look.

“Rough?” Ariane said in disbelief.
“Why, the dress is softer than the finest
goosedown.”

“Vexed odd goosedown,” Blanche muttered
beneath her breath.

Gingerly she held out the violet cloth with its
lush silver threads woven through in disconcerting patterns, like
leashed lightning playing through an amethyst storm. With scant
patience, she waited for Ariane to take the dress.

For once, Blanche didn’t insist on helping
her mistress with the laces. Nor was any help needed. The dress all
but laced itself, needing little help from Ariane’s quick
fingers.

That was one of the things that appealed to Ariane
about the Learned gift; she didn’t have to endure unwanted
hands on her body in order to get dressed. The fabric also turned
aside stains with the ease of a duck shedding water.

“I wonder how the weaving was
accomplished,” Ariane said, running the backs of her fingers
over the cloth. “The threads are so fine I can barely
distinguish them.”

“’Tis said the most expensive silk is
like that.”

“Nay. My father bought many bolts of silk
from knights who had fought the Saracen. None of the cloth was this
soft. None was as cleverly woven.”

Yet even as Ariane stroked the fabric, she was
careful not to look into its depths where light and shadow
intertwined. The memory of Simon’s kiss was unsettling
enough. She didn’t need the vision of a woman arched in
passion beneath a warrior’s caresses to further disturb her
peace of mind.

Harp in hand, silver-trimmed dress seething gently
around her ankles, Ariane set off for the great hall. The keep was
alive with the sounds of servants. As she made her way toward the
hall, Ariane heard them calling back and forth, talking of the fine
day after the wild storm and of the canny swine that had once again
escaped Ethelrod’s pen.

The fire in the great hall’s hearth leaped
high and golden. Simon and Dominic were lounging nearby. The cat
known as His Laziness was draped around Simon’s neck like a
leftover storm cloud. Leather hawking gauntlets lay on the table.
From the swooping motions of the men’s hands, it appeared
that they were discussing the merits of hunting waterfowl with
falcons of various sizes.

Other than a polite nod when Ariane entered the
room, Simon made no move to join her.

Ariane was both relieved and…vexed. Only then
did she admit to herself that she had been hoping for a chance to
talk with Simon.

’
Tis just as well he
isn’t interested in me
, Ariane told herself.
How do I ask my husband if he plans to force
me tonight or some other night entirely
?

With an impatient word under her breath, Ariane
shoved aside the fears that had neither outlet nor encouragement.
Since their disastrous wedding night, Simon had ignored his wife
except to be polite when their paths crossed in the keep.

Meg was sitting along one side of the big table
where the lords and ladies of the Disputed Lands normally took
their meals. Instead of food, Meg had an array of lotions, balms,
potions, tinctures and creams spread in front of her. Next to her
sat Amber. The combination of flame-colored hair next to gold was
arresting against the grey stone walls.

“Cassandra says this works very well against
diseases caused by chill,” Amber said. “Though, for
mild cases, some Learned healers prefer nettle harvested at the
height of summer to berries taken from Lucifer’s
ear.”

Meg picked up a pot, dipped her finger briefly into
it, and rubbed a bit of the cream between her thumb and forefinger.
When the cream was as warm as her body, she held her fingers up to
her nose, sniffed carefully, tasted lightly, and nodded.

Quietly Ariane sat down nearby. Simon’s
squire—a boy barely old enough to grow a wretched shadow of a
beard—stepped forward instantly with a plate of cold meats,
fruits, cheeses, breads and a mug of fragrant tea.

“Thank you, Edward,” Ariane said,
surprised.

“It is my pleasure to serve my lord’s
lady,” the boy said carefully.

Edward glanced aside at Simon, received a
fractional nod, and retreated hastily.

It was clear that Simon was overseeing
Ariane’s breakfast. As she looked at the plate again, she
understood something else—Simon must have been monitoring her
food for the past six days.

There wasn’t one item on the plate that she
didn’t like. The tea itself was a subtle blend of rose hips
and chamomile that Ariane had declared more than once was very much
to her taste.

Under Simon’s watchful black eyes, Ariane set
aside her harp and began to eat.

“Thank our Lord,” Dominic muttered as
he saw the harp leave Ariane’s hands. “The lady
won’t be making our falcons weep with her sad
tunes.”

Simon merely glanced from Ariane to his own
gyrfalcon waiting on a perch along the wall of the great hall.
Hooded, patient, Skylance waited with other birds of prey arrayed
on perches in the hall. Occasionally a falcon shifted and flared
its wings. The movements made bells jangle on the ends of leather
jesses wrapped around the falcons’ slender, cool legs.

Turning away, Simon resumed stroking the cat whose
head was tucked along the right side of his neck. The motion of
Simon’s arm caused the sleeve of his shirt to fall away from
his arm, revealing the scarlet line of healing flesh across his
biceps.

“Meg’s balm has healed you quickly from
your, ah, accident,” Dominic said.

Though the Glendruid Wolf’s voice was low,
Simon knew his brother well enough to understand that Dominic
didn’t believe the story of how Simon had gotten the cut
across his left arm.

“Aye,” Simon said. “Meg is very
skilled.”

“Odd that you were so clumsy. Tell me again
how it happened.”

A black look was Simon’s only answer.

“Ah, it comes back to me now,” Dominic
said. “You
had too much wine, you were
showing your bride how to flip the dagger end over end, and the
blade sliced you. Is that how it went?”

Simon shrugged and began demolishing an apple with
neat, flashing bites.

“A pretty story,” Dominic said
judiciously, “but it is time to speak the truth to your
lord.”

“What passes between a man and his bride on
their wedding night belongs to them, and only to them.”

“Not when the death of one or the other would
bring calamity to Blackthorne Keep,” Dominic retorted.

“We live,” Simon said dryly.

“And the bridal sheets were duly stained. By
your
blood, I presume?”

Silence.

“Simon.”

The Glendruid Wolf’s voice was low, urgent.
So was his posture as he leaned toward his brother.

“My questions aren’t idle,”
Dominic said flatly. “Each night Meg dreams Glendruid dreams.
Each night her dreams are more frightening.”

Simon’s mouth became a line as thin as the
scarlet wound across his arm. For long moments he made no motion
but to stroke His Laziness, increasing the cat’s ecstatic
purring.

“Is Ariane your wife in deed as well as in
ceremony?” Dominic asked bluntly.

Simon’s fingers paused, then resumed their
caresses.

“No,” he said succinctly.

Dominic cursed in the language of the Saracens.

“What happened?” Dominic asked.

“My wife is as cold as a northern
sea.”

“She refused you?”

A narrow, bleak smile changed the line of
Simon’s mouth, but the gentleness of his hand on the grey cat
never varied.

“She refused me,” Simon agreed.

“Why?”

“She said she would rather die than lie
beneath a man.”

“Then place her on top,” Dominic said
impatiently.

“I have it in mind.”

Dominic waited.

Simon said no more.

“How were you wounded?” Dominic
demanded.

Though the Glendruid Wolf’s tone was
insistent, it carried no farther than the two men.

“With a dagger,” Simon said.

“Who was holding it?” retorted
Dominic.

“My wife.”

It was what Dominic had suspected, but hearing the
truth spoken was somehow shocking.

“She truly tried to kill you?” Dominic
asked.

Simon shrugged.

“God’s teeth,” Dominic muttered.
“No wonder you haven’t sought her bed again. It would
be enough to take the steel from even the stoutest
sword.”

“Would that it had that effect,” Simon
said beneath his breath.

“What?”

“Would that my wife’s dagger could take
the steel from my sword. But it can’t. I fear my temper if
she refuses me again.”

Dominic’s black eyebrows rose. Whether on the
battlefield or in the bedchamber, Simon’s self-control was
the envy of many a knight.

“That is why you sleep alone?” Dominic
asked.

“Aye. And now she is wearing that witchy
dress once more,” Simon said. “God’s teeth, but I
would love to get my hands beneath it.”

Dominic looked at his brother’s taut features
and picked his words very carefully before he spoke.

“Do you think she prefers another man?”
Dominic asked.

“Not if she wishes to live.”

The deadly coolness of Simon’s voice warned
Dominic that even a brother and a lord combined had better
tread warily around the subject of Ariane’s
desires. Dominic had not seen Simon so intense since he had pursued
Marie’s artfully swaying hips between battlefield campfires
that burned no less hotly than Simon himself.