“Don’t do that,” he said hoarsely, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop her.
“Don’t do this?” She stroked him firmly, just the way he liked.
“Oh, God.” Luke found himself on his back, with her hovering over him. He heard a silken rustle, sensed her raising her skirts, felt her knees on either side of his hips as she straddled him. “Faithe, no. Not here.”
Leaning down, she breathed into his ear, “Have you never done this with others nearby?”
“Aye.” Of course he’d tupped women in the presence of others. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d shared a woman with his comrades, or found himself in a brothel with enough wenches to go around, but only one room. But he’d been a soldier then, eager for nothing more than physical release, and the wenches had been… “They weren’t like you, those women. You’re—”
“Highborn and refined,” she finished, mocking him with laughter in her voice as she untied his chausses. “Convent-bred. Easily disturbed. Easily shocked.”
“Does nothing shock you?”
She laughed softly. “I rather enjoy a little shock from time to time. It keeps the bodily humors in balance.”
He moaned softly at the first touch of her bare hand on his throbbing organ. Her fingertips slid over the little drop of moisture at the tip. “You’re ready for me,” she said. “I’m ready for you, too.” She found his hand in the dark and pressed it between her legs. He probed her slick heat and heard her breath quicken.
“Let’s go outside.” He wrapped his hands around her waist, but she seized them and forced them onto the pallet on either side of his head.
“Don’t make me hold you down,” she whispered laughingly.
They’d been his words, that stormy afternoon in the barn, words meant to subdue, to control. Her turning them around this way took him aback, and he stopped struggling for a moment—long enough for her to maneuver him into her, just a bit.
“Oh, Faithe. Don’t…”
“Don’t what?” Holding his wrists down, she lowered herself onto him, taking his full length inside her. He felt her hot flesh close around him, felt the delicious, intoxicating pressure of her body squeezing him…
He moaned.
“Shh.”
“I cannot believe you’re doing this.”
“Lie still. Don’t talk.” He felt the soft glide of her hair on his face, her warm lips against his. “Don’t talk.”
She kissed him, her tongue mimicking the slow, steady rocking of her hips. He did lie still, although it would have been an easy matter to wrest his hands from her and pull her off him. Something in her tone and manner had stripped him of his will in this matter, absolved him of accountability, and he found, to his astonishment, that he liked it.
He liked having her hold him down and take him, almost but not quite against his will. He liked lying motionless in the dark, with strangers sleeping nearby, and letting his gentle, well-bred wife tup him senseless. He liked the tight little bands of her hands around his wrists, the hot luxury of her mouth plundering his, the slippery-snug embrace of her most intimate flesh. Each lazy stroke coaxed him closer and closer to completion.
He arched his hips to meet her thrusts. Instantly, she raised herself until they almost uncoupled. “Nay!” he whispered.
“Don’t move,” she reminded him. “And don’t speak.”
He forced himself to lie still, with his loins on fire and his heart on the verge of exploding. She resumed her maddeningly slow lovemaking. He felt her body tighten, heard her breath come swiftly as her own climax approached.
“Faster,” he whispered desperately, his body taut and shuddering.
“Shh.”
“Oh, God, Faithe.” It pained him to lie unmoving while this mounting urgency consumed him. His chest heaved. He was drowning, submerging in this intolerable pleasure.
He groaned.
“Don’t—”
Swearing harshly, he whipped his hands out of her grasp. She tried to rise off him, but he seized her hips and rammed her down hard. They moaned in union. Her fingers bit into his shoulders.
He thrust upward as he worked her hips, whispering her name, wild curses, things that made no sense. She whimpered as her body contracted around him, setting off his own sudden, frenzied climax. Pleasure erupted from him, consumed him entirely. He forced what might have become a scream into a low, ragged growl of gratification.
Breathless and shaking, they held each other tight until the last of the tremors coursed through them. And then they kissed and kissed, stroking each other’s hair, laughing softly into each other’s mouth, breathing endearments and declarations of love against each other’s lips.
Faithe grew heavy in his arms; he pulled his blanket over both of them. The other day in the barn, she’d threatened to seize the reins he held so tightly and show him what it would be like to let go of them—and that’s exactly what she’d just done. She was wise in strange and mysterious ways, his sweet little Saxon bride. She’d turned the tables on him, exercised a sexual authority he’d thought to be his exclusive domain.
She’d shocked him. And he liked it.
As he drifted off to sleep, he reflected with a smile that his bodily humors had never felt more perfectly in balance.
Chapter 17
*
“AQUITAINE,” SAID ISAAC Ben Ravid in his guttural accent the instant Faithe removed the mantle pin from her pouch. “‘Tis from Aquitaine.”
Damn . Luke closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Aquitaine? Are you sure?” Faithe asked.
Isaac’s warm gaze grew chilly for the briefest moment, as if she’d insulted him.
“I don’t mean to doubt you,” she said. “But you barely saw it. Are you sure—”
“Put it here.” The old man pointed to one of several anvils on the huge, scarred table in the middle of his workshop—a large room at the rear of his house. Morning sunlight poured into the chamber from two tall windows behind him, which flanked a small furnace. His handiwork, in various stages of completion, was displayed on shelves all around the perimeter of the room. There were gold and silver caskets, cups, circlets, girdles, brooches… even a few items, like a large silver chalice, that had obviously been commissioned by an officer of the Church.
Isaac sat at the table and picked up a tiny hammer, one gnarled hand automatically tucking his long white beard into his robe to keep it out of the way. He leaned over the brooch, so that all that could be seen of him was the top of his strange, pointed hat.
“This design around the edge,” he said, pointing with the slender handle of the little hammer, “is typical of the southern regions of the Frankish empire, as is the way the gold has been burnished.”
“But why Aquitaine?” Luke managed. “Why not Tolouse or Gascony?”
Old Isaac smiled a bit condescendingly. “There’s a world of difference between a mantle pin from Tolouse and one from Aquitaine. This” —he tapped the pin with a fingertip— “reminds me of the kind of thing I saw in the cities of Ventadour and Périgueux. The jeweler who created this piece is from that area.”
“Périgueux?” Faithe said. “It’s from Périgueux?”
Luke clenched his jaw until it hurt.
“Aye.” The old goldsmith lifted the pin and inspected it closely. “Or Ventadour, or perhaps Brive-la-Gaillard. Somewhere in that area.” Turning the pin over, he read the inscription out loud “‘To my youngest son. Be strong and of good courage.’ Did this pin belong to a soldier?”
“That’s what we think,” Faithe answered.
Isaac nodded. “Those sound like the words a father would say to his son when he sends him off to war.” He rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the piece and then handed it back to Faithe. “Why are you looking for him?”
She tucked the pin back into her pouch. “He murdered someone. My first husband.”
The old man’s expression sobered. “Then he should pay.”
�
�I intend to see that he does,” Faithe said quietly.
*
“PÉRIGUEUX, EH?” ORRIK’S gaze narrowed on the pin he held.
“Or Ventadour or Brive-la-Gaillard,” Luke quickly put in. “Somewhere in the area of Aquitaine.”
“He seemed very sure of it,” Faithe added, gratefully accepting the horn of ale Lynette handed her. She’d had no time to rest up from her exhausting trip to Foxhyrst, nor to change out of the dusty, rumpled kirtle she’d slept in last night. No sooner had she and Luke entered Hauekleah Hall than Orrik had appeared and begun hammering them with questions.
Alex joined them and took the pin from Orrik. “I suppose it might have come from Aquitaine.” He glanced at his brother. “It does look something like yours, after all. We already knew that.”
Luke accepted his own horn and drained it swiftly.
“Périgueux…” Orrik scratched his beard.
“Or any city of Aquitaine,” Luke repeated testily.
“That might be helpful,” Orrik said. “Folks from down there tend to be darker than those from the north. You two are perfect examples.”
Luke and Alex exchanged sober looks. Wondering at the cause of it, Faithe asked, “Do you know of someone? Another soldier from Aquitaine?”
“Nay!” they said in unison.
She sighed. “‘Tisn’t much to go on… a soldier with dark coloring.”
“But ‘twill help,” Orrik said. “We can enlist some men to help us make inquiries. Baldric can be spared, and his brother, Nyle, and there are three or four others, all good men.”
“How do you propose we use these men?” Faithe asked.
“They can start in Cottwyk and work their way out from there,” the bailiff replied, “visiting every single hamlet and farm and city in the area until someone identifies the man we’ve looking for. ‘Twill be a much more thorough search than I was able to perform on my own. We have more information to go on now, and we can get half a dozen men to help us. One of them is bound to turn up something.”
Faithe handed her empty horn to Lynette and turned to her husband. “What think you, Luke?”
He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Orrik rolled his eyes. “I suppose you have a better idea.”
“I’m going to send those men to Hastings,” Luke said.
There was a heavy moment of silence.
“Hastings,” Orrik said tonelessly.
Luke cleared his throat. “‘Tis wiser to start from the beginning—from Caedmon’s disappearance last October. I mean to investigate the reason for that disappearance, and track his movements through the winter.”
Faithe let Orrik ask it, not wanting to appear to doubt Luke, especially in front of the others, but not understanding, either. “Why? ‘Tis his death we’re investigating, not why he left Hastings, or what happened to him during the winter.”
Luke rubbed the bridge of his nose. Alex turned and looked out the window, leaning on the sill.
“The more we find out about what drove him away from Hastings,” Luke said, “and how he lived, the better we’ll be able to piece together the events that led to his death.”
Orrik shook his head. “I don’t see it.”
“Perhaps the circumstances surrounding the killing aren’t what they seem. Perhaps that’s why you’ve had so little luck in finding the man responsible, because you’ve assumed that Caedmon was killed over a…” He glanced uncomfortably toward Faithe.
“It’s all right,” she said quietly, touching his sleeve.
“But what if that’s not the way it was at all?” Luke continued. “What if Caedmon knew his killer? What if it had naught to do with the woman? What if—”
“What if, what if, what if,” Orrik growled. “This is absurd. Caedmon died because some Norman cur couldn’t wait his turn. I’m sorry, Faithe.” He’d gone red in the face, as he always did when he was upset. “But, for God’s sake! We know how he died, we know why he died, and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with his disappearance from Hastings.”
“I think it does,” Luke said calmly.
“Then you’re a fool,” Orrik spat out.
“Orrik!” Faithe gasped. Alex turned around.
“And frankly,” Orrik ground out, seemingly oblivious to Faithe’s outrage, “I’m more than a little curious as to why you seem so determined to detour this investigation away from the time and place of Caedmon’s death. Sending those men to Hastings would be a waste of time, as you must be aware.”
“Obviously I disagree with you,” Luke said.
“And that should be enough to silence you,” Faithe told Orrik. “Luke is in charge here, not you. If he wants to send those men to Hastings, they’ll go to Hastings, and you have naught to say about it.”
Orrik shook his head disgustedly. “Do you know who the killer is, de Périgueux? Is that why you’re trying to lead us away from him?”
Faithe fisted her hands in her skirt. “Orrik! That’s enough!”
“Is he an old friend of yours?” Orrik persisted.
“For God’s sake, Orrik!”
“Think about it, my lady,” Orrik said. “That man” —he stabbed a finger toward Luke— “comes from the same region, perhaps even the same city, as the murderer. They might have known each other, might even have grown up together. Why else would he be sending those men on this pointless trip to Hastings, when—”
“You’ve overstepped yourself, Orrik,” she said in a low, wavering voice. “Badly.”
“But, my lady—”
“Not another word,” she added grimly, “or I’ll dismiss you myself.”
Silence rang in the hall.
“As you wish, my lady,” Orrik ground out as he executed an arrogant little bow. Turning on his heel, he left Hauekleah Hall.
Luke rubbed his forehead. Alex looked uncharacteristically grave.
“I need some air,” Faithe said wearily, “and I’ve been meaning to see how the vineyard is doing. I’ll be back by suppertime.”
*
IT CAME TO her as she strolled through the fragrant rows of vines, absently inspecting leaves and stems and roots while she basked in the low sun slanting over the surrounding pastures and meadows.
She knew what she had to do.
Luke wouldn’t like it. He hadn’t wanted her to go to Foxhyrst; he’d probably find this even more objectionable. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew she had to do it.
She walked slowly as the sun gradually settled onto the hilltops, relishing this time to herself. Privacy was a precious commodity in her life; so was silence.
When she spied the distant figure of a man walking toward her, she sighed in irritation. But then she recognized his distinctive, long-legged gait, graceful in its restrained power. She noticed his height, and the soldierly way he held his arms in relaxed readiness. Just watching him walk was enough to make her ache for him. She smiled and walked toward him.
They stepped into each other’s arms and embraced as the sun dipped below the hills, casting the vineyard in an ethereal twilight. He felt so large and warm and solid. She breathed in the wool of his tunic mingled with his familiar, masculine scent, and felt a sense of perfect communion with her world. He’d done that for her; he’d completed her. They’d both been lost, but now they’d found each other, and all was in harmony.
“You are so beautiful, Faithe,” he said, his soft, deep voice resonating against her ear. He kissed the top of her head.
She smiled against his shoulder. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
His chest vibrated with silent laughter. “I’m a great hulking brute.”
She shook her head. “You’re a beautiful man, Luke of Hauekleah, and I love you very much.”
“Luke of Hauekleah,” he murmured. “I like the sound of that.”
She looked up at him and said archly. “You’re supposed to say, ‘I love you, too.’”
He laughed. “I do. So much. His amusement s
eemed to fade. He brushed her hair off her face. “So much it frightens me sometimes.”
“Why should love frighten you?”
“Not love,” he said. “The loss of it. The possibility that… it won’t always be there. That you’ll stop loving me. I think that would kill me.”
“Nothing could ever make me stop loving you, Luke. Nothing.” Faithe wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “What put such a thought in your head?”
After a long pause he said, with a nonchalance that seemed forced, “I’m just out of sorts from being hungry. I’ve been sent to fetch you back for supper.”
“Right this instant?”
“It’s on the table.”
Tell him now . Tightening her arms around him, she said, softly, “I’m going to go to Cottwyk.” Not I want to go. I’m going to go.
She felt the tension course through him. He held her at arm’s length and looked down at her, his brow furrowed. “Why?”
Choosing her words carefully, she said, “I’ve never seen his grave, Luke. I need to see it.”
He frowned as if he wanted to argue with her, but could think of nothing to say.
“And there are other reasons,” she continued. “I know you don’t think there are answers to be had there, but I think… perhaps there are. I wouldn’t have said this in front of the others, but I do think ‘twould serve us well to question the local people, and… see for ourselves… where it happened.”
His gaze burned through her; his hands clenched her shoulders. “You mean to go to that…”
“Brothel. Aye.”
“Nay!”
She bristled.
Very quickly he said, “I know I can’t prevent you from doing this if you’ve set your mind to it. You’re used to making your own decisions and going your own way. I respect that. But…” Releasing her, he turned away and rubbed the back of his neck. “For you to even think about setting foot in a place like that…”
“I’m not a blushing maid, remember? I feel certain I can pay a visit to a house of prostitution without swooning.”
“But why should you?”
“To see the place where Caedmon died,” she said. “I may be able to learn something. Perhaps there will be clues about what happened that night.”
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