He made a wordless sound, moving away, downward, shaping her with his hands. She wanted him back for more; she dragged at him, lacing her fingers in his hair, but he was leaving her, pulling away in spite of it, dropping kisses down her belly.
Just as she would have exclaimed in despair of his withdrawal, he pressed his mouth to her quaint. He held her hips and touched her with his tongue.
The delicious bolt of feeling transfused her. She trembled beneath him, drinking air, moaning between her teeth, her body twitching as if seized by each lascivious stroke. She tilted her head back, lifting her breasts and her spine and her hips, pressing up to him to take the waves of lust, asking, begging—demanding with her flesh.
He rose above her. For the moment that they were separate, she whimpered in anxiety: she wanted him to go on kissing her that way, but he sat back and pulled off the doublet and shirt, baring shoulders muscled as fine and thick as the destrier's. He reached down to his hose and breeches that showed his full tarse through linen, crammed heavily against the cloth.
She felt distraught. He would use her now, and it was over, and she was near weeping for the feeling he had given her that still demanded more.
He released the lacing on his breeches. She lifted up her arms to embrace him as he came over her. She did not flinch, though he was so much larger than Ligurio; she lay herself open for him despite her thwarted yearning.
He rested on his hands, looking down into her face. "Lady," he said, with a quick grin, "in thy studies, that last that I taught thee—falls it within the thirteenth sin, indecent manner of embrace."
She made a faint wild laugh, a mindless answer, for he was lowering himself on her, this time using his body as he had used his hands and his tongue to urge that impossible pleasure. In surprise she felt it coming again as his hard member pressed at her, parting her a little with each push, until the head was inside her.
His arms trembled. He stared down at her, a blank distance in his look, a blindness. He drew air in his chest, his grin going to a baring of his teeth as he drove himself into her.
Though his size was a sore burn, she took him deep. No coupling she had ever known to be like this. His unchaste kiss, his unchaste touch, his breath a harsh sob at her ear; his weight on her and his penetration to the very depth of her. Over and over she rolled and shoved herself wantonly against him—and culmination came upon her like an ambush.
"God save!" she cried. Her back arched. Her body shuddered, beyond command. She died as he did, in full ecstasy, lost and cleaving to him in the flood.
* * *
She slept against Ruck's chest, on the floor, turned to nestle with one leg drawn up and her hips curving, her hand resting possessively on his waist. Propped on his elbow, he watched the firelight play orange and rose over her skin.
For as long as he remembered, ever when he discharged his seed, even from the first of his marriage to Isabelle, he had come into his wits again with his spirit borne down by melancholy. A nameless sorrow possessed him, a presage and knowledge of loss.
He knew to expect it, but the expectation brought no remedy, only an acceptance of something that God saw fit to impose on him. In his years alone, when he had given in to his lusts in secret, the grief had sometimes hardly left him from one trespass to the next, only abated by his vision of his perfect lady and confession. Its durance was sometimes days and sometimes only as long it took him to fall asleep, but ever the deep trist was there in the afterward, as it was with him now.
Softly he moved his hand over her, a gentle stroke. With each breath he could feel the tips of her breasts touch him. He could lower his lashes and look at them, marvel among many marvels. Without her gowns and jewels, she had a womanly shape, all roundness and long lines, not so coldly slender as her close-cut fashionable robes made her appear, but sweetly pillowed and cushioned, full ripe in life.
In his despair her comeliness made him think of how he would lose her. It must be impossible; he could not imagine any future in which he would have this moment again.
His finger trailed down into the shadow between them. He followed an odd flaw in the satin of her skin, an irregular line from her merkin curls up to her belly. He drew his fingertip downward, tracing another beside it, and another. They were strangely feminine, faint and light, soft at the edges like no scars he had ever seen in a wide experience of battle wounds. He wondered at how she might have come by such ghostly marks, but the very idea of questioning the Princess Melanthe on such a topic as her flaws made him smile inside himself.
She would freeze him in his place. She would not understand him, that he only wished to know more of her, nor believe that because she was not perfect beneath her furs and silks and jewels, he loved her the more. Arrogance and unexpected blemish, and such courage to ride with him alone. Shameless and coy by turns, her marvelous blue-lilac eyes sulky with fear that he was repelled by her appearance.
As he traced the marks, she caught his hand, folding up her leg up with a quick move, as if to hide herself. Her eyes sprang open. "What art thou about?" she asked sharply.
He locked his fingers into hers and leaned over, caressing her brow with light kisses. "Inspecting thy great age and ugliness, wench."
She brought his hand up, making him rest it on his own thigh, trapping it firmly there over the black hose he still wore. "I've lost count of these times thou hast called me wench. Thou moste be flayed alive to atone for them all. It is a great tragedy."
"Bassinger will make a woeful lay of lamentation, to remember me."
She stared at the base of his throat, unsmiling. He regretted speaking of Bassinger, bringing the world into their seclusion. To distract her, he loosed his hand from her hold. He cupped her breast, caressing his thumb over the dark rosy crown.
She drew in a swift breath. The shade of a frown hovered between her brows. She slanted a look up at him.
"Thou hast lied to me, monk man. Thou art no abstinent from women."
He shook his head. "I have told you troth, my lady, fore God."
"Nay." She rolled onto her back, gripping his wrist. "What of this manner of—kissing and touching? Depardeu, where hast thou discovered such things?"
He lifted his eyebrows. "This?" He made a slow circle with his thumb. "Lady, I have been married. A husband will touch his wife so."
She gave him a look as offended as any scandalized abbess. "Mine did not!"
Ruck tilted his head, resting his cheek on his fist. "Did he nought? Ne cannought I say why, my lady, but that pleases me for to hearen."
"And—did I not mean only—this—but thy...unnatural kisses. I think me only lewd gallants and carpet knights know of such perversions!"
He ceased his caress and lowered his eyes. She seemed truly agitated by the transgression. To be sermoned by the Princess Melanthe, of all people, made him think he must verily have been immoral to the worst degree of vice.
"Forgive me, my lady." He set his mouth. "I thought—such a one as you, wise in luf-amour—I thought me you would knowen these things, and like them. Ne will I nought offend you so again, I swear it."
She curled both her hands about his. "Nay, nay, thou mistakes me. I did—I took pleasure, wee loo, how could I say thee I did not? But—" She turned her face to him. "Where indeed hast thou learned them, if not from dissolute women and harlots?"
"Ne haf I recourse to harlots." He withdrew his hand, staring down at the silken carpet between them. "I wit it from confession."
"Confession!"
"Yea, lady."
She sat up. "Priests I know who are full of impurity, but I did not think they taught it in the church."
"They ask—" He plucked at the nap of the carpet and looked up at her sideways. "Do they nought ask questions of you, my lady?"
"Iwysse. Have I been idle, or proud, and suchlike?"
"No more than that?"
She hugged her knees. "Envious? Angry? Grasping? Gluttonous?" she recited, and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "Had I one wou
ld clatter and carp that I adorned myself too fine, until I wearied of it, and had him disappointed and another in his place."
"Oh," he muttered. He picked at the motley silk.
"They inquire of thee else?"
He scowled. "Yea. Of my lust." He spread his fingers, rubbing them back and forth over the nap. "They ask, haf I nought engaged in lecherous touches and embraces—and when I say I haf nought, asks the confessor in another way, haf I nought touched a woman on her breasts, or her body. And neither does he trust me no more than you, my lady, when I say him nay, and asks again, as if I had said yea, then did I nought touch her womb-gate and her merkin? And did I nought kiss her there and on her teats, for to make her lewd? And did I nought mount her unnaturally, as the beasts couple, or let her mount onto me? And did I nought do it on a holy day?" He made a snort of misery. "And then do I think of little else, I say you my lady, when I go out, but what I might do if I had me a wife and might usen her."
"Avoi," she said softly, but he could hear mirth in her voice.
His jaw hardened. "So, if ye believe me—ne did I nought learn vice from harlots."
"Haps thou couldst teach them!" she suggested.
He lay back with a deep sigh, stuffing a cushion under his neck and clasping his hands behind his head. She regarded him, and then reached up and touched his bent knee.
"It is because they take measure of thy form and vigor, and cannot conceive that a man like thee would be continent. So did that priest reckon me for excess in adornment."
He had not been perfectly continent, but he was not going to tell her more of the grinding inquisitions he received on the matter, not when the worst crime she was required to acknowledge appeared to be excess adornment.
"Is true, then," she asked, "that those things be not sin in marriage?"
"Some say yea, and some nay." He remained staring between his knees.
"Thou hast studied much on this matter?"
He nodded.
She rocked back on her hips and laughed. "Forsooth, we shall send thee to confession full oft, monk man, for thy further instruction!"
He let his gaze wander up to the window, to the chimney— to her, as she sat curled with the warm firelight on the curve of her back. He smiled slowly. "As God and my liege lady command me."
EIGHTEEN
The first thing Melanthe knew was the roar of a voice and the chime of rings sliding as the bedcurtains swept open and gray light poured over her. "Baseborn whore!"
A monstrous black outline flashed, and something came hurtling at her. Through the blankets a blow smashed into her neck and shoulder.
The black flashed again. She heard a shout, the thing came at her, and suddenly another weight bore down atop her, between her and the assault. A sound like an ax on wood cracked through her head. The weight on her jerked, and jerked again under another hit. Through a daze she realized that it was Ruck above her, his body pressing her down as someone beat him, raining blows on his naked back.
"She is dead!" the voice bellowed. "Get off the strumpet, ye idle whoreson! I haf slayed her!"
With each blow Ruck's body jarred, and his breath made a low sharp grind. But he held, shielding her, his arm locked over her face while the shocks hit him and the bed, wild strikes sometimes high on his shoulders and sometimes low, sending quakes of violence through to her legs.
"High morn is it!" their attacker howled. "Rise, boy, or look ye to losen your hide! Thy commoner is killed; base whore thou took to wive, and I'll slay her bastards to clean the nest! She was unworthy of you! Adaw, the swords await." His weapon cracked down again. "Up! Will ye jape a bloody corpse? Get up!"
The hits had lost a little of their energy. Ruck lifted himself. He raised his arm; she saw a grizzled man beside the bed—the descending wooden sword whacked into the palm of Ruck's hand. He held the weapon off and jerked it from their assailant's double grip.
Ruck rolled away from her. He cast back the bedcurtains and rose, hurling the wooden sword. It struck the open door and woke a thunder of echoes in the spiraled stair beyond.
"Cease off!" Stride-legged and naked, his back reddened by beating, Ruck glared at the savage old man. "Keep ye, that ye trespass no further!"
The man didn't even glance at Ruck. "Stinking bitch-clout, does thou breathe still?" He came for Melanthe, gray and powerful, his beard an untamed mat. "Hey and ware, I'll soon strangle thee!"
Ruck sprang to prevent him, ramming him back, holding him with an arm across his chest. "Nay, sir, 'tis folly! Heed to me!"
"Heed ye!" The man fought, big and strong enough in spite of his years to force Ruck to arm's length, but none of his struggle could break him free. "Heed ye, ye pillock, whilst ye degrade your mother, God assoil her! Whilst corrupt your father's line with common blood!" He spat toward Melanthe.
"Enow! Cease off this blundering!" Ruck caught him by the shoulders. With a grunt of effort he forced the old man to his knees. "Abase you!"
The man made wild efforts to rise, but Ruck held him down. "I have no children," Ruck said fiercely. "Ye knows this. I haf said you many times. Now listen to me. Isabelle is dead years agone. My lady's grace is the Princess Melanthe, of Monteverde and Bowland. And my wife. I would you wist it clearly, and repeat my words, that I trow I may release you."
The old man ceased his combat. Melanthe clutched the sheet and her hand over her bruised shoulder. He turned pale, lifting his face to her. "Bowland?" he said, his voice suddenly atremble. "Lo, the daughter of Sir Richard?"
Ruck let him go. The old man's body shook. As he bowed down his head to his knees and began to weep, Ruck looked quickly toward Melanthe. "My lady—are ye hurt?"
Her arm throbbed, but the quilts had muffled the impact of the sword. She was more stunned than in pain. Wordlessly she shook her head. He turned, kneeling to embrace their groaning attacker, holding him tight, as if he were a child.
"Who is this?" Melanthe exclaimed.
"Sir Harold." He did not say more, but gently urged the other man up. "Come, ye mote depart anon, sir."
Sir Harold pulled himself away. "Sir Richard? You have wed Sir Richard, boy?"
Ruck touched his shoulder and indicated Melanthe. "His daughter," he murmured. "The countess."
The grizzled knight twisted and pulled at his hair, possessed with frantic mumbling. He seemed to lose his strength, falling with his forehead to the floor, begging mercy, muttering in confusion of her father and Bowland and killing. Melanthe watched Ruck try to coax him away with no success.
"Come forward, Sir Harold," she said curtly. "Now speak plain words as a good trusty knight, or take thyself off."
The sharp command seemed to reach his scattered wits. He stopped his moving and mumbling, and crept to the bedside, his scarred hands knotted together. He raised his face to her. "My noble lady's grace," he said, "I haf a demon!"
"Yea, that is clear to me, Sir Harold."
"My lady," he said hopelessly, "me thinks I mote slay myseluen, to kill it."
"Nay, thou wilt not. Nill I nor Lord Ruadrik give thee leave. 'Tis against God, Sir Harold. And would deprive my lord of his rights to aid and counsel of thee," She softened her voice. "When the demon tries to seize thee, thou moste remember to ask God for counsel and solace, for He comes to the aid of those who wish to do good and act faithfully."
The old man gazed at her, dawning adoration in his face. "Blessed be you, my lady. Oh, my lady, ye be the wisest and worthiest of the world's kind."
"This is not my wisdom, but my honored father's, God give his soul peace. I only mind thee of thy duty."
Sir Harold still wept, but he gave a little sigh. "Gentle lady, truly the Lord God blessed this house on the day your lady's grace wed my lord. It was the unworthy bitch-mare I designed to slay, to keepen clean my lord's noble blood."
"God has saved thee from that mortal sin," Melanthe said. "Take thy near escape to heart."
He bowed his head. "My lady."
"Lord Ruadrik will adjudge thy punishment fo
r striking me, but if it be heavier than a day in the tumbrel, then I will try to intercede for thee."
"Gr'mercy, my lady," he said humbly. "I beg my lady's favor."
"Thou hast my favor. Leave me now." She held out her hand from beneath the sheet to be kissed. He reached for her so quickly that for a moment she regretted the move, but he took her fingers gently, only the rough pads of his palms touching her as he made a courteous gesture of bending over her hand.
"God preserve your lady's grace." He rose, falling back from the bedside with his shoulders squared and his head lifted. Ruck had stood all the time beside him, as if ready to drag him out at any moment. Sir Harold gave him a deep bow, pronounced himself at his lord's mercy whenever he should be pleased to devise a just punishment, and strode from the room.
Immediately Ruck closed the door and barred it. Without speaking, he took up his shirt, pulling it over his head, covering the fiery marks on his skin. For the first time Melanthe became aware of rain that pelted against the window glazing and the cold dimness of the room.
"Depardeu!" She sank back into the pillows. "What next in this place?"
"Ye ne are nought hurt, my lady?"
His cool tone warned her away from japing. Her shoulder throbbed painfully, but she held the silken quilt up close, watching him. "I live."
"He is formaddened, my lady," Ruck said. "Ne can he help himseluen when the fits are on him."
"Who is he?"
"My master in arms. In his prime he tooken a blow to his head that lay bare the brain, and since then has he no command of his rage. But he is a great knight, my lady, and taught me the best that I know of fighting."
"The secret of thy prowess. Thou dost fight like a madman because a madman instructed thee."
He shrugged. "Peraventure, it may be." He bent over a chest and took breeches from it, dressing himself without service. "Sir Harold esteems him gentle blood and bobbaunce above all things. Isabelle he despised, though ne'er did I bring her here. Only to hear her name arages him. He would haf had me taken a princess to wife."
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