“God be praised for that. When we get home you will do something quiet. How about a game of tables?”
She made a face. “Tables are boring.”
“You only say that because I always win.”
Arianna’s fingers hovered over a whalebone bishop and a smile played around her mouth. With a decisive movement she pushed the game piece down the board. “I believe I have just checked you, husband.”
Raine grunted. “The game is not over yet. In truth, I have you right where I want you, little wife.”
Arianna’s smug smile suddenly turned into a grimace. Raine jumped to his feet, sending knights, bishops, and pawns into the rushes. “Did you feel a pain?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Nay, ’twas only gas.”
“You’re going to lie down this instant. If you put up any more arguments, I’ll turn you over my knee.”
“I’d like to see you get me over your knee with me in this condition. It’d be like turning a turtle onto its back.”
Nevertheless, he was relieved to see that she allowed him to lead her over to the bed. She wasn’t the only one anxious for the babe to put forth its appearance. His guts had been tangled into knots like snarled gittern strings for weeks now.
Arianna had just fallen asleep, and Raine was about to leave the room, when the trumpeter at the gatehouse announced a visitor. He went to the window, surprised to see a lone woman ride into the bailey. He was even more surprised when he saw that the woman was Sybil.
He met her at the bottom of the steps of the great hall. She pushed the hood of her mantle off her head and looked up with big lavender-blue eyes. Eyes that stared at him above a cheek that bore a livid bruise in the shape of a man’s hand.
He guided her inside with a light arm around her shoulders, taking her up onto the dais and into the small antechamber that led off the end of the hall.
He turned her around to face him. He tilted her chin up, and he brushed his thumb along her cheekbone, just above the bruise. “Did Hugh do this to you?” They were the first words he had spoken to her. Her eyes fluttered closed and she nodded. “Why?”
“We argued. He …” She stopped, lifting her shoulders in a helpless little shrug. “It’s for a different reason every time, and the same reason.” She pulled away. Her fingers twisted around the love-knot brooch he couldn’t remember giving to her, and when she looked up again, he saw that her eyes were wet and shining with unshed tears. Her lower lip trembled open and she caught it with her teeth. “I wish that I could just leave, Raine. Sometimes I want to go away somewhere and never come back.”
She looked so hurt and bewildered, like a little girl who has just been punished and doesn’t know why. But there was nothing he could do for her. She was Hugh’s, and he could not come between his brother and his brother’s wife.
Suddenly her shoulders hunched and she buried her face in her hands, muffling her words. “I shouldn’t have come here. I know it’s wrong, but I …”
He made the mistake of touching her, and she fell into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, rubbing his chest with her breasts, burying her head in his neck. “Don’t say it’s too late. Say you still love me. Tell me you still love me.”
He grabbed her shoulders, stilling her. He felt the wetness of her tears on his neck, the beating of her heart against his chest, the softness of her. And the wrongness of her.
“Sybil …”
She lifted her head and looked at him.
He stared into eyes that were soft purple, the color of an evening sky one summer day when they had made love in a field of grass. In a sad and futile way, she was right, he hadn’t stopped loving her. But it was the girl of that summer he loved, not the woman of today. Because of that girl, in memory of that girl, he didn’t want to hurt her.
But he was going to have to.
“It’s over with us, Sybil. It ended on the day you married my brother.”
The words came out harsher than he’d meant them to. Her chest jerked and her hands clenched into fists against his chest. “But I still love you.”
He gave her a little shake. “You’re in love with a memory. But memories are only pieces of the past. Whatever might have happened or could have happened, didn’t. We are married to other people now, for better or worse. Go home, Sybil. Go home and keep the memories, but let go of the past.”
Her head fell forward and she laid her brow on his chest. Slowly she straightened and when she looked up at him this time, a smile trembled on her lips. “But you did love me once. For a while you were mine.”
He answered her smile with one of his own. “It was a sweet summer, Sybil. I will never forget it.”
His hands had closed around her shoulders, to push her off of him, when he heard a sharp, angry intake of breath. He jerked his head around and there stood Arianna, looking at him with Sybil in his arms.
He relived a thousand years of hell in that one moment, while she stood there and looked at him, saying nothing, just looking at him with blank sea-foam eyes. She turned and walked away, her stomach leading the way before her.
“Hell,” Raine said. And then he said it again. “Ah, hell.”
Sybil had let go of him and taken a step back, but he didn’t notice because he was still staring at the now empty doorway. She had to say his name twice before he turned and looked at her.
She smiled, a smile from the old days that dimpled the corners of her mouth. “Oh, Raine, I do believe you’ve gone and fallen in love with your little Welsh princess.”
Raine took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Aye, I love her.” It was an odd thing, but the words, once said, tasted good in his mouth. In truth, they tasted so fine, he said them again. “I love her.”
“But you haven’t told her, have you?”
“Well, I … Well, not exactly. But, dammit, she knows I love her.”
Her smiled faded. She touched his cheek, once, lightly. “Tell her anyway, Raine. Tell her before it’s too late. It’s a rare thing, is love. And too easily lost.”
They looked at one another—she thinking of the past, he of the future. She stood up on her toes and pressed her lips to his in a light, fleeting kiss that spoke of good-bye.
He escorted her out of the hall and put her on her horse, but he didn’t even wait long enough to watch her ride out the gate. Instead he bounded back inside and up the stairs. He stared at a thick expanse of iron-banded oak and sighed. He really didn’t want to take a battle-ax to his own bedchamber door.
“Arianna, let me in so that we can talk.”
Silence.
“Arianna, you are judging me falsely again, and I grow weary of it.” Silence.
“Arianna, I can’t tell you I love you through a bloody door!” Somebody snickered.
Raine whipped around. Taliesin slouched against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, and a smirk on his pretty mouth. “Have you tried opening it, my lord?”
“Huh?”
“The door. Mayhap it isn’t even bolted.”
Raine grabbed the latch and the door swung open easily beneath his hand. He shot Taliesin a quelling look before the boy could start flapping his jaws again, then he took a deep breath, girded his loins … and stepped into an empty chamber.
“She went to the meinhirion,” Taliesin said, appearing suddenly at his side. The boy heaved a huge sigh. “Once again you have bungled things. This is getting to be a bad habit with you. Why the goddess ever thought—”
Raine’s hands clamped down hard on the boy’s shoulders. “She didn’t try to ride there, did she?”
“Nay, she couldn’t. She walked.”
Raine lifted his eyes heavenward, thanking God for small favors. “I’ll wring her neck for this!” he bellowed, giving his squire a rough shake because the boy was in his hands and handy.
He felt anger boiling up within him and he let it rise, reveling in it. It was the anger of righteous indignation, of a man who has found himself in love with a woman who bewilders
him and drives him mad, but whom he couldn’t possibly live without.
The squire watched his master’s broad back disappear down the stairs and his eyes shimmered, shooting out sparks like falling stars.
The light faded. He rubbed his aching shoulders—he would be sporting bruises for a week at least. The kitchen wenches and dairy maids would all feel sorry for him, they would want to kiss him and make him better.
He threw back his fiery head and laughed at that. His laughter, rich and deep, echoed down and up and through the years.
She had known him to keep his anger tightly under control, and she had felt the full blast of his icy rages. But never had she seen him hot-blooded and bellowing. If it wasn’t for the memory of once again catching him with that wretched Sybil in his arms, she would have laughed.
He leaped from his horse and came charging up to her, huffing and puffing and breathing fire, just like the dragon he was named after. “What in hellfire is it that you think you’re doing?”
She jerked her chin into the air and looked down her nose at him, because she knew he hated it. “What are you doing here, Raine? Shouldn’t you be with Sybil? Already she probably grows lonely for you … for the feel of your arms around her.”
He flushed slightly, then his jaw tightened and jutted forward. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” He flapped his arm. “You’re about to have a baby and you’re out wandering the bloody moors.”
A part of Arianna was suddenly aware that her skin felt clammy and the roots of her hair were damp with sweat, but most of her was more preoccupied with making her husband suffer just a bit before she forgave him. “Why should you care what I do, or where I am? When it’s Sybil you love.”
Raine let loose with a string of curses that shocked even Arianna’s experienced ears. “I love you, you thickheaded wench! I love you!”
“You say that now.”
“Aye, I say it now,” he said, somewhat calmer, only battering her eardrums a little. “I say it now … I love you, little wife.”
“Now doesn’t count.”
“What do you mean, now doesn’t count?” He was bellowing again. Nice dragonlike roars. “Why doesn’t it count?”
“Because I’ve put the words into your mouth. They didn’t spring from your heart.”
“Jesus wept.” He pushed his hand through his hair in that typical masculine gesture of exasperation with a female. He pointed his finger at her, shaking it like a scolding alewife. “I know what you want. Well, fine—that’s just what you’re going to get.”
He pulled his tunic over his head with a vicious jerk and sent it sailing through the air. His chainse followed. He leaned against one of the standing stones and yanked off one boot, switched feet, and then yanked off the other. He started to peel off his chausses.
It suddenly occurred to Arianna that he was taking off his clothes. All of his clothes.
Surely, he couldn’t be thinking he was going to—no, of course he couldn’t. “Raine, stop.” Off came his braies. He was definitely naked now. “Raine, what are you doing?”
He fell down onto his knees before her, seizing her hands. “You wanted me naked and on my knees, just like in that cursed song. Well, here I am.” His voice had softened. She had never seen his face look the way it did now. All that he was feeling was there, in the tautness of the skin across his cheekbones, in the curve of his lips, in his eyes—turning smoky and warm. “I love you, Arianna, my wife, my lifemate. Cariad … Beloved, beloved. I love you.”
He knelt naked at her feet and offered her his love, and she was so moved by the silly, romantic gesture that tears filled her eyes. Oh, Lord, how she loved this man.
She opened her mouth to tell him so, and screamed.
Raine grabbed her as she fell forward, settling her down into the grass. “Arianna!”
She clutched at her middle as another savage pain racked her. “The baby, Raine. It’s coming.”
“Oooh, God …” He started to get up, sat back down again, started to get up, then sat down again. “All right. Don’t panic. There’s no reason to panic,” he said, sounding like a man on the edge of hysteria. He patted her cheek, then stood up for good and all, and dashed around the stones, snatching up boots and tunic and braies. He looked so funny that Arianna wanted to laugh in spite of the fierce pains that tore through her middle.
Raine hunkered down beside her again, breathless, his arms full of clothes. She heard in his voice the effort he was making to sound calm so that he wouldn’t frighten her, when he was scared witless himself. She loved him so much in that one moment that it made her throat hurt. “Arianna, little wife, I’m going to have to leave you for just a few minutes. I’m going to ride back to the castle and fetch a cart.”
He was behaving so sweetly, she almost hated to have to do this to him, but …
Another pain ripped through her. She seized his arm, almost pulling him down on top of her. “Now, Raine. The baby is coming now.”
He stared at her, his eyes wide, and then he looked down at her convulsing stomach. “Oh, sweet heavenly Jesus. Damn you, Arianna, you are doing this on purpose.” He started to lift her bliaut, hesitated a moment, then shoved it up around her waist. “Christ Jesus save us … I can already see her head!”
“It’s a son I’m giving you, husband. Not a daughter,” Arianna said in between panting grunts.
“She’s as bald as an old man.”
“He, not she. He has dark hair, black as a raven’s wing. And beautiful gray eyes, soft like smoke.”
“The rest of her is coming … I think. Push.” She lifted her head to see him reaching between her legs. “Arianna, for the love of Christ, will you push!”
“I’m pushing, curse you!”
“Well, push harder. I can’t do this all by myself.”
She pushed harder. She pushed so hard it felt like she was pushing herself inside out. He would be sorry, yelling at her when she was in the middle of having a baby. “ ‘Push harder,’ he says. I’d like to see you do any better, Norman,” she muttered between clenched teeth.
She felt the baby come out of her all in a rush. She heard a rusty squawk and a man’s deep laughter of relief. She lay, looking up at the blue, blue sky, and she smiled. Unlike the last time when she’d felt so exhausted after the birth, this time she felt euphoric.
She turned her head and saw Raine, with the baby in his hands. The poor little thing looked like a red and wrinkled old pod. Yet she experienced again that heart-soaring love that a mother feels when she sees her child for the first time.
Her husband was, she noticed, behaving most efficiently—cutting the navel cord with his dagger and wiping the blood and mucus off the baby with his chainse. Arianna began to giggle, then her giggles turned into loud whooping laughter.
Raine loomed over her. “What’s so cursed funny?”
“You. You’ll do Dame Beatrix out of a living, you’re so good at midwifing. And you’re naked, Raine. As naked as the day you were born.”
He laid the babe, now wrapped in his tunic, gently onto her breast, and his face broke into that smile she loved so well. “As naked as my son.”
She started to smile back at him, but it twisted crooked up on the ends, turning into a grimace. “Raine … something very strange is happening.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, sounding like quite the authority. “It’s only the afterbirth.”
“Nay, husband, you forget I have done this before, I …” She stopped, gasping as a fierce pain racked her. “It’s happening again. I’m having another baby.”
His face disappeared from her sight, then reappeared. “You’re right,” he said, looking disgustingly cheerful. “It’s another baby. Start pushing.”
“Go to hell, Norman,” she gritted out between her clenched teeth. But she pushed.
Five minutes later Arianna gave to her husband another little girl.
26
The babes thrived.
One hot August afternoon
the lord and lady of the castle disappeared into their chamber, and all who saw smiled and shook their heads, for they were in love, were those two, and mad with it.
Arianna went to the window, while Raine poured them each a cup of wine. Below, the beekeeper was walking across the bailey, covered from head to toe like a leper and carrying his drums in a yoke across his back. There will be honey on our manchet loaves tomorrow morning, she thought with a smile, for it was one of Raine’s favorite things.
She had turned around to tell him this, when she caught him tipping a small leather packet over one of the wine cups. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he whipped around suddenly, his fist closing over the packet and his hand going behind his back.
She advanced on him. “What is that you are hiding?”
“Nothing.” He turned in a half-circle, presenting her with his chest and keeping his hand out of reach.
She feinted to the left, then dashed to the right. Her hand snaked behind him, seizing his wrist. “I can see that it is something. A something that you just put into my wine.” She tried to pull his clenched fingers apart. “Are you trying to poison me, Norman?”
He opened his fist, surrendering its contents. “It’s a love philter.” There was a faint blush on his sharp cheekbones.
“Oooh, a love philter,” she cooed, examining the small leather bag. “Have I demanded so much of your poor male member lately, that you must use magic to assist you in fulfilling your husbandly duty?”
To her delight his blush deepened. “I was just sort of curious, is all. Taliesin gave the cursed thing to me on that Lugnasa night when you danced naked under the moon, back when you were being a stubborn wench about sharing my bed.”
“You have a faulty memory, my lord, about who was being stubborn about what. That squire is a scheming, interfering trickster!”
He grinned suddenly. “You must admit, though, that it might be fun to try it. Look, we’ll both drink it.” He picked up the wine goblet, stirring it with his finger, then held it up to her lips. His voice turned husky. “You go first.”
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