“Odd. I’m an old Norman and I’ve never heard of it.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“The thought appeals.”
“Simon,” Ariane said a trifle desperately.
“A whole goblet?” he asked.
“Aye.”
“One wish per cup?”
“Aye,” she said.
“What if I have two wishes?”
“Then you must drink two goblets. Quickly.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I have only one wish.”
Simon saw the sudden return of darkness to Ariane’s eyes and wondered what her thoughts were.
“What wish is that, nightingale?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Ever?”
For a moment Ariane didn’t answer. Then she lowered long black lashes over her eyes, concealing the darkness within.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
“But someday?”
“Someday you will know.”
The fire crackled in the silence, sending up sparks that died almost before they lived. Broodingly, Simon looked from the fire to his enigmatic wife.
You are like those sparks, nightingale. Flashes of brilliant heat against a consuming darkness.
What was it Amber said about you? You had endured a betrayal so deep it all but killed your soul.
Yet I can call fiery sparks from your darkness.
“Make your wish,” Simon said huskily.
Ariane looked at the goblet that he was holding out to her and shook her head.
“You go first,” she said.
“Another ‘old’ tradition?”
Ignoring the teasing in Simon’s voice, she nodded urgently.
Without looking away from Ariane, Simon lifted the goblet.
“May I burn like the phoenix within your amethyst fire,” he said. “And like the phoenix, may I arise to burn again.”
Simon drank to the last drop, turned the goblet upside down to show that it was empty, and poured more wine from the ewer.
“Your turn,” he said.
Ariane eyed the goblet with faint alarm. Though Simon had filled it barely half-full, it still was a daunting amount of wine to her.
“I cannot drink so quickly as you,” she said.
He smiled. “’Tis just as well, nightingale. You would be too addled to crawl, much less to fly.”
Taking a deep breath, Ariane raised the goblet to her lips.
“Your wish,” Simon said.
“’Tis for you.”
Surprised, Simon couldn’t think of anything to say.
“May nothing of what passes here tonight cause you difficulty,” Ariane said in a rush.
Before Simon could ask what Ariane meant by that toast, she lifted the goblet to her lips and drank as quickly as she could without choking. Wine spread over her tongue and through her body in a dizzying wave of warmth.
“Here,” she said breathlessly, pressing the goblet into his hands. “Your second wish.”
“There’s no hurry.”
Ariane looked so disappointed that Simon shrugged, filled the goblet, and toasted her again.
“May I some day understand the darkness in which my nightingale flies,” he said distinctly.
With an anxiousness Ariane couldn’t conceal, she watched Simon drink. When he finished the last drop, she let out a sigh.
Surely that will be enough to slow him. He drank toasts downstairs while I but pretended to drink mine. He has had two full goblets while I have had but half of one.
Surely…
“Don’t look so nervous,” Simon said dryly, lowering the goblet. “I won’t fall senseless after this small bit of drink.”
He poured more wine in the goblet and turned to Ariane.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I had only the one wish.”
“For me, not for you.”
“’Tis enough. If that wish comes true, none other matters.”
The intensity of Ariane’s voice and eyes told Simon that she meant exactly what she said. Whatever her game, it was deadly serious.
Frowning, he looked into the burgundy depths of the wine. The liquid swirled slightly, capturing streamers of light from the hearth.
“Then we will have to do it a few drops at a time,” Simon said. “Slower that way,” his smile flashed, “but never tedious.”
“I don’t understand.”
Saying nothing, Simon drank a small bit of wine. Deliberately, he left a gleaming trail of liquid on his lips.
“Sip from me,” he said simply.
Surprise showed on Ariane’s face, but she lifted her fingertips to Simon’s mouth, preparing to blot up the wine.
He turned his head aside.
“Nay, nightingale. With your lips.”
Ariane’s eyes widened, revealing magnificent amethyst depths framed in thick black lashes. She had kissed Geoffrey only a few times, and never on the mouth. Even in nightmare, she had avoided that.
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, h
er 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 mattr
ess.
“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.
9
Dominic 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.”
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