by Speer, Flora
She knew she was putting her religious vocation in jeopardy for the sake of a man who might not value her at all once his passion had been slaked. She feared the unceasing desire he aroused in her, and she took full heed of his warnings. Yet all of those perfectly good reasons for leaving him alone seemed of no consequence when weighed against the fact that Arden was in torment. He admitted as much. She could help him. She possessed the power to ease his body, and his mind, too, if she was able to convince him to talk about what was troubling him so deeply.
And she wanted him. Though Margaret had never yearned for any man before coming to Bowen Manor, she understood that the heat curling through her lower body, the trembling in her thighs, the tightness in her breasts and the confusion of her thoughts were all aspects of her longing for Arden.
“Margaret?” He was looking at her as if he would devour her.
Seeing his need written clear on his face, Margaret put aside all reservations. Upon her husband's death she had promised herself that never again would she submit to any man's lust, yet she was finding it impossible to resist Arden. The convent, her future, even her stern father, she would worry about at some later time. In the moment when her eyes met his, all that mattered to her was Arden and his unhappiness, and her desire to alleviate it.
“Will you kiss me, or shall I kiss you again?” she asked.
With a groan he gathered her closer and put his mouth on hers. Margaret was not experienced enough to tell whether the sound he made was a sign of delight or of pain. After a heartbeat or two it did not matter which it was. Eagerly she opened her mouth to him and Arden's tongue plunged into her, seeking, searching out the most delicate, most sensitive, hottest places. She was consumed by his kiss and she rejoiced in the heat that flooded every part of her being.
Pulling his lips from hers Arden kissed her forehead, her eyelids, nose, cheeks, and chin in a rush of passion that left her trembling. His tongue seared across her throat. He grabbed at her hips, yanking her forward until she was made unavoidably aware of his rising hardness. She rubbed against him, savoring the evidence of his manly strength. She wound her fingers through his thick hair, and shuddered with the growing need that filled her.
Arden swept her off her feet and into his arms. His eyes glittering like shards of pale ice, he carried her into the lord's chamber and placed her on the bed. It took him only a moment to light a candle and latch the door. Raising herself onto her elbows, Margaret watched him come to her.
With the charcoal brazier not yet lit, the room was cold. Arden stripped her clothes off as quickly as he could and tucked her between the sheets before attacking his own clothing. She saw him naked and oddly familiar, with the flame of the one candle throwing his sharp features into bold relief, and the vivid scar she recalled snaking across his thigh. There were, as she had guessed, other scars previously hidden by his shirt. And there was the part of him that stood up so hard and ready for her.
He lay beside her, and gathered her into his arms, and Margaret sighed with pleasure at the sensation of his skin against her own.
“I remember you holding me like this,” she murmured.
“I remember, too,” he said, kissing her brow. “How soft and sweet-scented you were that night, and how warm, when I was so cold.”
“Touch me the way you touched me then,” she begged. “Kiss me as you did not kiss me then.”
He did all she asked, and then he did more. There was no part of her body he did not caress. He kissed her from forehead to toes. He unbraided her hair and drew it over her shoulders and breasts, using the shimmering length of it to entwine himself until they were wrapped in each other. They lay so close together that Margaret began to believe they were truly one flesh.
She had not guessed at the pleasure he could bring to her. She had only yearned for Arden's touch, and to be near to him, and she was willing to accept the inevitable discomfort of sexual relations, if she could provide even a brief release from the unhappiness that held him captive.
But Arden did not merely take what she offered. He gave to her in return, teaching her with his mouth and his nimble hands just what a man could do for an eager woman. Lying between her thighs, his fingers probing within the sleek, dark hair where her legs joined, he entered a place that Margaret was amazed to realize was hot and moist and eager for him.
His fingertips pressing and circling and stroking a sensitive spot that she had never guessed existed, Arden carried her to such heights that, when the full realization of what was happening burst upon her, he lifted himself upward to catch her astonished cries of release in his mouth. Waves of heated pleasure washed over her and she dug her nails into Arden's shoulders, clinging to him for shelter lest she be swept away on a gust of passion far stronger than the wind that howled outside the manor house. Afterward, with his fingers still stroking gently inside her, she lay with tears of joy upon her cheeks.
Margaret understood at last that what she had endured in her marriage bed was no more than a travesty of true passion. Whenever Lord Pendance entered Margaret's body, he had hurt her, for entering her promptly and seeking his own pleasure had been all that interested him.
Arden was supplied with manly attributes far exceeding those of Lord Pendance, and Margaret was eager to receive him. She ached to hold him within her body, and she knew beyond any doubt that when Arden possessed her, his hard maleness would inflict no pain. Caught up in her first experience of womanly passion, of delicious, languorous desire, Margaret wanted all that Arden had to give her.
When she held up her face to him, he kissed her with unconcealed enjoyment and considerable warmth. When she caressed him, he returned her gentle gestures. She could see that he wanted her, yet he evaded all of her attempts to lead him to completion of the act that, she was certain, would result in an outpouring of mutual, intense delight. After a time, when all of her senses were tuned to a state of exquisite responsiveness by Arden's romantic attentions and she was quivering with her almost unbearable need for him, his continued reticence in this one matter became more disturbing than ever.
“Arden?”
Margaret moved restlessly, and Arden, his head upon her belly, gritted his teeth in the attempt to control himself. Drowning in the many-flowered fragrance she used, and in the far sweeter, more alluring essence of her womanhood, he wanted only to bury himself deep inside her, to lose himself and forget his blood guilt in Margaret's welcoming warmth. He had been a fool to think it would be otherwise, to imagine that he could touch and taste and give her release and not want all of her.
“Please, Arden,” Margaret whispered, “come into me. I'm near to dying for want of you and I'm not afraid.”
“You should be afraid.” He raised his head to look into her luminous gray eyes. He was shaking with his need, with the fierce urging of a manliness he had for years believed was permanently dead. His heart quaked with a different desire, and with an unspeakable fear. “I cannot do that to you, Margaret.”
“I know you wouldn't hurt me.” She touched his cheek. Then, apparently emboldened by what had passed between them in the last hour, she let her hand slide slowly downward.
He caught her fingers, stopping her before she reached her goal. He sought for a reason she would accept, certain she would reject him utterly if she knew the truth about him. He found an excuse in her oft-stated explanation for why she had fled her arranged wedding.
“What will happen to you after you have entered that convent for which you so yearn, only to discover a few months later that your body is swelling with my child?”
“I hadn't thought of that,” Margaret said.
“You should have thought of it. As you told me earlier tonight, you are no green girl.” It saddened him to see the warm light go out of her eyes, to watch as passion was replaced by worry. He hastened to relieve her mind. “We have done nothing this night that could possibly get you with child. In that at least, I have been scrupulous.” He lay back against the pillow and put his right ar
m over his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at her. “I shouldn't have brought you into my room, Margaret, shouldn't have done the things I have done to you.”
Guilt swept over him. It was not the old, familiar sensation that he knew from long experience could never be erased, but a newer, more complex sense of wrong-doing generated by the way he had used Margaret to try to ease his own need for human contact, for his desire to hold her close and ever closer, until they were one.
It seemed Margaret did not see it that way. She knelt on the bed, considering what he had said. Her loose hair cascaded over her bare shoulders, strands of it falling into her eyes. She tossed her head a little and lifted a hand to brush the hair off her face. Her upper body shifted with the movement, and candlelight gleamed on her softly rounded breasts.
Arden stopped breathing and held himself perfectly still, making tight fists of his hands, knowing he should not have removed his arm from over his eyes, because seeing her kneeling there so close to him made him want to grab her by the shoulders and push her down onto the sheet and attempt to take her until she screamed out her wild joy. But he was incapable of taking her. He knew the humiliation he would face if he acted on his hopeless desire, and the embarrassment she would suffer as a result.
“It was I who urged you,” she said, “I who wanted you to take me to bed and I who am even now willing to deny you nothing.”
“Do not offer yourself to me again,” he whispered fiercely, trying in vain to hide his shame. Surely, Margaret could sense it. “You do not know to whom you speak. I am not worthy to look upon you, let alone to undress you or touch you as I have done.”
“I think you do yourself a disservice, my lord.” Though she was deeply puzzled by his behavior Margaret set aside desire with a firm effort. She decided she would stay where she was for a little while longer and take advantage of their physical closeness to talk quietly with him. Perhaps he would say something that would provide a clue to the strange problem that bound him so tightly and so unhappily.
She lay down next to him, pulling his left arm around her shoulder. She tugged up the bedcovers and snuggled into the warmth provided by Arden's body. As she moved around to arrange the quilt, her hand brushed against the part of him that was still rigid. She wondered if it would stay that way indefinitely. There was an empty place deep within her body that still ached for what he had refused to give her and it disturbed her to be so close to what she could not have. The reason Arden had given her for withholding himself was a good one, but Margaret believed it was not his only reason.
As she worked at his left hand until his fingers loosened from their fisted shape so she was able to weave her own fingers through them, she thought again of Arden's reasoning – that she could not remain in a convent if she were found to be carrying his child – and she almost laughed out loud. For the realization came to her as naturally as the sun rises each morning that she no longer wanted to enter a convent. After what Arden had made her feel, Margaret knew she would enter a convent only as a last resort, to save herself from her father's ambitious scheming. At that thought she released a long, rough sigh, for it was her father's schemes that had set her on the path toward a convent in the first place, and the same path had led her to Arden's bedchamber. She had come full circle, and she had no idea what to do next.
* * * * *
Arden felt Margaret's sigh, felt, too, the way her soft breast rose and fell against his side. He reflected that he seemed to have a genius for inflicting difficult forms of penance upon himself. He inhaled Margaret's fragrance with every breath he drew, her willing body lay curled next to his, her fingers were wound into his, and he feared he would die of wanting her. Or, worse, that he would give in to his vile desire and attempt to take in full all that she so generously offered.
The minutes passed. Margaret's breathing became slow and even, and Arden could tell she was asleep. He told himself he ought to carry her across the solar and put her to bed in her own room, but he delayed, suffering the sweet anguish of holding her while denying himself.
After a while a peculiar kind of peace came to him, a further easing of the hard knot that had lain in his heart for so long. Untying of that knot had begun in this same bed, on the first night he had come to Bowen. Now, with Margaret in his arms, Arden discovered that he could almost believe in hope again.
He inadvertently tightened his arms around her shoulders and she stirred, murmuring softly, and cuddled a little closer. Arden stroked her hair and she quieted, trusting his touch and his nearness.
He wondered how she would react if he told her all about himself, what had befallen him, and what he had done. He thought he knew what her response would be. She would flee from him in utter disgust. She would race to the nearest convent and hide herself there and refuse ever to see him again.
He could not bear to tell her. He did not want her to learn the terrible truth. To keep Margaret safe from the horror and the guilt that lurked in his heart, and to protect himself from her revulsion if she knew, he must end their sweet winter interlude – and with its ending, his faint glimpse of hope would vanish.
A single tear escaped his burning eyes, the first tear he had shed since the day when his old life ended. One tear, no more. He could not allow himself any further weakness, could not let the bitter, pain-releasing tears fall, any more than he could allow himself to attempt to release his seed into the beautiful, eager body of the woman he – the woman he—
Arden swallowed hard, fighting for emotional control. Grief, the desire for sexual pleasure, and the admission of the depth of his feelings for Margaret, all must be ruthlessly suppressed. Arden had a duty to perform. It was his only possible chance to save his wicked soul and make right the monstrous wrongs he had committed. He dared not fail in that duty. And he could not drag Margaret with him into the blackness of the pit where his heart, his hope, and his lost youth lay bleeding.
Chapter 14
“You moved me after I fell asleep last night,” Margaret said to Arden. She looked a bit flushed, her wimple forgotten again, her face pale save for a spot of color that rose on either cheek when Arden appeared in the solar.
“I thought it a good idea to put you in your own room before the household began to wake up,” he said, trying to invest his voice with a coldness he did not feel. “It will be better if you don't have to respond to prying comments or questions. How is Catherine this morning?”
“Much improved. She's dressing now. If you wait a few moments, you may see for yourself how well she is.” Margaret seemed confused by his manner. Her eyes were worried and her lower lip trembled a time or two before she got control of herself.
“In that case, I will say what I must quickly, before she comes.” Arden looked into Margaret's soft silver-grey eyes and marveled at the pain he felt at what he was compelled to do. Surely, the pain was for her sake, because of the emotional distress he was about to inflict upon her.
For himself, since he did not believe in the romantic love that troubadours sang about, the discomfort he was experiencing could only be his body's reaction to the loss of a particularly tempting bed partner. So he told himself, convinced by the morning's light that the tender emotions of the darker hours were naught but fantasies. He would fight and conquer the demands of the loathsome body that had betrayed him too often with its weaknesses and its demands. Then, when he finally faced his father, he would confess his sins and pay the price for them like the true man he had once been.
And he would never again touch Margaret in desire. Still, there was no need to hurt her unnecessarily. To spare her, he would take the blame upon himself.
“We must end this affair between us,” he said, speaking as gently as he could. “What I did to you last night was wrong.”
“What you did to me?” Margaret exclaimed, looking every bit as upset as Arden feared she would be. She lifted her chin, regarding him coolly. “Allow me to remind you, my lord, that I cooperated without a word of protest. Indeed, I encouraged
what you did. I invited it.”
“Since you have often expressed your wish to become a nun, your cooperation and your encouragement were both most unseemly, Lady Margaret,” Arden said, matching her sudden reversion to formality with his own. “A sinful man can have nothing to offer a woman who lives in the happy expectation of one day attaining heaven.”
“I see.” She didn't, really. Margaret thought he was talking nonsense. In purely practical terms, Arden had a great deal to offer any woman. Bowen was his and, in time and with the king's consent, he would inherit from his father Wortham Castle and the rank of baron. Any sensible Norman father would be pleased to give his daughter to Arden – except for Margaret's father, who had other plans. But then, so might Arden have plans. For all Margaret knew he, or his father, had already arranged his marriage. He had not mentioned a betrothal, but it was one possible reason for his unexpected behavior this morning.
And yet, Margaret believed what Arden was talking about had nothing to do with the practicalities of life. It had to do with the secret part of him, that he intended to keep concealed, the part of his soul that had prevented him from possessing Margaret as she had wanted – as she wanted still – to be possessed.
“The snow last night has turned to rain this morning and the ice that remains will soon melt,” Arden continued. “The roads will be muddy for a while, but in a day or two they will be passable. You will want to continue your interrupted journey to a convent as quickly as you can, before your father discovers your hiding place.”