By His Majesty's Grace

by Jennifer Blake

  He gave a soft snort followed by a sigh. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I resent him for being born legitimate and first in our father’s affection. Maybe he was coming to my aid on the field today, instead of joining Graydon in his attack.”

  “How can you think otherwise?”

  “Easily, when I consider that any personal attack was forbidden, but I met one, anyway.”

  She skimmed her cloth over the great bruise that was shaded with purple-and-blue tints and centered by a long line of red. His mail must have been all that saved him from more permanent injury due to that blow dealt from behind. “You defeated Graydon and could have ridden him down and demanded ransom,” she said in meditative tones. “Yes, and Henley, too, I expect. Why didn’t you?”

  He hunched a shoulder. “I feared I might kill rather than capture. I preferred not to add to the sins of the battlefield that weigh my conscience.”

  “Sins of the battlefield?”

  “The killing at Bosworth Field,” he said in quiet strain. “Men become—I become—an animal in the midst of a fight, a beast that fails to think beyond the moment. A king’s knight whose only purpose is his orders and the need to stay alive no matter the cost to other men.”

  She brushed over the bruise again, deeply disturbed by the self-loathing she heard in his voice. “Yet you had the presence of mind not to kill Graydon.”

  “That was different.”

  She weighed the iron in his tone, spoke, anyway. “How so?”

  “The melee was relatively bloodless compared to…” He halted, said again after a moment, “It was different.”

  “Or you are less an animal than you think.”

  “A more calculating one, most likely. But never mind. Tell me how dutiful a wife you intend to be on this our wedding night.”

  She didn’t care for the deliberate change of subject when she had meant only to ease his needless self-blame. His derision that went with it, and the determined light in his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder, were also unwelcome. Tossing the cloth she held into the soap-clouded water that covered his lap, she put her good hand on the side of the tub and began to rise.

  He closed one hand on her wrist, reached to catch her waist with the other. A cry of outrage caught in her throat as she was pulled off balance. Water splashed in bright droplets as she landed in the tub with her legs draped over the side and her bottom pressed firmly into the cradle of his thighs.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “My shift will be soaked. I’ll have nothing to wear tomorrow.”

  “You may need nothing,” he said, placing a hand on her abdomen to hold her down as she struggled to rise. With his other arm, he reached around her and held her firm by clasping the fullness of her breast.

  She redoubled her efforts, shifting, kicking to gain purchase. “My hair will be wet, too. Let me up.”

  “I’m trying to keep it dry, but you’re making it hard—making other things hard, as well,” he said, speaking against her temple while laughter threaded his voice. “If you don’t be still, you may be bedded in a tub.”

  Her every muscle stiffened as she felt the shaft of rigid flesh that lay beneath the curves of her bottom. Her heart thudded against her ribs. Her chest rose and fell with the swift tempo of her breathing. “What…” she began before her throat closed. Swallowing hard, she tried again. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, Isabel, how can you ask?” He shook his head, even as he held her down with his elbow while delving under the water, his long fingers skimming, grasping and squeezing her curves. “Though what I really want at this minute is to find the cloth you threw at me—”

  “I didn’t!” she protested.

  “That you threw at me,” he continued implacably, “so I may serve you as you have served me.”

  “I’ve had my bath, thank you.” She made a small lunge toward escape, but desisted at once as he pressed upward with her, somehow nestling himself more firmly into the space where her upper legs came together.

  “To my regret.”

  “You aren’t supposed to bathe me. It’s not seemly.”

  “I am your husband and you are my wife. To serve each other in divers small ways before we take our pleasure, and take it merrily, is just as it should be.”

  “Merrily,” she repeated with a catch in her voice.

  “Just so.” Finding the cloth, he drew it out, dripping, then compressed it in his fist so water cascaded down, wetting the fabric over her breasts. The rose-pink of her aureoles bloomed under the wet linen, while her nipples became as beaded as plump, ripe berries. Bending his head, he sucked the wet cloth over one, and the flesh beneath it, into his mouth.

  Her gasp turned to a moan of shocked gratification. Without intending it at all, she lifted a hand to his wet hair. She threaded her fingers through it to hold his head in place as he laved her, suckled her, breathed hot against her and circled her tight, tight nipple with his tongue before taking it into his mouth again. She forgot that she wanted out of the tub, forgot her fear of what he intended. All she knew was the hard strength of his arm that supported her, the firmness of his chest where her shoulder rested against him, the warm water that pooled around her lower body and the intoxication that raced in her veins.

  Rand lifted his head, taking her mouth with the same sure possession as her breast. She met his tongue, accepting its glide, its marauding exploration, its friction against hers. The taste of him urged exploration of her own. She accepted the enticement, sweeping the curves of his lips, their smooth surfaces where his pulse throbbed, thrusting inside as she felt the gentle adhesion of his welcome.

  He slid his hand under her shift before she knew it, slipping it between her legs, clasping, holding. A shiver raced over her at his intimate incursion, and she held her breath an instant, releasing it into his mouth with a low sound of unwilling enjoyment. Liquid heat flowed from her, warmer than the water that cooled around them.

  He growled, released her mouth and lifted her to balance on the rim of the tub until she could sit upright. Surging to his feet, he caught her against him while he stripped off her wet shift and let it fall. Lifting her in his arms then, he stepped from the tub. Dripping water that made wet tracks across the rushes, he carried her to the bed and fell onto the feather mattress with her.

  She turned to him as he stretched out beside her, over her, half burying her in the feathered softness. Trembling, aching with the need to feel him against her skin, she clung, and almost cried out when he drew away. But he only rolled her to her back again and buried his face between her breasts, brushing aside the heavy gold chain of his reward before kissing his way downward over her navel, down to her damp curls. He threaded his tongue among them, found the small, most sensitive bud hidden there. While she thrashed, turning her head back and forth on the sheeting, he tasted her like some succulent August pear, drinking her sweetness. And when she was mindless and gasping, near desperate with need, he slid upward, spreading her thighs wide to accommodate his hard hips, and filled her in a single, fluid glide. The barrier inside was found and breached so swiftly she had no time to resist. It burned, a stinging pain, yet faded almost before it began.

  He went still, every muscle clenched. She thought his jaw muscles creaked a little as he opened his mouth to whisper against her hair. “Is all well with you?”

  She gave a small nod. It was the most she could manage while he filled her to such completion it was almost more than she could sustain. He withdrew a little, and she inhaled as if he had left breathing room. Yet she wanted him back again, reached with spread fingers to smooth her way down the firm line of his back to his backside. Grasping the tight curves, she drew him toward her once more while reveling in the heat, the slow friction.

  He pressed forward on a glide of hot, strong muscles, then set a rhythm that made her choke on a moan of bone-deep surcease. She met it, matched it, twined her legs with his to urge him on, drew up her knees to take more and more of him. Her very being opened to him,
clung to him with deep internal contractions. All consciousness of who and what she was vanished. She wanted nothing more than this, the endless sounding of body and mind, the close and elemental connection.

  Surcease wound its way up from somewhere deep inside—burgeoning, mounting, spreading—until there was nothing else in the universe except the hot, bloodred glory and the man who held her. Her throat ached with tears that spilled from her eyes, draining into her hair.

  “Rand,” she said, a low cry of amazement mixed with some primal mourning.

  He opened his eyes, looked deep into hers while his face contorted with an expression like agonized grief. She felt the pulsing of his heartbeat deep inside her, the first swelling force of his explosive completion. She closed her eyes and buried her face in his shoulder then, unable to bear the thought of what might come to them, unwilling to witness his final surrender.

  9

  Rand came awake with every sense suddenly, acutely, alive. He did not move but lay staring into the early-morning dimness inside the bed curtains. After a moment, he relaxed, smiling to himself as he absorbed the feel of full arms and warm, feminine curves pressed against him. He was replete, and why not? He had taken his bride not once or twice but any number of times between dark and this dawn, the last time at cockcrow. How aptly named, that first daylight hour when man and beast began to stir and to rise.

  His body was on the verge of readiness again at the mere thought. It seemed his hunger for the woman he held could scarce be sated. She was so very responsive in her ladylike fashion that it fueled his hunger beyond imagining. Who would have dreamed such reservoirs of passion lay beneath her cool and distant demeanor? It would be his pleasure to plumb them one by one until she was free and easy in her expression of them, until she could look him in the face when together they reached la petite mort, the little death of love’s apogee.

  That was, if he lived to have her again. The fear that he would not was what had driven him to use her so sorely. She had been a virgin, unacquainted with bed sport, unused to its rigors. He should have exercised more care and concern, should have given her time to become accustomed. The devil of it was that time was far from certain.

  His body was as unruly as a rutting ram. One thought of Isabel’s moist, hot softness and it sprang up, waving in search of it. ’Twas best if he quitted the bed before he did something he would regret, such as use her yet again in spite of her soreness. He should give her respite, at least until night came again.

  Easing away, he slid from under the sheet that covered them. Half-off the mattress, he halted. Isabel was turning, stretching in sybaritic languor, one hand reaching out as if in search of his warmth against the early-morning cool. Dear God, but she was lovely, a vision of heaven with her hair spread over the pillow, her lashes lying like silken feathers on the faint shadows under her eyes and the milk-white globe of one breast, capped by its peak the color of a sun-blushed peach, rising above the cover.

  Hot need clawed at him. With a silent oath, he sprang away, jerking the bed curtains closed behind him. Naked but far from cool, he strode to the small window let into the stone wall of the chamber. He knelt on the window seat built into its recess, opened the heavy wooden shutters and leaned out, breathing deep.

  He was bewitched; he must be, held in the thrall of one of the accursed Three Graces of Graydon. Yet the last thing he wanted was for it to end. The very last thing.

  Isabel had given him absolution for the injury to her stepbrother. Did it mean she truly saw him as a man instead of a senseless destroyer like one of Leon’s infernal machines? Or only that she despised Graydon more than she disliked him? Either way, he was more grateful for the heart’s ease of it than he cared for her to know. He honored the impulse in her as highly as he honored her as his wife.

  His wife. At last.

  He closed his eyes while he breathed a small prayer that there would be no end to this miracle. Or at least not yet.

  The scents of the morning came to him on a stray breeze, those of horses and hay, baking bread, roasting meat, fermenting hops, animal dung and too-human humanity. Brought to the present, he saw that the window looked out over the stables and, beyond them, to the mews for the king’s hunting hawks. Sparrows chirped and sang from where they lined the near stable’s rooftop ridge or scratched in the loose hay that filled the spaces between the cobblestones of the frontage yard. A cat stalked from the stable door and birds flew up like leaves blown before a gale. One spiraled higher than the others, fluttered an instant before Rand’s face and then landed on the windowsill in front of him.

  “And a good morning to you, too,” he said in a base rumble. “Someone must have been feeding you their bread crusts.”

  The sparrow cocked its head and pecked at an imaginary crumb. Rand put out his hand, half expecting the creature to fly off. Instead, it hopped upon his thumb and sat there, waiting.

  He chuckled quietly, charmed against his will. At that instant the bells of the abbey began to ring. The small bird paid no attention. His feathered friend had either greeted the dawn with a thankful heart already, or else was inured to the clamor that called those less blessed to their morning prayers.

  A whisper of sound came from inside the room. Rand turned his head toward the bed. Isabel had pulled aside the bed curtains and lay watching him. A faint smile curved her mouth, warming her eyes to the color of summer leaves. A strange sensation invaded his chest, constricting his heart in a grip so tight that its beat altered.

  Before he could speak, a scratching came on the door. Rand thought he knew who to expect, but called out in question, anyway, though his gaze never left Isabel’s face.

  “It’s David, sir. With bread and wine to break your fast.”

  Isabel snapped the bed curtains shut, closing herself behind their protection. Rand made certain no slit between them remained before he strode to the door. As he swung it open, David entered with a laden tray. He flashed a single glance toward the bed as he placed his burden on a table, then turned strict attention to setting off the basket of bread, jug of wine and silver goblet it held. That done, he reloaded it with the half-empty jug and wine-stained goblet from the night before. The untouched cheese, nuts and apples, he left behind.

  “Excellent,” Rand said. “Come back in an hour.”

  David inclined his fair head. “As you command, though you may wish to hear what passes.”

  “And that might be?”

  “The queen left the castle at daybreak. With her traveled her mother, her sisters and the king’s mother, the Duchess of Richmond and Derby, along with a guard of a thousand men-at-arms. Official word is that they journey to Winchester, where the queen will remain for the forty days of seclusion before childbirth. Court tittle-tattle says the king is near out of his mind with worry for her safety and that of his unborn heir. He believes last evening’s La danse macabre was an assassination attempt.”

  “And so fears they may try again.”

  “As you say.”

  Rand rubbed a hand over the bristles on his chin as his thoughts moved like quicksilver through his mind. “And the Master of Revels?”

  “They still seek him high and low. He is nowhere to be found.”

  “Too bad,” Rand said with a frown. “I suspect there is much Leon could tell us.”

  David’s smile was grim. “So thinks the king. He will not deal lightly with him if he shows himself.”

  “A fine reason for staying out of sight.”

  “Guilty or not,” David replied in dry agreement.

  A rustling sound came from behind the curtain. Both he and David heard it, Rand knew, though both pretended otherwise. “Where could he have gone?” he asked. “Who might he know that would hide him?”

  “No one can say,” David said. “He knew everyone, was beloved by the ladies, but had few friends.”

  “He can’t have disappeared, not unless he made for the coast and a fast ship for the continent.”

  “Not impossible.”
David, without appearing to give it a moment’s thought, moved to the tub where sat the cold, soap-scum-ladened water from the night before. Bending, he picked up Rand’s hose, his doublet and shirt, draping them over his arm.

  “No,” Rand said thoughtfully, “but is it likely? Would he abandon all he knows here?” His thought was for the people the troubadour had known, especially for Isabel. In the Master of Revel’s place, he would not have left her without some attempt to clear his name.

  “You think he tried to kill the king?” David asked, tipping his head so he watched from the corners of his eyes.

  “God alone knows. Any at the high table could have been the chosen victim.”

  “Or all of you,” his squire said.

  To that Rand made no answer. It was too true to require one.

  “So we will spend the day searching, along with the others?”

  “Would that I could, but the king will not allow it. Mayhap I can direct some manner of search party from the hall. I know naught else to do.”

  His squire picked up Isabel’s shift from where it had landed near the foot of the bed. Shaking it out, he held it up a moment, then draped it across his arm. Rand thought he must intend to deliver it to Isabel’s serving woman for washing, but refused to ask.

  “You are certain you are equal to it?” the lad inquired, his gaze on what he was doing.

  Rand glanced involuntarily at the bed. “I am certain.”

  “I meant because of the bashing you took during the melee, and your burns.”

  “Of course you did,” Rand said on a growl as he walked to the door and held it open. “You will not return, after all, but meet me at the stables betimes. You may send my wife’s serving woman to her, but not now. In an hour will do. Mayhap two.”

  “Aye,” David said, his face without expression, though an imp of humor lay half-hidden in the blue depths of his eyes.

  Rand slammed the door behind his squire. Turning away, he poured wine, added water, picked up the basket of fresh baked bread and approached the bed. The bed curtains opened and Isabel reached out one hand to take the wine. With the other, she caught his wrist and drew him into the haven within.