Simon’s smile was a simple baring of teeth.
“I meant no offense,” Geoffrey said carelessly. “If my clumsy congratulations on your wife’s sensual nature irritate you, I can only hope to be more precise with my praise in the future.”
Sven shot a quick look at Simon, seeking a sign as to how to handle the knight whose compliments were worse than any insults Sven had ever heard delivered to Simon’s face.
A moment later Simon’s fingers brushed casually against Sven’s sword hand in an old signal for caution.
“Good evening, Ariane,” Simon said, looking past Geoffrey. “Did you enjoy the herb gardens?”
“Ah, my little cabbage,” Geoffrey said, turning quickly. “If you only knew how I have longed to be within your warmth again. You have bewitched my very soul. I wither out of your sight.”
“Would that it were true,” Ariane said. “I would lock myself in my room until you died.”
With that, she went quickly to stand with Simon and Sven.
“I would be wounded, if I didn’t know your heart of hearts,” Geoffrey said, smiling at Ariane. “A married girl is a cautious girl, especially in the presence of her husband, yes?”
“I decided to play my harp along the river,” Ariane said to Simon, ignoring Geoffrey.
“Ah, that explains it,” Geoffrey said.
As he spoke, he gestured toward the bits of leaves and brambles clinging to Ariane’s mantle.
“Careless of you,” Geoffrey murmured. “A jealous husband would think you had lain back upon your mantle and spread your legs for a lover.”
Ariane went white and gave Simon a horrified glance. What she saw made ice condense in her blood.
She had never seen Simon so furious.
Nor so cold.
“Simon is a man of reason, not emotion,” Ariane said thinly.
“’Tis good that you know him so well,” Geoffrey said in an earnest voice. “Some would think it cowardice rather than reason that guides your husband.”
Sven said something in the harsh northern language of his mother.
“This fine knight,” Simon said to Ariane, “believes himself well beloved by your father. Is it true?”
“Aye,” Ariane said, making no attempt to conceal the bitterness in her voice.
“How well beloved?”
“As much as my father can love anything.”
“Pity,” Simon said. “I would rather feed this one to the pigs than feed pig to him at table tonight.”
“Is that an insult?” Geoffrey demanded.
“Why would a man of reason insult a knight such as yourself?” Simon asked.
“Because you suspect that your wife is in love with me. Because you—”
“Nay!” Ariane said harshly.
“—suspect that I am the man who took your wife’s maidenhead in passionate battle. Because you suspect—”
Ariane made a sound that was both Geoffrey’s name and a savage curse.
“—she is cold with you,” Geoffrey continued, talking over all interruptions, “for she cannot endure another man after having known me!”
There was a stunned silence in the bailey.
All that prevented Ariane from clawing Geoffrey’s smiling face was her husband’s hand beneath her mantle, locked about both her wrists. Though she struggled subtly, she had no hope of winning free to do the damage she wished.
Nor could she undo the damage that had been done.
“If you were indeed my wife’s first taste of love,” Simon said evenly, “’tis a miracle that she didn’t swear off men entirely and take up the veil.”
Before Geoffrey could speak, Simon turned to Sven.
“Show our guest to the stable,” Simon said. “He can bed down with his stallion.”
“Aye,” Sven said. “This way.”
When Geoffrey began to object about the inhospitable quarters, Sven cut across his words.
“Be quick about it,” Sven said curtly. “We have so many knights that the clean hay is soon taken.”
Geoffrey hesitated, shrugged, and set off after Sven.
Ariane let out a long, ragged sigh. She looked up at Simon, wanting to explain how Geoffrey had twisted the truth to make it appear that she had compromised her honor today—and Simon’s.
The words Ariane would have spoken fled as she confronted the clear black savagery of her husband’s eyes.
“Listen to me,” Simon said. “Listen to me very well. Whatever happened before you wed me cannot be changed. But if you have cuckolded me—”
“It wasn’t as Geoffrey made it appear!”
“—leave now, before I find out. Run fast and run far or I shall catch you. Then we will spend eternity in hell together. Do you understand me, wife?”
Ariane wanted to speak, but the only word she could force past the constriction in her throat was Simon’s name.
“I see that you understand,” he said.
Abruptly Simon released his hold on Ariane’s wrists. She drew in her breath swiftly, for beneath his cold fury she sensed that there was something more. Something worse. Something she, too, had known—the savage, consuming acid of betrayal.
“Simon,” Ariane said, reaching out.
“Do up your laces,” Simon interrupted curtly, stepping away from her touch, “lest you give the gossips of this keep even more to drool and snigger over than you already have.”
Ariane looked down. Through the opening in her mantle peeked the trailing ends of silver laces. A flush consumed her pale skin when she realized that her dress was partly undone.
“It isn’t what you think!” Ariane said passionately.
“What I think is that you are very fortunate the Glendruid Wolf values peace above war, and that I value my brother above all else.”
“My wound pained me,” Ariane said. “I undid my dress to see if I had somehow hurt it anew!”
“Did your head pain you, too?” Simon asked silkily.
“My head?” Ariane asked, baffled.
“Aye,” Simon said, turning, walking away with cool finality. “Your hair is even more undone than your dress.”
25
Ariane got up from the supper table and went to her bedchamber with a few muttered words about being tired. The truth was that she hadn’t been able to bear listening any longer to Geoffrey’s insinuations strip away Simon’s pride and her honor in front of the assembled knights of the keep.
Rather grimly Ariane wondered if Simon still thought that marriage was no worse than the sultan’s hell Dominic had once endured.
The food grew cold on the supper tray Blanche had brought to Ariane’s room, as Ariane simply sat and stared at nothing at all. Footsteps came and went in the hallway leading to the bath, but she took no notice.
Even the harp was no consolation. Ariane was finding that it was harder to abide Simon’s pain and humiliation than it had been to endure her own. She hadn’t caused her agony. But she was causing Simon’s.
A knocking on the closed door dragged Ariane’s attention from her own bleak thoughts.
“Yes?” she said.
“’Tis Blanche.”
“Enter,” Ariane said without enthusiasm.
The door opened. A quick look around the room told Blanche that nothing had changed since she left.
“Are you not finished eating yet, m’lady?” Blanche asked a bit impatiently.
“I have no appetite.”
“What of your bath, then?”
“My bath?”
“Aye, m’lady,” Blanche said, irritated. “I have prepared a bath as you requested and laid out a warm chemise for sleeping and everyone else in the keep is already abed.”
Blankly Ariane looked from her untouched supper to her handmaiden’s face.
“Did I ask that you prepare a bath?” Ariane said, frowning.
“Aye, m’lady. Straight after you ate, you said. You said you couldn’t bear something-or-other having touched your skin and you must wash no matter how lat
e the hour.”
“Oh.”
Blanche waited, but Ariane said nothing more.
“M’lady?”
“Would you like to seek your own bed?” Ariane asked.
“Aye, most certainly. If you please.”
“You are free.”
“Thank you, lady!”
Cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling with anticipation, Blanche rushed out of the room, barely remembering to close the door after herself.
Ariane wondered if Blanche’s new man—whoever he was—knew that his lover was already gone with another man’s child. Perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps it was enough to share Blanche’s breathless laughter in the darkness, to reach out and stroke warm flesh and be stroked in return, to hold another body close and hear ecstasy in each broken cry.
Abruptly Ariane stood, stripped off all her clothes, and pulled the pins out of her hair. As she shook her head, hair like fine black silk cascaded down her back to lie in heavy, smoothly shining waves to her hips. She gathered it up and began braiding it for the bath, but lost interest after a few twists. The moment she let go of the hair, it began unraveling.
She reached for her nightdress, only to find that her hands went to the silver laces of the Learned dress as though summoned. She was reluctant to leave the dress behind, even to bathe. She didn’t know why, she simply knew that it was so.
As though expecting the answer to be found in the fabric itself, Ariane looked at the dress.
And then she looked into it.
A woman of intense feeling, head thrown back, hair wild, lips open upon a cry of unbelievable pleasure.
The enchanted.
A warrior both disciplined and passionate, his whole being focused in the moment.
The enchanter.
Now he was bending down to her, drinking her cries even as he drew more sounds from her. His powerful body was poised over hers, waiting, shivering with a sensual hunger that was as great as his restraint.
Simon!
Ariane saw him as clearly as she saw herself in the woman’s wild amethyst eyes.
“Dear God,” she whispered, dazed.
Ariane shook herself and looked around the room, half expecting to find Simon there. What she saw was a fire burned near to ash, a bed turned down for her use, and spare blankets piled across the foot of the mattress.
Blankets that would become Simon’s bed when he came to the room.
If he came.
Ariane pulled the amethyst dress back on and laced it partway up as she paced the room. With each step the deep silence of the keep came back to her ears. Then the sentry called the time.
Simon should have come to the bedchamber by now. He had always come before now. Well before now, because Simon rose with the kitchen workers at the first crack of dawn to walk the battlements and check upon the well-being of the fields and people of the keep. Dominic walked with him, though he never required Simon’s presence at such an early hour.
Marie.
Simon is with her.
The thought was like a dagger going into Ariane. Without stopping to think she lit a candle and left her room so quickly that the flame guttered. With an impatient exclamation, Ariane stopped long enough for the flame to recover.
Shielding the fragile flame with her hand, Ariane hurried to the opposite side of the keep, where Marie and Blanche shared quarters. There was no true door for the maidservants, simply a cloth screen that could be moved aside during the day.
“’Tis Lady Ariane,” she said.
“My lady,” Marie said. “Please enter.”
Ariane slid between screen and doorway before Marie was finished speaking. Amethyst eyes searched the room quickly, then more slowly.
“You’re alone.”
Ariane wasn’t surprised to find Blanche gone. But she was surprised to find Marie alone. The dark-eyed woman had a lap full of sewing and a curious expression on her face.
“Aye. I am alone,” Marie agreed. “Is there something you require, lady?”
“Simon.”
“Then you will have to look elsewhere. Simon hasn’t come to my bed since…”
Without finishing the sentence, Marie shrugged and began plying her needle once more with astonishing speed.
“Since when?” Ariane asked.
“Since my husband saw Simon sneaking from my tent, thought he was Dominic, and betrayed Dominic’s band of knights into a sultan’s ambush.”
“God’s blood,” breathed Ariane.
“More like the knights’ blood,” Marie said.
Her small teeth flashed in the candlelight as she nipped off a thread that had knotted.
“Most of the knights were captured by the sultan’s men,” Marie continued, threading a new needle.
“Was Simon?”
“Aye. But none of the captured knights was the right one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The knight whom the sultan dearly wanted and whom Robert had betrayed wasn’t among the captured knights,” Marie explained.
“Dominic le Sabre?” Ariane guessed.
“Aye.”
“Why did the sultan particularly want Dominic?”
“The sultan had a taste for torture. Dominic had the name of a very strong, very brave knight who bowed to no man. The sultan vowed to destroy him.”
“What happened?”
“Dominic traded himself for the freedom of his knights. One of those knights was Simon.”
“The knights were released?”
“Aye.”
“And then Dominic was somehow freed?” Ariane asked.
“Aye. After a time.”
“Then why…?”
“Why does Simon hate me?” Marie asked.
Ariane nodded.
“Simon was near my husband when Robert was mortally wounded during the ambush,” Marie said calmly. “Before Robert died, he confessed to Simon what he had done to Dominic. And why.”
“But Simon knew that Dominic was innocent of any sin.”
“Aye,” Marie said. “It was Simon rather than his brother who lay with me after my marriage to Robert. Since he heard Robert’s dying confession, Simon hasn’t touched me. He blames himself for what happened to Dominic.”
“I thought you said Dominic was freed.”
“He was. But only after he was tortured such as few men have been and survived.”
Ariane tried to speak. At first nothing came out. She swallowed and tried again.
“In the armory,” Ariane said. “Simon kissed you.”
Silently Marie shook out her sewing, plucked a stray thread, and looked up at the woman who was close to her age in years, yet so far away in experience.
“Simon didn’t kiss me,” Marie said. “I kissed Simon. I suspected he was angry enough with you not to mind angering you in turn, so I kissed him. Simon hasn’t willingly touched me since he heard Robert’s confession.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“But the Holy Crusade was years ago!”
“Aye. Simon is a man of extraordinary passion. It will be many more years before he forgets. Or forgives me.”
“He loved you,” Ariane said painfully.
“Love?”
Marie laughed and smoothed the embroidered silk she was sewing. Her mouth was an amused curve as she knotted the thread, bit it through, and smoothed the knot until it was invisible. She picked up the needle and threaded it once more.
“Simon didn’t love me,” Marie said, sewing quickly. “I was simply the first woman he had bedded who did much more than lie on her back and think of God. My sexual skills all but enslaved him for a time.”
Ariane couldn’t hide her shock at Marie’s bluntness, which only amused Marie more.
“You must have had a nun’s childhood,” Marie said.
“Far from it. My mother was forced by my father. It was the only way he could have her. She was a woman of unusual…gifts.”
“A witch?”
“S
ome called her that. Here, I suspect she would have been called Learned.”
“A witch,” Marie said succinctly. “Did her gifts come to you?”
“Only for a time.”
Marie gave Ariane a sharp look, then went back to her sewing, for a single look had told her that Ariane would speak no more on the subject of her own missing gifts.
“As a child I was stolen from my Norman parents and sold into a seraglio,” Marie said as she sewed. “By the time Dominic’s knights freed me, I was very experienced at pleasuring men.”
“So you repaid the knights by becoming their…”
“Whore,” Marie said without embarrassment. “Aye. ’Tis what I know best. ’Tis what I have been trained for since I was eight. That, and sewing.”
Ariane blinked. “Trained to pleasure men? Why? I thought that sex was by nature a pleasure for men.”
“There is the pleasure of coarse bread and water to feed hunger and slake thirst, and there is the pleasure of honeyed peacocks’ tongues and dark, clear wine.”
Marie shook out the bodice she was working on, tugged at a seam, and resumed sewing.
“For men who have the palate to savor peacocks’ tongues,” Marie said, “a skilled woman is a foretaste of heaven. Simon had known only coarse bread. For a time, I had great power over him. In the end, though, his love of his brother was stronger than his lust for me.”
“That is what you regret losing?” Ariane asked against her will. “The power?”
“But of course. Why else would a woman trouble to learn what pleases a man?”
“Simply to bring him pleasure,” Ariane said.
As she spoke, Ariane remembered how she had held and caressed Simon’s hot, violently aroused flesh. And then she remembered something else. Her own feelings.
“And because it gladdens her to pleasure him,” Ariane added, barely subduing a sensual shiver.
Smiling, shaking her head at Ariane’s innocence, Marie stitched swiftly.
“You will never control your husband if you lose control of yourself,” Marie said succinctly. “If you would have the whip hand, you must know how to kiss and when to bite, where to lick and how to suck, what to claw and when to soothe, how to put him in your mouth and when to put him in your body.”
Appalled by Marie’s matter-of-fact summation, Ariane could think of nothing to say.
Enchanted Page 27