So be it. ’Twas a long time ago, that intended wedding day. It gladdened him to see the gifts meant for his lady wife were now worn by his peasant whore. As were the bejeweled girdle that rode low on his consort’s slender hips and the doeskin slippers that shod her high-arched feet. At least the coin spent had not gone to waste. God knows, her services were costing him naught.
“I rushed,” she gushed straightaway. “But in my excitement, I tripped and fell on my hem, which necessitated I brush everything off. I could hardly concentrate—or, apparently, walk—for want of seeing you again, my lord.”
Gratifying to know he was right about her. She might look like a queen in her new garb, but she thought like a common serf. Only a lowly born wench would admit such a telling thing to a man. A royal would be aloof, play coy. Never would a highborn demoiselle gush. Mitri’s unbridled excitement was coarse in the extreme.
And wholly appreciated by him.
His shoulders loosened, as did his gut, and he blurted, “I feel the same. I cursed the shadows for not lengthening sooner.”
“I pray you, do not wish for an early onset of eventide. When I awakened this morn and found you gone, I searched you out in the chamber. To no avail. I…I…missed you then.”
He might have put it to her hard, but in many ways, she was still a child. A rush of sympathy poured over him for her plight. And guilt for not being there when she had need of him. Defensiveness too, for verily, he had left her alone this morn because he had been too much the coward to stay. To protect himself, he had fled from her. Caring for her was not part of their agreement, and yet he found himself caring about her. And so he had left.
He cleared his throat. “The nobility are not like peasants, who sleep with their partners all the night through. Livestock too.”
“What the royals are missing! Not the cows, but sleeping with a human companion must be a comfort in the darkness.” She winked bawdily. “An occasion of joy too, if two searching mates bump into each other mid-night. Or early morn, as the sun comes up in the sky.”
“Perchance,” he said gruffly. Her inelegant observation had him pining away.
“I should like to thank you for my new garb, my lord. Never has anything so fine touched my skin.”
He could not say the same. Something fine had touched him last night.
Her skin. Silky smooth against his rough man’s flesh.
Why had he left her side? Why had he not slept beside her on that narrow cot and found joy inside her again this morn?
He would have liked to remain inside her body all day, moving at his whim. She would have allowed his whim free rein.
Laughing, she spun round, her feet nearly lifting off the ground, her magenta skirts a-twirling. “’Tis a beauteous day.”
Not as beauteous as she, he mused, and quickly turned away to unlock the gate.
The entrance swung wide, and he escorted her inside, an ungloved hand under her elbow, the fingers twitching with the effort it took to hold back from crushing her to him.
“Which way shall we go?” he asked.
“What are my choices? Difficult to make an informed decision without understanding the consequences.”
Did her statement hold deeper meaning?
He thought mayhap it might, but too befuddled to figure the riddle out, he accepted her words at face value and explained. “You have two directions from which to choose.” He pointed. “The path there on the left leads to a peaceful enclosed garden. The one on the right will take us to the encroaching wilderness outside the settlement.”
Only the closest members of his military entourage knew about the secret passageway hidden within the peaceful garden, an underground tunnel that would take a messenger into the woodlands, then to a boat concealed under a mound of evergreen bowers on the river. The waterway led directly to his brother at Ironguard. If the messenger carried dire news of a siege, Talon and his army would ride to Nettlewood’s aid. The system worked both ways. If an enemy attacked Talon’s keep, his brother would get a message to him at Nettlewood via the same route.
Mitri tilted her magnificent jaw. “Why can I not do both?”
“No reason.” He grinned at her piquant expression. “Save greed.”
“Guilty of greed as charged, for doing both is my decision. First the garden, then the wilderness. They each have their own appeal.”
He had always thought so as well. Naturally he kept that information to himself. He had already said too much. Revealing his impatience to see her had not been a sound move.
Of a sudden, Spur noted his consort’s uncovered head, the plaited brown hair swinging like a steed’s mane as she walked. “Did the coif I sent to your chamber not please you?”
She touched her escaped tendrils of hair. “The coif pleased me mightily. My thanks for the thoughtfulness.”
“If the coif pleased you, why not wear it?”
“Because the wearing would have been an unspoken falsehood. A lie of omission, if you will. Worse still, its wearing would have named me deceitful.”
“How so?”
“Virgins wear coifs as a sign of their innocence. Married women wear them as a token of modesty. As I am neither virgin nor a modest goodwife, but a bought whore, I dispensed with the symbolism.”
“Oh—” Was her decision to become his “whore” what she alluded to in her cryptic remark about choices and consequences?
For some reason, he had forgotten a coif’s symbolic meaning. He had also forgotten the ramifications of her becoming his consort—apparently for the same reason.
He had tried to justify her new position in life by telling himself she would receive a generous recompense for her carnal service to him, better payment than she would receive in London stews or in a brothel anywhere. Much better than making candles. As a peasant wife, she would have been destitute. At least whoring for him would keep her belly filled—in more ways than one.
The rub was, she had not set out to become a whore, and no amount of justification on his part would change that ugly truth.
His actions had brought her to that path, a road to ruin from which there was no return. She would never have a decent life now, a caring husband, a loving family. Her fellow peasants would shun her and the church would condemn her.
As for him—if word got out about the part he had played in her ruin, he would be seen from hither and yon as a royal lecher, a despot who took advantage of his overlord’s position of power to defile innocent peasant maidens.
His reputation would only benefit from such tales. Indeed, ’twas the very sort of notoriety he sought to garner for himself. A win for him and a loss for her all the way around.
At a narrow portion of the path, he released her elbow. “I shall order workers to widen this area posthaste. During your stay with me here at the keep, I look forward to many walks in the gardens with you on my arm.”
With a glimmer of a smile for his plans, she moved ahead, her fetching hindquarters gently swaying. And that swaying brought to mind the whipping. It had been dark in the bedchamber last night, and so he had seen very little of her luscious body. Was her shapely derriere still inflamed today?
At the thought, his cock rammed against the tight wrappings of his loincloth, weeping precum tears for release.
He swung her around to face him.
Her modest smile of before had spread from ear to ear.
Why, the crafty vixen had provoked him intentionally!
By Christ! Forget her chandler’s occupation; seducing men was her true calling in life. Knowing full well that he was smitten, she toyed with him, using her feminine wiles to bend him to her will, as any natural seductress would do.
He examined her as he would a viper in the desert. “’Twould be a mistake to assume my present enchantment with you will be long-lived. I am fickle in the bedchamber, and my lovers are always temporary. I would not see you…disappointed. Strive for another way to better yourself, Mitri. I am not your route to advancement. Neither will yo
u ever see King Stephen’s palace, be that your ambition. We will enjoy our pleasures, and then we will be done and depart one another, each going our own way.”
“I have a confession to make. Before the mercenary’s attack on Lord Harold’s settlement, I made candles for market in London.” She added sheepishly, “Erotic candles.”
“You need not have told me.” And not only because he already knew.
Whilst walking along the garden path, she admired a posy here and there. “As you have shown your faith in me by believing I was not the mercenary’s accomplice, I promised myself to be forthright with you, here on out.”
A pity he could not return her forthrightness. Revealing how he had used a tincture of a tongue-loosening plant on her would steal those glittering stars from her eyes. She looked positively glowing, even enamored.
With him.
A new sensation, her affection. Generally females only directed fear his way.
A new sensation, his interest. And he was indeed interested, as his erect cock would testify. When not fucking her senseless, she would provide him with endless hours of amusement, a pleasant diversion from the present clime of anarchy. A few tender caresses and she would be positively slavish in her devotion to him, a genuine lapdog licking his face.
He brought her to a stand before him. “How did these erotic candles sell?”
“Very well.” She drew her finger along the tensed set of his jaw. “Frustrated females snapped them up by the score. The trade was quite lucrative. And I am proud of my skill. Ladies of the court adore my candles.”
“You will have to make some.” He raised a brow. “And show me how they are meant to be used.”
Lifting her hand from his face, she flicked his chest. “We shall see.”
Where had his adoring lapdog gone?
She no longer deferred to him, and this grieved him. Deference kept the nature of their relationship at the forefront. And kept her from thinking this would ever be something ’twas not.
“The point is,” she continued as if she were his equal, “I do have prospects. I apologize for bothering you with my problems and worries and fears last night. Now that the sun is out, I feel ever so much more hopeful. Now I know what I shall do in the future.”
“And what is that?”
“With the gold I earn here, I shall go to London and expand my artisan venture. Perchance I shall even be part of a chandler’s guild someday. I assure you, if ever I go to court, ’twill be because I am asked to go to transact my trade and on my own merit, not as an arrogant man’s doxy. What I do with you now is apart from anything I shall do in the future. You tempt me with the vices of hell, and I am merely succumbing to your deviltry. For now. A brief detour on my road to financial success, when I shall be my own mistress.”
But at present, she was his mistress, and he’d had enough of her speechifying. “Bend over yonder bench,” he said sternly.
She raised a regal brow. “I beg your pardon?”
“You, my presumptuous temptress, are getting above yourself. Face forward and raise your bliaut in back.”
As silent as the garden was abuzz with bees and birds, she rounded over the rock seat.
He broke off a tree branch. “Prepare to be punished.”
Her stony silence ended. “For what transgression, pray? Since when are hopes and dreams a punishable offense? And, apart from that, you told me I could speak from the heart without fear of reprisal.”
“And so you may—by my leniency. This is not about that.”
“Then what is this about?”
“You have neglected to give me my due by calling me ‘my lord.’ This lack of respect must be remedied at once.”
“But I thought, when you gave me the choice, the nature of our agreement had altered. That I would have certain rights…”
“You misjudged my meaning. The only rights you have are privileges that I specifically grant you. And I am not nearly so generous as to grant you the status of an intimate. Never forget your position here. You serve me, and at my discretion. Do you understand?”
“Aye, my lord.”
Ignoring the hurt in her voice, he took the birch switch to her posterior.
“Oh aye,” she whimpered. Her back arching like a cat and mewing the same, she pushed back against the rod, seeking out a deeper connection with the wood, squeezing each last sting out of the lash.
At ten stripes, the little minx’s excited whimpers proved too much for him and he halted the discipline.
“Next time,” he growled, “I will flay you double the amount.”
Her head buried in her arms, she shivered. “I have heard tell of a flogger, my lord, made entirely of briars. This flogger abrades a woman’s breasts, especially her nipples. Any thorns left behind must be meticulously attended to, lest they fester and raise angry welts.” She asked sultrily, “Will you use that on me as well, my lord?”
He wiped his brow where dots of perspiration collected. The tart had done it, done the near impossible—shocked him, a jaded and unrepentant devil like him. Shocked him to the very core. To the degree that he forgot himself, his pride, his arrogance, his very conceit, forgot his careful distancing from her, as well, and answered with hitherto unknown candor, “Only if I may kiss each red mark the thorns leave behind on your creamy white flesh.”
“Oh how you tempt me into wrongdoing, my lord. Tempt me and make my loins moisten. Find you such a flogger and I shall do my utmost to disobey your commands.”
She might just as well have plunged a dagger into his spleen.
Transfixed by her beauty, absorbed by her every seductive utterance, he said, his tone raw even to his own ears, “Come you here to me.”
As she glided to him, he picked a spire of fragrant columbine, the flower’s petals a vivid ruby and gold, and gently wound the delicate stem into her plait, still dangling down her back and bouncing upon occasion between her sharp shoulder blades. That accomplished, he leaned into her and captured her lips, taking great pains not to crush the blossom.
Not the flower. Not the damnable spire of ruby and gold columbine.
Mitri.
He took pains not to crush his little consort as she could so easily crush him.
Chapter Thirteen
Mitri melted like beeswax into the warlord’s kiss. Her posterior wearing a brand-new array of stripes, her modesty in tatters, her ability to hide his impact on her gone the way of all flesh, she dropped all attempts at guile and allowed her honest attraction to him to shine through.
Though tall herself, he dwarfed her. In order to wrap her arms around his corded neck, she had to lift up onto her toes. That accomplished, she sank her hands into his dark hair, the fingers first threading through the coarse strands, then yanking at the newly trimmed ends in her frenzy to bring him closer. No matter how near she pulled him, however, the distance separating them remained too far. She needed him inside her.
Lie with me, lie with me, lie with me, out here in the sun…
In this magnificent garden, surrounded by herbs and flowers, she could think of no better place to couple with this stern overlord, her cruel master. And he was stern for putting off what they both wished, cruel too for delaying their joining.
Why did he hold himself back from her?
Their joining was inevitable. The fire they had started the night before still burned bright today.
Was it the gate?
He had left the entry ajar. What cared she if he had not closed and barred it? In her extremity, she was beyond inconsequential details like privacy. She wanted him, had to have him…right now.
Exerting all her might, she began dragging him down, her object to have her way with him there on the pebbly path.
“Enough,” he shouted and pulled free of her.
Panting, her kiss-bruised mouth gone slack, she cried in aching disbelief, “Do I displease you, my lord?”
“Nay,” he said grimly.
“Then why?”
“You nee
d time to heal.”
“Nonsense! I am fit.”
He glanced away. “At times, females refuse to admit such things.”
“Do you treat all your partners in this standoffish manner?”
“Nay, but there are extenuating circumstances here, if you would only own up to them.”
“You mean your size? I assure you, I can accommodate your length and breadth. I did last night easily enough and more than once if you will recall. Do not deprive me of pleasure simply because you are…”
She gasped. “Sweet Virgin. I know what this reluctance is about! You have changed your mind about me, about us, about our agreement. You no longer wish for us to continue.”
“Not at all. You please me very much.”
“Then allow me to please you now.”
“Later,” he grumbled. “With a goose-feather tick under your back, not with you lying on a rack of hard stones.”
“I shall hold you to that. Only—my cot’s tick is made of straw.”
“Ah, but the bed in my solar is made for an earl. Sturdy oak posts for tying restraints to, a goose-feather tick for rest between bouts of excess, and the softest of fur pelts for covers.”
And here she thought her master was not romantic! Her mouth watered at his imaginative and lovely description of decadence. “Are you inviting me into your inner sanctum?”
“Well—you did invite me into yours just now. Or was I mistaken?” He wiggled his brows at her.
The devil had a roguish sense of humor. Who would have suspected such a thing?
“No mistake, my lord. We are both agreeable, so why wait?”
“Since you are such a stickler for fairness, I thought it only fair to share my sleeping quarters with you.”
Much placated, she grinned up at him. “I suppose I can wait for later. In the meantime, show me your wilderness outside the walls.”
Then he did something that truly touched her. He presented his arm to her as if they were lovers out for a walk, not a virile man and a lusty woman seeing to a mutual itch. Once again, the romance of it all struck her heart like cupid’s arrow. Though his rough and dark side was compelling to her animal spirits, his romantic gestures fed her soul. She must guard against falling in love with this gruff overlord. He had made his position known to her, and she had done the same with him. This was no lasting arrangement, regardless that he had invited her into his bed.
The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) Page 12