by Tamara Leigh
Deciding she had made Lucien wait long enough, she peeked around the screen and saw he was seated before the hearth. Back to her, he leaned forward with his forearms propped on his thighs, reminding her of when she had come to his tent during the tournament. This time, his back was not bare, the scars he did not wish her to see hidden from her eyes.
Stepping out from behind the screen, she smoothed her embroidered chemise and wondered how long before it fell at her feet. And shivered, but not with cold.
She crossed to Lucien, laid her hands on his shoulders, and bent forward. “Are you ready for me, my lord?”
He chuckled. “Should I not be the one asking that of you?”
She slid her hands down his chest to the hem of his tunic and lifted it. As her fingers brushed his abdomen, he caught her wrists.
“Come stand before me,” he said and started to pull her around.
She resisted. “First, I would look nearer upon your back. It is part of you, and as we are now wed, I would know all of you.”
“Not that,” he said, the humor gone from his voice.
“I have seen it before."
“Not tonight, Alessandra.”
“Surely you are not ashamed of it?”
He looked over his shoulder, and it was displeasure, not passion, in his eyes. “It was not by cowardice I earned those stripes, but by mettle.”
“This I know, but I would have you trust me.”
He looked ready to refuse, but his eyes softened and he released her and started to raise his tunic.
Alessandra stayed his hands, gripped the hem, and drew the garment off over his head.
With her gaze, she traced the scars, with her fingers, touched them, with her mouth kissed them. And when the tension went out of Lucien, she slid her arms around his neck and put her lips to his ear. “You know not how long I have wanted to be like this with you.”
“Then why do you waste time at my back?” He swiveled and captured her between his legs.
“Why?” She peered into his upturned face. “Because I once heard a concubine say that to love a man is to love all of him, from the soles of his feet to the ends of his hair. And I do love all of you, Lucien—the boy who defied my father, the warrior whose scars delivered him into my mother’s hands, the man who brought me out of Algiers, the husband who shall ever be my home.” She slid her hands into his hair, stepped nearer, and pressed her abdomen to his chest.
He groaned. “This is not progressing how I planned.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How did you plan?”
“Words first. Ones that have waited too long to be spoken.”
“Then speak them, my lord husband.”
He urged her to her knees. Pupils wide and dark, only a narrow ring of amethyst to attest to the color of his eyes, he lowered his head. “I love you, Alessandra Breville de Gautier.”
There was something so sweet in the birth of those words that she did not want to let go of them, and so she closed her eyes and savored them until he began to kiss around her mouth. “Tell me again,” she beseeched.
He did—over and over until she said, “Words first. What comes second?”
He began unfastening the buttons of her chemise. “I will show you.” When the garment dropped to her feet, he stood and swept her into his arms. “Now, Alessandra mine,” he said, “we make love.” And he carried her to bed.
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed Alessandra and Lucien’s love story. If you would consider posting a review of Lady Of Fire at Amazon, even if only a sentence or two, I would appreciate it. Thank you for joining me in the middle ages. I wish you hours and hours of inspiring, happily-ever-after reading.
EXCERPT
BARON OF GODSMERE: Book #1 (The Feud)
Available Winter 2015
CHAPTER TWO
Castle Adderstone upon the Barony of Godsmere, Northern England
Autumn’s End, 1333
Were she to stop the wedding, she would have to kill the groom. Or so Agatha sought to convince her.
Peering up from beneath the ragged edge of the peasant’s shawl she had drawn over her head, El considered the man who approached astride a destrier that was blacker than the dregs of her ink pot. Though Bayard Boursier was fairly complected, he seemed no less dark than his mount. From his perspiration dampened hair that flipped up at the nape of his neck to his unshaven jaw to the merciless heart that beat beneath an ebony tunic, he was kin to the night.
She ground her teeth over the king’s plan to ally the bitterest of enemies. Had Edward learned nothing from the mistake of five years past when her aunt had been made to wed into the Boursiers? A mistake that had turned the families’ hatred yet more fetid.
“A pox on you, Edward,” El muttered as she glared at his agent of misery, a man whose appearance hardly improved the nearer he drew, one made all the worse by the patch covering his left eye.
A fearsome groom he would make for Thomasin de Arell whom, it was told, he had chosen to take to wife and would do so within the next six days to avoid forfeiture of his lands. But providing all went as planned, “The Boursier,” as he was better known—as if the whole of him could not be contained within his given name—would not have the De Arell woman. Nor would he have El, though until three days past, she had feared he would choose her. Thus, she had laid plans to avoid a sacrifice possibly greater than that offered up with her first marriage.
Despite the shawl’s heat that was too much for a relatively warm day, El shivered as memories of her husband crawled over the barriers she had erected against them.
She shook her head. Murdoch Farrow, to whom she had been wed five years ago at the age of sixteen, was dead. And, God forgive her, she had nearly danced to be free of him. Just as Thomasin de Arell would revel to be spared marriage to Bayard Boursier.
As he moved nearer, El lowered her gaze. One peasant among the many who thronged the market come to Castle Adderstone, she feigned interest in the foodstuffs offered by a merchant—a very old man whose bones and joints were prominent beneath a thin layer of skin. A moment later, his hands shot up from his sides and, in concert with his voice, expressed annoyance over his dealings with a stout woman whose heavily loaded cart told she was from the castle kitchens.
El slid her gaze past unplucked chickens suspended by tangled feet, to the riders who skirted the gathering and hazarded another look at Boursier. She groaned. Though she had been almost as near him when last he had brought his men against her uncle’s, he was larger yet. Beneath a broad jaw, his neck sloped to expansive shoulders, chest tapered to sword-girded hips, bulky thighs gripped his destrier, hosed calves stretched long to stirrups.
Feeling her resolve weaken, she curled her toes in her slippers and told herself she could do this. Though Thomasin de Arell had been chosen, still the Penzers must ally with that loathsome family, meaning it fell to her uncle to wed Boursier’s sister. However, if El’s plan succeeded, the Boursiers would be expelled from these lands, as might the De Arells.
Pricked by guilt that the De Arells might feel Boursier’s wrath for that which would soon be worked upon the latter, El reminded herself of the raid upon Tyne five months past. When the smoke cleared, a dozen villagers’ homes had been burned and half their crops, and all evidence suggested the De Arells were responsible for the atrocity visited upon the Penzers’ people.
The flick of Boursier’s reins drew El’s gaze to tanned hands that appeared twice the size of her own. Familiar with the cruelty of which a man’s hands were capable, she assured herself this one would not get near enough to hurt her as her departed husband had done. Still, her heart pounded and eyes burned with emotions she had mostly suppressed since her wedding night, when she had realized Murdoch found her tears pleasing.
Boursier was less than twenty feet distant when the sun came out from behind the clouds, and she was surprised to see his looks lighten. She would have said his hair was deepest brown, but it had only appeared so, darkened as it was b
y perspiration. Now, with sunlight running over it, she saw it was a shade of auburn. And the one visible eye was pale, though she could not tell if the gaze he swept over the village folk was blue, green, or grey.
Not that it mattered. Regardless of his coloring, his soul—had he one—was black.
Doubt prying at her purpose, she silently beseeched, Lord, can I do it? Not that she believed God would condone her actions, but neither was she certain he would condemn her.
She shifted her gaze to the diagonal scar above and below Boursier’s eyepatch. Though deserved, how he must loathe the Penzers and De Arells for an affliction that was without end.
She drew a breath deep and held it as he approached the stall behind which she stood. When his gaze settled upon her, she forced herself not to react in any way that would attract more attention—all the while praying the shawl provided enough shadow to obscure her face. Not that he had ever seen Elianor of Emberly.
Though questioning disturbed his brow, he urged his destrier past.
El eased the air from her lungs, swung around, and hastened to the hooded one who awaited her near a stall piled high with cloth.
Despite broad shoulders that fifty years of life had begun to bend, the woman who looked down upon El had something of a regal bearing. It was also present in defined cheekbones and the dark, sharply arched eyebrows Agatha raised to ask what need not be spoken.
El glanced beyond her at the great fortress that flew the red and gold colors of the House of Boursier, inclined her head. In the guise of a kitchen wench, she was ready to steal into Castle Adderstone. Or so she prayed—or should have.
Six days she must hold him. Then, for his refusal to wed his enemy, his lands would be forfeited. Unless she failed.
I shall not, she promised herself.
Even now Boursier was likely feeling the effects of the draught she had slipped into his drink a half hour past. That had been no easy task, one nearly rendered impossible when the cook had approached her. Blessedly, as she had tensed for flight, someone had called him to the storeroom.
Quickly, El had stirred Agatha’s preparation into the cup that was to be delivered to Boursier’s bedchamber, the lord of Castle Adderstone’s habit of wine before bed having remained unchanged since Agatha had endured a year in his household.
“’Tis just ahead,” Agatha said low, raising the torch to burn away the cobwebs blocking their passage.
El peered around the older woman at stone walls laid not by man, but by God. Here was the place to which Boursier was destined—carved out of the bowels of the earth outside his own castle, the shaft with its branching passages dug by Penzers and De Arells twenty years past when, for a few months, they had joined against the Boursiers. El’s own grandfather had assisted with the mining that had brought down a portion of the castle’s outer wall. It had been a victory, but a small one.
She recalled her visit to Castle Kelling several months after the thwarted siege when she had bounded onto her grandfather’s lap and only one arm had come around her. Bayard Boursier’s father had taken the other.
Agatha turned left off the passageway onto another, at the end of which lay an iron-banded door with a grate set at eye level. “This is it, my lady.”
El considered Boursier’s prison. “It will hold him?”
Agatha fit one of several keys into the lock and pushed the door inward. “‘Twould hold three of him.”
El accepted the torch offered her, stepped into the chill cell, and grimaced as light revealed the foul place. The stone walls were moist with rainfall that seeped through the ground above. To the right, a rat scuttled out of torchlight into shadow. Ahead, three sets of chains and manacles hung from the walls. Were Boursier of a mind to be grateful, he would be glad he had only to endure this place for the six days remaining of the two months given him to wed his enemy.
As El turned out of the cell, she wondered again how Agatha had learned of the passage formed from the mine of that long ago siege, the entrance to which was a cavern in the wood. More, how had she obtained the keys? Unfortunately, Agatha’s secrets were Agatha’s, but El dared not complain. While wed to Murdoch, she had benefitted from the woman’s secrets in the form of sleeping powders.
Meeting the gaze of the one in the doorway, she said, “Aye, it will hold him.”
Agatha inclined her head, drew from her shoulder the pack that would sustain Boursier, and tossed it against the far wall. “You are ready, my lady?”
“I am.”
With a smile that revealed Agatha’s teeth were surprisingly white, the woman turned to lead her into the devil’s lair.
“I know what you do.”
Bayard had wondered how long before she stopped hovering and spoke what she had come to say. He jabbed the quill in the ink pot and looked up at where his half sister stood alongside the table.
Jaw brushed by hair not much longer than his own, she said, “I will not have you sacrifice yourself for me.”
He stared at Quintin, wished she were not so perceptive. Though she had recently her twentieth year, she looked back at him out of the eyes of the aged. Yet for all the wisdom to which she was privy, she was a mess of uncertainty—the truest of ladies when it suited her, a callow youth when it served. And Bayard was to blame, just as he was to blame for her broken betrothal. Had he not allowed her mother and her to convince him she was not suited to marriage, the king could not have dragged Quintin into his scheme.
Hands clasped at her waist, she entreated, “Pray, wed the Penzer woman, Brother.”
He was tempted to laugh. “I assure you, one Penzer wife was enough to last me unto death.” He curled his fingers into his palms to keep from reaching to the eyepatch.
Her brow rumpled. “Surely you do not say ’tis better to wed a De Arell?”
He shrugged. “For Edward’s pleasure, we all must make sacrifices.”
Her teeth snapped, evidence it had become impractical to behave the lady. “Then sacrifice yourself upon a Penzer!”
Never. Better he suffer a De Arell woman than Quintin suffer a De Arell man. Of course, he had other reasons for choosing Thomasin. The illegitimate woman was said to be plain of face, whereas Elianor of Emberly was told to be as comely as her aunt whose beauty had blinded Bayard—in more ways than one. Then there was the rumor Elianor and her uncle were lovers and, of equal concern, that she had given her departed husband no heir. Such a woman he would not take to wife.
“Hear me,” Quintin said so composedly he nearly startled, for once her temper was up, it was not easy for her to come down. “’Tis far better I wed Griffin De Arell who already has his heir.”
Feeling his hands tighten into fists, he forced them open. “As I believe you will give Penzer the heir he yet waits upon.” Or so he prayed, for once she was wed to their enemy, she would need someone to love through the long years.
Quintin drew a shuddering breath. “I will not give Magnus Penzer an heir.”
He sighed, lifted his goblet. “It is done, Quintin. Word has been sent to De Arell that I ride to Castle Mathe four days hence to wed his daughter.” Though the wine was thick as if drawn from the dregs of a barrel, he drank the remainder in the hope it would calm his roiling stomach and permit a fair night’s sleep.
He rose from the chair. As he stepped around his stiff-backed sister, a wave of fatigue unsettled him, and he pondered the peculiar discomfort he had not experienced since the treacherous woman who was no longer his wife had worked her wiles upon him.
“Make good your choice, Bayard,” Quintin warned.
He looked across his shoulder. “I have made as good a choice as is possible.” Thus, she would wed Penzer, and the widow, Elianor, would wed the widower, De Arell, thereby allying the three families—at least, until one maimed or killed the other.
Quintin shook her head. “You have not.”
Pressed down by fatigue, he bit back a reprimand with the reminder she only wished to spare him marriage into the family of his darkest ene
my. “If I give you my word that I shall make the De Arell woman’s life miserable,” he said, “will you leave?”
She pushed off the table. “Your life, she will make miserable.” She threw her hands up. “Surely you can find some way around King Edward!”
Edward who demanded the impossible—who cared not what ill he wrought. Though Bayard had searched for a way past the decree, it seemed the only means of avoiding marriage to the enemy was to vacate the barony of Godsmere. If he forfeited his lands, not only would Quintin and her mother be as homeless as he, but the De Arells and Penzers would win the bitter game at which the Boursiers had most often prevailed. Utterly unacceptable.
“I am sorry,” Bayard said, “but the king will not be moved. And though I have not much hope, I must consider that these alliances could lead to the prosperity denied all of us.”
Her jaw shifted. “You speak of more castles.”
He did. When the immense barony of Kilbourne had been broken into lesser baronies twenty-five years ago to reward the three families, it had been expected licenses would be granted to each to raise more castles. However, the gorging of their private animosities had made expansion an unattainable dream.
“Accept it, Quintin.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and crossed the solar. A moment later, the door slammed behind her, catching a length of green skirt between door and frame.
Her cry of frustration came through, but rather than open the door, she wrenched her skirt loose with a great tearing of cloth—their father’s side of her. Later, she would mourn the ruined gown—her mother’s side of her.
Though Bayard had intended to disrobe, he was too worn out to bother. Stretching upon his bed, he stared into the darkness behind his eyelid and recalled the woman at the market. Not because of the comely curve of her face, but the prick of hairs along the back of his neck that had first made him seek the source. There, in her glittering eyes, he had found what might have been hatred, though he had reasoned it away with the reminder that his people had suffered much on all sides of the discord between the three families. And that was, perhaps, the worthiest reason to form alliances with the De Arells and Penzers.