So Great A Love

by Speer, Flora

  “You are not a coward, but I'll do as you ask.” Margaret sat back on the bed, keeping her hands on his shoulders, wanting to maintain that much physical contact with him, so he would know he was not alone. “I am listening, Arden.”

  “As you know, I went to the Holy Land in company with my Uncle Oliver and my cousin, Roger,” Arden began. “Oliver was my father's brother, younger than my father by only a year, and they were close as twins. Aldis was to live at Wortham while her menfolk were gone.”

  Arden fell silent for so long that Margaret feared he wouldn't continue.

  “Tristan mentioned once that he joined the three of you in Sicily,” she said, gently prodding him to speak again.

  “So he did, and from that day we four traveled together.” Arden was quiet for a moment more, as if he was choosing his words carefully. “By the time we reached the Holy Land, most of it was already under control of the Christian armies and had been for some years. The Saracens were determined to retake their lost territories, especially Jerusalem, which is as sacred to them as it is to us, and so they kept up a continual warfare. For the most part, our Saracen foes behaved with as much chivalry as did our own warriors. Sometimes, they were more generous, especially in the treatment of prisoners. But in any war there are villains, and on both Christian and Saracen sides there were bands of men who broke away from their armies to lead a rough existence out in the desert, where they were bound by no laws, save for the few rules they made for themselves.”

  Again Arden paused and Margaret, understanding that what he had said so far was only a prologue, kept her silence and waited for him to continue.

  “One band of Saracen brigands was particularly irksome near the area where we were encamped. Uncle Oliver led a group of men, including Roger and me, into the desert to seek them out and destroy them. Of course, the brigands employed spies to keep them informed of our movements. The rogues knew in advance that we were coming and they were lying in wait for us. They took us by surprise and they killed every man in our troop except my uncle, my cousin, and me. The three of us they bound and carried away to their camp.

  “We were angry at our defeat and we grieved for our slain comrades, but at first we were not particularly concerned for our own personal safety,” Arden continued. “We assumed our captors intended to hold us for ransom, which was the usual custom. We soon learned otherwise.”

  Once more he stopped, and again Margaret waited, sensing through her fingers still resting on his shoulders the tension building in him. When he resumed speaking a new note in his voice sent a cold shiver down her spine.

  “What they wanted,” Arden said, “was to make sport of us, to mock and debase us, while they forced Uncle Oliver to watch. Five of them held me down, two at my wrists, two at my ankles, with one sitting on my shoulders and grinding my face into the sand, because I fought so hard against what they were doing. I could hear Roger struggling and moaning nearby and I knew they were doing the same to him. And over it all, through my pain and disgust at what was happening, above Roger's cries and my own helpless oaths and the cruel laughter of those bandits, the desert wind whined across the sand dunes, singing a dirge for my manhood. How I hate the sound of the wind!”

  Peering over Arden's shoulder, Margaret caught a glimpse of his face before he turned it away from her, and she wondered if he was going to be sick.

  “They tortured you,” she said, hoping to spare him further painful explanation.

  “It was torture, and worse than torture. They did to Roger and me what no man should ever do to another person.”

  Margaret stared without comprehension at his stiff shoulders and what she could see of his averted face, until he spoke again.

  “They did to my cousin and me what men too often do to women who are captured during warfare,” Arden said, adding in a bitter tone, “Can you appreciate the irony of it, when the two of us and Uncle Oliver had repeatedly threatened death to any man in our company who so mistreated an unwilling woman?”

  “But, how could -?” Suddenly, she understood. Horribly, sickeningly, she knew what he had endured and why, out of shame, he held himself apart from all others, why he kept to himself with such rigid control. Except for her. He had opened his heart to her, trusting her with a truth so terrible that he could barely bring himself to speak of it. Tears for his pain filled Margaret's eyes; anger against his tormentors filled her thoughts. “They did that to you? As if you were a woman?”

  “Aye, as if I were a woman,” he repeated. “But I was not a woman! I was a man, a knight and a respected warrior! I cannot describe the helpless rage I felt in that hour of degradation, a rage I still feel whenever I allow myself to think of it. It's why I attacked Eustace yesterday.”

  “Eustace?” Margaret repeated, startled by the change of subject. “What has Eustace to do with what happened to you?”

  “He said I was not a real man,” Arden reminded her. “I must tell you, Margaret, that I feared what your brother said was true, that what I dreamed of finding in you was only a false hope, that I was, as Eustace so mockingly said, no longer a man. For after what happened, I was incapable of feeling physical desire. You are the first woman I have wanted since that day in the desert.”

  “You are still a man,” she said. She was so touched to hear him speak of finding hope in her that she had to blink away tears and clear her throat before she could continue. “I have always believed the best way to conquer a fear is to face it directly. That is what you have done. You have proven your manhood to me tonight, to my great pleasure and, I believe, to yours, also. Let there be no more doubt in your heart on that score. Arden, tell me, when did that dreadful event occur?”

  “More than five years ago,” he answered.

  “Where was Tristan? Did he not ride with you that day?”

  “No. Tristan was ill of a fever. A fortunate illness,” Arden added. “I am glad he was not with us. If he had been, he might well be dead, like Roger. Or worse, he might have become like me. I am glad he was spared that horror.”

  “Does Tristan know what happened?”

  “You are the only person I have told,” Arden said, “though there is one other who knows. When Oliver's troop of men did not return to camp for two days and Tristan learned we were missing, he got out of his sickbed to lead one of the search parties looking for us. It was Tristan who found me wandering crazed and half-dead in the desert and who took me back to camp. There a captive Saracen physician, an honest and capable man, cared for my injuries. He never spoke of the matter in any direct way, but I could tell that he knew what had been done to me. When Tristan or the other men came to visit me, my kind physician attributed my fever and my continuing lassitude to the days I had spent beneath the desert sun without water or adequate shelter, and to grief from seeing all of my comrades killed.”

  “How could you bear to stay there, in that land, after what happened?” Margaret asked.

  “It was months before I was recovered enough to care where I was or to think of traveling,” Arden said. “Isabel's father, Lord Garmon, was also in the Holy Land during that time, and he and Tristan soon became friends. Almost a year after Tristan rescued me from the desert, Garmon received news from Aquitaine of the death of his older brother. The family title thus passed to Garmon. I think he already harbored the idea of marrying Tristan to his daughter, so he invited Tristan to go home with him. Tristan suggested that I go along, too.”

  “And so you all went to Aquitaine and Tristan married Isabel,” Margaret said.

  “It becomes a happier story when one speaks of Tristan,” Arden told her with a twisted little smile.

  “I wish your story could reach a happier ending,” Margaret said. Then, after a moment during which she considered how best to say what was in her thoughts, “Arden, is there any way for you to put that horror behind you and let it fade into the past?”

  “If that one incident were all, perhaps, in time, I could set it aside and go on,” he said. “But there is
more to tell, and the remainder of the tale cuts even more closely to the bone and marrow of manhood and of honor. That part of my story I must tell first to my father before anyone else; it's the reason why I returned to England. And when he has heard it, I do not believe my father will forgive me.”

  “I do not find you at fault in any portion of the story, as you have told it to me,” Margaret said, wanting to give him what comfort she could. “I will never betray your trust in telling it to me.”

  Still kneeling behind him, she ran her hands along his shoulders, to his upper arms and back again. Fearing he might not understand the message she was trying to convey by touch alone, she spoke the words she believed he needed to hear.

  “Earlier tonight, when I lay close in your arms, when you were part of me, I said that I love you. Nothing you have said or done since that moment has changed what is in my heart.” Daring rejection, she reached around and caught his chin in the fingers of one hand, forcibly turning his face toward hers and making him look at her for the first time since he had begun his terrible story. “I love you, Arden. I will always love you.”

  “If I could believe that -” He pulled away and stood up, leaving Margaret kneeling on the bed among the tangled sheets and quilts. He walked to the brazier and stood next to it, fists on his hips, his gaze fixed on the glowing charcoal in the pan.

  Margaret stared at his broad shoulders, his naked back, his long, straight legs – and she was shaken by a gust of desire so intense that she feared her heart would stop from the strength of her passion. Every feminine instinct she possessed told her that Arden's welfare and the future of their marriage depended on what was said and done between them in the next hour. Once, she had fancifully imagined that he was constrained by an evil enchantment. After listening to his story she knew the evil that bound him was worse than any magic, for it was the evil memory of an intolerable reality. She knew of only one cure for Arden's affliction. The remedy was love.

  “Believe this,” she said, holding out her arms to him, though his back was to her, “believe that I want you in my arms again, that I want you deep inside me, with your mouth on mine and your hands touching me in places where I never until this night imagined anyone would want to touch me.”

  “After what I’ve told you, still you make such a request of me?” He turned to her abruptly, and took a long breath at the sight of her kneeling unclothed on his bed with her arms outstretched, inviting him to join her. His voice was a bit unsteady, betraying emotions tightly restrained. “You are not repulsed by me?”

  “How could I be?” she asked. “I love you.” Those words must be her answer to all his objections, for her boundless, unconditional love was all she had to offer him.

  “Ah, Margaret, if only -” He broke off, shaking his head.

  She believed she knew what he meant to say. He was not free to love her, not until he had spoken with his father and revealed the part of his story that he could not yet tell her. And, afterward, perhaps he still would not be free.

  “Let me love you,” she said, “and comfort you, if comfort is what you require. It will make me happy.”

  “I have done nothing in this life to deserve a woman such as you,” he said, and put out his hand to trace the shape of her lips.

  “Come to me, Arden. Make me yours again.”

  As if he could not stay away from her, he moved close enough for Margaret to catch his arms, to run her fingers over smooth skin and hard muscle, upward to his shoulders. His once-cold eyes were warmer, were a pale, clear blue, and very bright when they met hers. Smiling at him, Margaret tugged at his shoulders.

  Without warning he bore her down onto the bed and came down on top of her. Margaret reveled in the exciting heat of his skin upon hers.

  “You smell like a summer meadow,” he murmured, “and your hair feels like warm sunshine in my hands. For so long after that first night, when I discovered you here, asleep in my room, the sheets carried your fragrance. I could not go to bed without thinking of you.”

  “And when you thought of me, did you want me?” she asked, well aware that he wanted her now. She could feel, hard against her thigh, just how much he wanted her.

  “My longing for you was a sore trial to me,” he whispered with his lips against her ear. His hands stroked over her hips, his fingers straying with deliberate delicacy into the crevasses and hidden curves of her body. “It has been the sweetest, most painful torment ever inflicted on a man.”

  Margaret dared to laugh – and took the further risk of daring to tease him.

  “Perhaps you ought to invent a suitable punishment for me, to pay me back for my perfume,” she suggested.

  He reared up to look at her, and there on Arden's face was the closest thing to a real smile that she had seen since his return. There, for a few precious moments, was the youthful Arden she once had known, all shining warmth and bright good humor, and his sparkling blue eyes were dancing.

  “What would you like me to do, Margaret?” he asked, teasing back at her.

  “Kiss me until I swoon,” she answered, and saw the corners of his eyes crinkle with amusement.

  “I'll do better,” he promised. “I will show you what words cannot say.”

  He did kiss her until she was near to swooning, and he did not confine himself to her lips. He started at her forehead and kissed every inch of her body, right down to her toes. He used his tongue and his skillful hands, he nibbled and sucked and blew his warm breath into her until Margaret was aching, trembling, sobbing in uncontrollable desire. And then Arden rose above her and lifted her into his arms and made her his in one smooth, possessive stroke, and held her tight, safe against his warmth and strength, while the two of them burst into a joining so complete that Margaret knew it would never end.

  Much later he laid her down upon the pillows again and pulled up the quilt to keep her warm. He propped his chin on one hand and lay looking into her eyes and Margaret saw that, though some of the hard and chilly Arden had returned, a part of the younger, softer man lingered, too.

  “That was no punishment,” she whispered, touching his face with gentle fingers. “That was a glimpse of heaven.”

  “The only glimpse I am ever likely to be granted.” Sadness shadowed his expression, leaching the humor and warmth from his face. “You are so beautiful, so good. And I have done irreparable harm to you.”

  “I love you, Arden.” It was the only thing she could say, and her heart ached to see his eyes turn bleak and cold as soon as she spoke.

  “Go to sleep, Margaret.” He kissed her brow and lay down beside her, but not touching her.

  Later, when she thought he was asleep, she moved closer and put her head and one hand on his chest. Immediately, his body stiffened and went perfectly still. For a time he did not even breathe, but he made no objection to what she did. After a while, very slowly, his arm came around her and held her closely and gently, as if she were a priceless treasure that he feared he would break if he were not very, very careful.

  Chapter 20

  Down in the hall, Phelan and Eustace had at last staggered off to bed with the assistance of two of Royce's men. The ladies had also retired for the night – far more soberly – and Father Aymon was in the chapel, saying Compline, his final prayers for the day. Only Royce and Tristan were left at the high table. Tristan was slowly sipping a cup of spiced wine, while Royce finished the last of the almond pudding.

  “Now, Tristan,” Royce said, pushing his bowl aside and smiling at the maidservant who hastened to remove it, “you and I are as private as we are likely to be for the next hour or so. In the letter you sent to Wortham, you wrote that you are carrying information from a friend of mine, that you would put into my hands when we were together.”

  “Yes.” Tristan reached into the small leather bag attached to his belt and pulled out a much-folded parchment. “I've kept this with me at all times since Sir Braedon gave it to me.”

  “Braedon?” Royce accepted the parchment. Bre
aking the wax seal, he began to unfold it.

  “He is one of your secret agents, isn't he?”

  Royce went very still, watching Tristan.

  “He never claimed that he was,” Tristan said quickly. “Braedon was visiting Lord Garmon, who is Isabel's father.”

  “I know who Lord Garmon is,” Royce said.

  “I have a habit of noticing little things,” Tristan went on. He waved a hand in front of his handsome face. “I have this naive, boyish look to me, so people assume I am not very intelligent. I don't mind, for it's convenient. I listen and watch, and it's amazing how much I can learn. Sir Braedon's sobriety and his quietness intrigued me. Then, in early December, the rumors started and I noticed how Braedon was listening almost as carefully as I was to what people were saying.”

  “What were the rumors?” Royce asked.

  “That The White Ship didn't sink by accident,” Tristan answered readily. He leaned toward Royce, speaking now in a quieter voice. “The rumors claim the ship was sabotaged in hope that young William, King Henry's heir, would be drowned in the sinking. Supposedly, William wasn't a strong swimmer.”

  “That part of the story is true enough.” Royce's fingers continued to unfold the parchment, but he kept his gaze on Tristan's face, watching Tristan's reaction to a sudden change in subject. “How did you convince Braedon to give you this letter?”

  “Actually, Braedon approached me,” Tristan said, showing no sign of guilt or confusion. “People in Lord Garmon's household know that Arden is your son and he made no secret of his plan to return to Wortham. The night before we departed for England, Braedon asked me to carry this letter to you. I assume it's his report on whatever he learned in Aquitaine, and that he sent it by me because I am only an innocent traveler.”

  Royce was unable to repress a sudden bark of laughter at the idea that Tristan was an innocent.