by Tessa Murran
She could not be a witless fool, and run, with no plan. Lyall was her best hope. She had to be clever now.
The only problem with Giselle’s plan was that she did not want to keep Lyall at arm’s length. How could any woman do that? His manly beauty affected her so that it made her knees weak just to look at him. He had cleaned himself up since his return, and with his beard cropped, and his hair pulled back, she could truly appreciate his strong jawline, fine eyes and wide, sensuous mouth. She so wanted that mouth on her again. What Lyall had done in the loch had been disgraceful, and on that bed too, but it had made her feel so alive and so desired. And Lyall had kindness in him, she was sure of it. Already, he had been a thousand times kinder than Edric, her own countryman. His family were not monsters, they had been decent in their own way. In truth, she had felt more trapped at Wulversmeade than she did here.
Giselle took a deep breath and slipped out of the chamber and down the stairs. As she tip-toed through the great hall, several dogs, dozing before the hearth, raised their heads, but they did not bark, thank goodness.
Outside, the air was a little chill, and a full moon cast the yard into shadows. To her right Giselle spied two watchmen at the gates, sitting before a brazier, but no one else was around. It was pitch black apart from a low glow, coming from one of the buildings. That must be the stable over there.
Giselle picked her way carefully across the yard, starting at the hoot of an owl nearby. When she opened the stable door, all was quiet apart from the shuffling of horses in their stalls. Lyall stepped out of the shadows, huge and frightening in the semi-darkness, and then took hold of her and pulled the door shut behind her. He leant her back against it. She was trapped now.
‘You came.’ There was joy in his voice.
‘I should not have.’
‘I knew you would.’
‘Are you so sure of my obedience then?
‘Don’t snarl at me, Giselle. Let me say my piece.’
‘Alright, why have you brought me here?’
‘Rhoslyn. Her child is not mine, I swear it, and, though I may have used her in the past, she was also using me. She never truly cared for me, and deep down, I knew that.’
‘I am sorry I didn’t believe you. Your past is your own, and I have no right to pry into it. It’s just that I pitied her.’
‘She cursed you to the devil.’
‘Only because she was jealous and wounded.’ She looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘I know how that feels.’
He took a step closer to her. Their chests were almost touching.
‘Lyall, I want to believe you are an honourable man,’ she said.
‘Then I must disappoint you, for that is the last thing I am.’ Lyall took a step closer. ‘Will you forsake me now?’ he said softly.
Giselle regarded him for the longest time. ‘I can’t.’
He sighed in relief and smiled. ‘I had to speak to you, Giselle. I should not have brought you to Beharra. It was wrong of me. I should have freed you, and let you go south, at Wulversmeade.’ He brought his hands to her shoulders.
‘But you didn’t, Lyall, because you wanted the coin I would bring.’
‘If I’m honest with myself, I don’t think that was the reason.’
‘Was it to protect me from Banan, then?’
He looked down into her face. ‘I told myself that, but standing here with my hands on you, I want to do the opposite of protecting you.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Hold you, touch you - every inch of your skin, every hair on your head. I want to kiss you, long and hard and all night.’ His voice oozed desire, making her loins quicken. ‘I want to lay you down in the hay, Giselle, and take you, make you cry my name into the night.’
Giselle gasped at his honesty. Was this how all men spoke when they tried to take a woman’s virtue, in such a blunt, matter-of-fact way?
‘If that is what you want, Lyall, then I should go.’
His body pressed against hers, his palm on her cheek, forehead to hers. That sensuous mouth of his was but an inch away. ‘I would never do all those things to you if you did not want me to. Do you want to go?’ he said, breathing heavily.
This was her choice, here, now. Lyall would not force her to stay, but if she did, this man meant to do things to her, rough things, shameful things, things she yearned for and did not yet understand.
‘I say again, do you want to go? Speak, Giselle.’
‘No,’ she gasped. She’d scarce said the word before his mouth took hers and he pressed her up against the door. The wood was hard at her back, Lyall’s stubble rough against her face, lips warm and forceful. Desire flooded Giselle’s loins, her face burned, and restraint slipped away from her as his tongue pushed into her mouth.
‘I want you, Giselle,’ he moaned between kisses. ‘You bring such a passion on me as no man could fight. It’s like a raging hunger that I cannot control.’
How delicious it was to be desired. Giselle clutched at his chest and, as his kiss deepened, she snaked her arms around his neck and held him tight.
His mouth went to the sweet spot at the base of her neck. ‘This dress pleases me, but I cannot see you,’ he murmured, as he tore it down off her shoulders. His hands cupped her breasts, making her catch her breath.
‘Your hands are cold,’ she breathed.
‘Aye, I know, I was trying to find somewhere to warm them.’ Lyall laughed against her mouth, breaking the tension. He rubbed his hands together and breathed on them.
When they found her breasts again, warmer now, she almost melted with desire. Lyall stroked and squeezed her eager flesh, brushing the pad of his thumb over her nipple, shooting desire down to her loins.
‘No, you should not,’ she gasped, shaking her head.
‘Because you don’t like it, or because you do,’ he murmured, kissing her neck harder.
‘It’s wrong, it’s sinful.’
‘Aye, that’s why it feels so good. Tell me you don’t like it.’
Giselle could not say a word. In the darkness, Lyall seemed like a beast, harder and more commanding somehow. She wanted to deny him and tell him to get off of her, but the way he was making her feel was just too thrilling.
Lyall took hold of her hair, his lips took her mouth prisoner, and Giselle was all sensation and no common sense, as he lifted her skirt and explored her thigh with his hand. A warm palm slid upwards and over her bottom, and it seemed to excite him, for his kiss deepened. Lyall’s hand moved over her hip bone, so gently, and then down, until Giselle was almost screaming for him to touch her there, between her legs, where a deep ache of desire pulsed. She pictured his fingers, cool and long, as he began to slide them against her in the most intimate way.
This was too much. She had let him go too far, but how could she stop him when little shoots of pleasure were taking away her free will? As he slid along the length of her with his hand, Giselle almost stopped breathing. How could someone who was all muscle and fury be so gentle?
‘Lyall, I…oh, don’t stop,’ she breathed.
‘I can’t stop,’ he murmured, burying his face in her hair. ‘I should, but I can’t. Damn you excite me so Giselle, you bring a fearful lust on me. I won’t hurt you. I promise you can trust me.’
Trust him, with what he was doing to her? She had no reason to. But she was melting against his hand and pressing herself to it, as a feeling built up and up inside. Lyall was her master and how glorious it felt to be his slave. She would do anything to catch the feeling that was just out of reach. Her loins were hot, as though they were melting.
Emboldened, Giselle rubbed her hands along his chest, feeling the swell of his muscle through the rough fabric of his tunic. Lyall was so hard and broad, the smell of soap still clinging to his skin when he bent to kiss her neck. She tasted the ale on his tongue and revelled in his manly scent, all sin and strength. He groaned into her mouth as his other hand grasped hers, and moved it downwards, over the clenched muscles of his sto
mach.
‘I love the way you get so wet for me,’ he breathed, as his fingers continued to slide over her most intimate place. ‘I never saw anything as lovely as you in all my life. Tonight you took my breath away and now to be touching you like this…’
He moved her hand lower still, until her fingers found his hard length, straining against his braies.
Lyall groaned and roughly tore them open. There was an urgency about him, and a rising passion, as he coiled her fingers around his manhood.
‘Oh God,’ she gasped, in awe.
‘That’s just what a man wants to hear, lass,’ he breathed into her hair. She could almost feel him smiling in the darkness, as he began to move her wrist slowly up and down.
Giselle was too carried away by his hand, still moving tenderly on her body, to protest. His manhood was not at all what she had expected. It was full and solid, yet smooth, like a rod of iron inside a velvet glove, gliding in her palm, becoming slippery with his need. It was a magnificent and daunting thing.
It was so exciting to have a man like this, to hold him in the palm of her hand. Giselle smiled in the half-light as her whole world became Lyall’s fingers, and his mouth, and his deep, dark voice urging her to hold him tighter.
She gave herself up to some wild, wanton part of her and gasped and whimpered her passion out into the night, else she would have died from the intensity of it.
‘Lyall, please,’ Giselle gasped.
When she cried out, his hand came over her lips. ‘Quiet my love, or the whole of Beharra will hear us.’
He removed his hand and replaced it with his mouth and Giselle gasped out her ecstasy against it, as she held him, hot and taut and slippery against her palm. She shuddered against the barn door, digging her fingers into his back, hanging on to him for dear life, moaning against his mouth, thinking she might die from the pleasure of it all.
A moment later, Lyall stiffened and groaned, and something gushed, warm, over her fingers. Giselle could not move, and so she stood pinned to him until his breathing slowed. Then Lyall took hold of her hand and wiped it on his tunic. Giselle looked up at him, but his face was in darkness. He put his hand around her throat and kissed her with great tenderness. It was as though her whole body was raw, and she could have cried in an awful confusion of joy and remorse.
‘Giselle, are you alright. Say something.’
‘Do you think ill of me, Lyall?’ she gasped.
‘No, I think very well of you, Giselle, and I thank you for bringing comfort to me this night. You have eased my cold and lonely life since you came into it.’
‘Were we wrong, to do what we just did?’
‘No, it has been building in me since I first laid eyes on you. After I saw you at Wulversmeade, with your hair flying out in the wind, I wanted you. Not one night has gone by since then when you did not keep me from my sleep. I think you might be a witch, casting spells on me.’
‘You must think I am the worst kind of woman.’
‘No, you are the best.’
‘Am I become your whore, as well as your prisoner?’
‘No, Giselle.’ He kissed her almost angrily. ‘This is the truth of it. I like you. I more than like you. Tell me true? Do you like me or are you just afraid of me?
Giselle hesitated. Could she trust him with her feelings? Could she tell Lyall that he was more of a man than all the other men in the world put together? Could she tell him he was beautiful and strong and perfect, and that he put a fire in her belly and made her world spin, just by looking her way? Should she, because, if she did, she might sound like a weak fool?
‘Lyall, I do like you, but we are strangers, and I am your prisoner.’
‘Not anymore,’ he said, pulling her hair off her face. ‘You may go free whenever you wish.’
‘Free? Do you want me gone then?’
‘No, of course not. But I wish it to be your choice. Mine is that you stay awhile, if you can bear it, so that we can make sense of what is between us. I give my word I will not lay a hand on you again until you ask me to.’
Giselle was glad Lyall could not see her blush. ‘I do like you, Lyall, but there are things I should tell you before you can really know me.’
‘Hush,’ he whispered. ‘Horses. Someone is coming.’
Giselle heard faint shouts of greeting from the watchmen.
‘Quickly, you must get back to your chamber, before someone sees you.’
Lyall took her hand and they slipped out of the barn and into the cover of the shadows up against the walls. They entered the keep through a side door, and hurried up the stairs, to the sound of others stirring.
At the chamber door, Lyall gave Giselle one last, glorious kiss, full of longing.
‘I must see who is here at this hour. Find your bed, quickly, before I ravage you senseless, and I will see you at first light. I can hardly bear to wait that long.’
With that, he sped off into the darkness, and Giselle was left with a hammering heart and a smile that would not stop.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Giselle rose as the first of the sun’s rays were sneaking through the shutters. She hurried off to the hall where she found Ramsay, clearing up the remains of a meal and several mugs of stale ale. Lyall must have supped with his visitor last night.
‘What do you want?’ snarled Ramsay, in his usual manner.
‘I am looking for Lyall, is he up?’
‘You shouldn’t go looking for trouble, girl,’ he said ominously, ‘but if you insist on following him around like a tame bitch, then I can tell you he is in the stables.’
Giselle rushed out and ran into the stables. Lyall was saddling his horse, and so she paused at the door just so that she could look at him. He was so broad and tall, so much of a man. Would she ever be able to hold him?
‘Lyall,’ she called out and rushed up to him. But he did not turn to her in greeting. Instead, he stopped what he was doing and bowed his head. His jaw was clenched.
‘Will you not speak to me?’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. He looked down on it with distaste.
‘When were you going to tell me?’ he said coldly.
‘Tell you what?’
‘Our visitor last night was the Abbot Aifric.’ His eyes met hers, and there was a storm in them. ‘Aye, Giselle, he came with news of your ransom, or rather your lack of it. Seems there is no ransom coming, and there never was. Seems your family estate was taken from you by the King, forfeit for your father’s lack of loyalty.’
His voice was rising to an angry shout. He took a step towards her, and put his face in hers.
‘The Abbot tells me that your father is penniless, he is out of favour, he has lost all his land and wealth and more than this, the man has been dead these last six months or more.’
Giselle’s stomach twisted into a knot, and she took a step back from him. Lyall’s jaw was clenched, his fists were balls of rage, and a muscle was twitching in his cheek. His fury was such that she felt she was back at Wulversmeade, that first night when he had approached her covered in blood. This was not Lyall, this was that dark, vicious stranger who had terrified her. Whatever the Abbot had told him he had been stewing on it all night and building himself up to a righteous fury.
‘All along you have been lying to me, Giselle. Even last night when we…after I…what a fool I am to trust in you. To think I told you about my feelings. I bared my soul to you, and for what? I even said you were free to go but, of course, you can’t go, can you, for there is no one and nothing left for you back at Ravensworth?’
‘Lyall I tried to tell you last night.’
‘Was that why you have given of yourself to me, because you wanted to trap me, because you had nothing to go back to? You sought to get your claws into a husband, someone who was a good prospect? Did you seduce me so that I would take pity on you?
‘Me seduce you?’ she cried.
‘God, I have felt such guilt in wanting you. Are you even Baron de Villers’ daughter, or did
you lie about that?
‘Of course, I am. And I am here because you took me for ransom. I did not choose to come, and now you shout at me because there is no coin coming your way, nothing in it for you.’
‘I don’t care about the ransom. It is the lie that wounds me, Giselle.’
‘Please Lyall, can you not forgive the lie. I was alone, and I did not know what to do. I thought if I told you the truth you would cast me adrift, leave me on a Scottish hillside somewhere and just ride away. I was frightened, so I lied about the ransom, but I never lied about how I felt about you, how much I like you, indeed I think I…
‘Don’t say it. Don’t you dare! You have come here, ingratiated yourself with my family, dangled your charms in front of me, and all to feather your own nest. I have been the worst kind of fool to fall for it. Still, at least I got some pleasure out of your lies last night, for you gave up your virtue easily enough, like all lying whores.’
Crack. Giselle’s palm hit his face hard, leaving a red mark. Lyall took her viciously by the shoulders and glared at her, and then flung her away from him. Both of them froze for a moment, and the only sound was his rapid breathing and her blood thumping in her ears.
‘Why are you so angry?’ Her voice came out as a squeak. ‘It was one small lie I told, amid all the fear and uncertainty of being taken hostage. I wanted to buy time to think on what to do.’
‘Why did Edric say your father was rich when he was not? Did he lie too?’
‘Yes. Edric was only marrying me because his father forced him into it. He told you a lie to get rid of me because he didn’t want me.’
‘Well, that makes two of us.’
His words were like a punch to the stomach.
Lyall mounted his horse and rode out past her, in a fury of hooves, scattering chickens and geese in his haste to get away. Giselle could do nothing but sink into a heap on the hay and weep.
***
Kicking his horse’s ribs, Lyall urged it to gallop faster. He had to get as far away from Giselle as possible until his anger subsided, and not just anger, crushing disappointment. That she could lie, that behind that angelic face the lass could scheme and plot. How big a fool was he to think Giselle naive, innocent, perfect in every way? She was not. She had led him a merry dance, hadn’t she?