by Deborah Hale
“Oddly enough, so have I.” A gust of free, hearty laughter shook Rowan to his toes. He seemed neither to mark nor care about the speculative looks his men exchanged.
He drew her toward his tent, pitched before a slight rise. To the man-at-arms who guarded it, he ordered, “Stand off a ways and see to it that we are not disturbed on any account.”
“As you bid, my lord.” The fellow strove to swallow a broad grin and failed miserably.
Cecily caught his eye. She sensed the proper response from her should be a modest blush and downcast gaze. Instead she grinned back and winked.
Turning to his tent, Rowan drew back the entry flap for Cecily to enter.
As she crossed the threshold, she discovered a surprisingly agreeable site for their bridal tryst. Though the tent covered only a few paces in length and width, it was tall enough for them both to stand comfortably. A covered iron brazier in one corner had taken the chill off the autumn air, its smoke laced with herbs to mask the musty scent of canvas. A tiny lamp hung from the ridgepole, shedding just enough soft, flickering light to preside over their connubial rites.
As Cecily’s eyes grew accustomed to the shadows, they fixed on the corner of the tent opposite the brazier, where a thick mattress of fleeces beckoned her. She turned on Rowan and kissed him hungrily, her tongue swiping a moist bond between his lips and hers.
With obvious reluctance, he pulled away from her. “Not a touch or kiss more until you have shed those clothes.” He chuckled. “At my cousin Joscelin’s court, I knew men who made use of pretty boys. The practice never appealed to me. I want to know I have a woman in my arms.”
“Will you help me disrobe?” Her throat tightened, just saying the words.
His answer surprised her. “No. I would rather watch you do it.”
The suggestion, delivered in a husky murmur, fueled the heat in Cecily’s blood like a flask of oil poured on an open flame.
As she sought to regain her composure, Rowan slipped past her, careful not to permit even a glancing brush of their bodies. He knelt before a low chest, very much like the one he’d given her as a wedding present. From it he removed a wine flagon and a goblet.
Unstopping the flagon, he poured out a generous measure of wine, the color of flawless rubies. “Perhaps this will fortify us sufficiently until we are ready to take food.”
Cecily vacillated between the need to steady herself with a drink and the certainty that Rowan’s attentions would stimulate her better than any libation of the vine.
He held out the goblet to her. One dark brow cocked over eyes sparkling with delicious wickedness. “Let me make you an exchange. Say, one drink for every garment you remove?”
With a sly smile and a nod, she accepted his offer. Pulling off one leather shoe, she held it out to him. “I believe you owe me a drink, my lord.”
Taking the shoe from her, he tossed it aside, then held the goblet to her lips. She barely managed a sip before he pulled it back again. When Cecily sputtered in protest, he took a drink himself, savoring the bouquet upon his tongue.
“You shall have a longer draft when you have earned it, lass. With something more engaging than a bare foot.”
“Scoundrel!” Purring the word, as though it were the choicest of endearments, she kicked off the second shoe and claimed her miserly reward.
Next came the hooded surcoat.
After grudging her a slightly longer drink, Rowan stood back to watch as Cecily lifted the tunic over her head and let it fall to the ground beside her. She gave a little wriggle, enjoying the sensation of the air on her naked breasts. Their tawny pink paps rose erect and expectant as if signaling to her lover’s hands.
Rowan answered their call. This time he offered Cecily the goblet, to claim as long or short a drink as she chose. But how could she think of wine…or light, or air, when he cupped each sweetly aching bosom in one of his palms, teasing the paps to greater and greater heights with tantalizing swipes of his thumbs?
A tremulous gasp broke from Cecily’s lips. “Take back the cup before I spill it.”
With a lingering farewell caress that promised more to come, Rowan lifted his hands from her breasts and reclaimed the goblet. A smile of deep satisfaction hovered on his lips and glowed in his eyes. He enjoyed rousing her—that was clear.
“But, dear heart, you have not collected your reward.” He held the rim to her lips as she imbibed. “And these deserve a rich reward.”
His hot gaze flicked over her breasts again with such palpable admiration, Cecily fancied she could feel its gossamer caress. What reward would ensue when she shed the breeches? The anticipation made her heart skip giddily.
Before she could wriggle out of them, Rowan dipped two fingers into the goblet and anointed one of her nipples with a drop of wine. Dipping his head, he suckled it off with deft strokes of his tongue. By the time he’d favored the other breast with a similar reward, Cecily was ready to melt into a whimpering puddle on the ground.
With fumbling fingers, she untied the breeches and let them fall around her ankles.
Slowly Rowan walked around her. She started as his hand came to rest in a featherlight touch on her backside.
“You have healed…beautifully.” He rested his bearded chin on her shoulder. “Sister Hulda’s ointment must have magical properties. Or perhaps the hand that applied it?”
His arms encircled her from behind, bringing the wine goblet to her lips for a final deep draft. Oh, the strange but heady sensation of her bare back and rump pressed against his chain mail!
A woman at her most open and vulnerable. A man at his strongest and most guarded. But who possessed the greater power?
As he held the cup with one hand, Rowan let the other slide lazily downward, running over her breast and belly like a delicious trickle of warm water. Coming to rest with gentle possession on the downy mound between her thighs. Cecily did not trust herself to swallow the wine in her mouth, for fear she might choke.
With a swift, searing kiss on her neck, Rowan drew back from her again. A drop of wine dribbled from the corner of Cecily’s slack mouth.
“I beg one boon more.”
It was everything she could do to swallow the wine and breathe. “Anything.”
“Let me unplait your hair?”
Too lost in the extremity of pleasure for words, she could only nod her acquiescence.
With fingers suddenly grown impatient, he untied the leather cord and loosed her hair to fan around her. Two strands he draped over her shoulders to veil her breasts. That done, he circled in front of her and sated his eyes.
A spark of her natural impudence rekindled. “They do say sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, my lord.”
He beamed, like a master doting on the genius of a favorite pupil. “You would have me doff my armor? Merry, what reward will you grant me for each piece I divest?”
Cecily met the roguish challenge in his eyes with an intrepid thrust of her chin. “For each garment you remove, husband, I will give you leave to name and claim your own reward.”
His nostrils flared and for an instant he looked in peril of loosing his poised control. “That is as tempting a bargain as ever I’ve been offered. A man would be a fool to turn it down.” He flashed a feral grin that made Cecily break out in gooseflesh. “And I am no fool.”
For the first boot, he demanded a kiss—long and luxurious as a pelt of fine fur, with no parts of their body touching save lips and tongues.
For the second boot, he begged leave to run a single finger over her body, from crown to toe. As the pad of his finger glided across her skin, it set her aquiver with desire.
Upon removing the coif that protected his neck and head, Rowan bid Cecily suckle each of his fingers in turn. When he doffed his birnie of chain mail, he exacted the right to suckle each of hers. After his leather gambeson came off, with some assistance from her, he asked leave to rub his bare chest lightly against her bosoms. When his thatch of silken chest hair grazed her exquisit
ely sensitive paps, Cecily squealed with sweet torment.
Last, he removed his quilted leather breeches. Cecily watched with greedy eyes as the action liberated his rampant desire.
“Your will, my lord?” Her lips would scarcely cooperate to form the words.
All the mocking, teasing merriment had fled his gaze. Now it smoldered with hunger too long held in check. His hushed, urgent reply seared the air. “I will have you on your back.” He pointed to the mattress of fleeces. “Spread open to welcome me.”
A flutter of panic rose in her throat as she contemplated his size and his power. But a heady intemperance pulsed in her veins, pleading for the release only he could give her.
With an inviting sway of her hips, and a provocative glance back over her shoulder at Rowan, she sauntered to the makeshift bed. She collapsed on her back, her hair fanned around her and her legs sprawled wide in total surrender.
Hovering over her, Rowan heaved the massive sigh of a starveling contemplating the choicest feast.
“I gave you wine,” he growled, nuzzling the responsive flesh of her inner thighs with his beard. “Now I will sample your native vintage.”
At the whisper of his breath and the barest flicker of his tongue, her whole world turned inside out. Roiling. Spinning. Pulsing. Boiling alive in a cauldron of pleasure.
Before she could regain her senses, Rowan mounted her and thrust home. A cry of pain rose in her throat, but died in the onslaught of delight.
Spread open to welcome me. His words resonated in her mind as she melded her body to his. With instinctive convulsions of her hips, she urged him to plunge from that pinnacle of ecstasy to which he had coaxed her.
Then his mouth clamped down on hers and his whole body clenched again and again, as though it could not contain the force of sensation that rampaged through it. In the end it held together. But barely so.
For a moment he swooned on top of her, then gathered himself for a valiant effort and rolled onto his side, taking Cecily with him. Spent and complete at last, they slept.
He had died. It was the only explanation.
Died and gone to paradise.
So it seemed to Rowan as he slowly woke in the early hours of the morning.
Cecily nestled in his arms as though God had created her expressly to fill them. Expressly to fill the yawning void in his heart. Last night it had seemed possible that he filled some aching hollow within her, too.
Now, while she slept within the circle of his embrace, a fierce fever of protectiveness raged through him. Cecily was too eager, too trusting, too forgiving. She needed someone strong and vigilant to shield her against…a man like him.
Recognizing his own unworthiness, he should have been the first to warn her away. Instead, he had succumbed to his own selfish desires and led her into temptation.
Unbidden memories from their night of love tantalized him. Was he not willing to ransom his soul for more of the same?
Perhaps.
A deep sigh shook him, and from the corner of his eye a single tear fell upon Cecily’s silken mane.
But he was not willing to ransom her soul.
Somehow he must find a way to save his reckless, mettlesome beauty from the consequences of her own forthright generosity.
Even if it cost him his heart.
Chapter Eighteen
Could heaven be half so wonderful?
With a smile of womanly contentment stretching her lips to their limit, Cecily wriggled against the luxuriant softness of brushed fleece. When her movements met none of the expected resistance from a warm male body, she forced her eyes open and peered around in some alarm.
Either the lamp had burned out in the night or some hand had snuffed it. By such dawn light as managed to penetrate the tent, she could tell Rowan had gone.
She should have known better than to imagine one night of passion would keep him from his duty. No doubt he’d experienced many such since his disastrous bridal with Jacquetta DeNevers. It was foolish to hope their mating had meant as much to him as it had to her. Enough, perhaps, to weight the balance in their favor, when their differences and strong wills threatened to tear their fragile alliance asunder?
For herself, she feared it might weigh too heavily. Would her husband be tempted to use the carnal power he wielded over her in order to get his own way? Her father had tried to control her using the whip of his displeasure. Lord DeCourtenay might easily use the honeyed bait of her own pleasure to master her.
The notion chilled Cecily, almost as much as it beguiled her.
Coward! Fool! her own spirit of independence chided. What difference does it make how a husband governs you? With a lash or a caressing hand to your backside?
“Be quiet and mind your own business!” Cecily covered her ears with her hands, as if that could shut out the unwelcome exhortations of her own nature.
When she unstopped her ears again, Cecily heard the unmistakable sounds of Rowan’s army preparing to strike camp for the day. The chink of weapons and armor, the hoofbeats and whinnying of horses, the purposeful movement of men.
From just outside Rowan’s tent, she heard muted voices.
Perhaps her husband was planning strategy with his knights. His tent would be the logical place for such counsels. But how could he use it so, with his freshly deflowered bride sprawled naked in his bed?
Crawling reluctantly from her comfortable berth, Cecily dressed herself in the garments she had so deliciously shed the night before. True to the ribald jest of Rowan’s kinsman, she did walk somewhat gingerly after her conjugal initiation.
As she lifted the door flap of the tent, she braced herself to run the gauntlet of knowing stares and lewd half smiles from Rowan’s men. She wondered what Con would make of this strange but welcome reversal in her relations with his master.
The Welshman was nowhere in sight as she emerged into the camp, which was swathed in an early morning mist. Instead, Rowan huddled in close talk with two men she knew only slightly. Standing off from them, chained and under heavy guard, stood three other men, one of whom Cecily also recognized. For a moment she plundered her memory for a clue as to his identity.
Then the fellow called out to Rowan. “Who be ye and what do ye mean to do with us?”
That voice. Instantly Cecily recalled the guardsman who had tried to detain her from leaving Brantham Keep.
Fulke’s men!
Forgetting the tenderness in her nether regions, Cecily hurried toward Rowan. “What is this? How do we come to have apprehended Fulke’s men?”
Ignoring the bellowed demand of the prisoner, Rowan turned eagerly on Cecily. “They are in his service then? A band of my outriders took them by surprise, but they have not been very forthcoming with tidings about themselves.”
To his own men who stood guard over the captives he called, “Take them away and see they are fed. But keep them chained and well watched until I decide how best to dispose of them.”
The fellow Cecily had recognized began to bluster about how they would be sorry if they mistreated him or his companions.
When he paused for breath, Rowan ordered, “Gag that one as soon as he’s eaten.”
Casting Cecily a faint smile that looked almost bashful, he turned to his lieutenants. “Fie, I do not like this. Who knows how many other search parties DeBoissard still has combing the countryside? We were fortunate to blunder upon this lot before they blundered upon us. If the enemy anticipates our attack, we’ll be done for.”
“Then we must press on with all speed, my lord,” said the taller and fairer of the two knights.
“We cannot hope to reach Brantham before sundown,” countered the other.
Like a bolt of lightning in a dark sky, a plan had flashed in Cecily’s mind, illuminated to the last detail. She could keep silent no longer. “Don’t you see? This is not a problem, but an opportunity. I have known all along a frontal assault against Brantham would be disastrous, but I could see no alternative. Now Fulke has presented us with on
e.”
The three men stared at her as if she had grown horns.
Drawing a deep breath, she outlined her plan as if to a brace of simpletons. “We will take the clothes and horses from these men of Fulke’s and find three of our own who resemble them in size and coloring. Just at the tail end of the night watch, we will have them ride up to Brantham’s gate and demand entry. Once inside, they will keep the gate open until our forces can enter.”
Rowan’s two knights exchanged an auspicious look.
“It could work,” the taller one ventured cautiously.
DeCourtenay shook his head. “’Tis too great a risk. There’ll be hand-to-hand fighting….”
“Aye,” countered Cecily. “With our men armed and ready, while most of Fulke’s struggle out of their beds.”
“What if this advance party cannot hold the gate long enough for all my men to—”
“They won’t need to hold it until all your men enter, just enough to continue holding it for those who come behind. Besides, the guard will be few in number at that time of the night and inclined to sleep—maybe a little drunk.”
The two knights were nodding openly now in support of her. Surely Rowan would see reason, too.
“Enough of this, Cecily. It is a rash scheme. For all we know, the gate guards may recognize our imposters. They may be required to give a password or—”
“This is not the time for caution, DeCourtenay.” If he could not see it, perhaps they were too ill matched for their union to succeed. “Only boldness will carry the day. It will be dark at the gate, and I’ll wager the guards will open, password or no, if the search party returns with the captive they seek.”
It was the masterful keystone to her plan. Rowan could not send her packing back to Ravensridge if he needed her to affect his entry into Brantham.
He scowled, and beneath its sun-bronzed aspect, his face blanched. “On no account will I permit it. It is far too dangerous.” With a curt nod, he dismissed the two knights—her potential allies.
From between clenched teeth, Cecily released an exasperated sigh. “More dangerous than what you and I have already been through, together? I tell you, Rowan, I am the perfect bait for the gate guard, and I am the perfect addition to the advance party. While Fulke wants me to wed, his guards dare not lay a finger on me. And I know Brantham, down to the deepest corner of the cellars and the plumbing chute from the garderobe. If anyone can hold that gate open for you, I can.”