Five Unforgettable Knights (5 Medieval Romance Novels)

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Holden made no speech, but cast a look of longing toward his bedchamber window that tugged at Cambria’s heart. Then he turned his mount and took his place at the head of the company.

  “Forward,” he commanded. The journey had begun.

  Chapter Ten

  Cambria paused in the sheltering shade of an old sycamore and wiped the sweat from her brow with her dirty wool sleeve for the hundredth time. The weather had turned uncannily warm over the last few days, but the necessity for secrecy required that she keep the miserably stifling cloak about her. Her feet were blistered from the ill-fitting shoes and the pace Holden insisted on maintaining, and she could hardly stand her own camouflaging odor of stable filth and wet wool. But the worst of it was that it seemed she’d made the trip in vain.

  Sir Owen was behaving so damnably nonchalant that she almost believed she’d imagined or misunderstood that whole exchange in the knights’ quarters. It looked as if she’d gone to a great deal of trouble for nothing. But it was too late to turn back. She was committed now to the journey―every sweating, dusty, wretched mile of it.

  The de Ware men made the travel particularly nauseating, filling the balmy air with boasts of their feats of prowess in battle and in bed. To her disgust, even her own Gavin knights joined in the melee. According to all accounts, of course, none could hold a candle to the de Ware brothers. When their prattle became too coarse for her blushing ears, she dropped back to join the servants. There, at least, it amused her to hear the women’s versions of the same stories, which were unquestionably more authentic and less heroic.

  They stopped to set up camp as the sun sank low in the cloudless sky. A nearby stream flowed into a deep pool shaded by elms where Cambria stole away for a brief, refreshing dip. Afterward, she had no choice but to put on the same dusty surcoat, and her wet hair clung to her neck beneath her hood. But at least she’d managed to scrub away the stink of the road.

  Upon her return to camp, she set to work digging wild leeks for the evening pottage. A chatty young English girl with ragged blond hair and sly eyes accompanied her. Cambria paid little heed to the girl’s patter until she mentioned the name of Holden de Ware.

  “What’s that?” Cambria asked, feigning indifference.

  “I said, I wonder how long it’ll be ‘fore the lord picks one of us to warm his bed.”

  “One of us?”

  “Aye,” she said with a naughty wink. “Annie thinks it’ll be her, and Margaret’s been struttin’ under his nose like a lone hen in a coop o’ roosters, but I’m thinkin’...”

  “Isn’t the lord newly wed?” Cambria asked evenly, clenching a pair of leeks in her fist.

  “Oh, aye,” the girl divulged in a whisper, “to an ice queen, they say, who won’t even let him betwixt her legs.” She giggled. “Can you imagine, not sharin’ the bed of a de Ware?”

  Cambria blinked. Her back stiffened. Ice queen―was that what they called her? Worse still, was everyone privy to the sleeping arrangements between Lord Holden and herself?

  “Oh, la, if he were mine,” the girl continued dreamily, stroking the long leaves of her leeks, “I’d let him flip me on my backside any time o’ the day, to feel those strong legs o’ his wrapped ‘round―“

  “Enough!” Cambria commanded sharply.

  The girl started at the authority in Cambria’s voice.

  “Enough...leeks, I should think,” Cambria continued lamely, astonished by her own ferocity.

  “Oh, aye,” the girl replied uneasily, scratching her head. “I s’pose so.” She shook the dirt from the last few leeks and tucked the lot of them into the front fold of her kirtle.

  The servant’s words haunted Cambria all afternoon, and by supper, she could only nibble at her food while she watched Holden across the fire.

  It was easy to see why all the maids were agog over him. Golden flame glowed upon his face, accentuating the fine bones of his cheeks and the strong set of his jaw, while the full moon’s light fell across his hair in gentle silver waves. One powerful hand rested across his bent knee, while the other curved around his flagon of wine, and as he drank, his sleeve slipped up to display the flexed muscle of his forearm. His eyes, deep and pensive, revealed none of his thoughts, as he stared into the fire. His lips parted to drink his wine, and Cambria was reminded of his kiss and the way his lips parted to drink her passion.

  An astonishing wave of desire coursed through her.

  She turned her back on him abruptly to gather her wits, twisting in agitation at her wedding ring. She cursed under her breath. How soon, she wondered, would he choose someone to “warm his bed”? The women already buzzed about like flies on meat. They could hardly keep their hands and eyes off of him. The serving wenches sidled up to him as closely as they could to refill his cup or offer him another trencher, giggling like halfwits and speaking coy words of flattery. All this he accepted with diplomacy, neither showing particular favor to any one nor discouraging their attentions. Still, it rankled her to watch the vulgar display.

  She shouldn’t care, she knew. After all, it was common enough knowledge that English lords bedded whom they willed, when they willed, married or not. Virility was more highly prized than faithfulness. Besides, their marriage―hers and Holden’s―was purely political, wasn’t it?

  By the end of supper, she was as tense as an oversprung catapult, torn between self-pity and disgust, waiting anxiously for word that some wench had been called to the lord’s tent. But at last Holden retired to his pavilion, alone. For tonight, at least, she could rest easy.

  She’d just begun to drift off on a threadbare wool blanket amidst the lull of snoring when an old serving woman came to her. The beldame bore the message that she’d been summoned to Lord Holden’s pavilion. Cambria was certain there had been a mistake―she’d tried to remain all but invisible to the nobles―but the old woman insisted it was she the lord had called, the wench in the cloak.

  Her teeth chattered all the way there. Perhaps it was only the cool night air, or perhaps the idea of facing Holden sent a chill up her spine. Had he discovered her identity? Or had he, in some ironic jest of destiny, chosen her as a sweetmeat to end his meal?

  She drew the cloak about her face. The servant pulled aside the tent flap and bid her enter.

  The pavilion was dark inside. She hesitated, wondering in which corner of his lair the Wolf lurked. Before the old woman left, she lit a tall candle on a stand beside the pallet with her firebrand, throwing a pool of gold light across the enclosure. It appeared to be empty.

  Cambria stood still for several heartbeats, letting her eyes adjust to the candlelight. The tent was modestly furnished. A worn Turkish carpet stretched out across the hard-packed earth. There was a single carved chair and a large locked trunk for clothes and valuables. The thick, fur-covered pallet filled nearly half the space.

  Anxiety threatened to destroy her composure, and she fought to keep her expression bland. Her brain buzzed with a hundred different answers she could give if Holden questioned her presence. But none of them were even remotely convincing.

  ~*~

  Outside the pavilion, beneath the watchful moon, Holden paused. He took a deep breath, like a jouster preparing to charge. What would he say to her? What would he do? And most important, why was she here?

  If only he’d discovered her earlier... But once he was sure Cambria was safe behind castle walls, he’d focused his mind on nothing but the battle ahead, shunning the maids vying for his affections. He wished now he hadn’t ignored that particular maid in the cloak.

  He’d finally spotted her across the evening fire. A quick glimpse of the squared curve of her jaw lit by flickering flame had nearly caused him to choke on his wine. And then, watching her, he wondered how he could have been so blind.

  There were things about Cambria no cloak could mask. She had a most distinctive walk, for one thing, not a feminine gait, but a warrior’s long stride. Then there were the strong, sensuous, familiar curves and planes of her body, r
evealed when she pushed up her sleeves or hiked her skirts to step over a tree root, when she bent over to serve pottage or leaned far into a cart after a cup.

  But now that he’d discovered her, he had to ask himself why she’d come.

  He wanted to believe she’d followed him, as she’d threatened, in order to protect him from Owen. He wanted to believe her concern for him motivated her decision to counter his commands.

  But the sad truth was, he couldn’t be entirely sure of her affections. Other than her grudging admiration of his knightly prowess and the suppressed spark of desire he tended to inspire in women, he had no real proof of Cambria’s feelings for him.

  This alliance with the Border clans was too new, the king’s battle too critical, to overlook the possibility, as painful and improbable as it seemed, that Cambria might betray him. He knew she had contacts among the rebels―she had freed the three who’d attacked him, an attack too well arranged for his taste. She was likely sympathetic to the rebels’ plight―it seemed all Scots were romantics when it came to futile causes. And she was trying to distract him by casting suspicion upon one of his own men, Sir Owen, coincidentally the one who may have slain her father.

  Damn it all, he had to find out where Cambria stood, for the safety of his men. He couldn’t afford to allow her time to stir up revolt in the ranks or alert the rebel Scots of their coming.

  He sighed heavily and rubbed his hands together. He knew what had to be done. He had to question her. Although he despised the task, he was very good at eliciting information from less than willing individuals. He knew how much force to exert, and where, to get almost any prisoner to sing like a nightingale.

  But even as he considered it, he shook his head. He couldn’t raise his hand against Cambria. Such a thing was unspeakable. Besides, as proud as the little Scots warrior was, he knew threatening her with violence was absolutely useless. She was more than willing to die for her clan.

  Nay, he’d have to use a different attack to find the soft spot in her armor. He looked up at the dark heavens as if the answer lay there. A soft breeze blew at the nape of his neck, making the hairs there stand on end. And he knew.

  He’d use her own vulnerability―her very womanhood, that unexplored passion that lay below the surface of her cool exterior, denied for so long that she wasn’t even aware it existed. He’d use it to wring the truth from her.

  He rubbed his knuckles across his mouth as he contemplated the task before him. Summoning a passing squire with a motion of his hand, he quietly bid the lad bring a vessel of wine and two cups. His wife, he decided, was about to experience the touch of a master of seduction.

  ~*~

  Cambria heard the rustle of the tent flap, and she held her breath, shielding her face from view. When Holden entered, a dark, large, looming shadow, he breezed past her without acknowledgment. Indeed, Cambria thought he might not have even seen her. Slowly, silently she let the air leak out between her lips.

  Without looking up, he poured a measure of wine into two cups.

  “Don’t you roast, wearing that hood all the time?” he asked.

  She didn’t dare answer. He might know her voice. But as the silence lengthened, she began to believe his gaze could pierce the dim light and her shadowed hood into her very soul. She took the cup he held out for her in trembling fingers, turning aside and sipping at the wine.

  After a moment, he tipped back his own cup, finishing it off all at once.

  “You’re shy,” he remarked. “Have you never lain with a man before?”

  She gulped down the strong wine too quickly and was caught up in a spell of coughing. Holden reached out and clapped her a few times on the back, which didn’t help in the least.

  “Nay,” she croaked.

  Holden grimaced. How easy it was for her to lie, he thought ruefully. According to Guy and Myles, Sir Roger had bedded with her at the inn. He hoped to God she wasn’t lying about her loyalties as well.

  “Then it will be my pleasure to initiate you in the rites of passion,” he said.

  “But I don’t wish―“

  “Shh,” he soothed, “I’m your lord. You’re my vassal. I didn’t ask what you wished. I would bed a woman tonight, and I’ve chosen you.”

  Cambria swallowed hard. He certainly was matter-of-fact about the whole ordeal, and he wasn’t wasting much time. She felt as if she were poised at the edge of a waterfall, about to be pushed over. A torrent of emotions coursed through her―fear, anticipation, indignation, resentment―so rapidly she hardly had time to think.

  Holden set his cup down on the chest. Then he leaned aside and blew out the candle, leaving the pavilion in deep shadow disturbed by only the vague glow of the moon.

  Cambria resisted the urge to slip out the pavilion flap at once into the anonymity of the night. Then she scolded herself for her cowardice. She was on the battlefield now. Running away with no explanation would only postpone the confrontation.

  She stood tall. Her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the meager light when she heard him circling close about her. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his eyes burning into her, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to be devoured.

  He came up behind her, his breath in her ear so sudden she gasped in surprise and dropped her cup. The red wine spilled onto the carpet and was absorbed like a smothered scream. He pulled the hood slowly from her head, twining the fingers of one hand in her hair. The other arm he draped possessively across her collarbone and shoulders. His voice was deceptively gentle.

  “Do you know what is to come?”

  She remained silent, in spite of the alarm ringing in her head. Without warning, he subtly tightened his hold and clenched his fist in her hair. He wasn’t hurting her, merely keeping her prisoner in his grasp. Nonetheless she struggled against the confinement, her fingers pulling at the taut muscles of his forearm.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he whispered. “You’ve been kissed before, haven’t you?”

  She gave no answer. Her heart thrummed in her throat.

  “And I’m going to touch you―your lips, your neck, your breasts―in ways no one has ever touched you before.”

  With that promise, he forced her to endure that touch as he slowly ran the tip of his tongue up the side of her neck. A hot streak of lightning coursed through her body, as if a blade had done the deed. She shuddered, and a wounded moan issued from her lips unbidden.

  He placed delicate kisses against her throat, and she fought against the dizzying sensation. He breathed against her temple and massaged the back of her head.

  “You’re so warm...and soft...” He punctuated each of her attributes with a brush of his tongue against the various hollows of her ear. “Supple...and sweet...and beautiful.”

  She writhed in sensual torment against him. Then he ceased, and she shivered involuntarily.

  “Don’t...do that,” she gasped, fighting for a coherent thought.

  She should be outraged. After all, her husband was being unfaithful to her with another. Yet that other was none other than herself. It was all too confusing, particularly when he was driving her half-mad with that nuzzling beneath her ear.

  “Give me your lips,” he murmured against her cheek. “I would have a kiss.”

  Her heart plunged fearfully―he might recognize her kiss. But before she could duck away, he turned her head to his and ran his broad tongue boldly across her lips. When she opened her mouth in surprise, he closed his lips over hers.

  Never had she been kissed like this. The timid bussing she’d given him was nothing compared to this. He sucked gently on each lip, nipped at them as if tasting her. Then he deepened the kiss, drank her very soul from her and poured it back into her again. Even the passion of their wedding kiss paled against the purely erotic mating of their mouths now as his tongue tickled across, then moved languorously between her lips, parting them easily.

  She felt as if she were under an enchantment. Her limbs remained rigid in their po
sture of resistance, but her mouth acted with a will of its own. His kiss demanded an answer, and she gave it as her lips sought his with an age-old hunger.

  “Easy, my little nymph,” he coaxed, though there was strain in his voice. “We have all night. There will be more pleasure for you if we take our time.”

  With great dexterity, no doubt from practice, he parted her cloak and quickly loosened the laced front of her kirtle. The cool night air filtering over her bared skin startled her for a moment. Then, before she could guess his intent, he slid a hand beneath her gown and traced the outline of the top of her breast with schooled fingers. She gulped.

  ~*~

  Holden groaned. Her skin felt like silk beneath the pads of his fingers. What a fool he’d been to agree to that damned marriage document. He brushed a thumb across the fabric still covering her taut nipple, and she drew in a sharp breath. He tried, but couldn’t ignore the yearnings of his own flesh.

  “Stop. You mustn’t...” Cambria began in a curiously thick voice, attempting to sound authoritative and failing miserably.

  “Shh.” He stroked her again, absorbing her shiver with his own body. He could feel her resolve beginning to melt. Soon she’d be like molten iron on the forge, compliant to his will. That was if his own resistance held out, he thought wryly as a wave of desire flooded his loins.

  When he moved his hand to seek her other breast, she moaned softly against his cheek. He placed tiny kisses along the line of her jaw, continuing to caress and tease her with his fingers. Then, sensing her imminent surrender, he gently dragged her back against his body, gritting his teeth as her buttocks pressed against the throbbing column of his manhood. Taking a step backwards, he pulled her down with him onto his chair, settling her across his knees.

  “Now,” he told her in a voice he fought to keep steady as he twisted the wedding ring on her finger aright, “you will tell me, wife, why you’re here.”