Wild Wind

by Patricia Ryan

  "Welcome to the domain of the heart." Luke turned and crossed to the little window, opened the shutters, and leaned out. When he spoke, his voice was so soft and measured as to lull Alex into drowsiness. "'Tis a hard life, that of a soldier. We're not like other men. The things they cherish—a home, a loving wife, children—are denied us. No woman of any worth wants to be united with some great lout in bloody chain mail who never knows where he'll be or who he'll be killing tomorrow. Falling in love is not an option for us. We must make do with our laundresses and whores and tavern wenches."

  "No attachments," Alex murmured languidly, repeating the advice Luke had tried with so little success to drum into him. "I was an idiot. I shall not make the same mistake again."

  Turning back around, Luke leaned against the window frame and crossed his arms. "Until you're landed. Then you can—"

  "Never again," Alex breathed, his eyes closing of their own volition. "No attachments."

  Alex awoke some time later to the sensation of pleasantly rough fingertips gliding over his lips, anointing them with some sort of fragrant salve. Drawn for some reason to taste it, he touched his top lip with his tongue, brushing it across a fingertip in the process. A woman's low chuckle made him squeeze his eyes open.

  "Oh." He squinted to bring the face into focus—dark eyes, lush lips, a snarled mane of auburn hair spilling out of the rag in which it was tied. Tempeste; she sat on the edge of his bed, holding a tiny jar. He'd just licked her finger. "Terribly sorry."

  She smiled and leaned closer, her bosom resting heavily on his chest. "You may do it again," she offered, nudging his lips open with the slick fingertip. "Do you like the taste? 'Tis violet water and oil of sweet almonds in duck's grease."

  He heard the creaking of the chair behind him, and then Luke appeared in his field of vision. "Awake again, are you? Tempeste has been caring for you. I sent for her as soon as I brought you home."

  "I see," Alex managed.

  "Didn't I tell you she's handy with poultices and the like? Three days and not one wound has festered."

  "'Tis the turpentine that keep them from putrefying. One of my many little tricks." Tempeste smiled coyly at Luke as she rose and went to set the little jar on the corner table, which was covered with vials and bottles and stacks of clean bandages.

  "Tempeste's talents are myriad and varied." Luke lowered his voice. "I've paid her well to tend to your needs—all of them. See that you let her. I hate wasting my silver."

  "Are you serious? I can't even move."

  Luke smiled slowly. "Tempeste can."

  * * *

  "That's it, then," Tempeste announced after she'd removed the last of Alex's bandages. His nakedness seemed to trouble her not in the least, so he didn't let it trouble him. The only services she'd attempted to render him since he'd regained consciousness several days ago were of the healing variety, which was just as well, all things considered.

  "I'll have to rebandage some of them bad ones," she said, dipping a cloth in a bowl of warm water and wringing it out. "But I reckon it's high time I cleaned you up a bit."

  She started with his face, dabbing the cloth with great care over forehead, cheeks, and nose. As always when she tended to him, she sat snugged up against him on the bed, breasts and hips and fleshy arms pressing against him as she worked, her earthy scent enveloping him. "Some of them scars will stay," she said. "But the way I see it, that's all for the good. You were almost too perfect before. A man shouldn't be more beautiful than the woman he's with."

  Alex gestured toward the wall behind her. "There's a looking glass hanging over the wash basin. I use it for shaving. Bring it to me."

  "What do you want to shave for?" she asked, rubbing a hand over his youthful stubble. "I like a man with a rough jaw."

  "I want to see my face."

  Quietly she said, "No you don't."

  "I do." He wanted to brand his wounds into his memory before they healed. He wanted never to forget what his unchecked infatuation had wrought. "Bring it to me."

  She did. He kept his expression neutral as he inspected the ravaged remains of his face, knowing he would never look quite the same again. The boy who had lost his heart to Nicolette de St. Clair was gone, replaced by a man who would bear the scars of his encounter with her for the rest of his life.

  Tempeste hung the looking glass back up and set about washing him from head to toe, expounding all the while on his beauty—the squareness of his shoulders, the hard muscles of his belly, his lean hips and long legs.

  She saved one attribute for last. "You're quite as sizable in your privities as your brother," she observed, thoroughly bathing the part in question, which responded by stirring to life. Although far from modest by nature, Alex couldn't help but feel nonplussed to be growing hard under such close scrutiny, even by a woman who spoke of men's privy parts as if discussing the qualities of potatoes.

  "It's obvious you and Sir Luke were sired by the same stallion," she cooed, rubbing the warm cloth over him with increasingly firm pressure.

  He rose painfully onto an elbow. "You really needn't—"

  "Lie back down before you hurt yourself!" she scolded. He did so. "That's better. You must let Tempeste tend to you." Dropping the cloth in the bowl, she slid her damp fist up and down his length, watching intently as the object of her fascination swelled and rose.

  He clutched the sheets as she stroked him, her palm deliciously raspy against his taut flesh. "Look at that," she marveled softly as he became fully erect. "What a shame for such a lovely thing as that to go to waste. Don't you think so, milord?"

  Alex swallowed hard. "I suppose."

  "Your brother said as how I was to take away all your aches and pains." She pumped him faster now; his breathing grew harsh. "All of them."

  He thrust into her hand, which incited a bolt of pain in his right hip. "I...I don't know as I'm capable of..."

  "You just lie still," she soothed as she began gathering up her skirts. "I'm capable enough for the both of us."

  Alex closed his eyes and lay unmoving as Tempeste climbed atop him and set about ridding him of the last shreds of his innocence. "That's right, Sir Alex...just relax. Let me do all the work."

  He hitched in his breath when she lowered herself onto him. So did she.

  He saw the burning white light again, and Nicki's ethereal image, her smile serene, her eyes cool and unblinking as the pleasure mounted within him. And he promised himself this would be the last time he allowed himself the agonizing luxury of gazing upon her face, even in his imagination.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  "Alex? Alex, wake up." Nicki crouched over Alex, sleeping on an oarsman's bench in this forsaken longboat, wondering why the devil he wouldn't awaken. She must have said his name a dozen time.

  "Alex," she said more loudly. Still no response. She began to wonder whether she ought not to go get some water from the river and dump it on him, when he stirred, stretched...and looked at her.

  Her heart lurched.

  God, those eyes. How many times over the years had she dreamed of looking into them again. Sometimes, as now, she could see right into them, as if they were polished chunks of amber. Other times, it was like gazing into pools of ink.

  Alex glanced around—at the boat, the sky—as if he couldn't quite remember where he was or how he got here. Meeting her gaze again, he mouthed her name. And then he reached for her.

  Nicki held her breath as Alex trailed a callused fingertip lightly down her cheek. It was as if he didn't quite believe she was really there, or that it was really her. His touch rekindled something in her—a heat, a longing, a need for him that had never completely gone away, just lain dormant for nine cold years.

  A band of white wrapped around his knuckles caught her eye. "What's that? Are you hurt?"

  He glanced at his hand, then quickly withdrew

  it and sat up, pivoting so that his back was to her. That seemed to upset his equilibrium, for he sank his head in hi
s hands and groaned.

  She stood up. "Are you all right?"

  Alex grunted in what she took to be affirmation. From his movements, she could tell he was unwinding the bandage from his hand. She couldn't wrest her gaze from the powerful slope of his back, layered with muscle. In the summer heat, Peverell's men-at-arms would sometimes train without their shirts. On such days, the athletic field would be a sea of naked backs, yet she couldn't recall ever having seen one worth staring at.

  What would Mama have thought if she knew her daughter had deliberately awakened a man asleep in a boat in his underdrawers? She would have been appalled—especially considering that the man in question was Alexandre de Périgeaux, whom she'd despised with a virulence bordering on madness.

  And whom Nicki, God help her, had loved to distraction.

  She could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw him yesterday in the castle courtyard—not just because he was there, but because he'd changed so dramatically. Gaspar was right; Alex had grown up, gaining several inches in height and filling out that lanky adolescent body with dense muscle. In proportion, he reminded her of that tiny marble statue of a Roman warrior that Mama used to make Uncle Henri hide from her. Of course, she'd found it and studied it at every opportunity, entranced not only by its naturalistic beauty, but by its aura of potent masculinity.

  Alex looked every bit the seasoned soldier. His body had the well-used look of a wooden shield that had been nicked in too many battles. He had scars everywhere, and some were ghastly. It chilled her to think how many times he must have come close to death.

  He leaned over to pick something up off the deck of the old boat, stuffing the bandage into it. "How did you find me?" he asked groggily. His voice had deepened considerably since adolescence, but retained the slight raspiness she'd always liked.

  "The lady Faithe told me where you'd be. I tried to wake you up for the longest time. I got worried something was wrong with you."

  He rose unsteadily and stumbled over something, which rolled into her field of vision—a leather flask, the type men liked to keep strong drink in when they went out and about.

  "Ah." She should have recognized the symptoms of a morning head. She'd lived through Milo's often enough, back when he still had them. They seemed to be a thing of the past now that he reached for his wine immediately upon awakening.

  Alex leaned heavily on the boat's sloping hull. He rubbed his forehead as if it ached. "'Twasn't the wine. I sleep very deeply. 'Tis a common source of complaint, not being able to rouse me. It usually takes a few hard kicks. A fellow I was quartered with once cracked two of my ribs trying to wake me for battle."

  Nicki flinched.

  He shrugged. "It worked. Women don't use enough force, so they have less luck."

  This oblique reference to the women who'd shared his bed did not escape Nicki. It made sense that he would have found success with women. Alex de Périgeaux was more than merely handsome. His face had a quiet drama to it that was extraordinarily compelling. His most striking feature had to be those eyes, not so much because of their shape and color—although they were quite beautiful, and set off by sharply slanted black eyebrows—but because of their intensity. They didn't just look at you—they focused in, as if you were the only person in the universe, and Alex's sole desire in life was to plumb the depths of your soul. They drew you in, those eyes. Drew you in and never let you go.

  Women must find him utterly irresistible. Just as she had.

  A cloud of regret passed over her soul; she would have been his first, had things been different. She didn't respond to his comment about women, resolved to maintain a prudent distance from him—after all, she was married to his cousin, and the past was dead and buried—but he frowned slightly, as if sensing her discomfort. He used to do that a lot, she reminded herself. He always seemed to know what was in her heart. No one had ever seen all the way inside her the way Alex did.

  Alex's morning stubble rasped as he rubbed his jaw. She remembered his eyes as having shone with the unclouded innocence of youth, but that guilelessness was long gone, and the intent focus she'd found so mesmerizing had changed character. He studied her with a gaze as penetrating as that of the wolf for which he'd been named.

  His face had lost the boyish softness that had made him almost pretty, the years having imparted a ruggedness to his features that his nearly-imperceptible facial scars only served to enhance. And of course his hair was longer now, as shaggy as an Englishman's. Yesterday it had been neatly combed, but this morning it hung in stray tendrils over his forehead.

  Silence hung heavily between them. She'd come here with a purpose, but somehow this seemed an inopportune moment to say what she had to say. Instead, she said, inanely, "You have so many scars."

  He looked down at the old, well-healed injuries that marred his body. "No more so than most soldiers."

  She sat on the bench next to the one he'd slept on. "Yesterday, His Highness mentioned you as being part of his private retinue. I'd always thought you were a stipendiary soldier—a mercenary who fought for pay."

  "I started out that way—Luke and I both did. William recruited us right before...before you came to Périgeaux that summer, for his Brittany campaign." Chuckling humorlessly, he rubbed the back of his neck. "What a disaster that turned out to be."

  "Your father was a wise man—he predicted the Brittany defeat."

  "Aye," he said. "Just as Milo predicted that the English witan would choose Harold over William."

  "And that William's army would respond by rushing across the Channel."

  "We didn't rush," Alex said testily; she'd struck a nerve. "'Twas a well-planned invasion, and we conquered England with a single battle. A good day's work, even if I didn't walk away completely unscathed."

  "Is that where you got..." she began, eyeing the worst of his scars, a jagged gash on his side that disappeared beneath the waist of his drawers. "Nay, I don't want to know."

  "This?" She froze in astonishment as Alex casually untied the drawstring and lowered his drawers, maintaining the barest coverage for modesty's sake while displaying his mangled hip in its entirety.

  "Blessed Mary," she whispered, taking in the deep and disfiguring gouge, as if his flesh had been torn off the bone by wild beasts. "I'm surprised you can still walk."

  "It did take a bit of work to get back on my feet after this one," he said, hiking the drawers up and retying the cord. "It still seizes up on me if the weather's cold and damp. 'Tisn't from Hastings, though. It happened a few months later, while we under the command of a sheriff in Cambridgeshire, subduing rebellion. Luke and I were on the way to Hauekleah, for his wedding to Faithe, when two Saxons ambushed us in the woods. One of them had this...well, it's a farm tool, really, but peasants use it as a weapon, and it's a good one—a great mallet with a spike on it—"

  She shuddered. "I don't think I want to hear this."

  He smiled slightly, and she saw something in his eyes, a glimmer that reminded her of how it had once been between them, when they used to meet in their cave and talk for entire afternoons. He was still easy to talk to, she realized with some measure of surprise. Despite everything, she found herself relaxing in the presence of this half-naked, hung-over, ravaged soldier she had loved as a boy.

  "What about that?" She pointed to a gash on his calf.

  "Wolves."

  "Wolves?"

  "Well, one wolf. The whole pack was after me, but—"

  "I don't suppose any of your wounds were actually earned in battle," she said.

  He surprised her by laughing. "This" —he pointed to a deep crease in his right forearm— "is my memento of Hastings. A Saxon with a fistful of throwing axes."

  "Ah." She rubbed her arms.

  Alex bent over to retrieve the wad of clothes his head had been resting on, which caused him to squeeze his eyes shut briefly, in evident pain. Extracting a pair of chausses, he sat on the bench—facing her this time—to insert first one foot and then the other into the woole
n hose. "This arrow wound on my thigh is from the northern expedition a year or two after that. William paid off most of his mercenaries at the end of that campaign, thinking things would settle down and he wouldn't need them again. I refused to go, which seemed to impress him at the time. He drew me into the ranks of his personal corps, and I've been there ever since. He still pays me, but that's only because I won't take land."

  He stood to pull up his chausses and tie them off, his keen gaze fixed on her the whole time. "You always did have a way of making me go on and on about myself," he said quietly. "What of Nicolette de St. Clair? How has she fared these past years?"

  Nicki looked off toward the river. "I think you know how I've fared."

  She entertained the rash urge to tell him about her and Milo's predicament—that they were going to lose Peverell if she failed to bear a son by the appointed date. But she barely knew him anymore. How could she disclose something so personal, so potentially calamitous? Moreover, he'd pity her even more than he did now, and she didn't think she could stand that.

  When she looked back at him, he was studying her with an oddly intent expression that she fancied held a trace of sympathy. She smoothed the skirt of her pale blue gown. "There were two northern campaigns, weren't there?"

  He gave her a look of amused indulgence that let her know he was aware of effort to direct the conversation back toward himself. She supposed he'd had enough experience with that tendency of hers to know it when he saw it.

  "Aye," he said, shaking out his big, wrinkled shirt, "we headed up north again in the winter of sixty-nine, to rout the Danes out of Yorkshire. They fled over the Humber River, meaning to gather supplies, so we..." He frowned uneasily. "You don't want to hear this."

  "I do."

  He gathered up the shirt and lowered it over his head. It was partially open, displaying the smooth planes of his upper chest, the topmost ridges of his belly. "We burned them out," he said. "We followed them past the Humber and gathered all the farm implements and foodstuffs into giant piles and set them on fire. We slaughtered cattle, torched houses..."