by Jen Black
The age old plea. The one he had always avoided before. But this time, he must answer it, or she would be gone. And he must sound convincing. “I love you. I want to marry you.”
“You could sound as if you meant it,” she muttered and sank her teeth into his shoulder.
Heat pulsed through him. The darkness concealed his body’s reaction to her touch. As a signal of his good intentions, he put his hands behind his back.
“I don’t have a lot of practice at this declaration lark,” he said. “I shall not touch you if you are not sure.” He waited. An inner voice told him that he’d made a silly move. He should have kept hold of her. “Are you sure?”
“Aye, of myself.” Her sharp voice came out of the shadows. “But what of you?”
He sighed. She was going to freeze him out again. “What can I say? I speak flippantly. Always have done. How can I convince you that I love you, that my heart is yours forever?”
He let himself fall full length in the straw. The rest was up to her.
After several long moments she came to rest beside him. In some ways it was a pity they had no light, for he would like to have seen her face and judge her expression. He wanted to see her unclothed but there were no guarantees and he must move very carefully. He risked losing her if he moved too fast.
“Let me tell you something,” he said comfortably. “I told my father about you before I left, and he—”
The straw rustled as she sat up again.
“Be still.” He pulled her down and resisted the urge to fondle anything more intimate than the curve of her shoulder. “Yes, I told him about you. He asked me much the same question you did, though not quite in the same terms, perhaps. I assured him that I wanted to marry the girl who had the misfortune to be Cuthbert Carnaby’s daughter, and we—”
“Misfortune?”
He found he did not need light for she stiffened in outrage beneath his palms. “We hatched a plan whereby I should bring the Deputy Lord Warden’s orders to Cuthbert Carnaby since his brother is ailing.”
“He’s dead,” she said flatly.
“What?” He still could not see her. Not even a stray moonbeam found a way through the sturdy roof.
“Sir Reynold died yesterday morn. He’s been ill since May, poor man.”
He pulled her closer. She was slender, but her breasts were rounded mounds pressed against him and he longed to touch them. Later, he told himself sternly. Later. The innkeeper in Corbridge had told him Carnaby was dead. He ought to have remembered.
“I’m sorry. Were you close to him?”
“No, not really. He was always travelling from here to Halton, to Hexham, to Langley. Sometimes to Bearl, even Fallodon.” She sounded subdued. “His wife is already dead, so his daughters will continue to live at Shortflatt with their maternal grandmother.”
No wonder she’d shed a few tears earlier. Death was never easy and she’d had a lot of other things to contend with in the last few days. “Your lady mother will not accept the children?”
Alina sighed. “There’s no room for them. Once the repairs are done, and extra chambers built, then perhaps they will come to us. But I interrupted. My mind is in such a whirl. Please go on with your plan.”
“I’ve forgotten what I was saying…”
“Your father’s orders for Aydon.”
He settled more comfortably into the nest of straw and pulled the second cloak over them both. “Well, let’s see. I’ve brought written orders from the Lord Warden to your father. That means he cannot attack me now. Or if he does, he’ll have to face the Lord Warden, with three thousand soldiers at his back. Not a likely prospect, I think.”
She said nothing. He hoped she was happy with what he told her. “Once I’ve given him the orders, I can then ask for your hand in marriage. I don’t think he’ll refuse, do you?”
“Did your father not mind you marrying me?” She sounded subdued.
“Oh, not really,” Harry said cheerfully. “My older brother will inherit anyway, and that means I have more leeway in choosing a bride. Your family is well favoured with lands and perhaps that’s why he thinks you are acceptable.” Harry chuckled softly. “Or perhaps he thinks I shall be able to control what goes on here. That’s if we choose to live at Aydon.”
“I doubt it.” Alina’s voice was soft in the darkness. Harry wasn’t sure if her remark applied to his controlling events at Aydon, or where they should live. “Have you made love to other women, Harry?”
“What?” She had surprised him the first time they met, and now she was doing it again.
“You heard me, I think.”
He coughed and cleared his throat. Jesu, no woman had asked him that before. He nodded, and then remembered she could not see him in the dark. “Yes.”
“Yes? Is that all?”
“What do you want?” His voice, like his thoughts, hovered between irritation and amusement. “A strict accounting? A tally sheet?”
“No,” she said, wriggling closer to him in the straw. “I wondered if you knew what you were doing. You don’t seem keen, to be honest. I thought men were always as keen as dogs with bitches.”
Harry spluttered, caught between outrage and laughter. “You want me to show keenness, then?”
“Of course,” she said. “Why else did we come here?”
Harry hesitated. “You had doubts, if you remember. I am trying not to rush you.”
Her hands sought his chest, moved to his shoulders. The straw creaked and rustled. “My doubts have gone, Harry. I know who you are, where you come from, that you want to marry me and that my father does not terrify you.”
He was not sure he agreed with her last point, but he had no argument with the rest of her statement. Her fingers traced his throat, found his jaw, his mouth and then her warm breath reached him. She kissed him so delicately he did not respond in case he frightened her away. Her lips remained closed. Had she ever been kissed by a lover before? He didn’t think so. Errington had stuck to the formalities, then.
He cupped the back of her head in his palm, and let the fingers of his other hand stray over her. Words echoed and ricocheted around inside his skull. “I love you,” he whispered.
He felt her stiffen in his hands, heard a hiss of sound as if she sucked air between her teeth. Her arms sprang around his neck and almost choked him. The rest of her pressed against him and Harry fell back in the straw. “Alina—.”
She kissed him, pressed against him. Sounds of happiness poured from her throat. Harry grasped her face between his palms and kissed her back. This time he sought her open mouth and she recoiled.
An open-mouthed kiss must be new to her. He held her gently and did not stop her lifting her head. She did not retreat far, for her breath still fanned his cheek. “This is how lovers kiss, Alina.”
Her head moved slowly in denial between his hands. “Truly?”
“You will like it,” he added, and waited. His fingers held her with the lightest of touches and he knew the moment she decided to try again.
The softness of her mouth on his delighted him. He matched his lips to hers, tilted his head so that their mouths not only met, but melded, melted and joined. Tantalising her lips with the tip of his tongue, elation surged through him when her mouth parted for him. Teasing, tempting, Harry moved slowly. His reward came when she ran her tongue in swift exploratory ventures across the divide.
“What an apt pupil you are,” he breathed against her ear, and sought her mouth again.
“I like it, Harry, but it is making me feel breathless, as if I have run a long way.”
“M’mmmm. Exactly as it should.” He half-smiled as he met her hot, eager mouth.
“But you aren’t breathing hard at all.”
“You might think that, but my heart is racing. Feel.”
Her hand touched his doublet. “I think…”
He brushed her hand aside, opened the hooks and thrust her hand inside, laid it flat against his skin. He shuddered, and she started
at that first contact. He heard her swift intake of air and held steady.
“Now, can you feel it? Tell me quickly, otherwise I might think I’ve died.”
Her fingers spread, the pads pressing against his skin, moved slowly to the place where his heart thudded. “It beats so fast, Harry. Perhaps mine does too. If only we had light, I should be able to see you.”
He wondered at her thoughts. Did she want to see his body? One day, he promised himself. One day she would tell him exactly what she wanted of him.
He rose to one elbow. “Enough. I want to kiss you again.” He pushed her back in the straw and proceeded to show her how varied and magical a kiss could be. In no time at all her skin grew hot and her breathing ragged. Laying a fingertip at her throat, he traced a line slowly down to the drawstring of her linen chemise, found the bow that tied the strings, jerked it loose and pressed the edges of fabric apart. His mouth wandered over her skin.
“Harry…oh, Harry…” Her voice lingered over his name. He found the laces of her bodice, loosened them and let his fingers trawl the sweet mounds of her breasts. “I did this before. Do you remember?”
“M’mmmm.” She sounded amused. “In the dark, when you were in the dungeon…and Matho was pacing up and down above us.”
Harry let his tongue circle her skin until she groaned and moved restlessly beneath him. Hot, urgent, eager to move, to invade, it took all his determination to hold back. He wanted to judge the moment and make it perfect for her. If he got it right the first time, then everything would be all right later.
The straw rustled and their breathless laughter turned to gasps and moans. The world might have stopped turning but Harry did not notice as Alina trailed her mouth over the smooth skin of his shoulder. In turn he licked the salt off her skin, nipped the softness of her belly. When he touched her thighs, she let them fall apart.
Harry had made love many times. No young man refused an offer if the lady was suitably attractive, and offers came his way frequently. Delightful they may have been, but there was more to this encounter than mere pleasure. He had never found bedding a maid so all encompassing, never suspected how demanding and delightful it would be to have someone want all of him; his mind, his heart and his body, all at the same time.
Not that he objected. It deterred him not in the slightest. He doubted he would ever be able to explain it to any one, perhaps least of all himself, but as he moved over her in a blur of anxious desire, he prayed that she would not reject him at the last moment.
She was ready for him, begged him to go on. With his blood roaring in his ears, he found and thrust into her. Aware of an obstruction and her sobbing breath in his ears, he stayed motionless. Her nails dug into his shoulders but her small whine of pain hurt him more. “Alina?”
Her head jerked to one side. “Don’t stop now!”
He hardly dared move. Slowly, little by little, her muscles relaxed around him. “Shall I…?”
She urged him on with tiny thrusts of her hips. “Slowly, Harry, slowly!”
He loosed a gasp of laughter against her cheek, braced his elbows more firmly in the straw and set off in a slow, languorous rhythm that all too soon, and without his permission, increased.
“I shall…I—”
It was impossible to get the words out. He wanted to tell her he must go faster, for that imperative ache was gathering, swelling and about to burst and he could not control it, not this time. He could only hope that she was with him as he rose on the wave that would carry him on to that deep boneless beach of oblivion. He crashed down with a sound that echoed like a growl around the stable loft and dimly, from somewhere close to his ear, heard a short, sharp cry and then a diminishing echo.
He was hot and slick with sweat. His head rested against her cheek and the thunder of her heart frightened him. He lifted his head, suddenly impatient with the darkness that had been their friend until now. “Alina?”
His senses cleared. When he shut his mouth, he heard her panting for breath. She must have enjoyed it, or she wouldn’t be breathing as if she’d run up the hill from Corbridge. But he had to make sure. “Alina? Tell me…” He swallowed hard. “Have I hurt you?”
“It’s gone now. Harry?”
He found her hand and kissed it.
“Harry, I love you.”
Relief and joy swept over him.
Chapter Nineteen
Alina opened her eyes on blackness, cold air and the sound of a horse snorting somewhere close by. Her fingers snatched at a thick heavy covering that lay over her, and straw prickled and rustled beneath her.
Memory flooded back. She was in the stable loft beneath Harry’s cloak, and he was beside her….except that he wasn’t. Her hand wandered, searching for him and found nothing but cold straw.
“Harry?” She called again, louder, but received no answer. Surely she had not imagined his warm bulk, his breath cool on the back of her neck as his large body cradled her in their straw nest?
She sat up and pushed the cloak away in one sharp movement. Cold air rushed in and goosebumps sprang up on her arms, attacked every inch of uncovered skin. Scrambling to her knees, Alina fumbled the edges of her chemise and bodice together.
Where was he? She shuffled forward. No, she must stop, for there was a gap in the floor somewhere close by. The blackness was impenetrable, and she could not decide which direction to take. It must have been the same for Harry and he was stranger here. Had he fallen to the stable below? The horse snorted as if something disturbed it. Was Harry lying injured somewhere beneath the loft?
The thought was enough to bring her to her senses. She crawled forward until she found the sawn edge of the boards announcing the open square in the floor. Warmer air, smelling thickly of horse, came up from below. The stable was as dark as the loft.
She sat back on her heels. She was alone in the dark. He had left her.
She put her head back and screamed. “Harry!”
The horse snorted, iron shod hooves clattering on the stone floor below. The sound of the heavy body thumping into the wooden stall brought Alina to her senses. Mortified by her moment of panic, she leant forward. “Steady, girl, steady. It’s only me being stupid.”
She rubbed her face with both palms, dragged her fingers through her hair. “I’m panicking because it’s dark and I can’t see and I don’t know where Harry’s gone. There are steps into the loft, I know that. I’ve often used them. But I cannot see them in the dark.” She clenched her hands into fists and beat them against her thighs. “Think, Alina, think.”
Slowly a picture formed in her mind. Since she knelt by the loft opening, then the stairs were on the far wall behind her. She remembered them clearly. Now all she had to do was make her way over there.
Looping her skirts out of the way, she crawled across the straw, and uttered a sigh of relief when she reached the steps. One hand to the wall, she felt for the first step, and moved slowly down.
Faint footfalls sounded outside. Alina froze in mid-step. Her breath sounded loud in the silence. Something creaked and a brief glimmer of light flashed and grew stronger. What if it wasn’t Harry? What if Father had suddenly remembered her fondness for Grey House? Lantern in hand, a dark shape turned the corner of the stable door, and headed for the stairs where she crouched.
“Harry!” Weak with relief, she sagged to the wooden step.
Harry held the lantern high. “What’s the matter?” He bounded up the steps and crouched on the step below her.
Alina blinked in the weak candlelight. “I woke and found you gone. I thought—Oh, Harry! Where did you go?”
“You were coming to find me? Alina, you might have hurt yourself. Let’s get back to bed.”
“Our nest in the straw?” Already she felt better.
“Our makeshift bed.”
She heard the laughter in his voice, and it warmed her. “Where’ve you been? What’s that?” She pointed to the bundle in his hands. “Can I smell bacon?”
“I went over to
keep the fire going,” Harry said. “While I was there I thought I might fry a slice of bread. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
She giggled. “Oh, Harry! You are amazing. I’m hungry, too.”
It was easy, in the candlelight, to find their way back across the loft.
***
At first light they went back to the still warm kitchen fire and ate what little there was for breakfast. Alina cleared away the crumbs on the breadboard while Harry crouched by the hearth and built up the fire. Her gaze lingered on him while her hands moved automatically over her tasks. The once-white shirt sat easily on his broad shoulders and his hair glowed in the new flames creeping around the twigs he laid so carefully.
This was a taste of how it would be if she and Harry married. She smiled dreamily. One day, perhaps, there would be children, too. A girl and boy, if the good Lord deemed it so, each with Harry’s wonderful blue eyes and dark hair.
She stared down at the empty board and frowned. It was no good dreaming. “Harry, what will we do now the food is gone?”
“There’ll be rabbits in the fields. According to Matho you’re a dab hand with a bow.”
Lifting her head, she looked at him. “So you talked about me, then, the pair of you? I expect he told you about me shooting at Stagshaw Fair?”
He grinned at the fire and did not turn. “He said you beat all the lads and they hated you for it.”
“Ay, and did he tell you how hard my father warmed my backside for me after it was all over?”
Harry laughed. “Let me guess…He said it was unladylike behaviour. How old were you?”
“I was ten,” she admitted. “Mama tried to teach me to be a lady, but I was slow to learn.”
“You mean you’re still a hoyden but with redeeming qualities? I can send you out to shoot a rabbit for the pot when times are hard?”
“Oh, no. I’m fine with the target, but I can’t kill things.”
“You’d starve rather than kill a rabbit or two? What an odd creature you are.”