Heat of the Knight

by Jackie Ivie

“I’m saying you rarely tell the truth, and this one’s even more full of holes than your usual.”

  He was grinning again. Lisle wet her lips with her tongue. “If I give you this bit of cotton and lace…am I going to get the truth?”

  “There’s usually more than one bit of truth to everything.”

  “What?”

  “I’m saying there are several layers to every bit of truth, and if you part with that nightgown, I’ll give you one of the layers. One of the lower ones.”

  “Truth is truth. Anyone who says different is a liar.”

  “As I’ve already claimed that title, you’ve na’ much else to your argument, madame. Hand over the nightgown.”

  He had his hand out again. Lisle unfolded her legs and put her toes against his side, and squirmed beneath the material he was requesting.

  “Explain this truth thing, Monteith.”

  “Will I get the nightgown if I do?”

  “That depends on what you say.”

  He licked his lips. “Start undressing. I’ll start talking. Stop if you feel it merits it. I’ll do the same.”

  Lisle brought her legs back underneath her and rose to her knees.

  “There are many reasons people do things. Many reasons they call the truth. Take this thing between us. I wed with you because it was like a blizzom hit me right square between the eyes. It was also because the MacHughs would na’ take my gold, and they needed it to keep them from starving. They had something I wanted. ’Tis something I would give anything for. You. They think it was for the gold. So do you. All of it is truth. All of it. Which one is the real truth?”

  Lisle lifted the nightgown over her head and handed it to him. He had his eyes on the cleavage her bone-enhanced chemise was holding in place. She couldn’t believe he’d taken the time to strap her into it when she was ill.

  “You put me in this chemise on purpose, Langston.”

  “There’s another truth thing. It truly was the first thing I grabbed, and it was something I would have looked for if I knew you had it. It was my pleasure to strap you into the thing. It still is. Damn you, woman.”

  “You are a very strange man, Langston Monteith.”

  “And you are a viciously desirable woman. What do you want for the drawers?”

  He shook after asking it and Lisle watched him do it. Her own body was doing antics that weren’t far behind, and every breath was pushing her further to the edge of her chemise cups. She watched him look there and close his eyes while another shudder ran him, and then open his eyes back on her.

  Lisle had never felt such a feeling. She went back on her haunches, stretched out with her legs, and toyed along the buried side of him with her toes. “Doona’ you think we should wait for eight?”

  “What the hell for?” he asked.

  “You probably ordered sup, and other things.”

  He looked away, sucked in several breaths, and let them out, and that was fascinating to watch. The man was more than handsome, and he knew it. He looked back to her.

  “Eight o’clock better hurry along then, or it will be damned, like the rest of this.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Give me the drawers to find out.”

  “I’d rather puzzle it out myself.”

  “I ordered a bath. I ordered food. Roast, duckling, salmon. Vegetables…I forget which. Damn you, Lisle Monteith!”

  He was shouting it across at her. She reached for the pantaloon tie. He was heaving great breaths as she lay back, using her arms to wriggle out of the drawers, and careful not to disturb the thigh-high stockings he’d put on her. And then she was pulling her legs back beneath her, keeping the chemise about her upper thighs, so there was only a gap of a finger-length or so between the two materials, and handing him the drawers.

  He plucked them from her and tossed them to the side, where they landed somewhere on the floor beyond the bed. Then he was moving, coming at her, and the covers were showing their traitorous side as they gave up any hint of clinging to him and hiding him. There wasn’t anything she could do about it, except lie back down and take the brunt of his weight with her hands on his chest, her elbows bent and her belly feeling every bit of every breath, while all that was male about him was searching, pushing, straining against where she was denying.

  Lisle’s arms flexed with the weight, and held him precariously as he bent his head and brushed a kiss down her nose, and from there onto her lips.

  “We have…to speak about…your negotiating skills, my lord.” Lisle turned her head to pant the words to the mountain of covers he’d shoved to the side of them.

  His answer was garbled, since he had her chin in his mouth and was sucking on it, and that had her bucking and heaving and doing everything but opening for him, while he slid along her…to her knees. Back. To her knees…. back.

  “Open for me, love,” he whispered when he got his lips to her neck and was doing things on her skin that were sending rushes of sensation to every part that she was denying him.

  “What…will I get…if I do?” she asked.

  A growl answered her and then he was peeling the cups of her chemise down to reach her, punish her, suckle her, and Lisle was spiraling into a world that didn’t resemble anything like the red and black calabash room they were in, for it had too much light.

  Her arms were shaking with holding him aloft, and then he wasn’t helping her with it at all, as one hand moved to lift her for his delectation, bringing her to a point of ecstasy, and then passing it. Lisle cried it aloud, and then he chuckled, cooling flesh that he’d just moistened and heated, and making her buck at him in earnest, to unlatch him.

  All that gained her was more of his mouth, and more of his weight, as he gave up helping her hold him aloft and reached down to hold all of her in position for him. Lisle watched him, and then he looked up, met her eyes, and the flash of something that hit her looked like it hit him at exactly the same time as he shuddered, eyes half-lidded and locked with hers.

  “I ordered the ships to anchor for this,” he said, although his voice trembled, and then he looked down at her and licked her.

  Lisle screamed again.

  “And for this.”

  He licked the other peak, and her cry was turning into a keening note of passion, pain, and joy. Then, he was lifting his upper body away from her, taking the heat and sensation and all that was glorious away from her; denying her. She was after him, straddling him as he lay back, opening for him, encasing him, and then she was swimming, filling her lungs with air in order to make it to the next space when breath would be allowed her. Oceans were cresting on a waveless sea, and she heard them, gloried in them.

  Langston had her waist and was manipulating her up…down. Up…down. Over and over, until she was crying again with it, ignoring the tears that streamed everywhere, blotting where the chemise bodice was still pushed down, sliding over her flesh, and dropping onto him, where she was wetting both of them.

  Breathing deepened, filling the cabin with the drumbeat of sound, the cadence of life, the thunder of passion and desire and hunger, and pure, unadulterated lust. Then Langston was crying with her, his voice blending with hers, in a groan of time-defying length and depth. Lisle clung to him, held onto him, as he arched against her, shuddered, and emptied himself into her.

  There was the flow of the ocean in her ears, although it sounded more like a friendly Scot’s burn than the torrent of sea that made her belly recoil in an agony of ache. Lisle slid down onto him, slowly, suspending herself in time as she did so, making it an ooze of movement rather than the freefall of disjointed flesh she felt like she was.

  Langston’s chest was heaving, he was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, and there were definite tracings of tears leading from both eyes down into the black hair behind his ears. He was watching the ceiling above them, and he wasn’t seeing any of it. She could tell. Lisle forced her neck to support her head to turn it from where it lay, so she could regard him.

 
; “Langston?” she whispered, reaching with a hand to follow a tear path from his eye.

  Her action made him twitch, and brought him back from wherever he’d been. It wasn’t an easy journey, if the confused look in his eyes was any indication. He licked his lips. Lisle shifted, lifting herself a bit higher so she could look fully at him.

  “Aye?” he asked, finally.

  “What are you willing to give me for the stockings?”

  Her answer was a whoosh of air that was probably meant to be a chuckle, but fell woefully short. She giggled for him, lay back down atop his chest, snuggled into him, and slept. Neither of them heard the knock he’d scheduled for eight.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Langston Leed Monteith wasn’t just a liar. He was a cheat, and evil, and a devil, and everything they’d ever called him, and Lisle didn’t need the eighteen ships that had joined them the very same evening he was loving her and telling her he’d stopped his ships just for her, to convince her of it. She toyed with asking him if he was planning on invading France now, since he appeared to have an armada of more than twenty ships. It was impressive, and it created quite a stir all the way up the French coast until they anchored just off the port of Calais.

  She assumed word would get back to England about the armada of caravels, all flying a dark green flag with a golden lion passant at the center, and anyone who didn’t have a clue who Clan Monteith was would certainly know now. She was treated to the sight of hundreds of troops atop hundreds of horses, all in green and gold, and all in kilts, and all waiting, to escort them to Paris.

  Lisle was given herself for company in the carriage, and that was all right with her. If Monteith had shown her his face, she’d have been scratching it. If he gave her sight of an ear, she’d have been screeching in it, and if he so much as gave her a glimpse of his back, she’d have been stabbing something into him and finishing the job started with his left shoulder. That’s how much he, and his lying tongue, meant to her!

  The tears started before they’d gone a league, and then she was very grateful she had the carriage all to herself. Betsy, Cassie, and Bess had their own carriage, and there were eleven more of them trailing behind, with the baggage and all the arms and food that men needed to make such a spectacle. She was grateful they didn’t stop until they reached Paris. Even if she had to bed down in her quiet carriage, and cry herself to sleep. That was better than looking across at Monteith and knowing she’d given her heart to a man who could lie to her in the throes of his own ecstasy, and not even worry over it.

  She hadn’t told him of the baby, either. He was just going to have to ferret that one out for himself. She wasn’t going to give him anything more to bind her to him than he already had. King Louis was expecting them. He’d given them a portion of the Louvre Palace in which to stay, but that was probably more due to having all these troops in his capital. Apparently he already knew that it was better to know where the devil was, than to have to guess at it.

  That much of what he’d told her, Langston hadn’t lied about. It took them four days to reach Paris, in which time Langston hadn’t done a thing toward purchasing her a larger wardrobe that she could see. The most he’d done was send off a contingency of men with orders to purchase goods that he was going to transport home, and even that she questioned. They were probably doing something else. Sneaking about, creating customers for his commodities, with calabash pipes full of opiate, or whatever they smoked in them. She didn’t trust anything Monteith said. She never would again, either.

  She was given a parchment with her own marching orders, and they weren’t open for discussion. The Monteith had apparently finished with one of his false truths, which was the excuse that he was here to honeymoon with her, although he’d been shopping all right. He’d been to a jeweler. He’d had a dress made and sent to her. He had Betsy, Cassie, and Bess there to assist, although they mostly stood about with their mouths open at the lavish rooms the Louvre Palace boasted. Monteith wanted her to report at seven, sharp, dressed head to toe in dark Monteith green, and wearing as much gold as a woman could possibly wear and not be bowed down with the weight of it.

  It was positively Medieval looking, and Lisle looked at her reflection with distaste. It was effective, though. She moved sideways and then back, and felt the large, voluminous velvet of her skirt sway with it. There was golden embroidery, sewn with real gold in the threads, all through her green skirt, making vines that trailed from the bodice to the bottom, and then turned into leaves of almost solid gold all about the hem and the train that swept the floor behind her.

  There was a golden girdle about her hips, and it was so heavy it had taken both Cassie and Bess to hold it in place while Betsy hooked it into the dress at the back, where at least the material had to assist with holding it up. The sleeves had been sewn with golden leaves at the tops, and it was probably more for strength than visual impact, although it had that. About the only thing that wasn’t gold was the crisp white puff of lace above a bodice that peeked out from the neckline, which was intentionally cut low, barely covering what it needed to cover. That way the emeralds he’d sent hadn’t a chance of being overlooked, either.

  They had even threaded gold-ribbed ribbons all through her hair, which was loose and rippled to her waist, disguising the layers of strapping that went from her shoulders to her belt and back up, to also assist with the weight of her belt. It was ridiculous. It was incredibly heavy. It was extremely impressive.

  As was Langston Monteith, when he arrived for her, in his Highland Chieftain ensemble, with the retinue of Monteith men at his heels; all moving with such a perfection of stride that it sounded like one set of footsteps rather than twenty-some-odd.

  Lisle eyed him as he came toward her. Then he went to his knee, lifted her hand to his lips, and moved his eyes to hers.

  It was for show, it had to be, and Betsy, Cassie, and Bess gave him what he expected with their sighs behind her. Lisle ignored them and looked down at him with as cold an expression as she could manage. He rose to stand beside her, tucked her hand in his, and acted like she really was a loved wife that spent every night with him rather than one that had been sentenced and kept in solitary confinement for almost a week now.

  “You look exactly as I imagined you would, Lisle.” He whispered it as they started their procession, passing hall after hall filled with the nobility of King Louis’s court, and looking at bowed head after bowed head as they went.

  “We’re being treated as royalty,” Lisle whispered back.

  “Of course. We are. Or close to it.”

  “Langston?”

  “Quiet, love. We’re going to be introduced.”

  “I’ve met King Louis. I was na’ impressed. He wears more powder than half the ladies in court must own. All at once. On his face. ’Tis unmanly, and ugly. Makes me wonder what pocks he hides.”

  “Na’ him. Our prince. Charles. Charles Stuart. My patron. My liege. My only true liege.”

  “Our—?” Her voice was failing her, as were her knees, and Langston must have known or guessed, because he had an arm snaked about her, and it was holding her up by her golden belt, and forcing her to remain standing at his side, whether her legs helped with it or not.

  “Hold steady, Lisle love. You’ll see very soon what this has all been about. What it’s always been about. I need you now. I need to put you on your own stallion, and I need to show all the people of France what kind of backing Prince Charlie has now…has always had.”

  “Prince…Charles?” she whispered, her eyes still wide.

  “Aye.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “Of course. ’Tis my gold that supports him.”

  Her legs did lose her with that one, and she stumbled, but Langston had that hand looped into the back of her belt and had her against him, so it barely showed.

  The steps outside were teeming with horses, Highland men all wearing the Monteith colors, and people, everywhere she looked there were people
, some clapping, some talking, all looking. It didn’t appear that a stray dog could get through, and he expected to get an entire column of men through them?

  “Langston?” Lisle’s hand shook on his arm, and that wasn’t a far cry from how her voice was acting.

  “You’ll be fine, Lisle. You’ll ride at my side. See? Torment and Blizzom. I felt it appropriate.”

  “You brought over your own horses?”

  “Of course. There are very few Arabian stallions in France. King Louis has na’ given an order for mine, as of yet. This should convince him otherwise, I think.”

  “You doona’ let an opportunity pass you, do you?”

  He grinned. “Very good. Come. I’ll mount you.”

  Lisle caught her breath and scanned him from beneath her lashes. Then, she smiled. Softly. Sweetly. “I believe I shall allow you to do so,” she replied.

  “Lisle, I have a prince to sway, negotiations to make, and I need to be sharp, focused. I canna’ have you turning my lust on me. Not now.”

  “I am na’,” she replied.

  “Why do you ken I stayed away from you?”

  “You knew I was planning on flaying you alive?” she replied.

  He grinned wider. “I have to be focused. Sharp. I had to set this up. I had to put my gold in the right palms. I had to do a thousand things that the sight, smell, and touch of you and your body just seem to interfere with. Will you cease that?”

  “What?” she asked innocently, although she had been running her hand along his arm, in a suggestive manner.

  “I’ll pay that back later. When I have the prince safely aboard.”

  “Oh dear God. You’re planning on ransoming Cumberland. You’re going to use him to make them accept Prince Charles and Scotland.”

  “Smart. I’ll say it again. You’re quick.”

  “’Tis too dangerous. Nae. Doona’ do this, Langston. Nae. You canna’ do it. I beg it of you.”

  His smile died. His eyes went black. “Doona’ ask for what you canna’ get. Such a thing is na’ open for negotiation.”