What an extraordinary wench.
Dominic stroked his closely clipped mustache and black beard as he studied her.
That hair. Gold and red and russet. It makes her skin look like particularly fine cream. I wonder whom I must pay to have her in my bed. Father, brother, uncle?
Or husband…
Dominic frowned. The thought of the wench being married didn’t appeal. The last thing he wanted to do was give the Norman-hating vassals of Blackthorne Keep an excuse to cry off the bargain King Henry had forced. The Scots thanes and minor Saxon nobility might mount all the local wenches at will, married or no; but let a Norman touch a local woman against her husband’s desire and the complaints would be heard all the way to London.
Is the wench married? That is the question.
Yet instead of asking about marriage, Dominic asked after the queen of falcons that had been King Henry’s gift to his newest great baron.
“Did my peregrine arrive safely?”
“Aye, lord,” William said quickly.
“How is she?” Dominic asked.
But it was the girl he spoke to, not the falconer.
“Fierce,” Meg said.
Then she smiled as she realized Dominic had taken her for what she appeared to be, a common maid. Relief, amusement, and a curiosity about the dark knight made Meg decide to stay rather than flee as she had first thought to do.
“Life pours through her like a torrent of fire,” Meg said. “She will repay well the man who takes the time to gentle her.”
A shaft of desire went through Dominic, startling him. He wasn’t a boy to harden at a girl’s smile and double-edged words. Yet he had done just that, undeniably. Were it not for the fall of his side-fastened cape, his instant response would be visible for all to see.
“Stay by me while I visit her,” Dominic commanded.
There was naked demand rather than polite request in his voice. Meg barely stifled her instant irritation and the unease that grew greater with each moment she was in Dominic’s potent presence.
Dominic saw Meg’s mixed reactions and was again intrigued. Most girls of her station would have been delighted at any sign of a lord’s attention. Yet he sensed quite clearly that she was getting ready to run from the mews.
“A man’s first moments with a new falcon are critical,” Dominic said. “I want her to accept me without hurting herself by trying to flee when no flight is necessary.”
“Or possible,” Meg muttered beneath her breath.
“Exactly.”
Dominic noted the tiny tightening of Meg’s mouth and the slight widening of her eyes in surprise at being overheard. He read other people with the ease of a farmer reading the seasons or a priest reading the Bible. The smile he gave her would have been taken by most people as a sign of reassurance.
But Meg saw through Dominic’s gentle smile to the calculation beneath.
“Have no fear,” she said crisply. “The falcon is hooded. A sightless falcon flies nowhere. She awaits your gentling.”
“Will you help me, lady falconer?”
“I am…Meg.”
“Lord Dominic le Sabre,” he said.
“I suspected as much.”
Again, Dominic smiled slightly, enjoying the wry edge of the maiden’s tongue.
Meg tried not to smile in return. She failed. It was impossible not to soften, for his flash of amusement had been real rather than calculated.
Dominic’s smile widened as he read Meg’s answer in the relaxation of her body. No longer was she poised to flee.
“Then come with me, maid Meg. William will see to your honor. Or have you a husband to stand for you?”
The falconer began coughing fit to choke. Meg whacked him soundly between the shoulder blades and prayed that he wouldn’t give away the game. She suspected that her future husband would be more relaxed with a cotter’s wench than he would be with his unwilling Saxon bride.
“There, William. Are you better or should I thump some more?” As Meg bent solicitously to the falconer, she whispered, “Enough, William! If you can’t keep me secret, I’ll go to the peregrine without you!”
The falconer cleared his throat heartily and pulled his mouth into a flat line as though he would never smile again. Instantly the line fractured into laughter. He clapped his hand over his mouth and made strangling sounds.
“I think we should leave the poor fellow to it,” Dominic said smoothly. “Stay here, falconer. You’re coughing fit to frighten a stone, much less a falcon newly come to your mews.”
Meg glanced sideways. Her heart lurched when she saw Dominic watching her. There was a masculine calculation in his eyes that was different from his previous self-control. It was hot rather than cold.
He wanted to be alone with her.
“Which mews?” Dominic asked.
“I—er, there,” she said, pointing.
“Show me the way.”
Common sense told Meg to refuse. Curiosity made her accept. She could learn much about a man from the way he handled a fierce, captive falcon.
Warily Meg led Dominic to the mews housing the new peregrine. The room was three times the size given to the priest’s falcon. An opening set high in the wall admitted fresh air and light. Only the air was appreciated by the peregrine, for she was hooded. It was a way of keeping the bird from dashing herself uselessly against the walls in search of freedom or exhausting herself by thrashing at the end of her leather leash.
Small bells chimed when the falcon moved restlessly on her perch, sensing people within her mews. As Dominic and Meg entered, the bird spread her powerful wings and turned her head from side to side, listening intently. Despite the hood, she could hear quite well.
Meg whistled an intricate five-note call, one she used only for this bird. Recognizing the call, the peregrine calmed, folding her wings. The small chiming of bells faded into silence.
“She is magnificent,” Dominic said in a low voice.
“A bird for princes or great barons,” Meg agreed.
“Does she come to the wrist yet?”
“Mine, aye. She is wary yet of men.”
“Wise,” Dominic said. “At this moment she knows us only as her captor, not as the partner in the hunt we will become.”
The peregrine shifted restively at the sound of Dominic’s voice. Bells chimed at the end of the leather jesses that trailed from each leg. Her hooked beak opened and her wings spread as though to attack or defend.
Dominic whistled, exactly duplicating the five-note call Meg had used. Startled, Meg turned and stared. Even the falconer had difficulty making his whistle sound like hers.
The falcon cocked her head quickly, orienting on the familiar whistle. When it was repeated again and again until it made a soothing rill of sound, the peregrine edged across her perch, getting closer to the source of the music. When a leather gauntlet nudged gently against her talons, she stepped forward onto Dominic’s wrist.
“Touch her as you normally would,” he said in a low voice.
Meg would have to stand very close to Dominic to reach the falcon as she normally would. She hesitated, divided between wariness and curiosity at what it would be like to stand within this man’s reach as the falcon did, breathing his scent, hearing the soft rush of his breath.
Bells spoke, signaling the peregrine’s increasing restlessness.
“Go on,” Dominic murmured. “She grows nervous of your silence.”
Speaking quietly, praising the proud falcon’s strength and beauty, Meg stroked her fingertips over the peregrine’s head, her wings, her breast, her cool legs, blowing gently into the falcon’s face all the while.
“Indeed, you are the most perfect falcon in all the realm,” Meg said softly. “Your wings are swift as a storm wind, your talons strike like lightning, and your courage is greater than thunder filling the land. You will never turn aside from the hunt. The death you bring will be clean and certain.”
The temporary blindness of the hood had he
ightened the peregrine’s response to messages from her other senses. Surrounded by the scent, touch, and sounds that had comforted her since she had arrived in the strange mews, the peregrine became calm yet alert, focused entirely on the woman who touched and spoke to her so kindly.
Meg turned toward Dominic, a silent question in her eyes. The answer came as he began stroking the falcon as she had, head and breast and wings, his touches both gentle and certain. Unhurried, as though there were no more demands on him than those placed by the need to reassure the beautiful captive falcon, he stroked her and whistled her five-note call.
Fascinated, Meg watched. When the bird became restive at the strange breath bathing her, Dominic showed no impatience. Long minutes passed as he began the ritual all over again and yet again, touching the falcon as Meg had. Slowly the bird calmed, accepting him.
Only then did Dominic speak to the peregrine, praising her fine beak and the proud curve of her head. Bells jangled as the falcon moved restlessly, unused to Dominic’s voice. Again, he showed no impatience. He simply began all over again, repeating the calming ritual until the falcon accepted his touch, his voice, his breath bathing her.
Meg let out a sigh she hadn’t been aware of holding in. Smiling with pleasure, she watched Dominic finish gentling the falcon. He had a fine touch, light and yet firm. Even when he turned the bird to the light to see her better, she accepted him without restlessness.
“You are very gentle with her,” Meg said softly.
“Falcons respond best to gentleness.”
“And if they responded best to beating?”
“I would beat them,” he murmured matter-of-factly.
There was silence while Meg measured anew the dismaying extent of Dominic’s self-control. Had she not sensed the pain buried so deeply within him, she would have thought him an utterly cold man.
“Again, Meg,” whispered Dominic. “Let me see your hands gentling her.”
But this time it wasn’t the peregrine on his wrist Dominic watched. It was Meg’s graceful hands, her slightly parted lips, and her breasts rising beneath her open coat. His nostrils flared slightly as he drank in the scent of spices that rose from Meg’s body like heat from a candle flame.
Desire surged powerfully, making Dominic uneasy. A warrior who wasn’t in complete control of himself made mistakes. Fatal mistakes.
With the ease of long experience, he reined in his impatience to bed the wench. He couldn’t control his body’s hard response, but he could control what he did about that arousal.
“It might be worth captivity to be touched so sweetly,” Dominic said after a moment. “Do you caress your lovers with your breath and fingertips, maid Meg?”
Startled, she turned toward him. He was very close, and he watched her with a falcon’s intensity. In the half-light of the mews, his eyes gleamed like quicksilver.
“I—I know not such things,” Meg said.
“Is your husband so ungenerous, then?”
“I’m not married.”
“Excellent,” Dominic said, blowing gently over the peregrine. “I would be loath to sever that which was melded together with God’s blessing, yet I find I want you as my leman. Do you have a father or an uncle who will receive your price?”
Spine straight, chin raised, Meg said coldly, “You overreach yourself, lord.”
The clear tone of outrage in her voice amused Dominic.
“How so?” he asked.
“You are to be wed on the morrow!”
“Ah, that.”
Dominic turned aside long enough to replace the peregrine on its perch.
“Marriage is for land and heirs,” he said.
With no warning, Dominic turned and pulled Meg against his body, testing her response to a direct approach. When he lowered his head as though to kiss her, he felt the refusal in her stiff body and saw it in the fierce glitter of her eyes. The wench was as proud and aloof as any peregrine. And like a hunting bird, she would have to be taken by stealth rather than force in order to achieve the desired result.
God’s teeth, why couldn’t it be a willing wench who tugged at my loins?
But it wasn’t. Not yet.
With a mental curse at being forced to go through the prolonged formalities of physical seduction with a simple cotter’s wench, Dominic tipped Meg’s stiff chin up with his cupped hand. If she were as cold as her voice, no seduction was possible; and that, too, had to be determined.
“Small falcon,” Dominic said, “marriage has nothing to do with this.”
The tender sensuality of Dominic’s tongue as he traced Meg’s lower lip was completely unexpected to her. She went still while strange sensations shivered through her body, making her feel as fragile as flame, as valuable as a dream come true.
How can so ruthless a man be so gentle with me? Meg asked herself wonderingly.
Inside Meg, as deeply held as Dominic’s cry of pain, Glendruid hope lifted its careworn head. Perhaps now, after one thousand years, perhaps now the waiting would finally be at an end….
Then Meg saw the cool patience in Dominic’s eyes and remembered what he had said about the falcon: if beating the bird would have taught it trust, he would have beaten it.
He is using tenderness on me as surely as he used it on the peregrine. But Glendruid eyes see more clearly than even a falcon!
Meg wrenched free of Dominic’s grasp so quickly that the peregrine spread her wings and called in sharp distress.
“Be still,” Dominic said. “You frighten my falcon.”
Though soft, the icy command in his voice was as unmistakable as the jangling bells on the falcon’s jesses.
“Soothe her,” Dominic said.
“Soothe her yourself,” Meg retorted softly. “She is your captive. I, sir, am not.”
3
STANDING JUST INSIDE THE DOORWAY of the bath on the keep’s fourth floor, Simon watched his older brother warily. Dominic had been in uncertain temper since he had been to the mews that morning. Discovering that his future wife wasn’t going to break bread with him until the wedding feast tomorrow had done nothing to improve Dominic’s mood.
“The women’s hall,” Dominic said in disgust.
Black cape flung back, fists on his hips, Dominic looked around the bare stone room. The draft from the gutter that emptied into the moat was severe. The wall hangings and wooden screens that might have tempered the chill were absent. The bathing tub was more suited to a woman’s size than to a man’s.
The water, at least, was hot. It breathed a warm mist into the chill room.
“Why in the name of all the Angels of Judgment would a man put the only bath—such as it is—in the women’s quarters?” Dominic demanded.
“John has never been beyond Cumbriland,” Simon said calmly. “He never had a chance to learn—and enjoy—Saracen ways. He probably thinks bathing will endanger his manhood.”
“God’s eyes, was the man good for no more than sowing crops of bastards over the countryside while his wife still lived?”
Wisely, Simon said nothing.
“The bailey wall is more wood than stone,” Dominic snarled, “the armory is a rust closet, the fields are barely plowed, the cisterns are like sieves, the pasture is eaten down to rock, the fish ponds are more weed than water, the dovecotes are a shambles, and there isn’t even a rabbit warren to put meat on the table in winter!”
“The gardens are excellent,” Simon pointed out.
Dominic grunted.
“And the mews are clean,” Simon continued.
Mentioning the mews was a mistake. Dominic’s expression flattened into savage lines.
“God rot a lazy lord,” he snarled. “To be given so much and to use it so badly!”
Simon glanced aside at Dominic’s squire, who was looking very unhappy. Simon didn’t blame the boy. Few men had seen Dominic in a temper. None had enjoyed the experience.
“Is everything at hand for your lord’s bath?” Simon asked.
The squir
e nodded quickly.
“Then see to your lord’s supper. A mug of ale, perhaps. Several, actually. Cold meat. Cheese. Has the kitchen managed a decent pudding yet?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Find out.”
“And while you’re about it,” Dominic cut in, “find where my betrothed is hiding!”
The boy left the room with unseemly speed, forgetting to pull the drapery into place behind him.
“He has fought Turks with less fear,” Simon said as he straightened the drapery so that it cut off all drafts from the doorway. “You frighten the child.”
The sound Dominic made was more growl than answer.
“Is your peregrine ill?” Simon asked.
“No.”
“Were the mews badly kept?”
“No.”
“Should I find a handmaiden to attend your bath?”
“God’s blood, no!” Dominic said. “I need no whey-faced wenches sniveling over my scars.”
When Simon spoke again, his voice was as flinty as his older brother’s.
“Then perhaps you would like some practice with sword and shield?” Simon suggested softly. “I will be delighted to do the honors.”
Dominic spun toward his brother and gave him a measuring glance.
For a few taut moments, Simon thought he would get the fight he had suggested.
Abruptly Dominic let out an explosive breath.
“You sound irritated, Simon.”
“Just following your lead.”
“Um. I see.” Beneath Dominic’s beard, the corner of his mouth kicked up slightly. “Will you attend my bath, brother? I trust no one else at my back in this keep.”
“I was going to suggest that very thing. I like it not that your betrothed evades you and your host is ‘too ill’ to greet you in a proper manner.”
“Aye,” Dominic said grimly. Dominic unfastened the big Norse pin holding his cape in place and tossed the fur-trimmed cloth over the trestle table standing near the door.
The cape settled over the small chest Simon had brought into the room and set the candle flames to shivering in their holders. Also on the table was a pot of soft soap.
Untamed Page 3