The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three

by Domning, Denise

  Until this night, Rowena had never had a complaint with the custom of bedding the bride and groom. It was sensible, even practical. How better to make certain, prior to the consummation of the marriage and in front of as many witnesses as possible, that there was no hidden physical defect in either party? Now, as a maid pulled at the sleeves of her robe, the sour taste of reality filled her mouth.

  As she had said, she was purchased goods to be examined for blemishes before the final transfer from seller to buyer. Nude and vulnerable, she turned to reveal herself to her husband. It was her shame, not the cold air, that made her skin prickle.

  Lord Graistan stopped undressing, his chausses dangling from his fingers. For a short, silent moment, it was as though there was no one save the two of them in the room. His gaze lingered on her body, touching her full breasts, slim waist, and gently curving hips.

  She looked at this lord who now owned her. Long legs, narrow hips, broad chest, strong arms, arrogant man. If he chose to take her against her will, she would be powerless to stop him. Rowena of Benfield, once sure she would be owned by no man, intensely felt her loss of freedom. She glanced up at him. He met her gaze and took a half step forward.

  His movement broke the spell woven around her. "Well, my lord," she asked acidly, "am I worth the price?" Even her mother gasped at the harshness of the question.

  "I’m pleased so far," her husband answered, his voice soft and deep, "but the night is still young, and there is a test or two remaining 'ere it's over."

  Those women still gathered behind Rowena chuckled and loudly whispered their bawdy comments. Lord Graistan laughed. Edith stepped closer to her daughter. Rowena shifted away in startled surprise.

  "May she retire now, my lord?" Edith asked.

  The nobleman spared his mother-by-marriage a brief glance, then his attention returned to his wife. "But she hasn’t yet answered. Do you find a flaw?" His tone was intimate.

  How could he be so casual about this? "Nay," Rowena snapped, then immediately retreated to the great bed and slid between the cold sheets.

  The maids laughed at her cowardice, but her husband silenced them. "Have mercy on us," he pleaded mockingly. "A body could freeze solid in here in just moments. Now, would that not be a sorry waste of flesh?" Again, the women chortled.

  Lord Graistan tapped his father-in-law with a bare foot as the priest dragged the nobleman out the door. "Don’t worry overmuch how you handle him, Father; I doubt he’ll notice anything until the morrow.”

  Once all the others were gone, Lord Graistan quietly shut the door behind them. Rowena had heaped the many soft blankets about her, but she was still cold. In wary fascination, she watched her husband snuff out all but the night candle until the air reeked of burned wick and deep shadows again whispered in the corners.

  A moment more and he was at their bedside. She lay tensely back against the bolsters and waited. The mattress dipped beneath his weight. Her teeth clenched. Linen rustled impatiently against linen as he arranged the pillows to suit him. Still, she waited.

  Each passing moment died a long and agonized death. Only the low moan of the rising wind broke the silence in the room. Why did he hesitate? She wanted this over and done with, now.

  As minutes ticked away she again recalled Lord Graistan’s conversation with her father. Perhaps her new husband still wished to be free of this contract. If their marriage wasn’t consummated there’d be no expensive petition to the pope, only an application for dissolution to his Churchman cousin. But then, he'd have to give up her dowry.

  The clean sheets fairly crackled as she shifted slightly to look at him. He'd left the bed curtains open and lay covered to the waist by the blankets. His fingers were laced behind his head as he rested on the bolsters. His eyes were shut. She couldn’t imagine a more relaxed pose.

  Meager candlelight gleamed against his exposed skin and shadows traced the masculine swell of his chest. She studied the generous sweep of his forehead, the narrow line of his nose and well-molded lips. Not a truly handsome man, she thought, but not unattractive, especially when he smiled. As she watched, fine lines of amusement began to play at the corners of his closed eyes.

  "Do you like what you see?" His eyes opened, his head turning in her direction. The taunting warmth of his words was reflected in his gray gaze.

  Rowena immediately looked away, her cheeks afire. He made her feel like a child caught where she shouldn’t be. Hard words hid her chagrin, "It hardly matters, does it my lord?"

  The moment the words were out Rowena regretted them. What a stupid girl! What if her words incited him to cruelty?

  Her husband laughed. "It matters, if only to my vanity. My given name is Rannulf. I prefer that form of address from those who know me well." His words implied that she’d soon know him very well. So, he'd had no intention of leaving her virgin. Once again he had toyed with her and won.

  "As you like, my lord." She eased back down against the mattress.

  "Rannulf," he prompted.

  "Rannulf," she answered uneasily.

  "So, my lady wife," he said, then sighed. "This night we make ourselves a marriage, eh? What say you we begin this task of ours now?"

  Rowena steeled herself for his touch. If only he would close the bed curtains. Deep shadows would make the fulfillment of this duty easier. She lay tensely beside him and waited.

  He rolled to his side, his eyes now a pale gleam in the night. When he brushed a strand of hair from her face, his touch was gentle. "Try not to be too fearful. I intend to make this as painless for you as possible. Of course, this is assuming you are yet virgin."

  Rowena sat bolt upright with a gasp of outrage. "What! Now you presume too much. Please recall that I’ve lived fourteen years in a convent."

  He laughed quietly. "What have convents to do with virginity or virtue?"

  That piqued her pride. "Be assured that what I held precious for the Lord God, I now surrender to you," she spat out, her fists clenched into the bedclothes.

  Again, he laughed. "Stay angry, wife Rowena. I like you better this way. Consummation of marriage is not as horrible as you might think."

  "You questioned my honor apurpose?" she cried out.

  When she would have said more, his mouth took hers. Outrage made her try to pull away from his touch, but his heated kiss consumed her anger and confused her senses. When he urged her down against the mattress, she hadn’t the will to resist him.

  Trapped in a web of sudden and overwhelming sensation, she closed her eyes and sighed. His was an unexpectedly clean scent. She savored the taste of his mouth on hers. Against her arm, she could feel the hard curve of his shoulder, yet his skin was soft where it touched hers.

  Something stirred within her, warm and deep and hidden. He pressed a kiss just below her ear. It stirred again. She caught her breath. His fingers stroked her palm.

  Again, he pressed his lips to her throat, this time slightly lower, then he set another kiss lower still. The stirring within her grew into a faint tenseness. She sighed, and the tenseness eased. Her fingers twined with his, and her other hand found its way to the nape of his neck. Gently, she combed her fingers through his hair and shivered at its silkiness. Trapped in her own need to feel, she trailed her fingertips down his nape to his shoulders and back again.

  He groaned low in his throat. Startled back to her senses Rowena snatched her hand away as she burned with shame. How could she have been so forward? She tried to pull away, but he caught her in his arms. Without a word, he once again took her mouth with his. She lay still and cold beneath him in her shame.

  "Don’t run away," he whispered. His words were laced with laughter.

  "How could I run? You hold me," she whispered in return, her arms still held tightly at her sides.

  "And would you run if I didn’t hold you? I think not," he breathed into her ear. Rowena shivered. "I think"—he kissed her throat—"you’ll do as pleases both of us, not just me."

  "You mock me." She pressed her ha
nds into the sheets, determined to stay perfectly still even as his caresses again dissolved her spine.

  He paused and braced himself up on his elbow. "I promise I won’t tease you any more, at least not with words." His hands slipped up from her waist to cradle her breasts.

  Rowena gasped and twisted. Outrage fused with pleasure in an unholy union as he lowered his mouth to kiss a line between his hands. The sensations he awoke were unbearable, yet she didn’t want them to cease. She tried to pull away, to escape the enormity of what she was feeling. Too late. She was pinned to the mattress between his arms.

  All rational thought fled in the face of her primal need to feel. She knew the heat of his mouth against her breast and reveled in the roughness of his callused palm as he stroked her stomach. When his hand slid lower to touch her nether lips she trembled beneath him.

  Her hands found and caressed the hard line of his shoulders. His teasing fingers made her cry out and try to twist away while in all truth she wanted to do no such thing. Her lips found his throat as he lowered himself to lay full length atop her, his legs between hers. His hoarse and whispered words were unintelligible as she kissed his neck. She spread her legs to better accommodate his weight upon her. The heat between her thighs fairly scorched her.

  Pain, tearing pain. Rowena cried out and arched beneath him as her virgin blood flowed. Her fingers dug deep into his back as she bit her lip to still her cry.

  As she laid still beneath him the fullness of him within her was both foreign and welcome in one incredible instant. Her husband rested still atop her. With gentle fingers, he combed her hair, then stroked her cheek.

  "Forgive me." His words were oddly breathless. "Have patience, your pain will pass in a moment."

  Rowena's eyes remained half-closed. A moment slipped by and slowly, the burning ache eased. As it passed the urge to shift beneath him woke, not to escape her husband’s weight upon her, but because the feel of his skin against hers demanded it. She fought the urge.

  Their legs were twined, his between hers, her calves across his. When had that happened? Again, he stroked his fingertips down her cheeks, his hands lowering down either side of her neck in a feathery caress. She shivered as a tiny spark of heat exploded within her.

  Lowering his mouth to hers, he touched his lips against hers in a gentle kiss. One followed another, each one growing with intensity until it became a passionate taking of her mouth. All memory of the pain he’d caused her died.

  She shifted uneasily beneath him, not knowing why she did so. It was as if there was some hidden destiny within her, but try as she might, she couldn’t imagine what it was. As she moved so did he, his shaft sliding deeper into her. She gasped, only this time the sound had naught to do with pain.

  "I promise this won’t always hurt you so" Rannulf breathed into her ear between kisses.

  He moved again, then again. A subtle pleasure pulsed within Rowena, quickly tumbling into a greater need. She shifted to accommodate his thrusts, finding yet greater pleasure as she did so. He buried his head against her neck, his breathing ragged and quick, and she embraced him in mute acceptance of her womanhood.

  But, when he stilled to lie, panting atop her, Rowena nearly cried out in complaint. There was something more, something she couldn’t identify. What more could there be between a man and a woman?

  After a long moment, he eased slightly to one side, lying half atop her. His eyes were heavy lidded with his ebbing passion. The smile that bent his mouth was warm and untroubled.

  Slowly, Rowena smiled in return. He kissed her cheek, then the tip of her nose. When, at last, his mouth met hers, her lips clung to his as she enjoyed the taste of him, the warmth of his lips, and the glorious feeling of his mouth moving against hers.

  Of a sudden he drew away to eye her anew. His expression clouded his smiling warmth dimming to stark confusion, then into a harsh coldness. He eased completely off her, then farther away in the bed, as if he feared to touch her.

  "Best you sleep well this night. We travel to Graistan on the morrow. I must be on about my business." He sat up and impatiently tugged the bed curtains closed around them. When he lay down it was with his back to his wife.

  "Tomorrow?" The word spilled bitterly from Rowena’s lips, but it wasn’t the morrow's leave-taking that bothered her. His sudden coldness deeply stabbed her, destroying all the warmth and pleasure they had just shared. What had she done to make him stare at her so?

  He raised up on one elbow to look over his shoulder at her. The dour lord was back. "My men and vassals await my arrival at Nottingham. Be content that Graistan isn’t so far and that the short trip won’t trouble you much." He settled into the mattress and drew the bedclothes up over his shoulder.

  Rowena stared at his back as his breathing fell into the deep and even rhythm of sleep. Only then did she ease across the bed into the corner farthest from him. There, hidden in the deepest shadows of the bed, she struggled to straighten her painful thoughts. There was nothing to straighten. Reason and order had fled; serenity was shattered. In their place sat the memory of their lovemaking and his cruel rejection.

  She’d known that she’d be no more to him than an instrument, a harp to be set aside when the song was finished. What she hadn’t known was how painful that setting aside would be. Leaning her head against a bedpost, she swallowed her pain and felt the coldness within her grow colder yet. Only when she could bear her thoughts no more did she settle beneath the bedclothes, keeping as far from him as possible. It was a long while before she slept.

  Rannulf lay still and forced his breathing into an even, relaxed pace. His new wife sat at the far side of the bed. Cruelty didn’t come easily to him as it did some men. Yet, he reminded himself of how necessary it was. If only she’d been the ugly, docile girl he'd expected, then he could have been kind and still have felt nothing toward her. Instead, she was a fiery, passionate, and beautiful woman. His lips moved in a silent curse. He was married again, this time trapped into it by his own avarice.

  When his cousin, Oswald, who served Benfield's new overlord, the Bishop of Hereford, had sent John of Benfield to him with this contract, Rannulf’s first impulse had been to refuse. After all, he had his heirs in his half brother, Gilliam, and his natural son, Jordan. But when John explained the extent of his daughter's estate, Rannulf found he couldn’t let the opportunity slip away, especially when her lands lay so close to his own heart, Graistan.

  Rannulf listened. There was no sound but the wind. He peered over his shoulder at his wife. She was curled onto her side, her back to him.

  When he was sure she slept, he rolled toward her. Even now he ached to reach out and draw her near, to feel the softness of her skin against his, the silkiness of her hair twining around his arms. He remembered the sweet taste of her and shuddered.

  She had wanted him. Even in her innocence she'd shown him that. He'd touched her and a flame of raw desire burst into life in her eyes. No other man had ever awakened her passions; she hadn’t even known herself capable of such feeling. God, he wanted no more than to lie abed with this woman and teach her more of pleasure. He ached to kiss her once again into awareness of her womanhood.

  But he wouldn’t be staying at Graistan with her. Aye, he’d awakened these passions of hers, but who would she find to satisfy them while he was gone? He balled his fists against such thoughts, successfully burying them where they belonged, back in the darkest corner of his mind.

  Despite his efforts, he couldn’t escape his sense of impending heartbreak. His life was cursed. Once, long ago, when he'd been younger, less jaded, he'd dreamed of a marriage such as his father had known with his second wife, Ermina. Theirs had been a true love, filled with great passion and caring. But, if Rannulf’s first marriage had been dull and fruitless, his second had been a catastrophe that had nearly torn his family asunder. It was then that he’d sworn not to marry again.

  Here was what came of greed. Beside him lay a woman who would no doubt destroy his life ev
en more thoroughly than his last wife had, and him with it. Rannulf sighed. It’d be best if he never came to care for her. If she grew to hate him for it, so be it. Better her hate than his pain.

  He resettled the bedclothes up over his shoulders and waited for sleep to overtake him. The wait was dark and empty, and his wife cried out in her dreams. It was a struggle not to take her in his arms to comfort her. At long last, he drifted off and had no dreams of his own.

  It was the relentless drumming of sleet against the shutter that awakened Rannulf. Beside him, his wife sighed heavily and rolled to her side. Outside, the wind howled and sent fingers of icy air probing into every corner. She shivered as a draft fluttered in the bed curtains. He stirred a little to let her know he, too, was awake.

  There was enough gray light in the bed to show him her form. He studied the tumble of her thick black hair against her pale skin. The contrast was as startling as she was. Without effort, he recalled the full lushness of her body and her instinctive response to his lovemaking. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and caressed the gentle curve of her back where it narrowed into her waist.

  She gasped and rolled out of his arm's reach. "I thought you still slept," she said ungraciously.

  "How can a man expect to find any rest when his wife constantly moves about all night? He kept his tone light. "Your dreams weren’t pleasant."

  "I cannot recall, my lord." She lied. He knew it.

  "How quickly you’ve forgotten my name." Why did he press this with her if he wanted her to remain distant?

  She only shrugged, then turned to open the bed curtains. Day’s watery light pushed past her to fill the bed. She shivered despite that the bedclothes were held tightly about her.

  Rannulf watched her a wee part of himself sighing at her reaction. His cruelty had achieved exactly what he desired. It would be a long while before she again allowed herself to be vulnerable to him. What he'd done to her gouged him as well.