by Gwen Rowley
He laughed and kissed her hair. “That’s something to go on with, isn’t it? In time we will fit more easily together. And we’ll have all the time we need when we are wed.”
When we are wed. She shivered as she lay beside him, gently tracing the scar beneath his ribs as his breathing slowed and deepened. Had he really asked her to marry him? It seemed so natural at the moment that she’d accepted him without thinking. It was only now she realized what that meant.
She sat up, her legs crossed beneath her. Lancelot lay upon the grass, one arm crooked beneath his head, moonlight bathing the hard contours of his body in a silver glow. A smile still lingered upon his lips, those precisely chiseled lips that she had always so admired. Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed them lightly so as not to wake him.
His brows were thicker above his nose, tapering as they arched. The left one had a tiny scar running through its outer edge, marring their perfect symmetry. She kissed the scar, as well, and then the tip of his nose, and then his lips once more because she could not resist them. Sitting back, she admired him shamelessly, her eyes tracing the bold contours of his wide jaw and high cheekbones, lingering on the deep, enchanting hollows in between.
Would she ever grow weary of looking at his face? In ten years, twenty—no, even then she could not imagine such a thing could ever happen.
A rustle in the wood behind her shattered her reverie. She shook her hair over her shoulders, shielding breasts and belly before she turned, blushing yet defiant, to face whoever had disturbed them.
Only to find the glade empty. She could still hear muffled sounds, yet she could not see what might be making them. She gasped aloud when she saw the high grass bend as though beneath a footstep. For a moment it seemed someone was there with them—she had the impression of the hem of a glittering gown sweeping across the grass, a high-arched foot encased in a jeweled slipper. When she tried to see more, the image wavered and was gone. All that remained were two patches of flattened grass, a swirling darkness between her and the trees, a rustle in the undergrowth and the occasional green glint of eyes, as though a score of tiny animals had gathered at the clearing’s edge.
“Who is there?” she cried, her voice high and thin with fear.
Lancelot started awake, lifting himself on his elbows. “Elaine? What—” He looked past her, and his eyes widened.
“Who is it?” Elaine cried, turning to search the empty clearing. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” Lancelot said. “There is no one there . . . now. It is all right, Elaine. I swear it.”
When he drew her to him again, she went, trusting him completely as she lost herself in his embrace.
Chapter 28
“BUT what if it doesn’t stop?” Elaine asked, peering from the doorway of the barn as the rain beat upon the fields beyond. “We’ll have to bring the hay in—”
“Nay, lady,” Will Reeve said decidedly, dragging a bony wrist across his streaming brow. “That’ll mean fire sure enough. Damp hay—” He shook his head. “It just won’t do. We can only hope this rain don’t bide.”
“My scar was a-paining me yestere’en,” Lancelot said suddenly from her other side, in such a dead-on imitation of the reeve that Elaine was forced to manufacture a hasty coughing fit. “And thass a certain sign of rain. ’Twere but a middling sort o’ pain, though, nobbut a shower’s worth, I’ll vow. But then,” he paused dramatically, “this morning I found a spider in my porridge.”
“I hope you didn’t kill it,” Elaine said severely, giving him a sharp dig with her elbow.
“Nah, lady, not I!” Lancelot declared. “’Twere a rare fool—”
“—that’d kill a spider at hay-making time,” Will Reeve finished flatly. The two men eyed each other over her head. “Well, lad, at least ye listen.”
“Always,” Lancelot assured him.
“Even if ye are a scamp,” Will said, his face lighting with a rare smile.
“I am,” Lancelot said humbly. “And I’m sorry for it.”
“Bullocks,” Will declared. “But thass all right, we can all use a bit o’ merriment.”
Elaine grinned as Will vanished into the barn behind them, where the rest of the villeins had fled the sudden storm. “Very good,” she said approvingly, “we’ll make a farmer of you yet.”
“You,” Lancelot said, “can make me anything you like.”
He stood in the doorway of the barn with the rain beating down behind him, one hand braced above his head and his damp hair curling about his brow.
“Will,” he called, not turning from Elaine, “what say we give the lads a rest? Say an hour . . . or no, let us make it two.”
Within moments the barn was empty save for the two of them. “I could not sleep last night,” Lancelot said.
“Warm milk is said to be effective in such cases,” Elaine retorted primly, though her heart was pounding so hard and fast that she was certain he must hear it. So it always was when he looked at her that way, as though the world and everything in it had ceased to exist—save her.
“It was not warm milk I wanted.” He lowered his arm and stepped forward until they stood toe-to-toe, barely an inch between them. He tugged the coif from her head and let it fall to the floor. “I lay in bed, watching the moon, remembering sunset at the mill and a certain sound you made . . .”
He deftly unwound her braid and ran a hand through her hair, spreading his fingers so the strands gleamed against his skin. “Do you know the one I mean? It was when I—”
“Yes, I know,” she said quickly, her cheeks warming as she remembered the flock of swallows bursting from the ruined mill with a clap of wings, startled from their perches by her cry. She had laughed, then, watching the black shapes wheel against the red-streaked sky, her arms wound around her lover’s neck and his breath warm and quick against her neck.
“I liked that sound,” he went on, his face thoughtful as he wound a golden lock about his wrist, “oh, I liked it very much, Elaine. The more I thought of it, the more I longed to hear it once again.”
He tugged her hair, drawing her closer until she could feel the beating of his heart. “Do you think I might?”
“Perhaps. I cannot promise . . .”
“Is that a challenge?”
Before she knew what he meant to do, he bent and seized her about the knees, tossing her over one shoulder and striding toward the wooden ladder leading to the hayloft. “Put me down—you’ll do yourself a damage—”
“Too late,” he said, dropping to his knees and laying her down in the deep straw. He bent to her, and the rain pounded on the roof as he explored her with lips and tongue and hands, greeting each response as a revelation.
“This?”
She moaned softly as he trailed a path of soft kisses from the peak of her breast to her navel. “Or . . . this?” He dipped lower, and when she gasped, he raised his head to look at her through half-closed eyes. “No? Or was that a yes?”
Before she could collect herself to answer, he bent to her again, his explorations growing bolder. When she cried out, her body arching toward him, he laughed aloud. “Oh, that was assuredly a yes. What’s this?” he said with mock sternness as she clamped her legs together, stammering an incoherent and much belated protest. “No, I will not have it, indeed I will not.”
So it always was when they lay together and with endless patience he sought her deepest pleasure. All he asked of her was honesty, which she could not have refused him if she would.
At last he came to her, and they strained together, rising, rising toward some distant peak. As one they reached it, hung poised for a heart-stopping moment, then her cry woke the echoes in the rafters above their heads before she tumbled headlong into oblivion.
“Mmm . . .” Lancelot murmured sometime later, rousing her from a doze. “Just think, only a fortnight, and you will be mine forever.”
“What then?” she murmured sleepily.
“Then we can make love in a proper bed. With pillows.�
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She laughed, remembering their visit to his castle and the hour they’d spent in the lord’s bedchamber. There had been many pillows on the great bed. A tiny cloud of dust had burst from the one she had used to attack him by surprise. What had started as a romp soon took some very interesting turns.
She sighed. “I do like pillows. Yes, we must have dozens. But . . . where are we to live?”
“I had thought at Joyous Gard,” he answered, his hands moving lazily up and down her back.
She smiled, remembering the moment when he so named it, as they stood together on the battlements, her body glowing from their bed play and the wind whipping through her hair.
“Did it not please you?” he added.
“Oh, it did, very much. It’s lovely. Only . . . I would like to see the crop in.”
“Then we shall. Joyous Gard isn’t going anywhere.”
“Do you mean it?”
One broad shoulder moved in a shrug, making the muscles move like liquid beneath his sun-browned skin. “I’m in no particular hurry to take up residence. After all, it’s where I’ll spend eternity.”
“What do you mean?”
“My tomb is already built, complete with a plaque that bears my name and lineage.”
She drew back a little, a chill touching her neck. “You’ve constructed your tomb?” He hadn’t had anything else done to the keep or lands; indeed, she’d been a little shocked at how run-down the castle was. She covered her discomfort with a laugh. “How frightfully practical.”
“Practical? Me?” One dark brow lifted. “No, it was there already.”
“But if you did not—then who made it? Why?”
He smiled, drawing her down so her head rested against his shoulder. She traced a finger across the curling dark hair upon his chest, listening to the steady beating of his heart.
“I’ve told you before that when I came to Camelot,” he said, “I did not know my own name or who my parents were. The Lady presented me to King Arthur and asked him to make me one of his knights. He agreed—though he didn’t look very happy about the whole business. I was quick to take offense in those days, so I said he needn’t bother until I could present myself to him properly.”
Elaine nodded, lulled by the music of his voice. This was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but it was the first time since he had been ill that he had spoken of the past at all.
“Instead, I asked for an adventure,” he went on, “and soon enough he found me one—a good thing, too, as I wasn’t getting on very well with the other squires. Well, that adventure led to another, and so at length I found myself riding to Norhaut to aid a lady in distress.”
Elaine knew this tale; she doubted there was a person in all of Britain who did not. It was Lancelot’s first adventure, the deed that won him both spurs and fame . . . and by the time it made its way to Corbenic, it had been so twisted and embroidered as to be completely unbelievable. Elaine had a hundred questions, but the first one springing to her lips was the foremost in her mind. “Was she a beautiful lady?”
“Not as beautiful as you,” he said, his lips brushing her temple. “But passing fair. Well, once the battle was over—”
“Wait!” Elaine interrupted, laughing. “You can’t just say, ‘once the battle was over’!”
“Another time—”
“But that is what you always say! You never talk about your adventures, and I’ve heard such fanciful things—you would laugh if you knew what they said of this one. I want to know what it was really like.”
He heaved a martyred sigh that she thought was only part in jest. Her small pang of guilt was quickly stifled by her curiosity, and she promised herself she would not laugh, no matter how far the truth varied from the tale. “Very well,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything! To begin, how many knights fought with you?”
He gazed up at her, his expression as resigned as a man who had just offered himself to be tied upon the rack. “None.”
“You had the sole command? But you were just a lad!”
“Yes, but I had been preparing all my life.”
“Still, an untried squire?” Elaine shook her head. “Poor lady, she must have been quite desperate.”
“She was that,” Lancelot agreed.
“How many foot soldiers did she have?”
“There were none.” She gave him a sharp look, but he merely shrugged. “Men-at-arms?” He shook his head. “Squires? Not even a one-legged soldier or an incredibly brave page?”
“Norhaut had been occupied for years,” he explained. “The defenders had all been killed or run off long ago. I fought alone that day.”
“Oh.” Elaine regarded him in silence, half expecting him to burst out laughing. But he merely went on watching her with patient resignation, as though he knew how ridiculous the whole thing sounded, and was sorry, but could not do anything about it.
If she could have dropped the subject there and then, she would have done it. But she had gone too far to retreat; no matter how little she might like the answers to her questions, she had been the one who insisted on asking them. “Next you’ll tell me there really were two giants,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “And six score knights defending the gates.”
Then, at last, he smiled. “Of course not,” he said, and she laughed, a bit surprised at the strength of her relief.
“There was only one giant,” he went on. “Poor fellow, he wasn’t very quick—and three score knights, not six, none of them particularly brave or skilled.”
Elaine stopped laughing. “You—wait a moment, I want to be sure I understand you. You defeated a giant and three score knights? Without any help at all?”
“Oh, no, I did have help. Just before I reached Norhaut, I met a damsel—”
“Another one?” Elaine smiled to show she was not jealous in the least, though she feared her smile wasn’t terribly convincing.
“This one came from the Lady of the Lake. She gave me three shields; each was meant to increase my strength by ten.”
Elaine was starting to feel ill. She’d forgotten the shields, which had figured largely in the tale. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” she said with a brittle laugh. “Let’s see . . . thirty times your strength against sixty knights, is that it? So really, it was two to one, almost an even match. That’s leaving the giant aside, of course, but we’re not counting him.”
“I used two of the shields,” he said, his face as stony as if she’d just given the rack another twist. “The third I cast aside.”
Now she had joined him on the rack. His story was absurd, impossible. Elaine might not understand much about knights or battles or giants, either swift or slow, but what she knew, she knew. And included among those few, indisputable facts was that a shield was only as good as the materials that went into its making and the strength of the man who wielded it. To believe otherwise was folly . . . or . . .
“Why did you cast it aside?” she asked quickly, before she could follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion.
“I did not need it. The giant was no trouble; as I said, he was dreadfully slow. And many of the knights turned tail and fled. I doubt I fought more than half of them.”
Ah, well, that explained it. How foolish she had been to doubt! Single-handed, he had defeated only thirty knights, not sixty. No wonder he had tossed the last shield away!
Had it been anyone else, she would have laughed, certain he was either a braggart or a liar. But she refused to believe that Lancelot would lie to her, and he had never once attempted to impress her with his deeds. Even now, he had done his best to avoid the subject, and she was quite sure he wasn’t jesting. Which meant that he was telling her the truth.
And still it was impossible.
“Lancelot,” she said carefully, “are you quite certain that is how it was? Not that I doubt you,” she added quickly, “I’m sure you fought bravely that day. ’Tis only . . .”
“Only what?”
He sat up and brushed straw from his damp skin.
“Well . . .” she drew a swift breath and plunged ahead. “No boy of eighteen years, however doughty he might be, could possibly defeat thirty knights. Even if they were hopeless, utterly unskilled, and cowardly into the bargain, the sheer numbers would have been enough to overcome a single challenger.”
“Yes, but I had the shields.”
“The shield does not exist that can increase its owner’s strength tenfold! It simply isn’t possible; it isn’t in the natural order of things! Listen to me,” she said urgently, sitting up to face him. “The sun rises each morning in the east. Every night it sinks into the west. That is God’s ordering of the world; it can never change, no more than a seed of rye, planted in a field, might yield a turnip—or an onion or a rose—if rain falls upon a Tuesday or the wind blows from the north!”
“Or that killing a spider at harvest time brings rain?”
“Of course it doesn’t! That is just a silly superstition, and only the ignorant believe it!”
“So I am ignorant?” he retorted, his eyes flashing.
“No!”
“Oh, I am a liar, then!”
“Not that, either. Please don’t be angry, I only want to help. The Lady of the Lake—she isn’t who you think she is.” Quickly she told him of her conversation with Father Bernard. Lancelot did not interrupt but sat quietly, his head bent. “So you see,” she finished, “it isn’t your fault at all. You were just a child; of course you believed everything they told you.”
At last he raised his head. “So what you are saying,” he said slowly, “is that I am mad.”
She flinched as though he’d struck her. “No! You are . . . confused. Mistaken. Oh, Lancelot, there is no such thing as magic.”
“No such thing as magic!” He laughed a little wildly. “Do you honestly believe that?”
“It is not a matter of belief; I know it for a certainty. My love, I would not lie to you, not about anything and surely not about this. If only you will trust me, together we can find the truth.”